What if we told you that there’s a wealth of information at your fingertips? It’s all right there in your Point of Sale (PoS) system. Information from your PoS system can be used with other information sources such as social media, tracking apps, reservation systems, review sites or any surveys that you’ve conducted.

All of these can be beneficial when building out a restaurant’s big-data program. Data-led restaurants make smarter decisions to increase their profitability. From production to customer service, everything can be optimised.

Stay ahead of the curve

Your restaurant is missing out on invaluable insights if you haven’t made the leap into the world of big data yet. Besides, your business will be at a competitive disadvantage now and in the future.

“We expect data to impact every area of operations, from marketing messages personalised on behavioural analytics to hyper-customised menu suggestions based on past purchases to sensors that track staff productivity,” says Kelly Killian, director of the food service content group for Winsight, a company that provides actionable information and market intelligence to business leaders.

“And in the kitchen, smarter equipment will gather data to make for more efficient purchasing, production and more,” she adds.

All types of restaurants, from casual to fine dining, are incorporating analytics programs and data-gathering software into their operations. The adoption rate is increasing, but for those that haven’t adopted these data-gathering methods this year, it’s not too late to start.

Pilot serves clients the right big data

Businesses crave up-to-the-minute data on sales, customers and staff performance. The Pilot PoS system generates reports relating to the business and transactions that take place at a specific workstation.

One of the main objectives of the Pilot POS reporting functionality is to provide you with information that generates a clear understanding of the transactions that are taking place in the business. Through reporting, you can track information on the daily sales of individual items in your restaurant. This is useful to determine if a product is selling or not and can be used to implement menu changes in your eatery.

Another useful report generates information on all the stock movements of food items. It provides you with valuable information such as back-stock levels, opening front-stock levels, issues or portioning, closing front-stock levels, stock usage and stock reconciliation.

If you’re buying a large number of avocados, but they end up being used for guacamole, you can adjust your menu to cater for them in different dishes so they’re not wasted.

You can learn how to make your big data work for your establishment by reading our detailed e-book, Take a bite of your restaurant’s big data.

Author : Rudi Badenhorst

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