Point of Sale Systems: Retail vs. Hospitality

The POS market is divided into two segments with very different needs: retail operations and hospitality businesses like restaurants, bars, and hotels.

Retail POS Systems
Of the two groups, retailers have simpler POS needs. Their transactions are completed all at once, and there is often less variation in the types of products they sell. Some POS features retailers may specifically want include the ability to support kits (e.g. 3 for $2 deals), returns and exchanges, and support for digital scales.

A potential complication in some retail environments is the need for a product matrix. Your retail POS system will need to support matrixes if you sell items that come in a variety of styles, like clothing or shoes. For example, matrixes let you create one inventory and price entry for a particular sweater, but still track sales according to size and color.

Hospitality POS
Depending on the type of establishment, restaurants and other hospitality businesses have different requirements from POS systems.

Efficiency is the key focus for casual restaurants. For retail-style restaurants like sub shops, POS systems that relay inputted orders cut down on time-per-transaction and reduce the errors that can happen when hastily-scrawled orders are passed back to the kitchen. For quick-service restaurants, POS systems are practically a requirement for living up to their name: orders taken on terminals in the front are automatically displayed on monitors in the food preparation area, ready to be quickly assembled and delivered to the customer.

For table-service restaurants and fine dining, POS requirements are somewhat different. They include the need to be able to create and store open checks, as parties order more over time, as well as track which server is responsible for which table. The efficiency gains from better management can be impressive. If a restaurant with 20 tables and an average check of $45 can increase turnover by one party per table, that is an extra $900 on a busy night.

Well-integrated restaurant POS systems allow you to transfer meal charges from the dining room to guests' rooms with just a button or two. Hotel managers need to be aware that not all POS systems integrate with software).