Stories & helpful posts on POS System Hardware and Point of Sale.
If you’re a bakery owner or manager drawing up a wishlist of improvements that would make life easier, chances are it’d be topped by a request for more hours in the day. From the earliest of early starts baking breads, cakes, and other delicacies to a full day’s service and on to the evenings spent planning for catering jobs, there are precious few hours of rest.
While that wish for more time is likely going to go unfulfilled, there are digital avenues to pursue that can calm the chaos and create management efficiencies that allow you to do more faster.
A bakery management system based around your point of sale can give you control over your entire business from the convenience of your phone and help you win back some daylight hours.
Manage It All From One Platform
The new generation of point of sales (POS) solutions that will come to dominate small businesses in the 2020s combine every management tool and service secret into a single, Cloud-powered platform you can access from your smartphone. By replacing your old, disconnected network of registers, inventory, staff rosters, customer information, and accounts with sleek iPad terminals and the latest in business software, you can streamline your bakery operation down to a money-saving hub that comes together as nicely as a favorite cupcake recipe.
To use a POS solution as a bakery management system, you need a wishlist of features that lets you;
Create Digital Inventory for a Diverse StockroomAutomate Your Supplier RelationshipsGet Your Custom Orders in OrderOffer Mobile Payments and Digital ReceiptsManage Your Team or Have Them Sort Themselves OutLearn About Your Revenue
The leading POS solutions are dynamic enough to be customized to your unique bakery and proven success method.
That process begins with finding order amid the jumble of ingredients, supplied goods, bags of coffee, and custom packaging that make up the typical bakery inventory.
1. Create Digital Inventory for a Diverse Stockroom
Bakery managers don’t have the luxury of sourcing all their needs from a single supplier, so keeping on top of everything you have, need, and could do without can lead you into a disconnected tangle of record books, programs, and unending stocktakes.
A digital POS solution can pull together everything you purchase into a single count that can track how each dollar you spend contributes to the bottom line. You can divide coffee beans, raw ingredients, and wholesale products into single units for accurate tracking and perform live stocktakes with the touchscreen simplicity of using an app on your iPad.
Digitizing your stockroom may be the single most profound way to open up more hours in your working week.
2. Automate Your Supplier Relationships
The best POS solutions let you take your digital inventory a step further and put your digital assistant to work for you doing repetitive, low-level chores that drain your time. You can automate some of your inventory and stocktake tasks, for example, by setting up trigger points in your system so that falling stock levels will stimulate new purchase orders.
You can also create alerts that will tell you when outstanding receipts become due or set up reminders for your bakers to check their chief ingredients regularly.
The small amounts of extra time freed up by letting your POS system do some work can let you prioritize your efforts to areas where you can make a big difference in your bakery’s performance.
3. Get Your Custom Orders in Order
If you’re still taking and passing on custom orders with pen and paper, you are heading straight toward an order mishap. A digital POS system offers a smooth link between your bakers and your online customers so you can reduce the risk of reputation-destroying mistakes.
A bakery management system should always include an online presence as it opens up alternative revenue streams, makes it easier to communicate directly with your customers, and expands your reach.
You can create an order page within your website that logically guides customers through the process of customizing a cake or catering for hundreds.
4. Offer Mobile Payments and Digital Receipts
Bakery POS solutions aren’t just for behind-the-scenes accounting. The emerging trend of using multimedia iPad terminals and mobile payment options means you can get creative with how you deal with customers.
The best systems include discreet hardware that can accommodate a range of payment options, such as chip and PIN, tap ‘n’ go, and digital wallets, that take the fuss out of payments so you can keep the focus on a positive customer experience.
If you’re dealing with large orders and regular catering contracts, you can offer digital receipts sent by text or email that slide right into a customer’s phone, along with a pleasant message from yourself. These receipts come with touch screen payment options that encourage no-fuss transactions. You can even accept on-the-go mobile payments through your phone if you want to settle an account in the field as soon as a delivery is made.
5. Manage Your Team or Have Them Sort Themselves Out
Bakeries are built on teamwork; from the bakers on their sunrise shifts and the counter staff making coffee with a smile, to the drivers dropping off ready-made brunch baskets at corporate offices.
If you’re running a cloud-powered POS system, every member of your team can access the staff resources through a single password. This means you can let your team sort out their own rosters, communicate remotely with each other, and even take care of their HR needs, including timesheets.
Since every transaction is run through the same digital POS system, you can also keep a watchful remote eye over live service and track the performance of each team member from your smartphone.
A digital POS system lets you create your own little social network to smooth out the working details of service.
6. Learn About How You Earn
A digital bakery management system can help small businesses level the playing field by introducing professional-grade sales and data analytics. Once you convert all the measurables of your business to digital data—such as the goods you order, the shifts your staff work, and the customer loyalty information you collect—you can measure it from any number of angles and find out how your business makes money, plus how it can make more.
Options begin with simple tallies of which items sell fastest and how the spend on ingredients is recouped in cake sales, and continuing through to insightful stats on peak sales times, the impact of marketing projects, and the shift of the seasons.
Data analysis like this was once the sole domain of big business, but the digital age has made it possible for any business to take advantage. And if you’re not making the most of these digital insights, you might be lagging behind bakeries that are.
Find the Right Bakery Management System Fit
The bakery management systems features listed above are only practical once they’ve been customized to your unique business. You need to find a solution that lets you input your ingredients so that the final sales count makes sense. You need payment options that you know your customer will use. And, you need analytical insight that stems from the way you like to work.
Ticking off all these features on a bakery management system wishlist won’t physically add hours to the day, but it could let you work more efficiently within those already available so that you feel more in control of your business.
The POS solutions created by talech can be customized to suit the way you run your bakery. We devote time to understanding your business to create an innovative bakery management system that levels the playing field.
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