5 Planning Tips for POS Placement

Where you place your point of sale is one of the biggest decisions you can make, as ultimately, it’s going to affect how your business runs.

Get it right and your venue will run smoothly, your queues will keep moving, and your kitchen orders will come out on time. Get it wrong, and you’ll have customers and staff stepping awkwardly around each other and complaints about your orders taking too long.

Sounds a bit grim, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be. We’ve pulled together a few tips to think about when planning the placement of your POS, so you start your business off on the right foot.

1. Place your POS to match your venue

The nature of your venue will determine where to position the central POS terminal. Are you a high volume quick service restaurant, or does your café have a more relaxed feel?

If you’re a counter-service café, placing your POS terminal next to your cakes and sandwiches makes it easier for the counter staff to grab them when taking an order. It also makes it easier for customers to buy one on impulse.

For a food truck, you want the POS and your service area to work side-by-side, to make the most of your limited space. For a bar, you want enough room in front of the POS so people can line up, but still have quick, easy access to order a drink.

Another thing to consider is whether your customers pay up front or wait for the check. Make sure your terminal is installed with enough space to match the service nature of your venue.

2. Know how much space you have to play with

The size of your venue plays a huge role in determining where your POS terminal should be placed, so make sure you know exactly how much space you’ve got.

If you’re a smaller venue, having the terminal right inside your entrance has the potential to block up the space—and having to navigate around a crowd of people standing around to pay doesn’t give the best first impression.

Look at your floor plan and work out where the natural flow will lead your guests. If you’ve got a bit of room in your venue, placing your POS directly in front of the entrance leads customers straight to the till, and gives them space off to the side to wait for their order.

You want to give your customers enough room to comfortably line up to order and pay, so your POS terminal should be placed somewhere that doesn’t interfere with your tables.

Waiter stations should be placed off to the side of your rooms, out of the way of customers but easily accessible for staff, and for quick payments. A good way to reduce space even further is to choose a mobile POS option. With a tablet or iPad POS, your terminal can be installed on the wall, and can be unclipped when your staff need to take it out to the tables.

Where will your back office be located? Keep this in mind as well. Make sure you’ve got enough room in your back office space for all the essentials to run your system, such as your computer, server, network switch, and wireless router.

Place this equipment somewhere out of the way, to give you enough room to control your POS system and stay out of the way of service at the same time.

As well as your terminal, you’re going to need peripherals such as a credit card reader, cash drawer, and receipt printers. Make sure you place your terminal with enough room for all the hardware you need, and with enough space to use it.

You can maximise your available space by installing the terminal on a SpacePole, or installing the cash drawer under your counter.

3. Get the right number of terminals for your venue

Again, this depends on the size of your venue. While you can always add more terminals later, you want to make sure you have enough terminals when you start out, to ensure your service is on point from day one.

A good rule of thumb is one POS terminal per 50 customers—so if you’re a small bar, café, or food truck, one terminal will work just fine.

Bigger venues such as restaurants or pubs may require two or more terminals, for example two at the bar, or one at the front desk and one at a waiter station.

4. Think about the kitchen

While all the customer activity and queues happen front-of-house, getting your kitchen POS placement right is crucial to ensuring your meals come out on time.

Once again, we come back to space. How much space do you have in your kitchen? Is there room to install your bump screen and printer on the counter, or do you need them attached to the wall? Would having a ceiling installation work better for your kitchen?

Make sure your screens and printers are positioned where your kitchen staff’s biggest focus is—front-of-house. Installing your screens and printers at the pass means every time an order goes out the screen can be checked to see what’s coming up, and keep your service in hand.

5. Above all, make it easy to use

This one should go without saying, but you want your POS terminal to be easy to use—for everyone. It’s all well and good for your staff to be able to use it, but making it so your customers can easily see the screen display gives them more of a sense of security that you’re getting their order right.

Impos display stands give can be customised to suit your staff, and have the ability to rotate towards your customers, for when they want to check the bill or sign up for your loyalty program.

You also want them to be easy for the POS support team to access, in the rare occasion any repairs need to be made. Be sure to leave enough space around your equipment during the installation, so that you’re covered for the future.

Whether you’re running a café, managing a bar, setting up a food truck, or in charge of a hotel, we can help make sure your POS equipment is positioned in the right spot so that your service potential is maximised.
Contact us to see how we can help you get the best setup for your POS system and get your venue running smoothly.