Reduce your costs with a Hospitality EPOS system
In the current climate, like most hospitality venues, you may be struggling with how you can manage rising costs and run a profitable business.
Spending money on a new EPOS system may seem counter-intuitive to this. However, a good hospitality EPOS can be one of the most effective tools in managing costs and ensuring your business is profitable.
Managing supplier price rises
Supplier price rises are becoming so frequent for many venues, that as soon as you have responded to one price rise, another comes through. For many businesses it is almost impossible to ensure that cost price rises are being factored in, and responded to in a timely fashion. This means you may not be making the margins you need to, in order to run a profitable business.
A good EPOS system can change this, by giving you an immediate view of your gross profit as you input your increased cost prices.
An EPOS with a good stock management function should also be able to tell you which recipe items are impacted by an ingredient price increase, automatically update the cost off those recipes, and show you the new gross profit you will be making. This enables you to respond to price rises quickly and easily, whether by increasing your sale price, looking to change suppliers, or even switching out certain products or dishes completely.
Managing staff costs
One of the biggest costs in running any business is your staff. April brings with it another rise in the minimum wage & the additional increases for employers National Insurance, making it increasingly difficult to maintain staff costs at a level you need, in order to be profitable - particularly alongside other price pressures.
Most EPOS systems will enable you to analyse your sales data, determining your busiest times of day. You can then make sure your staffing is aligned accordingly.
Our Hospitality EPOS system also includes staff scheduling tools, showing you what your wage % will be at the start of the week vs. your forecasted sales. This gives you the opportunity to adjust your rota if needed. We also have real-time staff wage % features on the EPOS, so you can keep on top of staff wages in real-time, during a shift, making changes to staffing levels if necessary.
Our EPOS also includes an integrated mobile ordering app, included as standard with all pricing plans. This can save staff time taking orders and reduce the number of staff you need at certain times of day.
Minimising wastage
When input costs are so high, it is more important than ever to minimise wastage, and the associated cost to your business.
A good EPOS system is essential to this. Firstly, it will enable you to record all wastage, from beer in the drip tray, to food that has passed its expiry date. This means you can keep on top of how much wastage there is in your business, taking action if it is too high.
Secondly, if you implement an EPOS with a stock management system, you can run stock takes and view detailed reports to alert you to any wastage that has not been recorded.
Optimising opening times
It’s an unfortunate fact that some hospitality venues are having to cut back on opening times in the current climate. But how do you make sure the days or times you close will save you money and not lose you money?
Most EPOS system can help with this by making it easier to view hourly sales, helping to identify times that are less likely to be profitable.
Our EPOS system takes this a step further and shows you an accurate estimate of the net profit you make on any day, week, or month. This ensures you are fully up to date on how profitable your business is, and then enables you to drill down into each day, to identify if any days are costing you more money to open than you are making.
Monitor your profitability
Regularly review your profit & loss (P&L) report so you understand all of your costs, and ultimately your business bottom line.
If your EPOS is linked to your accounting package and you’ve automated the submission of your supplier invoices (see our previous blog on automated bookkeeping), you should have a pretty up to date P&L in your accounting platform.
However, it's possible to get an even more up to date and accurate P&L for shorter time periods directly from your EPOS.
Our hospitality EPOS includes a P&L report that calculates your fixed costs, such as rent, based on the time period you are viewing, which can be as little as one day. This gives you a view of your profitability more quickly, and for much smaller windows than you can realistically get from your accounts.
Knowing at all times how well your business is doing, will prevent any nasty surprises at the end of the quarter or year, and allow you to make any cost savings and changes much more quickly if things aren’t looking as good as anticipated.
Consider challenging your business rates
Whilst not related to savings you can make with your Hospitality EPOS, business rates relief has reduced from 75% to 40% for thi tax year, so many businesses will have seen their rates rise significantly from April.
This could be a good time to challenge your business rates. We have successfully challenged the business rates of our own pub, and share some information based on our own experience in another
blog article. It’s worth noting that this article specifically relates to pubs.
Conclusion
So, if you are looking at how you can ensure your business is profitable in the current challenging trading conditions an investment in a good hospitality EPOS system could be a great first step.
With costs under control, you can then look to take advantage of the many other EPOS features to increase your revenues, from selling gift cards, introducing a loyalty scheme, or taking bookings from your website.
If you would like to see more on how our hospitality EPOS system can help with your business, get in touch with our team of hospitality experts.
