P O S I n - D e p th Series

3 Keys to POS Payback

Most SpeedLine users find that the POS has the biggest initial impact on their business results in the areas of cash control, loss prevention, labor cost management, customer ser vice, and administrative efficiency.
New POS improves sales, lowers costs:
My Fathers Place
Since installing our SpeedLine POS, we are up over $20K from last year, says Todd Sicheltiel, of My Fathers Place in Warner Robins, Georgia. My food cost is down almost 3% and labor about 2%, Todd says. I had another record month in May, up almost $3000. I should have installed a POS earlier, he adds. Ive been making an extra $1500 a week, and the payments on the loan I took to purchase SpeedLine are less than $400 a month. Its a drop in the bucket! With the economy and food prices so bad, Im so glad I got SpeedLine when I did, Todd says. He tells people, If you dont have a POS, youre going to rot on the vine. Especially now! Everything costs so much, if youre not a fine point pen with a sharp tip, youre done. Todd says one reason he saw an immediate boost in profits with his new POS is that everything is getting rung up! Extra ranch sauce, little add-ons: there has always been a 25-cent charge for a glass of water, but without a POS, staff often forgot to charge. I made $400 in water sales last month a Styrofoam cup with ice in it! But as a new SpeedLine user, Todd is just scratching the surface of what his POS can do for his business. I know I have along way to go, he says. I am just using the basicsbut I am going to grow with it. Read the full story

If this is your first POS system, youll see immediate bottom-line benefits like these: Faster order entry Substantially less paperwork at the end of the day Fewer mistakes and remakes Easy training for new staff All those things translate to time and dollar savings. But how can you recover your POS investment faster?

POS SYSTEMS

1. Focus on the key cost drivers.

Labor and food costs are the heavy hitters on the debit side of your balance sheet. Learn how to use your POS to control labor through forecasting, scheduling, and labor analysis.

Take a bite out of food costs

Youll see an immediate impact on food costs when you install a POS because with fewer errors, youll have fewer remakes and less waste. To get to the next level, learn to use your POS systems food cost controls including inventory software, portion control (weights on make tickets), and loss prevention tools that can pinpoint and help you to prevent theft of both food and cash. By comparing your food costs by item with your sales mix, you can keep your costs even lower by eliminating low-margin, slow-moving items from your menu (and focusing promotions on your highest-margin menu items.

sales history that it captures. Dont schedule four drivers on Friday night because thats what youve always done. The sales forecasting tools in your POS can help you predict much more accurately what volume of business you can expect to do each day, by the hour. SpeedLines unique Operations Planning toolset builds a labor plan off that forecast, telling you how many cooks, cashiers, servers or drivers you need to schedule for each shift in order to meet your labor targets. But not everything is predictable. So its just important to track your labor vs. sales throughout the day and adjust the schedule as you go to keep on target. And use the security controls in your POS to control labor costs too: prevent staff from clocking in too early for a shift or clocking in a friend whos running late. Controlling Food Costs with Inventory Software Labor Savings article

Effective labor control starts before your doors open

Staff to meet your labor targets. One of the secret weapons in your POS arsenal is the

Forecasting tightens labor controls:

Capital Pizza Huts
With SpeedLine, I can see what business was like on this same day last year, and itll let me look at all the days and weeks around this same day, says David Henderson, then the vice-president of field technology at Capital Pizza Huts. Other POS systems he has used also stored historical information, but none provided so much detail. When we run the end-of-day, he says, SpeedLine prompts us to enter notes, like if a bus pulled up out of nowhere that day, or whether there was a snowstorm. The system allows us to make a sales forecast not only for the day, but for lunch and dinner separately, he continues. At lunch we can even forecast how much of our traffic is going to be dine-in, carryout and delivery. That really helps when it comes to scheduling labor. SpeedLine also tells the scheduler the job requirements for each shift: for example, the need for two drivers, two cooks and four servers from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. That makes it easy to establish minimum staff scenarios for each shift all relative to projected sales. If a manager attempts to schedule too many workers, the system tells him that he needs to cut back. No more waiting until weeks end to discover the labor budget is busted. We want the manager to see those numbers change as theyre putting people on the schedule, David says. Theres no guesswork at all. It is what it is. And when the system tabulates labor costs, it factors in payroll taxes and benefits costs. You get a complete picture of what the cost is going to be, David states. It looks at everything. Read the full story 2

POS SYSTEMS

2. Sell more.
Can a POS system really help you sell more? Absolutely. Aside from the soft impact that faster order entry and fewer mistakes will have on your sales, your POS can directly impact sales volume in two key ways.

