November 2, 2024
Written by: The POS Exchange Team
When you run a small bakery, you know how important it is to keep customers happy. From the moment they walk in the door to the moment they leave, customers should have a seamless experience that encourages them to return for more. Upgrading to the Best POS System for Restaurant will enhance your operations and help you achieve this goal. Not only will it make your life easier, but it will also improve the customer experience by speeding up transaction times and ensuring accuracy. In this article, we’ll share some insights on finding the right POS system for small bakery to help you achieve your operational goals.
The POS Exchange's POS systems can help you find a reliable, user-friendly that enhances your bakery's efficiency and customer experience while fitting your budget and operational needs.
Avoid the hassle of manually tracking ingredients and baking materials. Your POS system will take the guessing out of ordering. Here’s how. Every time you sell a cookie, cake, or pastry, a POS system will track the amount of ingredients you used like sugar, eggs, flour, etc. Then your system will tell you when your supplies are running low, ensuring you never run out of ingredients.
One way businesses build their customer base is by collecting data. Use your POS software to quickly capture customer information on any sale. Analyze purchase patterns to better understand and connect with loyal customers. Also, keep customers up-to-date about special events and promotions.
Use your POS system to track and report employee hours. That way, there is no guessing on what early hour arrival your employees show up to start baking pastries. Your system keeps track of exactly how long their workday lasts. More importantly, it can help you make important staffing decisions based on the average sales by day of the week or average sale. That way you can correctly staff your business on your busiest days.
Forget about handwritten orders. Your bakery POS system keeps track of your orders. This comes in very handy when you are working on special orders, such as large orders of pastries and specialty cakes. You can easily see every order and schedule what needs to be done to fill it.
A good bakery POS system can be used to generate invoices. This is a benefit to bakeries that make deliveries. The invoice can be set up so the recipient can quickly and easily read everything on the invoice, like:
The POS system's benefit for bakery invoices is the ability to easily account for all deliveries. This will ensure that all deliveries are made on time and with the right items in them.
The POS Exchange brings over 20 years of restaurant expertise, serving 200,000+ merchants and processing billions annually. Our tailored POS system solutions help businesses speed up checkouts by 30%, implement dynamic pricing, and manage customer reviews while reducing overhead.
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Our mobile iPad POS systems streamline operations with features like order management, bill splitting, and inventory control. With integrations for business management tools and advanced security measures, we ensure your POS system grows with your business.
Trust our expertise to help you avoid the common pitfall that affects 38% of new business owners who choose the wrong POS system. Whether you're managing a busy restaurant, a local café, or operate a multi-location business, The POS Exchange delivers customized POS system solutions that tell your unique business story.
KORONA POS is great for virtually all brick-and-mortar or large-scale bakeries. The many functions it provides may be too much to handle for an at-home bakery. KORONA POS is excellent software, topping our list for its end-to-end functionality that can help support various bakery business types. Its flexible processing with:
The system features excellent modifiers, such as a checkout screen that can be edited and shifted to fit your business precisely. Creating your own ecommerce website allows an extra layer of customer relationship management that some in this guide do not provide.
It is the only system on this list that integrates with every major credit card processor, so users can shop for the best processing rates. For busy bakeries with check averages below $10, this feature can keep more profits flowing to the bottom line.
Offers the ability to modify orders with special requests, such as a name on a birthday cake or a specific mix of pastries, all while seamlessly communicating this to your staff when the order is placed. This POS also intuitively allows product combinations and accurate, real-time price adjustments based on these combos.
KORONA POS allows baseline users to offer date—or time-based promotions (like half-priced pastries during the last hour of business) and set detailed rewards and coupons for combos. It is the only system on this list that includes gift card processing for no additional charge.
Most bakeries operate outside a standard 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday, benefiting KORONA’s 24/7 customer support.
Supports a super-speedy checkout process with order and payment buttons condensed on a single screen.
Toast, a relatively young startup founded in 2012, focuses on restaurants with reasonable pricing and numerous features for cafe pos systems aimed to make day-to-day operations easier. Toast POS was designed specifically for tiny cafes and bakeries, although it may also be used in full-service cafes. The program includes:
Toast is notable for being technologically advanced, with several mobile and internet ordering alternatives. Provides contactless solutions such as:
Provides detailed menu management, including:
Includes automated payroll and recruiting features such as:
BakeSmart is the ideal tool for bakeries selling to other businesses, with functionality for:
With an enterprise-level account, you can enter standing orders for wholesale customers. You can schedule these orders for a specific pick-up or delivery date, and BakeSmart will add the order to your production calendar two days in advance. This allows easy planning, cost, and revenue forecasting while giving your customers consistent service.
Centralized production is key for larger bakeries. You can set ongoing production targets and volume limits, calculate costs and prices according to each location, and keep this information in a centralized space.
You can build out price levels for different accounts and set specific pricing for each item. Wholesale customers can manage their orders through the portal provided.
CakeBoss is a bakery POS system designed for at-home bakers. It is easy to use and has in-depth cake-building tools, making it ideal for small cake businesses. The extremely affordable annual fee after the first year and dedicated software for smaller businesses make this an essential bakery POS system.
