Acquiring extra information extra simply after which making optimum use of it – that’s what Joe Costanzo, founder and proprietor of REVOLTtek in Santa Rosa Seashore, Fla., sees as the key of success in right this moment’s restaurant trade.
Costanzo discovered concerning the usefulness of knowledge mining the laborious means, he defined to Karly McBride, the Affiliation’s content material communications supervisor, in a latest OrderUp podcast, Harnessing Point-of-Sale Data.
“My spouse and I began our first counter-order seafood restaurant 12 or 13 years in the past and not using a point-of-sale system, hand-writing tickets and placing them into the money register,” he relates. Operators could make quite a lot of errors that means, lose some huge cash, he provides.
At the moment, the pill trade was simply getting began and the Costanzo’s needed one thing straightforward to get into, more cost effective than the POS methods accessible to them then. “So I based a cloud-based firm, purchased an iPad and printer, and began a community,” he says. “It was nice for what we would have liked. We discovered loads concerning the performance of POS, and we had the restaurant background, so the corporate we have been working with on the time [Heartland Payment Systems] requested us to return on as a reseller/supplier.”
In the course of the pandemic, quite a lot of eating places that didn’t have information earlier than bought entry to it—from on-line orders coming in, from Third-party companies like DoorDash, GrubHub and UberEats, and from their very own web sites. “However the largest supply for information is thru the POS that captures on-line orders, buyer loyalty exercise, even waitlists which are all immediately built-in.”
The flexibility to see and analyze information with out having to ask clients for it immediately is “actually huge,” Costanzo explains. “You’ll be able to see what clients who’re utilizing your loyalty program are buying, when, and why, then do focused campaigns in the event that they haven’t visited shortly.”
Analyzing your enterprise
However even greater, he provides, is the chance {that a} highly effective POS system built-in with buying information offers you to scrutinize product combine, meals costing and the profitability of particular person menu objects.
“Everyone’s centered on protecting meals price low, however I like to take a look at meals revenue,” Costanzo notes. “You might have a $10 burger on the menu with a 20% meals price—that’s nice. However when you have an merchandise that prices $20 with a 50% meals price, you’re making more cash. How will you promote extra of that?
“In your menu or in your menu board design—do you wish to make it a featured merchandise?” he asks. How can this be developed by your advertising and marketing? “In a fullservice restaurant, you may make positive your employees is aware of they’ll be tipped extra on that that sale.”
It’s shocking what number of restaurant house owners don’t use this information or share it with their employees, despite the fact that they’re already paying for it, he provides.
Each restaurant in all places offers with the identical fundamental challenges, however Costanzo believes that tapping into native restaurant operations and data-mining experience—which is what REVOLTtek does for Heartland clients—is one more key to success.
This expertise provides the sort of white-glove service that quite a lot of eating places are hungry for,” he says. “We do POS, Cloud, WiFi, networks for eating places and retail. We’ve developed quite a lot of relationships with eating places due to our background, and we get as many restaurant questions as POS questions.
The corporate offers with so many alternative eating places, he provides, that they see how their shoppers are doing issues, and with permission, levy that info and share it with their different clients—that is how this restaurant is doing it or how lots of people are doing it. “What can I do with the info?” he asks. “Am I utilizing that information proper?” There are assets to assist.
