Essential POS Features For Your Bar Or Brewery In 2024

Unlike full-service restaurants, bars change their menus as often as multiple times a day for special happy hour pricing, game-day specials, seasonal food/drinks, and more. You’ll reduce employee errors and lost profits if your POS offers a flexible menu that can automatically accommodate these frequent changes.

Many POS systems don’t offer extensive menu or table management but it’s practically a must in the bar industry. This is an area where Toast stands out, offering complex management and the ability to quickly and effectively set up promotions and alert employees when certain items are low or unavailable.

This might seem like a no-brainer, but having a POS system that can scan IDs, check for fraudulent cards, and keep records of legal alcohol sales could be crucial to your business in the event of an investigation.

Many systems that are specifically created for liquor stores or other establishments that sell age-restricted items have databases that can track these types of transactions for potential audits down the road and help cut down on potential errors overall.

Without fail, you will have a transaction error at midnight on a Tuesday when most customer service centers are closed, so 24/7 customer support from your POS system is more crucial for bars than other businesses.

And you might be surprised to learn that 24/7 phone support is not necessarily the norm with POS software. Having a number to call or text to get immediate or near-immediate results may be something you want to prioritize, along with having a system with a strong offline mode in case of an internet outage.

With liquid inventory tracking, bartenders can track the alcohol poured into each drink and get alerts when specific ingredients are running low. POS systems can also store drink recipes, report on best-sellers, and allow you to check your stock in real time from anywhere.

Having a system that alerts you immediately when you are running out of an ingredient and also lets servers know so they aren’t selling a product that is no longer in stock can be extremely important. And there are many POS systems that specialize in having excellent inventory management.

At the very least, your bar needs a POS system with basic time-tracking, scheduling, and training capabilities for your employees.

Realistically, you’re going to want employee management and reporting tools beyond just the basics. Some of these management tools include the ability to set up different permissions for different types of employees, along with fraud prevention features that monitor things like comps and canceled tickets.

Your POS system should have a pre-authorization feature that saves a customer’s card information as soon as the tab is opened, along with an “open ticket” or “suspend” function. Larger businesses will also need to be able to merge and transfer tickets between servers.

A “split tab” feature is also useful for large parties that order a lot of drinks, food, and/or bottles of wine.

Any POS worth the cost is going to offer some basic reporting features. The best will have in-depth reports based on automatically collected data from every transaction, visit to your store, and interaction with marketing materials.

POS reporting helps you gain insight into your business operations to help you improve your sales, employee turnover rate, and customer satisfaction.