It may not seem like it at first, but pizzerias can be the most complex restaurants to manage from a software perspective. Due to the popularity of pizza and the high expectation for pizza to be delivered to homes and offices, the activity inside a pizzeria can become quite chaotic at peak hours. Well-designed software for pizzerias or POS systems will go a long way in allowing sanity to return to a pizzeria or restaurant. We will introduce the most crucial features that a pizza POS system must have. We will focus on two types of pizzerias: a small, takeout-only pizzeria, and a large, eat-in-bar pizzeria, with pizza delivery in the back.

“Must Have” Features of a Small Pizzeria Delivery Point of Sale System

Due to the dynamic nature of pizza delivery, and because business might be concentrated in a few peak hours each day, running even a small pizza delivery store requires a number of “must-have” point-of-sale software and hardware features. These include:

• Item prices and shipping costs for different parts of the city are entered into the system and are consistent. This will make your customers happy as they won’t be overcharged and your cost won’t fluctuate randomly based on the driver who delivered the food.
• For store sales, all items must also be entered into the system, so the cashier doesn’t forget to charge for them. Example: charge $0.25 for a glass of water.
• Tracking the food ingredients that go into each pizza. This may include the scales and the POS terminal at the kitchen work station. Excess portioning, which is a huge source of expense in pizza kitchens, can be reduced that way.
• Forecast demand for drivers and cooks. This is a big one. Personnel costs are one of the largest expenses in a small pizza delivery. Why have 4 employees available when the forecast software predicted that 2 will suffice for that part of the day?
• Cash collection, tracking and delivery routing system.
• Promotions and coupon marketing. A well-designed pizza POS system can help you run a coupon promotion without investing huge amounts of money in newspaper ads. Instead of paying for ads, simply collect the email addresses of your frequent customers and send them the coupons in the email. It costs you nothing to send a thousand emails and your customers will be happy to hear from you.

“Must Have” Features of a Pizza POS System

If you keep pizza delivery a part of your business while also running the pizza restaurant, these features will add to the “must have” features in the previous paragraph. The following features will allow for smoother and more cost-effective operation of the seating area. Also, since your revenue will increase, spending time on forecasting and analysis will have a higher return on investment, so we added features of a POS system that will help you with forecasting as well.

• Kitchen inventory control is important to running your business like an efficient machine. Financial responsibility will help reduce shrinkage.
• Customer tracking by table should be implemented to simplify the workflow.
• The restaurant’s point of sale must allow the management of waiting staff, it must include productivity functions in the kitchen, such as portioning and staff control.
• The reservation and waiting list function manages the next guests.
• A wireless announcement to guests, patrons, and managers helps optimize guest seating and upsells from seated guests.
• Table service and drive-thru order entry, cashier financial responsibility, and staff communications.
• Management features like inventory and prescription tracking. Labor control and scheduling. Extensive report of labor costs. Easily gain insight into store operations with detailed reports.