Integrating with Google Translate allows users to run CakeBoss in their preferred language. This makes the system inclusive to bakers trying to start in the food business, regardless of their language.
The CakeBoss POS system allows you to track all customer contact information. We found the date feature very useful; it allows you to add birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates to customer profiles, strengthening customer relationships.
As you build new orders, CakeBoss’s cost calculator prompts you for the number of servings and hours you spend preparing the orders. It combines this information with your recipe and material costs to generate a price per serving that ensures you never underbid yourself.
CakeBoss comes preloaded with over 120 common baking ingredients that you can use to build recipes. The prices can be edited, and you can add or edit your unique ingredients for costing purposes.
CakeBoss Cloud is a new feature that lets you manage your bakery business from any mobile browser. It also offers customer tracking and loyalty features. Essential invoicing support, pricing calculators, and shopping lists are useful tools for at-home bakery businesses.
CakeBoss has an optional PayPal integration, which allows your customers to pay invoices online with a credit or debit card and PayPal.
Square for Restaurants is one of the most popular POS systems on the market—it offers:
Online selling and invoicing allow easy selling of items like custom cakes, and zero upfront costs help bakeries scale. Its easy admin tools and digestible reporting make running your bakery smooth and efficient, which can be all the difference when starting out.
The baseline Square POS subscription is free for unlimited terminals. Small and home-based bakeries can run this register on iPads they already own, use the system for as long as needed, and cancel at any time for no penalties. Other Square tools for invoicing and online sales also have free subscription tiers to help beginners get started.
Square Invoices is a Square business tool that enables you to send invoices from your Square management dashboard. Once the invoice is sent, Square will automatically prompt customers to settle their bill and send reminders if someone is slow to respond.
Like KORONA, Square includes a free online store for POS users. Square’s setup wizard guides you through the site creation process. You can host your store for free using a Square-affiliated link.
You can expand your Square for Restaurants POS with the hundreds of partner apps featured in the Square App Marketplace. If you need ingredient-level inventory tracking with a recipe log, Square integrates with MarketMan, PeachWorks, and YellowDog.
Square offers reporting on the menu items that are selling the most so you know what your customers are looking for. The POS also uses historical data to determine when customer demand may warrant your business staying later or closing down early on a given day if you have that flexibility.
TouchBistro is a cloud-based iPad coffee shop pos system created exclusively for restaurants. The standard system features:
It also interfaces with various payment processors, allowing small bakeries to compare prices to choose the best option.
$69 a month is affordable, especially for bakeries with multiple units. The only drawback is that online ordering is an extra fee ($50/mo). That being said, many bakeries have brick-and-mortar locations separate from their online ordering, making managing this cost feasible.
TouchBistro’s inventory system tracks ingredient-level items and is easy to set up. Its website features a tutorial.
TouchBistro’s menu-building interface is user-friendly and cloud-based, allowing you to edit it wherever you are at any given time. The menu can be built with color-coding options, allowing staff easy access as they work.
Bakeries can employ many employees at peak times, making the need for security high when so many are working on the same system. TouchBistro offers individual staff logins, allowing you to manage and track staff on how they sell and any actions they take on the system.
TouchBistro offers a wide range of CRM tools to build loyalty with your guests. Customizable offers, gift cards, and detailed online ordering add-ons let you grow your customer base however you see fit.
Vend POS is a cloud-based POS system based in New Zealand. Vend by Lightspeed is primarily a retail point-of-sale system, but it may also be used in coffee shops, especially those that sell merchandise or grab-and-go items and require inventory management. Vend is one of the few point-of-sale systems for small businesses that includes:
Vend also interfaces with various payment gateways and payment alternatives, such as PayPal, to accommodate your financial needs.
Revel was the first cloud-based iPad POS in the market and is among the best POS systems for coffee shops and bakeries. It’s a management tool designed to help retailers improve customer service and streamline operations. Among various provided POS features, its loyalty programs shine. You can easily create a custom program for your customers to earn loyalty points and rewards with Revel.
Clover is among the top POS systems. It provides everything a coffee shop owner needs to start selling food and managing their business. Clover is a plug-and-play coffee shop POS system that requires very little training to set up and use. It employs custom Android-based hardware with quick-serve functionality.
With a reasonable price tag and access to a range of 3rd-party delivery options, Lavu is one of the best POS systems for coffee shops and bakeries. Restaurants of all sizes can use Lavu as it’s a highly customizable POS system.
Cake POS comes last in our list of the best restaurant POS systems. This easy-to-use and cost-effective point of sale is designed to fulfill the needs of quick-service and full-service restaurants. Faster table turns, fewer waits and higher customer loyalty will help you streamline your coffee shop operation. With guest, table, and waitlist management, you can provide consistently outstanding service to every guest. Online ordering is now integrated into Cake POS.
Every bakery is unique. You need to evaluate your business needs to find the right POS system for your bakery. Here are some essential questions to help you identify the requirements for your new system.
