Introducing the next-generation point of sale for today’s restaurant operator
As a restaurateur, juggling everything on your to-do list can be a lot. Getting ahead of the competition. Reducing costs. Improving your margins…
Heavy is the head that wears all the hats. But we have good news: You don’t have to do it all on your own — the right point of sale (POS) system can help.
In fact, 48% of restaurant operators said they’ll devote resources to new point of sale technology in 2024.
And it’s no wonder. According to our recent survey, about 40% of restaurant professionals estimate they’d save more than 10 hours a week by improving their POS software and hardware.
Maybe you’re thinking about buying your first restaurant POS system. Or maybe you’ve been working with an outdated POS for one too many years and you’re ready to upgrade. No matter where you’re at in your journey, whichever POS you choose next should help you save time, increase profits and equip your staff to be more efficient.
We’d like to show you how Heartland’s next-generation restaurant point of sale can help you do all that and more. With new-and-improved tech built for ease of use and commercial-grade hardware that’s durable, sleek and space-saving, our advanced features and refreshed user interface are designed to meet your needs.
How? Our team of software and hardware experts listened to today’s restaurateurs and used their own experience as entrepreneurs to create a true all-in-one, next-generation POS.
Keep reading to discover the top six benefits Heartland Restaurant delivers:
1. Cost management
With pressure from inflation and shifts in consumer spending habits, you’re likely feeling the strain on your restaurant’s budget — whether you work in fine dining, casual dining, quick-service restaurants or food trucks.
But respondents from our 2024 survey agreed: POS tech can help.
In fact, one of the top benefits Heartland Restaurant delivers is the ability to put money back in your pocket. We understand the first step to cutting costs is getting a grip on the parts of your business that are cost drivers. That’s why Heartland Restaurant POS helps pinpoint the areas where those costs exist and gives you the power to target and lessen them with features designed to reduce inefficiencies and optimize your labor.
Our restaurant point of sale functionality includes cost-saving tools like robust sales reporting, labor or employee management, inventory management and more.
“The reports are just so easy to get to. It has made some of my business decisions a lot easier because of the analytics. So I can take any of the analytics from a unit and compare it to another unit or compare to the year before and create spreadsheets straight from there, which is extremely helpful.”
- Prost Brewing
Here are a few examples of how Heartland Restaurant helps cut down on top expenses:
Reduce food waste and prevent underbuying: Integrating the POS with leading restaurant inventory management software, like MarginEdge, Whisk, MarketMan and Restaurant365 helps monitor and track stock and food levels.
Do more with less staff: With solutions like Heartland’s handheld Mobile POS, staff can handle tableside ordering faster. Kiosks can also reduce the burden on your counter with self-serve ordering and payment for your diners.
Stay on the pulse: Robust reporting for your single or multi-location business can provide insights that allow you to make informed business decisions, like adding more staff for peak hours, reducing staff on slow days, optimizing your menu offerings to replicate best-sellers and reworking the menu’s slow-sellers.
2. Streamlined synchronization
Few things are more frustrating — for servers or customers — than putting in an order only to find out the dish is out of stock once the ticket reaches the kitchen. Thankfully, the right POS can help you avoid that.
The secret ingredient for success between the front of house and back of house is real-time synchronization.
Making changes to the menu — and the need to be agile — are par for the course in the restaurant business. So it should be as simple and uncomplicated as possible, right? That’s where POS tech comes in.
Roughly three in four of our survey respondents, regardless of restaurant type, agreed cloud-based POS technology helps staff be more efficient and get better tips.
It’s all about bridging the communication gap from front of house to back — no matter how big your floorplan is. Heartland Restaurant simplifies sending orders, making modifications, revising items and updating pricing, using intuitive software paired with hardware that has the network reliability you need to keep your entire restaurant in lock-step.
“There are just so many tools now that we can use because it is cloud-based. I can do it on
my phone right now.”
- Prost Brewing
When it comes to the back office, Heartland’s Admin Portal is your central command hub. It makes easy work of creating and viewing reports, updating menus and so much more:
Keep servers updated: Inform staff of menu changes, replacements or if items have been “86’d” in real time.
Help servers, bartenders and the line stay in sync: Our smart POS syncs across terminals and locations based on flexible settings that reduce miscommunications, errors and customer frustrations — making sure your team stays connected.
Manage the back office: Sales data from a single location or multiple locations is centralized, reducing the amount of time needed to reconcile or analyze business performance. Plus, you can access it in the cloud from any computer, anytime, anywhere.
3. Increased sales
The old saying that it costs more to get a customer than to keep one still rings true — especially for small businesses. That’s why creating an excellent customer experience can translate to increasing your bottom line in a big way.
If you’re wondering where to start with improving your customer experience, 61% of the restaurateurs we surveyed agreed that boosting speed of service and offering loyalty programs were among the most important factors for creating a memorable visit.
Restaurant technology, like Heartland Restaurant POS, that’s designed to enhance the time (and dollars) your customers spend with you is key to creating a customer experience guests will want to come back for. Here’s how:
Reward loyalty: 48% of businesses that use Heartland Loyalty, powered by Como increase foot traffic and drive repeat business using limited-time offers, referral bonuses and gift cards.
Increase table turns: Taking orders and payments using a card reader or portable, handheld POS, like Heartland Mobile, makes table management a breeze. It allows you to speed up service without rushing the guests and increase the number of covers with efficient ordering and payments.
