Fragmented POS systems are restaurants' biggest missed data opportunity, Oracle says

Every sale, labor decision, inventory movement and customer interaction in a restaurant passes through the point-of-sale system in some form. Many operators still use only a fraction of what their systems can do. That is the central finding of a Sep. 14 Bar & Restaurant report by Maura Keller, which gathered views from Oracle Restaurants, Signature Systems and hospitality consultancy 110 Ventures on where the unused value sits.

The sharpest answer came from Oracle. Amber Trendell, senior director of outbound product management for Oracle Restaurants, told the publication that the opportunity operators most often overlook is unification, and that it matters more than any single new feature. Many restaurant companies run fragmented POS environments, she said, because regional teams, franchisees or individual locations made their own buying decisions over the years.

When systems are split up this way, Trendell told Bar & Restaurant, operators struggle to keep processes uniform, bring in automation, and apply data and AI in a consistent way from one part of the business to another.

Oracle's case for a standard foundation without a full rip-and-replace

Bar & Restaurant reports that a cloud-based, standardized POS foundation lets a restaurant company connect transaction data with labor, inventory, loyalty, payments and financial systems, and that it can do so without necessarily replacing every existing application.

Profitability gets much clearer, Trendell told the publication, when sales are read alongside labor, inventory and financial information instead of one report at a time. In her description, operators can weigh contribution margin, prep complexity, food cost, inventory consumption and customer behavior together rather than in sequence.

She also gave a direction of travel for AI. As it becomes more integrated into restaurant technology, Trendell said systems will increasingly identify issues on their own, recommend solutions and help managers execute approved changes faster.

According to Bar & Restaurant, a cloud-based, standardized POS foundation lets restaurants connect transaction data with labor, inventory, loyalty, payments and financial systems without necessarily replacing every existing application.

The six numbers 110 Ventures says to watch, and why the hour matters

Darren Spicer, hospitality consultant and founder of 110 Ventures, described the POS to Bar & Restaurant as the operational command center of a restaurant, the place every sale, labor decision, inventory movement and customer interaction eventually flows through. Rather than asking what happened yesterday, he said, the best operators ask what the data is telling them right now and make proactive decisions throughout the day.

He listed six metrics worth tracking: hourly sales, the average ticket, the mix of products sold, labor as a percentage, the number of transactions and loyalty participation. Spicer's caveat, per the report, is to read them as trends over time rather than isolated figures.

When demand actually occurs, in his framing, is just as important as how much is sold.

One kiosk, several kitchens: the Signature Systems angle

Alex Schwartz, marketing director at Signature Systems, covered the more familiar ground first. Modern POS platforms support loyalty programs, prompt upsell opportunities and tie into a growing set of hardware and software that helps a restaurant run leaner, he told Bar & Restaurant.

His overlooked opportunity was different from Oracle's. Some POS providers now let a customer order from multiple restaurants on a single kiosk or tablet, Schwartz said, and he pointed to food courts, casinos, theme parks and any location with several dining options as the fit.

Schwartz pointed to food courts, casinos and theme parks as the settings where this applies. According to Bar & Restaurant, he described it as a worthwhile choice for groups and families who want to sample several cuisines without leaving one location.

Menu engineering and the top-10 habit

Menu decisions have traditionally leaned on operator instinct, and Bar & Restaurant positions POS data as the objective check on that instinct. Schwartz said most systems make it easy to see best and worst sellers, and that many restaurateurs work by a simple rule: keep the top 10 sellers and avoid clinging to anything outside them.

With food costs still moving around, the report notes those sales-rank reports help an operator spot when an item no longer earns its place on the menu. Popularity, though, only tells part of the story, and the piece flags that reading sales rank alone is one of the common mistakes in menu evaluation.

What the reporting leaves open for franchised chains

Trendell attributes fragmentation to regional, franchise and location-level decisions, but the Bar & Restaurant piece does not go further into how those decisions accumulated or how operators have addressed them.