Must-Have Features For Bakery POS System

As a bakery, your business thrives on your ability to mix different ingredients in just the right way. Baking is a science.

Even with that perfect blend and tasty delights, your business may not be booming. The reason may be your bakery POS system.

Just like your baked goods are mixed to perfection, the right bakery POS system will allow your small business to deliver that perfect customer experience mixture. By implementing small bakery management software, you’ll be able to deliver a fast, friendly and, of course, tasty experience each time your customers visit.

Not only will this keep them coming back again and again, but they’ll bring others with them.

Speed Up Sales with Mobile POS

Implementing a mobile bakery POS system will allow you to speed up sales

The biggeest factor in the right bakery point of sale system is speed.

Specifically, your bakery needs an ordering system that gets customers through the queue and out the door as quickly as you can. This is especially critical at peak times, like early morning, when your bakery is swamped with customers. Don’t lost business because the wait is too long.

Implementing a mobile bakery POS system will allow you to get through customer orders more efficiently. Instead of having a fixed cash register for bakery sales, this type of system leverages tablets and other mobile devices, which means you can move around and still complete sales.

With a mobile POS system, you can handle customer’s orders on your tablet without having to run back and forth to a central register.   If a customer wants an eclair from the far end, you can process their payment on the spot.

In the same way, mobile bakery POS software also allows you to get out from behind the counter and meet customers on the sales floor. This makes it easier to upsell and recommend new products. With a mobile POS system, your sales will not only be faster but also more profitable.

Use Ingredient Management For Inventory Efficiency

Adding ingredients to products in eHopper POS

Another detriment to a small business style bakery is running out stock of certain ingredients. Nothing will disenchant a customer more than showing up at your bakery for a specific item only to find out that you’re waiting for a vendor to deliver the necessary ingredients. Inventory management is especially crucial for bakeries because baking requires such precise measurements. You can’t really improvise if you’re missing ingredients.

With a bakery POS system like eHopper, you can efficiently track ingredients. Each item can be entered into a database, complete with the unit of measurement, cost, vendor information and more.

From there, you can enter the volume of ingredients that each item uses. So, as you sell baked goods, your stock of ingredients adjusts accordingly. With this small bakery management software at your fingertips, you’ll never run out of ingredients. Vendor orders will be placed well in advance.

Ingredient management is also important for bakeries that handle a lot of custom orders. You’ll always have an updated list of what ingredients you have available in stock.

Enhance Customer Support With CRM

Customers are more connected to their favorite brands than ever before. Thanks to social media, email and a wide range of other tech channels, brands can reach their customers anywhere.

However, fostering loyal customer relationships in this hyper-connected age is harder to manage than you might think. With all of these different touch points that customers can interact with your bakery on, delivering a cohesive and personalized experience is a challenge.

The brands that attract the most loyalty today create a relationship with their customers.

This goes beyond merely knowing their name and being able to greet them as they walk in (although, that’s certainly a big step). Every interaction a customer has with your bakery creates data, whether that information is what they ordered that day, how they paid, whether or not they used a discount or other coupon and more.

Each kernel of data about a specific customer allows you to foster an understanding of who that person is and what they want from your brand (aside from delicious baked goods, of course).

The best cash register choice for a small bakery means the best bakery POS software, which will allow you to create customer profiles of each person that visits your store.

These profiles can include simple information, like contact info, or email address. Also, you’ll have more in-depth insights about when they shop, what they buy and more.

There’s a lot of value in enhancing customer support with customer relationship management (CRM) software on a bakery POS system.

Not only does the customer get to experience better, faster and more relevant service, but you can track trends that will allow you to anticipate times of high store traffic better, or which products are most popular with what demographics of consumers. These insights lead to better marketing efforts and overall better customer relationships.

Track Orders With POS Order Management

Given the number of special orders that bakeries often face, you need small bakery software incorporated into your POS system. This will help make order tracking easier and more efficient, so you never lose an order, write the wrong name in icing or forget a crucial ingredient.

The best bakery POS software presents orders in an all-in-one view, which lets you quickly scroll through current, past and future orders. Not only does it keep your business organized, but it also makes it much easier to find a guest’s order when they enter the store.

No confusion. No unnecessary waiting while you track the order down.

Similar to eHopper’s CRM feature, the order management area of the software also can showcase your data. With a complete history of orders saved, you’ll know which items are most popular when, your most popular ordering channels and more.

These types of insights help you structure and time  your promotions. Alternatively, you could look at past orders to better anticipate periods of high volume sales and plan ahead of time.

Your customers will enjoy your streamlined order management activities as well. Whether they are just curious about the status of their order or they need to change/cancel the order, your system will be able to quickly find that order, without any wait to the client, and make the necessary changes immediately.

Some small business bakeries can sync this with a bakery mobile app, so customers can have this information or make adjustments on the go.

Visibility With POS Reporting

Get a complete view of your business with POS reporting

Essentially, the best bakery POS system gives you a complete view of your business. Aside from order management and customer relationship management tools, small bakery management software also has a number of reports that you can view to check in on various dimensions of your company.

• Inventory Reports: See your entire inventory and even track which products produce the best returns. If you have multiple bakery locations, you can see which stores have what in stock and transfer items between one another.
• Sales Reports: Sales reporting expresses your profits. You can look even closer and look at sales created on a single register or by an individual employee, which helps you see who is performing best.
• Tax and Tips Reports: Know exactly how much your employees are making in tips from credit/debit card transactions and how much you are spending on sales tax.
• Serial Item Reports: Also known as an Inventory Aging Report, this lets you track perishable products and ingredients and see how much money you are wasting on stock and product going bad.
• Time Clock Reports: Employee fraud is a preventable issue with Time Clock Reports, which will let you track who worked when and even see which register they used. This will help you make better schedules and decrease theft.

All of the reports of your bakery POS system are exportable, which allows you to bring them into the same sheet or environment. This makes it much easier to analyze the data and uncover trends and correlations across the various reports.

Conclusions

Finding the best cash register for a small bakery isn’t just a matter of finding a POS machine that is capable of handling various transactions.

eHopper’s bakery POS software is capable of so much more and will allow you to control your business in ways that you couldn’t before. Sign up today and try eHopper POS for Free!

Every day you bake up something sweet for your customers, now you can indulge your bakery’s own sweet tooth.