Restaurant news

In 2021, the restaurant industry has seen huge changes in the marketplace, and in the behaviour and requirements of consumers.

Restaurants have had to tackle potential resistance to eating out, and need to provide customers with increased digital services such as
online ordering.

NFS has responded with a suite of developments that enhance our core Aloha EPOS offering, already used by thousands of operators worldwide.

• Integration with Harri – With a finite resource such as labour your technology toolkit must include a robust solution for managing staff schedules. Supporting scheduling with data insights is the most efficient and cost-effective way to ensure customer service levels are as high as possible. This effective tool is now integrated with your Aloha restaurant EPOS system.
• Online ordering solutions – Integration with mobile ordering and payment solutions such as Qikserve or OneDine offer many advantages. Guests have greater control over their payment experience, tables are turned faster, payments are 100% accurate and staff can concentrate on providing exceptional guest service leaving Aloha to take care of the admin.
• Aloha Open API Store – By opening up its APIs, Aloha has empowered NFS partners and clients such as Chilled Pubs to create their own engaging digital experience for their guests, a mobile ordering solution.
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• Integration to ResDiary – The Aloha 2 way integration to ResDiary not only allows the ability pull customer bookings to your Aloha restaurant EPOS system, but allows the sharing of client sales back into ResDiary for analysis of customer spend. Managing your reservations, delivery and takeaway orders has never been more easy.
• Integration to MarketMan restaurant management software – This all-in-one-solution tackles everything from inventory management, purchasing and expense tracking through to recipe costing and vendor payments. Greater automation; less manual input and duplication; the power of Aloha restaurant EPOS integrating with MarketMan.
• Global Payments integration – NFS are particularly proud of this partnership. Performance benefits include integrated PDQ machines allowing servers to take the PDQ to the table, pick up a check, print, receive payment and close the tab without needing to return to the Aloha terminal. Global Payments’ unique customer portal not only manages transactions, but also analyses customer retention, sales by shift, benchmarking against competition, and how far your customers travel to your establishment.
• NFS Cloud POS – A new generation of SAAS EPOS has emerged offering easy to use, light versions of traditional EPOS. NFS Cloud POS offers the cloud-based enterprise features restaurants need for online orders, third party delivery integrations and automated inventory and more – combined with full management control, reporting and analysis at unbeatable pricing.

2022 offers plenty of opportunity for forward-thinking restaurateurs who support their operations with the right technology.

We’ve identified 5 key things to look out for:

1. Consumer behaviour changes – we’ve already seen a huge evolution in the way customers behave. Expect this to continue, with an increasing emphasis on digital access and convenience, and with loyalty encouraged by two-way conversations via social media; every restaurant and bar is now the heart of a community. Build your virtual brand.
2. The growth of pay at table – A huge trend that has been accelerated and is definitely here to stay. Staff equipped with hand-held devices or mobiles integrated with the EPOS system can take payments (and orders) at tableside; diners love the speed and convenience.
3. A better customer experience – With competition now ferocious, and with eating at home now far more popular than before, restaurants need to offer something special. EPOS technology creates the quick and convenient experience they require, from online reservations and ordering to tableside payment; captured data allows restaurants to email attractive offers tailored to each guest. The system also controls labour better, so the serving staff to customer ratio is always right.
4. Restaurant operational efficiencies – Tableside ordering on tablets or mobile devices means guests’ orders are transmitted instantly to the kitchen for accurate and rapid delivery (the system can integrate with kitchen automation if required). Serving staff are given prompts for upselling, and can spend more of their valuable time with customers rather than running to the kitchen with orders.
5. Better integration to finance systems—The requirement to streamline across the entire business and remove unnecessary duplication has driven the evolution of integrations. Aloha recently integrated with Xero, allowing the automatic feed of data into the accounting software. We expect to see more integrations like this in the future.