Point of sale systems

Cash.

We use Restaurant pro express with good results. Its a little complicated to set up but once its done it works top notch.

System 3 POS..It is good if you do alot of carry-out and deliveries.

Hi Tim, PM sent about POS systems.

I'm a big fan of the KISS system for the small operator.

I've considerable knowledge of the POS market via my IT job and have experience from the operator side as well through our two restaurants. In my opinion, if you aren't big enough to invest $20 grand in a POS system you should stick with order pads and a cash register. All the good gear is going to cost you that or more for a Micros/IBM/NCR type setup, and more to service and maintain it.The cheap software-and-some-PC-accessory solutions will drive you crazy with downtime, glitches and support nightmares.

If you're the PC hobbyist type who likes to noodle around with computers then knock yourself out, but remember that when you're not focusing on your core business (food) you are losing money, and when you have no way to take customer's payments because the POS lived up to it's acronym you are really shafted. Unless you've got money to burn and you're serving hundreds of sit-down diners a night I'd stick with a simple, reliable, old school setup. It won't pump out those slick reports with all sorts of metrics for MBAs to cluck over, but you'll just keep ringing that register bell and making money instead of constantly training employees and paying equipment bills.

The only glitch we ever had was the hard drive took a crap at 12:04pm, right in the middle of lunch with a line of people. They came right out and replaced the drive and we were back running that afternoon. We did lose some credit card transactions but that was it. We were completely unprepared to go back to tickets.

Looking for some more current info on pos system is there apps for it or would i need to have WI FY set up on the trailer keeping in mind this is a small set up so trying to keep overhead down

I'm running Square on an ipad. I hate apple products, but the square stand does work well, and is supposed to work offline as well. I bought my iPad through AT&T so it will connect to wifi or cellular. No monthly fees, only charges are on credit card transactions. If you're doing a large volume of transactions, I think over 10k per month, it's cheaper to go elsewhere like Clover or Toast.

mwallinford said:

Looking for some more current info on pos system is there apps for it or would i need to have WI FY set up on the trailer keeping in mind this is a small set up so trying to keep overhead down

Click to expand...

I just recently switched over to Square and I'm using the Magstripe reader. With this reader the Square App will function in "Offline Mode" where it will accept charges but won't process them until you reconnect to wi-fi. If you're on LTE it works in Normal Mode just fine.

I'm running a small BBQ food truck business and this is pretty convenient for me overall. Simple to use, works well, no issues so far (about a months worth of use), and the money gets deposited the next business day (so Friday's sales post on Monday morning).

I'm using an old LG cellphone to run the Magstripe reader and so far all is well. Before Square I was using a company called SpotOn and they offer a ton of services, along with credit processing, but they were pretty shady. The fees were all over the place depending on the type of credit card and it was averaging over 4% of sales for "interchange." On top of that it was $35 per month...Square is 2.75% for every swipe so it's quite a bit better.

Note : I bought the Bluetooth chip reader but it doesn't work on my phone...lucky enough the Magstripe reader comes with chip reader, and that works just fine.

SmoothBoarBBQ said:

I just recently switched over to Square and I'm using the Magstripe reader. With this reader the Square App will function in "Offline Mode" where it will accept charges but won't process them until you reconnect to wi-fi. If you're on LTE it works in Normal Mode just fine.

I'm running a small BBQ food truck business and this is pretty convenient for me overall. Simple to use, works well, no issues so far (about a months worth of use), and the money gets deposited the next business day (so Friday's sales post on Monday morning).

I'm using an old LG cellphone to run the Magstripe reader and so far all is well. Before Square I was using a company called SpotOn and they offer a ton of services, along with credit processing, but they were pretty shady. The fees were all over the place depending on the type of credit card and it was averaging over 4% of sales for "interchange." On top of that it was $35 per month...Square is 2.75% for every swipe so it's quite a bit better.

Note : I bought the Bluetooth chip reader but it doesn't work on my phone...lucky enough the Magstripe reader comes with chip reader, and that works just fine.

Click to expand...

The mag stripe reader doesn’t have a chip reader you still swipe the mag stripe don’t you?

We just got a square as well. Going to be using it for the first time in a few weeks.