Point of sale systems have evolved substantially from merely processing transactions and recording payments. Today, modern POS systems can cover a wide range of features like:
A small coffee shop may require fewer features than a full-service restaurant. Therefore, you should ask yourselves: what functionality would support my business? To give you a hand, here are the must-have features of a POS system for cafes and bakeries:
The POS system should allow you to digitally manage stock down to the ingredient level, track menu item ordering levels, and alert you when stock is low.
If you operate a chain of coffee shops or bakeries, this feature offers you a central hub to control your menu easily. Every time you add, adjust or remove menu items, all your stores will get the updated menu automatically. You’ll have more freedom to design your menu by arranging items into categories or highlighting the popular items on the POS for upselling purposes.
You should sync customer data with sales and inventory data to understand my customers’ preferences, behaviors, and best-selling items so that I can design proper marketing and loyalty programs.
The POS system should have mobility and flexibility to manage sales across stores and channels.
Think about what kind of data you need and identify the key metrics to measure for my cafe and bakery. For example:
Ensure my POS system can handle robust reporting and analytics for these metrics.
The cafe and bakery POS system should be quick and reliable:
You’d want to avoid a crash or slow-responding cafe POS system that delays the services and makes customers irritable. When choosing a coffee shop point-of-sale solution, consider:
Cafe and bakery point of sale must be scalable. If you grow and open new stores, build a cafe chain and have more customers, the POS system needs to scale up to meet more complex management needs. Thus, ensure your selected POS software can add new POS terminals, open new locations, and add more users with limited effort. It should also integrate seamlessly with my eCommerce platform for smooth management across both online and offline operations. The best POS system will enable me to integrate with other 3rd-party software seamlessly.
For example, if I want to expand my home delivery services with a 3rd-party partner, my POS needs to be compatible with the delivery app. At a higher level, if I’m thinking about international expansion, I should check whether the system can support different languages or multiple currencies and comply with the user country’s accounting policies. Besides integrating with 3rd-party software, another scaling option for cafe owners is customizing POS built-in features or building new features to meet my changing business demands.
The best part is I only pay one time for the POS license. The upfront fee may be high, but I can save thousands on monthly payments in the long run. Although I can start with a cheap POS system with little room for scalability, it will cause more problems if I grow and need to replace it with another advanced software. Hence, I should have a clear business roadmap to pick a suitable POS – a worthwhile investment that can scale and support me for many years.
After evaluating your requirements, you can create a shortlist of potential POS providers to compare.
Check if the POS system is cloud-based or legacy. Legacy POS systems store data on local servers on a closed network. In contrast, cloud-based systems are hosted on the web, which allows you to access it anywhere on any device. This method stores data on the cloud, allowing me to manage my cafe and bakery from anywhere. Thanks to the benefits of cloud technology, more and more companies have trusted this method.
Another important consideration is whether the POS systems are designed exclusively for restaurants and cafes. Although standard retail POS systems can cover fundamental orders and payments for food businesses, restaurant-specific systems have very different requirements. A POS built for restaurants will enable me to handle daily tasks such as: easily
Investing in a new POS system is a big commitment, but it will pay off many times over. Don’t rush for the lowest upfront investment; make sure I’ve calculated the return on investment (ROI) I could achieve. Here’re some key factors to consider when analyzing how technology impacts my bottom line:
After evaluating all factors, I can narrow down the POS candidates that meet my needs and budget. The next step is to consult your network and peers.
You can seek reviews on the Internet and consider the provider’s reputation. I ensure the provider offers support when I encounter technical issues and that they’re continuously working on updates. Be wary of new technology providers since I’d risk they can change or no longer be a company in a few years. Thus, I’ll pick a company with a proven track record that I can trust to provide support and updates when needed. In addition to reading reviews on the Internet, I’d want to hear feedback from restaurants using my targeted POS systems.
Visit my friends in the industry to ask them about their experience with the POS system:
When visiting a coffee or bakery shop using that system, I can experience the system as my guest would. I can make an order and purchase to see if the experience is smooth and accurate, or the staff can easily get my information and sign me up for loyalty programs. A good POS system makes the shopping experience pleasant and helps the brand learn more about its customers.
I should get a demo on which POS systems I’d like to see in action. I can contact the provider through their website and request a demo. This is the chance to learn how the system will work in my restaurant and understand what I’ll receive.
Here’s the checklist to prepare for my demo requirements:
Make sure all stakeholders join the demo meeting so they can discuss and decide which POS system to choose.
I should talk to the provider’s sales representative in advance and share my business objectives, what matters most to me in a POS system, and which specific products or features I require. This will allow the sales representatives to prepare the demo based on what’s most important to me.
Think about questions about the functionality. I’d want to learn more about the POS system. It’s also a chance to understand the POS provider as a partner. Ask them about their research and development roadmap and see if their working methodology is a match for me.
If the demo goes well and I want to move forward, I am clear with my needs on when to come on board, or if I’m opening new stores, etc.
The POS Exchange specializes in helping restaurants improve operations with customized point-of-sale systems. They understand the unique challenges of running a restaurant, and their POS systems address those pain points head-on. Their solutions help speed up checkout times, manage customer reviews, implement dynamic pricing, and reduce overhead costs.
Their restaurant POS systems also have advanced security measures to help protect your restaurant from data breaches and fraud.
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