What is a Hospitality EPOS system?

Frankie Neale • 28 June 2023

What is a Hospitality EPOS system?


A hospitality EPOS system is a Point-of-Sale system designed specifically for hospitality businesses. Whilst a generic POS system will enable you to record sales and take payments, a hospitality POS system will enable you to perform all the additional functions you need for your business, such as adding items to tabs and tables, routing orders, splitting bills, taking orders at the table, and making key info, such as allergens, easily accessible to staff.

 

A good hospitality EPOS should also prioritise the things that matter to hospitality businesses, like speed of service and ease of use.

 

Any good EPOS system should offer a back office with a range of real-time reports, but a hospitality EPOS system should offer reports that are specific and relevant to the industry, We wrote an article recently on the Top 5 Hospitality EPOS reports.

 

Hospitality businesses offer a very different range of products to other sectors, such as wines by the glass, draught beers, and food items or cocktails with recipes. A good hospitality POS system should make it easy to add these products to the till, and to accurately track stock for them. You can read more on that in our guide to using your hospitality EPOS to track stock.


Hospitality EPOS product template


Systems for different business types

 

Some hospitality EPOS systems will cater for specific business types, while others will accommodate all hospitality businesses. Each business type will have their own needs.

 

A cafe EPOS system should be able to cater for different tax rates and pricing of products depending on whether they are sit-in or take-out orders. It may need also need to offer the ability for customers to order via a click & collect app.

 

A restaurant EPOS should include a table plan and a good kitchen management system, including a kitchen screen and flexible order routing. We wrote about the key features of a kitchen management system in a recent blog.

 

A pub EPOS system should be designed with speed of service at the forefront, helping bar staff serve more customers at peak times. Good pub & bar EPOS systems should also make it easy for staff to view cocktail making instructions, or information about the beers on offer.


Cocktail instructions on EPOS screen


Other systems

 

A hospitality EPOS system is at the heart of a business, holding an immense amount of data on your sales trends, margins, stock levels, and customer spending habits.

 

It’s also the system staff are most familiar with and are interacting with most of the time.

 

For these reasons a hospitality EPOS should be the at the centre of a business’s IT systems.

 

Feeding data to other integrated systems can enable better reporting and accounting, reduce manual workload, and minimise errors.

 

Similarly, feeding data from other systems into a hospitality POS system can put key information right in front of staff exactly when they need it.

 

Whether a hospitality EPOS system is integrated with other third-party systems, or directly incorporates other functions of the business into it, integration with other technology is an important aspect of an EPOS that shouldn’t be overlooked.


Tabology Hospitality EPOS features and integrations


The team behind the system

 

A hospitality EPOS system needs a team behind it that have a strong expertise and passion for hospitality. They need to understand the industries changing needs and be able to turn the many great ideas of their customers into practical, easy to use features.

 

A knowledgeable team can also help customers get the most out of their system and provide timely support for any issues they face.

Our hospitality EPOS system can cater for every type of hospitality business and incorporates a booking system, mobile ordering app and staff scheduling tools.


Our team come from a range of hospitality backgrounds, and we even run our own systems in our own pub. Get in touch to find out more.

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