5 Best Pizza ePOS Requirements That Apply Specifically to Pizzerias

America’s favorite food isn’t hamburgers. It isn’t steak. It isn’t even apple pie.

When the Harris Poll asked Americans which is their favorite comfort food, the hands-down winner was pizza. According to research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, on any given day, 13% of people in the U.S. at least two years old eat pizza. In addition, one in six Americans aged 2 to 39 has pizza for breakfast, lunch, or dinner on a given day.

That means serving fresh, hot pizza becomes a civic duty: A pizza-less future is almost too devastating to imagine. Meeting our nation’s never-ending demand for pizzas of all shapes, sizes, and combinations involves more than 78,000 pizzerias. 

Increasingly, those establishments rely on a cloud-based ePOS system to meet their customers’ unquenchable desire for pies fresh out of the oven, whether flat or deep-dish, square or round, traditional or nouvelle cuisine. These are the five pizza ePOS features that keep pizza eaters and pizza makers smiling.

Apply Data Analytics to Improve Menu Management

Many of the advanced analytics capabilities that enterprises rely on are available to pizzerias and other small retailers through the sales and other analyses that ePOS systems make possible. For example, by reducing the number of manual operations required to receive and complete orders, the systems allow staff to spend more of their work time crafting artisan pizzas and attending to customers.

Pizza ePOS systems monitor the many modifications customers make to their orders and report a complete sales analysis that lets you listen to and learn from your clientele. This lets you focus on the products and processes that customers prefer, which brings the business closer to its customers while also allowing it to run more efficiently and effectively. 

Spot Sales Trends to Make Inventory Management More Efficient

The more information you have about which of your pizzeria menu items are most popular and which are slow movers, the more accurately you can predict the menu options that customers are most likely to favor in the future. With an ePOS system, a pizzeria can get an up-to-date report on the menu items that are ringing up the most sales and which are lagging. This allows the business to avoid having to throw away food that goes stale before it can be used.

A cloud-based ePOS system lets a pizzeria track storeroom items from the time they’re ordered to the time they’re used in finished products. The sales reports let stores identify trends in customer preferences as they happen so you can be in a better position to adjust product orders on the fly. The ePOS system is able to track ingredients to the ounce or gram level rather than just knowing the number of open master containers.

Track Customer Preferences to Enhance Marketing Efforts

Another advantage of a pizza ePOS system is that it lets the business craft promotions and special offers that purchase histories indicate are most likely to appeal to specific customers. This helps you increase sales of menu items that are less popular by combining them with complementary choices, such as a particular salad promoted with a popular pizza.

Another way a cloud-based ePOS system for pizzerias helps the business is in promoting new menu items. The systems let you identify which regular customers are most likely to try something novel based on their previous pizza orders. By putting more customer information in the palms of employees’ hands, ePOS apps allow your staff to make customers aware of special offers or promotions based on their past purchases.

Improve Pizza Deliveries via Faster, More Accurate Order Processing

There’s nothing like that first glimpse of a piping-hot pizza brimming with toppings as you open the delivery box. Conversely, there’s nothing more disappointing to a pizza lover than a pie that arrives with the wrong toppings and that shows up too long after it was taken out of the oven. Fast and accurate order processing can spell the difference between an avalanche of pizza orders and a trickle.

A pizza ePOS system makes it easy for a restaurant to link sales data with inventory management to ensure a ready supply of the fresh ingredients your customers prefer, while avoiding the waste that occurs when you over-order slower-moving ingredients. The systems also enhance ordering for customers by providing them with clear, easy-to-use menus that are accessible via the restaurant’s custom mobile app and website.

Customers are able to use the features of the ePOS solution to redeem rewards after reaching a certain level of orders. The systems allow store managers to offer customers discounts and other promotions tailored to their past purchases and to prompt them to add complementary items to their orders, such as salads, drinks, and desserts.

Provide Customers With a Contactless Drive-up Option

Many of the practices your customers are adapting as a result of COVID-19 restrictions are likely to remain popular options well into the future. One such trend is giving customers the option to pick up and pay for their order with no contact via curbside pickup or other drive-up option. 

In addition to keeping customers and employees safe, contactless drive up allows pizza orders to be paid for and received quickly, easily, and securely. Young people, who tend to be a pizzeria’s best customers, are especially fond of curbside pickup: A recent survey found that 74% of Gen Z diners and 77% of Millennials use curbside pickup at least once a week.

Cloud-based pizza ePOS systems offer a range of contactless payment and pickup options, including the ability to integrate a branded mobile app and custom website for taking digital orders with the restaurant’s on-premises operations. This gives customers a unified ordering experience and their choice of payment method, including digital wallets, gift cards, and Near Field Communication (NFC) credit cards.

Pizzerias require an ePOS system that helps them deliver the pizza goodness their customers have come to expect at the fast pace of a typical pizzeria kitchen on a hopping Friday or Saturday night. They need an ePOS system that lets them track inventory, analyze sales, and stay in touch with their customers. And they need it at a price they can afford. With today’s pizza ePOS systems, you get all of that plus integrated online and in-person operation in a system that serves as the foundation of your entire business.

When you partner with talech for your retail technology needs, we devote our time to identify your business challenges. We use this information to work with you to apply an innovative POS solution that levels the playing field.