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Point of Sale Technology in the Restaurant Industry


There aren't many places you can go in the United States without experiencing point of sale technology. From the hot dog and coke your purchase at a sporting event to the your hotel room on a family vacation to the groceries you purchased this morning for dinner to the world famous Las Vegas strip, point of sale technology is as much a part of our lives as the internet and rent to own computers.

One area where point of sale technology has transformed the way business is practiced is the restaurant industry. Think of fast food restaurants that pride themselves in quick, fast, and fresh delivery and then imagine if each order was taken manually and then walked back to the kitchen. A quick stop at a favorite fast food restaurant could easily take the same amount of time as preparing your own dinner at home. Businesses earn greater revenue when food is delivered quickly to customers. This is thanks to point of sale technology.

The restaurant industry remains one of the most competitive facets of the American economy. Market research indicates that the odds are generally against the restaurateur. A recent study indicated that 26.16 percent of independent restaurants did not make it through their first year of business. There are many ways to decrease these odds. One of these ways is to utilize point of sale products employed by first time restaurateurs in the same manner as rent to own appliances and rent to own furniture that help offset costs during the first critical year in business.

One failed restaurateur was quoted as saying, "I suffered from mission drift. When things didn't work, I would try something else, and eventually there was no concept anymore." His comments reflect the risk involved when a person does not invest in the critical edge offered by the point of sale technology. Some businesses are also deciding on rent with option to buy leasing contracts to lessen the initial risk of opening a business.

For many restaurant chains, registers are more like computers, often utilizing high-quality touch screens that complete the sales transaction in the least amount of time. In some instances many of these effective computers are linked with a central control unit where printers are also connected. Some large-scale systems are more like a spider's web, linking to other stores and keeping an eye on sales and other important data from other stores around the country.

Pulling into the drive-through to treat yourself to a cheeseburger might be once of the last places you had imagined going wireless, but the point of sale technology allows drive-through systems to communicate through speakers. Point of sale technology continues to offer a variety of technological advances for the savvy restaurateur.

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