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It’s an exciting time to own a restaurant.

Yes, competition is fierce, but the industry is full of passionate professionals, causing diners to fly to new restaurants in mass numbers.

To stand out from the crowd of other restaurants, you’ll need to offer great food, impeccable service, and unbeatable efficiency. These days, all three of these can all be achieved with restaurant hardware and modern technology.

Now don’t worry – I’m not suggesting you replace all employees with robots and nix all human interaction from your restaurant! But using the right restaurant hardware and technology can actually make your cooks’ and servers’ jobs easier and improve your guest experience.

Read on for a list of 7 useful pieces of restaurant hardware to own in your business.

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1. Touchscreen Terminal

Speaking of efficiency, modern POS technology through touchscreen terminals was arguably established in the name of efficiency. Most of these terminals are equipped with restaurant software designed with an intuitive interface that lets new hires start taking order immediately and effortlessly.

An easier order-taking process speeds things up, which leads to more orders coming into the kitchen (and more food coming out). Some terminals even contain an attached credit card reader, so cashiers can swipe and have the customer sign on screen in a matter of seconds without any waste of paper (or time).

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2. Receipt Printer

As beneficial to efficiency that paperless receipts can be, most restaurants – especially full-service restaurants – still want to have the options of paper receipts. Typically, you’ll have two choices when it comes to receipt printers – impact and thermal.

Impact Printer

One kind of printer is the ink (or “impact”) printer. This is a favorite for the back of the house due to its louder printing process. If chefs are tied up, they might not notice a new slip show up in the printer. Impact printers help to avoid this kind of problem by catching the attention of cooks in a more alerting way.

Thermal Printer

The other option is a thermal printer, which most find to be useful for the front of the house. It prints faster than traditional ink printers and is less noisy. Since these receipt printers don’t use ink (they “burn” the paper with thermal heat), you won’t have to waste time or money swapping out ink cartridges. Again – efficiency is a big reason why one would want a thermal printer in their restaurant, but both have a necessary place in many restaurants.

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3. Cash Drawer

Above all else, a cash drawer is essential for all restaurants that value safety and efficiency. It’s not exactly the newest piece of technology on this list, but that speaks to how tried and true it is for all restaurants.

If you are looking for a more modern approach to managing your restaurant’s cash drawer, sync it up with your POS so that all transactions can be recorded. Naturally, you should also lock your cash drawer overnight and empty it out regularly for added security.

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4. Driver Docket Scanner

If you are looking for a more modern approach to managing your delivery drivers, using scanning dockets to allocate orders to your drivers so the are in and out like a flash.

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5. Caller ID

Displays callers phone number on screen and pulls up customer details so staff can see customers names and order history, including customer noteseg. good customer, note not to put anchovies on pizza.

Save staff entering the number in the system and having to ask the customer over the phone, better customer experience.

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6. Customer Facing Display

If you want patrons at your lining up at you takeaway restaurant to follow along with their purchase, a pole display screen is the way to go, or even better a customer facing display screen.

Customer facing displays screens show the itemized price per each food or drink ordered and the ability to promote deals and other promotional offers.

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7. Kitchen Make Display Screen

Some restaurants have quite a hectic kitchen, and so printed tickets might not be the most viable option. Instead, these kitchens rely on a kitchen display screen.

Mounted to the kitchen wall, will display all open orders for the back-of-house team to see in one place. This makes it easier to stay organized in the back of the house, which keeps things sane in the front of the house as well.

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Restaurant Hardware in Your Restaurant

All of these technologies and hardware pieces can add value to your restaurant, especially when they’re working together as part of the same point of sale software. This is why you should purchase a hardware bundle so you can save money along the way.

It’s true – the sheer amount of restaurant hardware that’s available to restaurateurs can seem a bit overwhelming, especially when it comes to your wallet.

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