Technology

The pizzeria POS vendor test: 3 traits to look for

A three-part litmus test for potential or even current POS providers from Pizza Guys CEO.

Photo: iStock.

December 23, 2020 by Shahpour Nejad — PRESIDENT/CEO, PIZZA GUYS

As leaders in the pizza restaurant space, we are all familiar with the ever-shifting nature of the industry. New food regulations, new menu items, new consumer trends and buildout designs — we are accustomed to constant change.

When the pandemic first struck nationally, Pizza Guys moved quickly to work with our particular POS provider (Touchpoint) to make the changes needed to achieve success for our brand, as players on a new and constantly changing restaurant landscape.

Below, I'm sharing some of the things we learned were most critical in making our technology go with an increasingly disruptive restaurant business flow as brought on by the pandemic.

How solid is your relationship?

To make important changes to a piece of technology as important as your restaurant's POS system, you must have solid relationship with your POS vendor to ensure that company understands your model, offerings, objectives and business almost as well as you do. This creates a seamless relationship so when changes need to be made, that POS provider can understand where you are and where your business wants to be so they can help you with the best solutions.

For Pizza Guys, when the pandemic rolled around, our home state of California quickly implemented some of the most stringent guidelines in the nation for restaurants to follow. Having a takeout and delivery model already in place, we knew we would be able to continue to serve our customers, but needed to work out a way to minimize contact between our employees and customers to keep everyone safe.

The adaptability test

When delivering a pizza, there usually is an "at-the-door process" where customers pay for their pizzas, sign receipts, provide tips and other actions. In the interest of everyone's safety, we wanted to eliminate this process.

We turned to our POS system provider and explained that we wanted to implement a way for customers to use contactless delivery and contactless payment. Almost immediately, our vendor implemented a new feature in our POS system that allowed customers to select how they wanted their pizza delivered and receipts provided (for instance, via text email?).

The ability to make these changes across our entire system was key. Likewise, enacting those changes nearly instantly after the request was made was crucial to allowing our brand to continue safely serving our communities.

In addition to adding contactless delivery to our POS system, we also wanted to instantly add contactless payment so that our customers could comfortably pay us without needing to use a credit card terminal at our store, enter a debit card PIN or pay with cash. This addition also helped us limit employee and customer interaction throughout the pandemic.

Our POS system was adjusted to send a payment link directly to our customers' phones via text, which is compatible with Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Both of these additions have been absolutely crucial because they not only provide customers with safe payment and delivery options, but contribute to convenience.

Can they see the 'Big Picture'?

Another key factor to keep in mind when deciding which vendor to use for your pizzerias is to check in and see if a service provider you're evaluating offers a truly holistic approach to your business's needs. For instance, does your POS provider have the capabilities to address online ordering, reward/loyalty programs and native delivery – all key to navigating in the current restaurant business environment?

When we decided to implement contactless delivery and payment, our POS provider could quickly enact the needed changes because the company understood how our system worked and was responsible for our delivery and payment technology. Some restaurants use various different vendors to handle delivery, loyalty and online ordering.

As a result, this more fragmented approach can make it tough to implement broad system-wide changes quickly. By using a holistic vendor, the necessary changes for our brand were made across our entire system almost instantaneously, which greatly aided our ability to continue providing our product to customers and helping them understand the new changes we made to protect them and our employees.

The POS system has always been one of the more important pieces of equipment for a restaurant, but as we progress through the pandemic, restaurants are leaning more heavily on their technological systems. These three areas are key to ensuring your vendor or vendors are able to adjust to this rapidly changing business environment.

Technology