Tag Archives: restaurant point of sale

Back-of-the-House vs. Front-of-the-House Receipt Printers for Restaurants

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Restaurants are busy work environments where mistakes can quickly snowball into kitchen backups and long wait times for tables. A restaurant POS system with both front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house printers reduces the need for staff to decipher someone’s handwriting —which can mean fewer mistakes, quicker service, shorter lines, and more table turns.

However, restaurant printers are only effective if you choose the right ones. Receipt printers for restaurants aren’t usually “one size fits all.” The best printer for your kitchen might be different than the printer that sits on the counter in the dining room.

Back-of-the-House Printers: Impact Printers

The back-of-the-house is where heat, spills, particles, and steam can damage a printer to the point where it stops working—causing work to slow down or, even worse, forcing staff to handwrite tickets.

Choose an impact printer that uses bond paper that can withstand the hazards of a busy kitchen. Impact printers are designed so a printhead makes impact with an ink ribbon, transferring the message onto the receipt paper. The advantage of the ribbon is that two colors can be used, black for orders and red for modifiers. Bond paper will withstand humidity and the extreme temperatures found in hot kitchens and freezing cold storage. In addition, impact printers are loud and help to notify cooks when orders are coming in a rowdy kitchen environment.

In modern kitchens where heat and oil are well-controlled, direct thermal printers can also be used. However, they also need some very specific features, such as splash resistance, warning buzzers, and an insect-proof design, as well as some other, more optional features.

Star Micronics’ impact printer recommended for all your back-of-the-house needs includes:

  • SP700: This fast, two-color printer is built to withstand heat and humidity while offering clear and crisp type, clamshell design for easy paper loading and an embedded power supply for space efficiency. The SP700 BTi supports iPad®, iPhone®, and iPod touch® devices in addition to Android™ and Windows devices.

 

 

 

 

Front-of-the-House Printers: Thermal Printers

In the front-of-the-house, aesthetics are important and the hazards are fewer.  Thermal printers are sleekly designed and have a compact footprint, so they don’t look like electronic clutter sitting out in the open. A thermal printer is quiet and uses a printhead to apply heat that transfers characters and images to receipt paper and labels.

These receipt printers for restaurants are perfectly suited for front-of-house printing needs like customer receipts, because they have a higher resolution than impact printers, so they print crisp, clear images. For restaurants that want a nicer looking receipt, or want to print coupons and marketing information, thermal printers are the right choice.

For the front-of-the-house, Star Micronics recommends:

  • TSP100III printer line: High-speed printing of 250 mm/second and a guillotine auto cutter helps your staff do their jobs as quickly as possible. The printers are easy to set up, are Cloud Ready, and compatible with AllReceipts, and they includes the futurePRNT Receipt Enhancement Tool.

 

 

 

 

  • TSP654II and TSP654IIResto: Easy to set-up and extremely fast, the TSP654II is extremely reliable, offers drop-in-and-print paper loading, and prints 300 mm/second. The TSP654II-Resto version is certified by “Revenu Quebec” to comply with the tax laws in the Canadian province. The TSP654II is available with WebPRNT for printing from web-based  applications and, it comes equipped for online ordering applications with cloudPRNT.

 

 

 

Front-of-the-House and Back-of-the-House

Star Micronics has created a state-of-the-art thermal printer recommended for all your front- and back-of-the-house needs.

  • mC-Print3: This fast, front-loading and front-exiting printer is one of the smallest printers in its class. It is the perfect solution for any restaurant. It comes with multiple connectivity options such as USB, Lightning USB, Bluetooth, and Ethernet, allowing it to connect to any PC, tablet or cloud-based software application.

In addition to its flat top design, it also includes a splash-proof enclosure to protect the printer from hazards such as water, debris, or insects when used in harsh environments or outdoors. Gain all of the benefits of a thermal receipt printer in the back-of-the-house with the mC-Print3.

 

 

 

Selecting a receipt printer for the front- vs. back-of-the-house restaurant environment doesn’t have to be a difficult decision. Typically, for restaurant kitchens and environments with extreme heat or cold, look for an impact printer built to withstand spills, humidity, dust particles and more. Unless, of course, you’re purchasing a Star Micronics mC-Print3, a versatile, sleek, and fast little printer that will handle both front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house applications with ease. For more information, please visit www.starmicronics.com.

How to Find the Best POS Solution for Your Restaurant

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Star Micronics and FOURLEAF offer the perfect solution for any restaurant POS

Starting a restaurant business or a coffee shop has never been easy for people who don’t have experience. Such business requires large spending – from purchasing and investing in all necessary equipment to over hiring staff and releasing monthly salaries. Consequently, these have direct negative effects on a restaurant’s profitability. Last but not least, traditional systems cause difficulty for owners when they want to quickly expand their business.

