No Patty? No Profit!
Imagine walking in to your favourite burger joint. You have your order planned in your mind. You get to the counter, only to be told, “Sorry! We are out of stock.”
While a customer walks away in a bad mood, the repercussions are much higher for the restaurant. You lose the business – meaning direct loss of revenue, and your reputation is called in to question – the next time the customer is looking for a burger he/she may go elsewhere to a place where they know their favourite burger is in stock.
Cumulatively, this could be a disastrous situation for a restaurant. So how do you tackle this? A good POS system can help you manage and maintain your stocks and send you automated alerts when your stocks reach critical levels. Touché POS can do all this and more for you.
Let’s now look at the same example from the point of view of a small eatery or QSR, which procures semi-finished items from vendors, then assembles them to create the final item for sale – a burger. To make a good, saleable burger the eatery requires two categories of ingredients:
Key ingredients – A bun and a patty Complementary ingredients – A takeaway bag and a paper napkin
Here we see a clear distinction in the two categories. Without the key ingredients, it would be impossible to create the final item. Whereas, the complimentary ingredients add to the customer experience, but are not crucial to the creation of the final item for sale, in this case the burger.
Coming back to our initial question – How can a good POS system help you in this scenario?
With the application of a good POS, each of the ingredients listed above can be created in the system and categorised as illustrated.
The individual ingredients can be linked up to the final item for sale.
You can manage the stocks of your ingredients.
Stocks increase when they are received from the vendor.
Stocks are depleted with each final item being sold.
Most importantly, a good POS system should help you manage and maintain your stocks so you never find yourself in the detrimental situation of not having a final product to sell to your customers.
If any of the ingredients required to make the final item being sold – a burger – are out of stock, your POS should not allow you to add the item to the check.
Additionally, your POS should allow you to set Par Stock levels for each ingredient, i.e. the minimum stock level. Through this set-up, a warning alert is sent out to the cashier (and manager) when selling the item bringing their attention to the fact that the ingredient needs to be restocked to prevent disruption in sales.
It is obvious that without a key ingredient such as a patty you cannot sell a burger. But does this mean that if you do not have paper napkins in stock your POS system should stop you from selling burgers? Absolutely not!
Here is where the categorisation of ingredients in to key and complementary comes in to play. While you cannot sell an item when the key ingredients are out of stock. Your POS should let you continue sales irrespective of stock levels of complementary items. However, it should still alert you that your complementary items are out of stock.
At this point, you may ask yourself. Why do I need to have a POS system for this? Why can’t I delegate the task of maintaining stocks to an employee?
The answer is that automation removes all chances of manual error. An employee sitting and counting how many patties are in stock could miscount putting you back in the situation where you could lose business due to not having a final item for sale. Additionally, the long-term costs of an automated POS are far less than the cost of wasted resources on stocktaking and loss of reputation due to manual errors.
Get The Edge with a great POS system that allows you to manage stocks and maintain revenue flows. Harness the power of Touché POS.
Author: Paresh Gupta, Development Manager at Prologic First.
For over 15 years, Prologic First has developed and internationally marketed integrated software solutions for the hospitality sector. Software that comprehensively meets the requirements of hotels, F&B businesses, membership clubs, and banqueting/conference venues.
