For really quick ordering, some apps, including our own food & drink ordering app, will enable a customer to order by simply scanning a QR code (scanners are built into most phones cameras, so this is as simple as putting the QR code in the cameras view).

If a new customer can place an order from your app as quickly as they could have ordered at the bar, then you have an app that is likely to be a success.

You might need it to do more than you think

Ordering food and drink from an app sounds like a simple requirement, but it’s easy to overlook the many more detailed aspects that underly this.

Think through all the features you use of your bar epos and whether they will also need to be available on your drinks ordering app. Do you need to run promotions? Can customers select modifiers or mixers? Are certain products only available at certain times of day?

If you track stock you will need the orders from your app to feed into your stock tracking system & you’ll want to be able to report on your mobile orders as you can your other sales.

It needs to tie in with your other systems

Many of the requirements above will rely on a good integration with your bar EPOS system. A level of integration is also key to achieving a positive user experience.

If staff need to re-key orders into your EPOS, this will delay the time to a customer receiving their order. It can also lead to mistakes. With the increased volume of orders that might be placed using an ordering app under social distancing regulations, it would be a huge amount of staff time to key all of these orders into your EPOS.

If your kitchen already received food orders on a kitchen screen or printer, you'll want orders placed on your ordering app to come through in the same manner.

Look for multiple payment options

From both a customer experience and operational perspective, taking payment in the app makes sense, particular if your app supports Apple and Google Pay.

However, card processing fees on an app will always be higher than for card transactions taken using your card machines.

It’s important to be aware of this and to understand what your options are if volumes of sales through the app prove to be very high. One option might be to pass on a small service fee to the customer – you will be the best judge of how acceptable this would be to your customer base.

Another option, would be to take payments for orders using your card machines instead of within the app. Whether you choose to do this is likely to depend on your order volumes and your own operational procedures, but if it’s something you want to consider you’ll need to know your ordering app has the option.

Decide on your own criteria

We’ve put together the above based on our own experience in self-service systems and the thinking we went through in developing our own ordering app. Different points will be more or less relevant to different businesses and it’s important to think through what is important to you and your style of operation.

If you’re not tied to your existing EPOS we’d love to tell you more about using our pub & bar EPOS with integrated mobile ordering . If you don’t want to move from your current EPOS then hopefully the above can help with your selection of an ordering app that integrates with your system.