Contrary to popular belief, restaurant point of sale is not a one size fits all models. In the restaurant industry, you’ll find large to mid-sized sit-down restaurants, mom and pop shops with 5 to10 tables, cafes, fast-casual, food trucks, and more. Finding the right point of sale system for your restaurant really depends on the type of business your running.

1. Pop-up Restaurants & Food Trucks  

For a pop-up restaurant or food truck scenario, you will want a point of sale that allows you to be mobile. Tablet POS or mPOS are very popular in this market because the mobility of the tablet or mobile device allows users to take up less space and take the POS outside of the pop-up or food truck to take orders and process payments of those waiting in line. With this type of mobile solution, you will want a receipt printer with the same mobility. A portable receipt printer that can hook right to your belt strap is ideal for these pop-up and food truck environments because they are lightweight, compact, and can print receipts from anywhere, at any time.

2. mPOP

In cafes and smaller restaurants, mobility is still preferred, but you will need a POS system that is more static. The mPOP allows restaurateurs to still utilize the mobility of a tablet or smartphone while having a set POS check-out station with a small footprint. This is the perfect solution for smaller restaurants or cafes that have a lower cash flow and want to maintain an aesthetically pleasing counter space.

3. TSP100III

For larger restaurants, you will need a more robust solution that can withstand busy periods with a high volume of orders being transmitted and receipts being printed. The TSP100III is the best printer for this scenario with a tethered USB connection for Apple iPad® devices that simultaneously facilitate data communication to the printer and charges the mobile device. The TSP100III is also offered with WLAN and Bluetooth connectivity option to print receipts from anywhere in the restaurant.

The FOURLEAF POS App aims to connect owners to their business 24/7. Help owners to track their sales income in real time and it is specially designed from fundamental concept to be an online restaurant POS system.

Star and FOURLEAF strive to help restaurant owners to track their inventory and be able to send wireless orders to the kitchen within a fraction of a second.

More info is available at:

www.fourleaf.life
www.facebook.com/afourelaf
www.twitter.com/fourleaf_app

Growing Restaurant Revenue with Mobile POS

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restaurant mPOS

Mobility is dominating the point of sale world. From table-side service, to tablet point of sale, mobility is making is easier for restaurant owners and operators to perform quick and painless transactions and give their customers the ideal dining-out experience. While some of the smaller, “mom and pop” restaurants may be hesitant to invest in a mobile point of sale (mPOS) system, they could be missing out on a huge boost in revenue by not upgrading. In addition to revenue increase, the adoption of an mPOS system could also mean an increase in tips for servers, making it easier to maintain low turnover rates.

A report by Software Advice shows that mPOS can predominantly impact your servers’ commitment to upselling – therefore, increasing daily restaurant revenue. Upselling is a sales technique that restaurant server often use to induce the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or add-ons when placing their order. This technique is commonly used by restaurant server because their calculated tip becomes higher with every dollar spent by the customer.

How does mPOS impact upselling?

In restaurant settings where the mPOS system is used for table-side service, the server may have a tablet in-hand entering the order as it is being placed. This can help remind the server to ask the customer if they would like to add a side of fries to their order or upgrade their drink to a larger size for only a dollar more. This is especially helpful for daily promotions or one-day offers that are not a part of the server’s regular order-taking routine.

restaurant mPOS charts

In the chart above provided by Software Advice, you can see that restaurants are not upselling as much as they could be. However, we can see that the majority of customers surveyed are more likely to make an order modification that was suggest by their server when dining out.

The Mobile POS Checklist

In case revenue increase isn’t reason enough to adopt a mobile point of sale system, we’ve outlined some additional benefits that mPOS can bring to restaurant businesses. According to an additional report done by Software Advice, 72% of restaurant owners request mobile restaurant POS software.

First and foremost, you need an mPOS system that is simple enough for any server to fluently use. If you’re looking for a mobile solution that will allow for a table-side service, you must ensure that your mPOS software is quick and easy-to-use. If your servers are disrupting the order process by taking the time to search for items in the POS, it defeats the purpose of the table-side mPOS solution.

Secondly, you will need a receipt printer that works seamlessly with your mPOS solution and will allow for a total transaction to be completed right at the table. It has been bound that engaging customers by having them complete the payment process right on the tablet can actually lead to an increase in tips. When this transaction is complete, servers equipped with portable, handheld receipt printers can kindly print and hand the customer their receipt without ever disrupting the transaction process.

In addition to the ease of use and fluid transaction process, mPOS systems often offer features such as inventory management, loyalty, and customer data capture, that help you run your restaurant more efficiently.

If you’re looking for an mPOS solution to take your restaurant business to the next level, be sure to check out Star’s line of portable receipt printers for your mobile point of sale needs.