Sell to people who already like you

Did you know that it costs 7 to 10 times more to win a new customer than to increase sales to an existing customer? By marketing to the customers in your POS systems customer database, you can boost revenue by giving customers incentive to order more often and spend more each time. And because database marketing is targeted, youll spend less and get a much higher response than with traditional advertising and bulk mail.

The challenge with database marketing is that it can be timeconsuming, and time is the one commodity thats in short supply at every restaurant. Automation can make it easier. For example, SpeedLine automates customer reminder and reward mailings through a full-service program called SpeedMail. Restaurants using SpeedMail are averaging a 22% response to their mailings, which translates to an average of $5234 per month in trackable sales.

Sell more to the people right in front of you

Upselling can add thousands of dollars to a restaurants bottom line. But training an unskilled worker to upsell can be difficult, if not impossible, without the right tools. Most point of sale systems support some type of upselling prompt. SpeedLine, for instance, provides the tools to script multiple upselling selling messages and choices. The key to successful upselling is giving your staff the right words to say at the right point in the order entry process and making it easy to add additional items to an order. Spot promotions or managers specials, scripted into the ordering process via the POS, can also be an easy way to push slowmoving menu items in the restaurant. And because most POS systems track sales by item and by employees, upselling can be encouraged through sales contests and incentive programs.

Upselling boosts sales 20%

Stuft Pizza
Jose Raposo manages a Stuft Pizza franchise in southern California. The restaurants new SpeedLine POS resulted in a lot of changes in his restaurant including a 20% increase in sales in the first two months. A SpeedLine installer added scripted upselling prompts for staff into the POS menu. The system is able to suggest certain products to our customers, something that was hit and miss when totally left up to the order-taker, Jose says. With staff upselling and serving customers more efficiently, the effect on sales was immediate: a 15% bump in the first month, and a 20% increase by month two. Seasonal Upselling

POS SYSTEMS

3. Tr y something new.
A quality POS system will grow with your business. Once you have the basics down, explore new ways that you can make your POS work harder for you. At SpeedLine, our commitment to our customers includes ongoing development: leveraging the best new technologies to create new ways to drive sales and efficiency.

4. Four? The title was 3 Keys

Yes, the title promised 3 keys. But if you operate multiple locations, a fourth factor, enterprise efficiency may be the most important of all. Use your POS systems enterprise polling and reporting solution to consolidate data above store. This is the foundation for business intelligence tools that can help you analyze performance and identify problemsand opportunitiesat individual locations, regionally, and chain-wide. Manage menus, pricing, and coupons at head office to improve consistency, reduce your training load, and keep store managers focused on their core business. Interface your POS systems with the accounting, marketing, and purchasing systems at head office. SpeedLine provides the tools to support custom integrations that can reduce administrative costs, improve accuracy, and keep your business running at top efficiency.

Take your business online

Integrate a Web ordering site with the POS systems at your restaurants. A cost-effective way to drive new business, online orders average 17% higher ticket totals than phone orders. At Papa Johns Pizza, web orders represented 20% of sales in the past year: If youre not online yet, are you missing out?

Talk to your customers online

Potentially an even more cost-effective method of database marketing is via email. Send a well-timed message about a lunch or dinner specialor a birthday greeting to customers on their birthdays. Although the response rates can be lower than physical mail offers, the cost is also much lower. Consider email as an enhancement to a direct mail campaign: for instance, try sending an email reminder to customers who havent yet redeemed a direct mail offer.

Boost seasonal sales with gift cards

Gift certificates drive seasonal sales for many restaurants. By integrating electronic gift cards with their POS systems, restaurants can expect to multiply their gift sales by a factor of two to 10 times. The advantages are notable: gift cards have a higher perceived value than paper gift certificates, a lower risk of fraud, a stronger branding impact, and broader merchandising appeal. Guide to Choosing and Online Ordering Provider

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2008 SpeedLine Solutions, Inc.

POS SYSTEMS

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