The Best POS System for Food Trucks, Ghost Kitchens, & Restaurants

If you ask folks of a certain age to describe a restaurant, they’ll probably paint a familiar picture—a large, mostly open space full of tables and chairs with a kitchen tucked somewhere near the back. But if you asked for that same description from a 22-year-old instead, you’d get an entirely separate answer. Why?

In the 21st century, a restaurant is no longer defined by tables, cash registers, servers, or the hostess stand. A pandemic and a sea change in consumer values have created a proliferation of new dining experiences.

Some contemporary restaurants may share little in common with the sit-down eateries of old, but too many food trucks, ghost kitchens, and pop-up restaurants still depend on cash registers or tablet apps. As the 21st century rolls on, that will have to change, and Sky Payments Group is here to see that it does.

Versatile Point of Sale Solutions For Restaurants of Every Kind

Generational shifts and the digital age may have upended things, but until we can consume meals over the internet, we’re stuck with several realities.  

A restaurant makes food—we can say that much for certain. But beyond that, all bets are off, including where your customers eat, how you market to your target audience, and how/where you accept payment.

Modern restaurateurs need versatility—not just in their thinking, but in their point-of-sale systems, too. As the concept of “the restaurant” escapes from brick-and-mortar buildings, our technology and strategies need to evolve.

How Smart POS Systems for Restaurants Change The Game

Compared to your cash register or tablet widget, how can a smart POS system for restaurants really change how you do business? You already have a suite of management and outreach software, after all, and you’re good about browsing Google reviews when you can spare the time.

But modern POS systems go far beyond facilitating the exchange of money. These days, the best POS systems can serve as a central nervous system for your whole enterprise—regardless of what kind of restaurant you’re operating.

The Best POS System for Food Trucks

What started off as a novelty way to launch a restaurant has snowballed into a cultural phenomenon. Now, it’s hard to imagine a world without food trucks. But when the restaurant changes location each day (or even several times each day), challenges abound. 

For starters, you have to inform your customers about where you’ll be. And since they won’t often find you in the same spot twice, you’ll need to keep your diners up to speed with frequent updates and the latest menu items. It’s bad enough if you can’t be found, but it’s even worse if you’re not remembered in the first place. 

When it comes to customer engagement, your choice of POS system can have a major impact.

Food Truck Marketing, Social Media Engagement, & Reputation Management

Word of mouth is vital to any restaurant, but it’s especially critical for food trucks. Brick-and-mortar restaurants are generally easy to find—either intentionally or by chance, doubling their visibility. But food truck operators need clients to first find and then come to them. That means leveraging every digital tool at your disposal.

The best POS system for food trucks needs to be capable of:

• Gathering customer data at the point of sale
• Easy, turnkey email marketing campaigns
• Comprehensive social media management from a central hub
• Online review management & responses
• Integrating with your existing marketing tools

When word of mouth is happening online, reputation management and outreach are even more important. The best POS system for food trucks should solve more than the simple problem of alerting customers to where you’ll be each day—it should position you where your customers already are. If that same POS system enables curbside payment or contactless QR codes, so much the better! 

The Best POS System for Ghost Kitchens

Ghost kitchens (also called ghost restaurants) are the unsung heroes of the digital dining age. But a drastic decrease in physical customer engagement comes with plenty of challenges. Your visibility, online presence, and—most importantly—your online ordering have to compensate for the absence of a dining experience.

While there’s no shortage of food delivery services these days—from GrubHub to DoorDash and beyond—everybody takes their cut of the profits. How your customers order from your ghost restaurant can make or break your revenue projections. 

Furthermore, as an all-card business, ghost kitchens suffer mightily from credit card processing fees. Even without the overhead of a typical restaurant, turning a buck with your ghost kitchen can be an exercise in maximizing margins. 

Here again, the best POS system for ghost kitchens combines with a revolutionary no-fee credit card processing system to save the day.

Online Order Management For Ghost Kitchens

Relying on companies like DoorDash and GrubHub can seem like a good idea at first; after all, it spares you from hiring your own delivery drivers at a minimum. But this convenience isn’t without its downsides.

Companies like DoorDash can charge up to 30% of the total value for any orders placed through its app. That’s 30% of your total earnings out the door just as a cost of doing business. But with the right POS system, you can accept online orders yourself and cut out the middleman. 

That said, there are still more middlemen to deal with—the banks and financial institutions that issue the cards you’re paid with. 

No-Fee Credit Card Processing for Ghost Kitchens & Food Trucks

Interchange fees are no joke, weighing in at 1.75% to 4.25% per transaction. Together with the fees you pay for delivery services, as much as 35% of your total revenue could be lost by default. Any reasonable person would find that unacceptable, and so do we.

At Sky Payments Group, we decided to do something about third-party delivery fees and credit card processing fees. For just $10 per month, you never have to pay interchange fees again. Instead, you can use that money to grow your business, hire a new line chef, or redouble your marketing campaigns.

Why grow the banks and the delivery services when you could be growing your restaurant? Sky Payments Group combines leading-edge POS system technology with truly disruptive no-fee credit card processing for a comprehensive solution that restaurants of all kinds can get behind. 

Find The Best POS System For Your Restaurant—Wherever & Whatever It Is

From reputation management and social media to online ordering and even real-time data and analytics, SkyTab POS systems put the power and money back where it belongs—in the hands of restaurateurs. No matter how unorthodox or traditional your restaurant may be, one thing’s for certain: you need a POS system that empowers you to work smarter, not harder.

Every kind of restaurant has its strengths and weaknesses. Traditional sit-down restaurants may be familiar, but they’re vulnerable to decreased foot traffic and stuck in one place. Food trucks may be mobile, but the burden of marketing and consumer engagement is higher. And ghost kitchens may not need servers, hosts, or a dining area, but they will need clever ways to accept payments and reach their customers. At the end of the day, there’s a simple solution to each issue—a smart POS system from Sky Payments Group. 

Schedule your free demo today and learn how your restaurant can reach escape velocity with Sky Payments Group.

Ready to Take Your Food Truck, Ghost Kitchen, or Pop-Up Restaurant to The Next Level? Schedule a Demo Today.

We’ve only just scratched the surface of what our hardware and software can do for your restaurant. With mobile ordering capabilities, curbside payment, built-in loyalty programs, email marketing campaigns, and social media management tools, our fully integrated POS system is a smart choice for any restaurant—orthodox or otherwise. Schedule your free demo today and put as much as 35% of your revenue back in your pocket.