As a food truck owner, choosing a point of sale (POS) system is arguably one of the most important decisions you’ll make. It’s the foundation of your day-to-day operations, from accepting orders and handling sales tax to creating menus and communicating with your kitchen (a crucial step!).
In this short series on finding the best food truck POS, we’ll walk you through everything the Table Needs POS can do to make your food truck run more smoothly.
This installment will go over how a food truck POS mobile app can streamline your entire food truck operation.
Read the rest of this series:
What to look for in a food truck POS mobile app
It truly seems like there’s an app for everything these days, and running a smooth food truck operation is no exception. The Table Needs POS mobile app lets you do everything you need to run your truck: manage your menus, accept orders and payments, operate your kitchen display system (KDS), and even do your reporting.
Menu management
Your menu is the root of who you are as a restaurant, so put your best foot forward when showing off your food. You can create your menu in the mobile app, from entering in dish descriptions to adding in mouth-watering photos of all the options.
Menus constantly evolve, so once you create your menu you’re by no means locked in. If you need to change a dish or add something new, you can do that right from the app as well.
Accept orders and payments
Once your menu is ready for guests’ eyes, they can place their order (and pay!) with ease. You can enable tap to pay technology to make it easy to process payments, or add the online ordering option to allow guests to place and pay for their orders ahead of time.
Built in KDS
Without a streamlined kitchen workflow, it almost doesn’t matter how easy your ordering is—if you can’t keep track of the order, it won’t get made. With a KDS built right into the Table Needs POS mobile app, your kitchen can easily track and manage everything they need to make.
Hayley Porter from Mori’s Place Coffee, loves the KDS integration. “One person can take orders while the other has their phone beside the machine and focuses on making the drinks as they pile into the KDS,” she says.
Automatic text notifications
Once an order is ready, the mobile app POS will automatically text the guest that they can come pick up their food. This helps you increase your service speed, as it reduces wait times and helps you avoid huge crowds waiting outside your truck. Plus, it gives your customers peace of mind knowing they won’t miss their food.
Why consider a food truck POS mobile app?
You may be wondering why you need a food truck POS mobile app when the regular POS system exists, but there are actually a lot of benefits to running your food truck from your phone.
As mentioned above, the Table Needs POS mobile app includes all the features and functionality you need to run a truly successful food truck. But, it has the added bonus of no expensive hardware, start-up costs, or surprise fees typical of other POS systems.
All you need to run your food truck is a phone or tablet—something you likely already have as part of the equipment you use to run your business. If you’re using your cell phone, you don’t have to worry about connecting your food truck to the internet. Instead, you can run your POS through your phone’s data or cell service.
Another benefit of the POS mobile app is it’s one less thing you have to secure or remove from your truck at the end of the day. Not only does this save you space during service, but it also gives you peace of mind knowing you haven’t left expensive electronics on your truck overnight.
The food truck POS mobile app in action
Now that you know some of the benefits of a mobile app, let’s actually walk through how that flow might look.
First, you have to create your menu, which you can do right from your phone in the app. Add new items, remove things you’re out of, or add specials that’ll only run for a few days—the sky’s the limit.
Once your menu is live, customers can look through and order from their phone. They can pay online before they pick up their food, or you can enable tap to pay on your phone to accept payments from in-person orders.
Once their order is placed, it automatically routes to the KDS for the kitchen to work their magic—no more yelling orders or losing tickets. Once the order is done, your customer will automatically get a text letting them know to come pick it up and enjoy.
At the end of the day, you’re a business owner, and you have to keep track of the financial side of the business too. The POS mobile app has reporting built in, so you can check in at the end of each day to see how you did.
With its portability, cost-effectiveness, and innovative features, the Table Needs Point of Sale Mobile App empowers food truck owners to streamline their operations and increase profitability in their businesses. Ready to see how it can work for you?
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