Boost check size: Restaurants that use a mobile POS to deliver speedy, accurate service have seen a 10-15% increase in average check size. Plus, up-sell tools help servers increase tickets by easily adding recommended items to an order like a drink, side or extra modifier.
Maximize tips: Inspire higher tips for servers by offering flexible, user-friendly tipping options to your customers.
Manage guests: Reduce wait times using the Waitlist function. It lets you alert guests when their table is ready, cut down on lag time between table turns, increase your overall covers and put more money in your and your servers’ pockets.
Serve more customers: Customers are placing online take-out and delivery orders more than ever. Heartland makes it simple to load your menu using back-office software, so you can start taking online orders quickly. With support for third-party delivery services and your own drivers, you can expand your customer base, providing the omnichannel experience your business needs to thrive.
“Tips went up almost 100% yesterday. That was extremely exciting. The front credit card checkout
is very user-friendly.”
—Chicks Teriyaki
4. Efficiency through AI and automation
Restaurant owners agree: Data entry is a waste of time, marketing is hard to measure and training staff is a pain. Maybe one or all of those things have caused you to avoid switching to a new restaurant management system so far. If you’re nodding your head, times have changed. Now, it’s a cinch to load existing menu items using smart syncing of inventory items, ingredients and modifiers.
And with our built-in Heartland Loyalty, powered by Como program, you can harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to use customer data for marketing by measuring and suggesting campaigns that get feet in the door and increase check sizes.
Identifying opportunities is just the beginning. The real value is seeing how executing relevant operational changes and recommendations made by AI can positively impact your business.
“Heartland POS was probably the smartest thing I’ve done in the restaurant business, and the key is speed.”
— Steak & Main
5. Access to the tools you (actually) need
Getting the tools to run, grow and scale your business doesn’t mean paying for more than what you actually need. It also doesn’t mean settling for lackluster hardware options to get the restaurant POS software you’re looking for. The best restaurant POS solutions will deliver a complete package that’s just right for your business.
Heartland Restaurant POS comes equipped right out of the box with essential commercial-grade hardware that’s built to survive the wear and tear of the restaurant industry. We know it needs to be tough, reliable, easy to use and even more simple to learn. After all, who has time for complex technology when they’re busy juggling the day-to-day chaos of running a busy restaurant business?
“It was a little bit different from the last software package, but once you’re in there for a day, you’ve got it figured out and you’re good to go.”
— Covatta's Main Street Market
Heartland’s best-in-class restaurant POS software integrates with over 130 leading business and restaurant management software platforms, making it even easier for you to get things done and make customers happy. Plus, you can choose from plenty of add-ons and integrations to streamline a wide range of operations, including:
Marketing and loyalty
Online ordering
Third-party delivery services, like Doordash and UberEats
Accounting and tax management
Operations management
Inventory management
6. Top-tier support
When you’re in the market for new POS tech, you’re evaluating more than a platform — you’re choosing a partner. Shiny new hardware and user-friendly software are great, but the true value of a POS solution comes down to the customer support behind it.
But don’t just take it from us: 9 out of 10 survey respondents told us that having a team of experts to lean on for support provides tremendous value, no matter if it’s for an upgrade or getting ready to open your doors for the first time.
“You get into business with people that have your best interests at heart. That’s what Heartland does for us.”
— Prost Brewing
At Heartland, we provide round-the-clock, full-service care from day one:
Live agent support: Receive help with installing POS hardware, such as the touchscreen monitor with customer-facing display, Mobile POS, POS terminal, receipt printers, cash drawer, kitchen display system (KDS) and more.
24/7/365: Text, chat, email or phone — our always-on support team ensures you get assistance whenever you need it, however you want it.
Tailored onboarding: Get up and running quickly with swift — but personalized — onboarding and training, so you get the most out of your new solution.
“The biggest thing in business is finding someone you can trust. We went to Heartland Restaurant because it makes your life a lot easier. We knew that their core value as far as how they handle their customers and their service was excellent. It just gave us another reason to love the system even more.”
— St. Mary's Seafood & More
Ready to be part of the next generation?
The six benefits we just went over are something every restaurateur deserves from their POS. That’s why at Heartland, we’ve worked hard to perfect our Restaurant Point of Sale solution to fit the needs of you —the small business owner.
With Heartland Restaurant, you can customize our solution to get exactly what you need, and nothing you don’t. Our reimagined suite of modern, intuitive software and reliable, innovative hardware is designed specifically for the hospitality industry. Heartland Restaurant offers built-in loyalty tools with Heartland Loyalty, powered by Como, a modern KDS, inventory tracking, robust sales reporting, smart menu management, seamless online ordering, offline mode, the ability to accept contactless payments and so much more. Plus, it’s easy to start, use and scale.
If you’re interested in learning more, our team is happy to provide you with a demonstration of all the ways Heartland Restaurant delivers the benefits you deserve. Contact us today to be part of the next generation of restaurant management.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this document does not, and is not intended to constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available are for general informational purposes only. Information provided may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information, and readers of this information should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter, in the relevant jurisdiction. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents here are hereby expressly disclaimed. All trademarks contained herein are the sole and exclusive property of their respective owners.
Heartland is the point of sale, payments and payroll solution of choice for entrepreneurs that need human-centered technology to sell more, keep customers coming back and spend less time in the back office. Nearly 1,000,000 businesses trust us to guide them through market changes and technology challenges, so they can stay competitive and focus on building remarkable businesses instead of managing the daily grind. Learn more at heartland.us