In the fast-paced world of the foodservice business, making a lasting first impression can be directly equated with success. Placing a strong emphasis on your point of sale (POS) displays – the last place your customer interacts with before leaving – can play a crucial role in enhancing the customer experience. As a focal point of customer transaction, POS displays can influence purchasing decisions, average spend and even loyalty. Here, innovativeness takes the front seat.

Let’s explore six forward-looking ideas to innovate your restaurant’s POS displays:

1. **Digital Menu Boards:**

Digital menu boards are becoming increasingly popular for their ability to display vibrant, high-definition images of menu items, captivating your customers’ attention. Not only will they give a sleek, modern look to your restaurant but they also offer convenience in updating your menu and pricing in real time.

2. **Interactive Touchscreens:**

Imagine a world where your customers can navigate your menu offerings, customise their order and make their purchase all at a single interactive, touchscreen POS system. Offering ease of use, this technology allows for a seamless, personalised customer experience, thereby increasing customer satisfaction.

3. **Integrated Loyalty Programs:**

Integrating loyalty programs right into your POS system can significantly enhance customer retention. Such systems allow customers to easily earn points and redeem rewards, which can be a great incentive for repeat visits.

4. **Mobile Application Integration:**

Today, more and more businesses are using mobile applications to streamline customer transactions. Allowing customers to place and pay for their orders via a bespoke restaurant app can significantly reduce queue times, improve order accuracy, and create a convenient user experience.

5. **Self-Service Kiosks:**

By using self-service kiosks, you have the potential to reduce staff workload, increase order accuracy, and improve sales through upselling and cross-selling. A kiosk can display mouth-watering pictures of your dishes, encouraging customers to add extras or try something new.

6. **Contactless Payments:**

In our current society, where social distancing has become the norm, customers appreciate the ability to pay contactlessly. By implementing contactless payment options like mobile wallets or NFC card readers at your POS system, you can increase transaction speed and ensure a hygienic, seamless payment process.

Inventing creative ways to leverage technology and visual appeal in creating an innovative POS display will help your restaurant stay relevant and appealing to contemporary consumers. These ideas are not restricted to larger franchises either – independent restaurants, cafes, and other small businesses can just as easily, and beneficially, implement them. Keep abreast and stay ahead in this incredibly competitive industry!

In today’s competitive business landscape, it is not enough to develop a strong corporate brand; leaders must also establish their personal brands. This particularly holds true for small business owners, where the line between the person and their enterprise often blurs. Personal brands can be considered an extension of the essence of the business and as such play a significant role in the overall marketing of the organisation, be it a local eatery, a niche bookstore or a family bakery.

Personal branding, in the simplest terms, is the process of promoting an individual. For small businesses, this individual is mostly the business owner. By presenting themselves in a positive light, these business owners create a reputation. This reputation, if managed well, can significantly benefit their organisation’s marketing efforts. This is because consumers are more likely to trust a brand or business when they know and respect the person leading it.

Nowadays, consumers are increasingly interested in having a more personal connection with businesses. This trend significantly overlaps with the hospitality industry, where restaurant marketing largely depends on creating an intimate relationship with patrons. A restaurant owner or chef, via their personal brand, can take advantage of this trend. When customers feel that they know the person behind their favourite local restaurant, that personal connection can do wonders for business. Patrons can develop a loyalty that might not exist in the absence of a personal brand.

Fostering a strong personal brand also gives the owner of an enterprise a platform to establish themselves as industry thought leaders. By regularly sharing insightful content pertaining to their field, they can impart value to the public, enhance their brand image, and effectively draw in potential consumers. Thought leadership is a potent tool for small business marketing.

However, carving out a personal brand isn’t about creating a persona that isn’t true to oneself. Au contraire, it is about representing oneself truthfully, thereby creating authenticity. Authenticity, in the digital age, sells. Customers place a high premium on authenticity, and a personal brand that comes off as genuine will be immeasurably beneficial to the business it represents.

In conclusion, personal branding is an integral part of small business marketing. Whether as a way to connect with customers and engender loyalty, or as a platform from which to establish industry thought leadership, the importance of personal branding cannot be overstated. By placing focus on personal branding, small business owners can elevate their firms, ensure customer loyalty, and enhance their overall marketing strategy.

In the ever-competitive world of small business, making your mark is more challenging than ever before. With the advent of digital technology and social media, the standard brick-and-mortar model has to constantly evolve to maintain a competitive edge. Amongst these strategies, one that has proven effective and gained traction over the years is the use of loyalty schemes or customer loyalty programmes.

Loyalty schemes are essentially marketing strategies designed by businesses to encourage customers to continue using their services or purchasing their products. Though it is not a novel concept, with the continuous evolving of consumer behaviour, small businesses need to reconsider and redirect their energies in tweaking their loyalty schemes to combat the increased competition and customer demands.

A typical loyalty scheme model rewards frequent purchasers with free merchandise, discounts or rewards points. However, the crux of reimagining your loyalty schemes is to make them stand out, appear more appealing, build a strong customer base and stimulate growth and profitability. So, how can one amplify their small business marketing curve by reimagining their loyalty schemes?

Firstly, personalise your scheme as per the needs of your customers. One size does not fit all. By understanding your customers’ preferences, you can create tailored offers that are more likely to encourage repeat business. You could use data from previous purchases or use customer feedback to provide a more personalised experience.

Secondly, consider adopting a tiered system. Reward your most loyal and frequent customers with increasingly valuable rewards. This not only instils the feeling of being valued, but also incentivises them to spend more to reach the next ‘level’ of rewards.

Integrating your loyalty schemes with social media can bring forth a new dimension to your marketing strategy. Encourage your customers to share their experiences online, refer their friends, or provide reviews in exchange for rewards. This boosts your brand’s visibility and credits it with the invaluable asset of customer endorsement.

Applying a gamification approach to your loyalty scheme can make participation more engaging for your customers. To illustrate; if you run a cafe, your loyalty card could have a ‘coffee cup’ that gets filled up with each purchase, and once it’s full, the customer receives a free cup of coffee.

Lastly, ensure extraordinary customer service accompanies your loyalty scheme. A great loyalty programme coupled with subpar service will not net the best results. Tend to your clients in a way that not only justifies but amplifies the loyalty rewards you’re offering.

In the restaurant marketing context, revamping your loyalty programmes to be more interactive and satisfying can significantly impact customer retention and increment sales. By putting a creative spin and infusing digital advancements into your loyalty scheme, you can bring a noticeable upward curve to your small business’s profit graph.

In the end, reimagination is the key. Loyalty schemes are no longer just ‘point collections’; they are now a vital part of the customer experience. By making them enticing, engaging, personalised and integrated with today’s digital world, you can maximise their potential and amplify the scope of your small business or restaurant’s marketing efforts.