Are you ready to deliver Vegan and Vegetarian food?

vegan delivery on the rise

Delivery and Vegan Food are the fastest growing restaurant trends

According to Grubhub and Yelp vegan and vegetarian options are trending like never before. The fastest growing item overall was cauliflower crust pizza. According to the “Year in Food” report cauliflower popularity grew by 650%. After several years of growth in meat alternatives can this really be called trendy any longer? I would suggest this is far from a trend. Americans are looking for comfort food without the animal protein.

Dine in, Delivery or in home Meal replacement that is the question

Whether you are catering to the meat alternative crowd or still serving meat and potatoes how and where are the next frontier. Diners are voting with their wallets and they are choosing in home meal replacement and delivery. Several restaurant publications have recently featured restaurants that have closed their dining rooms to expand delivery and take out ops. What this tells me is people want fresh not frozen and quality made meals. If it were just wanting to eat at home we would just nuke a frozen dinner right? Well, that ain’t happening.

Do you have to respond to trends in order to make it today?

Well that answer to that is above my pay grade. I do think if you are just starting in business and catering to younger diners you probably do. There is still room for the classic steak house and hopefully there always will be but the young guest are growing up in an alternative protein reality. The next generation will have never lived in a world where fast food did not offer a plant based alternative. At what point is it no longer an alternative? These same consumers will also grow up with every restaurant having online ordering and delivery options. So regardless of the concept you operate it may be time to dip your toe into the technology pool and see what happens. No need to do a cannon ball into the deep end, start slow with an iPad POS system and go with the flow. Let your guest tell you how they want to order and respond! While we can’t help you with plant based alternatives we can assist with the modern technology for your restaurant. Call us at 800-863-2274 or online at Restaurant POS including online ordering.

November 7, 2019

Is your restaurant ready for the holidays?

ready for the holidays?

Promote your gift cards

Americans go to present is the gift card. Start stocking up now before it’s too late. Don’t rely on only hard plastic gift cards, get geared up with e-gift cards also known as a virtual gift card. Industry experts agree that e-gift cards are the next big thing for POS and gift giving. You should be ordering your gift card stock before Thanksgiving in order to be prepared.

Start working your email list

Around daylight savings or sooner you should be sending out holiday themed emails. It’s about this time of year businesses start planning their holiday parties. Send your customer list updates on catering and private dining options. Many businesses cater events in the office, however in this strong economy parties have made strong come back. While your emailing about holiday parties don’t forget to mention gift cards especially if you offer a virtual gift card that can be ordered from you website.

Make sure your equipment and technology is ready for the rush

Whether you have a point of sale system like Digital Dining, Dinerware or a cloud based tablet system ensure you are compliant with payment requirements. Double check your other mission critical equipment as well. If something has a nagging issue get it repaired or you are just inviting trouble. Find out if your POS provider offers surge licensing in case you need to stand up an extra POS terminal for a few days during the rush.

Take care of staffing issues now

Head off staffing issues by thinking ahead. Get your vacancies filled now. After filling in your roster hire some seasonal help as well. Don’t forget to get floaters lined up in case a regular or seasonal hire call in sick or get stuck in bad weather. Don’t leave anything to chance because we all know what Murphy says “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. If POS is one of those items you need to address call us at 800-863-2274 or on the web at Restaurant POS.

October 24, 2019

Make payments easier to attract tech savvy guest

scan to pay

Make payments easier for a better guest experience

Part four of our series on attracting and keeping Millennial Customers focus on payments made easy. Restaurants always strive to achieve that perfect guest experience. The one they will tell their friends and family about. It really does not matter if you are a five star table service establishment or carry out burger stand. How fast guest can pay and leave is part of the overall experience. Technology can improve this part of dining out that often diminishes the entire outing if handled poorly.

Servers are busy and your guest know that.

How often have you been our for dinner and wait to get your guest check and credit card back. Much of this can be accounted for via training however servers have a lot on their plate (pun intended). One of the break through technologies allow guest to use their own phone to pay a guest check off including a tip. Yes, you heard that correctly. You don’t need to put an ugly tablet on every table to make it easier for guest to pay. Use the Heartland Guest Application that allows your guest to use their own mobile device to simply scan to pay. Your POS will be configured to print a QR code on each guest check. You guest simply opens the app, scans the code and pays with a credit card they have already associated with their account.

A guest Application improves the experience for the guest and staff too

Technology like a guest app empowered with payments also lessens the load on servers too. Guest paying their own guest check off is one less thing for your servers to do. Another side effect is you could get an extra table turn in for the night too. If you think the technology demands of the millennials is demanding, your haven’t seen anything yet. The next generation Gen Z thinks their tech savvy parents don’t know anything about tech and social media and their right! Learn more about the Heartland Guest Application here.

October 16, 2019

Restaurant Inventory Control with Heartland POS

Heartland Restaurant POS now integrated with Yellow Dog

Our model allows you to use industry experts for restaurant inventory control with Heartland POS. This model allows you the best of breed when selecting systems. We found out long ago time ago to stay in our lane. We don’t do inventory and good inventory does not do POS. In some cases it makes sense to do it all like we do with orders. Other times it is better to partner with someone that brings a laser focus to the solution. In this case Yellow Dog is one of the first companies to complete the integration with Heartland POS.

Get your food and beverage inventory under control

At yellow dog they understand restaurant inventory control is a process. When you have Yellow Dog integrated with Heartland Restaurant POS you won’t have to worry about ruining out of inventory again, or even worse wasting inventory. Their systems work seamlessly with the POS system. However, just like the POS it’s the people and support that are the secret sauce that brings everything together. At Yellow Dog you get a caring team of professionals because they know better people make better inventory.

Choice and freedom set Heartland apart from the rest

You may have noticed the the restaurant technology landscape has changed dramatically over the last few years. Companies have emerged that offer technology but only if they can lock you into long term processing contracts. Heartland is changing the landscape again for the better. Even though they are a processing company did you know you are free to use whatever processing company you want with Heartland POS? This POS system is a standalone product not a loss leader to get you into processing. Sure, we want you to select Heartland processing but maybe you already have a contract or you prefer to process with the bank that financed your business. In our case you can still get the best POS on the market and add processing when the time is right. Call us at 800-863-2274 to schedule an online demo or in person in the Seattle Tacoma area.