How A Cloud Kitchen POS Streamlines Your Deliver-Only Operations And Boosts Profitability

The minute you start thinking about starting your own food delivery business, or a cloud kitchen, is when you should think about a cloud kitchen POS too. Not just for running kitchen operations smoothly, but also to ensure higher profitability as well.

A cloud kitchen typically accepts orders from various online food aggregators and can also have its own online ordering website and mobile app. Handling orders incoming from the various platforms through individual tablets and then processing them into the POS is a cumbersome task. Thus, having a cloud kitchen POS that accepts all orders centrally becomes a necessity for a delivery-only kitchen.

How A Cloud Kitchen POS Streamlines Your Operations

From the minute an online order comes in, to the point of it being pushed to the right kitchen to monitoring each operation until its delivery, is all handled by a single technology. You could only imagine the convenience that the technology brings to your brand if you’re still not using it.

Also, since cloud kitchens thrive on online orders, it’s important to have an integrated system to have a detailed record of customer details. Their likes and dislikes are recorded by the frequency of the food they order, which is eventually used to make suggestions the next time the same customer wants to order in.

i) Centralized Order Taking

The orders are placed in a single integrated POS in which the initial details of the customers are taken in, inclusive of their names, location and preferred dishes. As soon as these details are put in with their order, it is pushed to the customer’s nearest kitchen where their food is prepared. This ensures minimal delivery time and maximum customer satisfaction.

The call center panel is an integral part of the cloud kitchen POS. This ensures upselling and retaining the customers’ trust by suggesting them their favorite food. Along with that, the software also helps you to define a menu for each of your kitchen outlets on the basis of their bestsellers, streamlining your orders.

ii) Multiple Brand Ordering

A cloud kitchen business model can incorporate more than one brand, which means that the customers should be able to order from different brands in one order. The use of a cloud kitchen POS makes it both convenient and more revenue-generating for your brand.

The best part is that a company can customize its restaurant management software according to its needs. For example, if a customer wants to order from a kitchen that serves different brands, the brand kitchen can actually customize that to happen. Or if a customer wants to know the bestseller dishes of a kitchen, the kitchen could customize that as well.

iii) Live Data Reports and Analysis

Both the customers and the owner should be able to track the status of food preparation and delivery to maintain a good relation. Since these kitchens have separate integrated restaurant management software now, the executives must be no longer troubled for constant updates. The real-time-location analysis also enables tracking of your kitchen operations, like the time taken to prepare a particular dish.

As soon as the order is punched by an employee, it is optimized in such a way that the delivery executive reaches there as soon as possible. A proper POS allows you to note down important details of an order like the discount offered, or the frequency of a particular dish ordered by a customer. All this data eventually leads to the evaluation of your staff’s performance and thereby generates their incentive plans.

iv) Sales Management And Overview

After billing and checking order details, you need to decide on the different prices of your dishes depending on your kitchen location. Most cloud kitchens work with a multiple brand business model. Suppose a brand has its outlets in a number of countries like Singapore, Dubai, and India.

Each of these countries has a different currency and differs in the availability of raw materials which would reflect on the food cost. It can be daunting to actually convert each transaction into their respective currencies to monitor transactions.

A restaurant management software can save you from all the headaches and estimate an appropriate cost for you taking all these factors into consideration. Once you have different prices for each item on the basis of your kitchen location, it becomes 100 times easier for you to monitor your transactions.

These transactions also include the delivery partners for each order in each kitchen, all on a single screen. On occasions where there is a discount applicable on an order, the transactions include the discount amount given. Analysis data of all these orders also help to determine which is the top source of order delivery, Zomato, Uber Eats, Swiggy, etc. You could use this information to understand your sales and profits.

v) Monitoring Operations From Anywhere Around The Globe

Another important advantage to take into considerations is the central optimization of all the operations. It would help you to identify the lag, the cause of the delay happening and other details that you may otherwise oversee. Along with that, it makes it possible for the restaurant to deliver faster by specifying the time span for the preparation of each item with the estimated time for its delivery.

You are also able to customize any minute changes in the recipes for each item centrally, which will be automatically sent to all the respective kitchens. Since you can’t be present at each outlet individually, your restaurant management software works as a substitute for you by monitoring everything in detail.

vi) Managing Different Kitchen Outlets

The kitchen outlets need to be completely optimized in order to avoid delay in operations and food delivery. The better the kitchen is organized, the easier it will be for the staff to work. What a restaurant management software does is make a blueprint of the kitchen inclusive of all the equipment.

You can customize the kitchen equipment according to you. One example of a potential set of your kitchen is to place the equipment for hot dishes on one side and the ones for cold dishes on another side. There can be a lot of other ways to organize your kitchen set-up and all of that can be monitored through one single software.

This makes it easy for you to prepare different kinds of dishes smoothly at the same time. You can track each of the items present in your kitchen including your raw materials and equipment. The software helps you to keep track of all the dishes from the kitchen.

vii) Instant Assigning To Your Delivery Partner

As soon as an order is punched in a POS, it is automatically assigned to the respective delivery partner. This optimization ensures that the time taken for the food preparation is somewhere near to the time taken by the delivery executive to get to the kitchen outlet. Ensuring such high precision in order taking and delivering will bring many more orders to your cloud kitchen than a bunch of marketing techniques together.

We know how the cloud kitchen is gradually sliding into the food and beverage industry and becoming the new popular trend. The online ordering industry is at 50,000 crores as of now and is expected to experience a hike of 15% every quarter year from now, which makes Cloud kitchens the next heroes of the F&B industry and the restaurant management software their soldiers!