University Cafeteria POS System Top Features You Need for 2020 and Beyond

Learn how to empower and connect your campus with a University Cafeteria POS System that stretches far beyond the kitchen.

The Top POS Features Your University Cafeteria Needs for 2020 include:

• College Student Meal Plans with Dynamic POS Software
• Advanced POS Capabilities for Universities:
  • Alerts for declining balances
  • Employee payroll deductions
  • Self-service kiosks
  • Custom receipts and kitchen tickets
  • Customized menu and food options
  • Modified pricing with automatic adjustments
  • Alerts based on preset parameters
  • Custom access and permission settings
  • Hot keys
  • Multiple alternative SKUs
• Mobile POS Terminals:
  • Store to Store Transfers
  • Quick Service Line Busting
  • Inventory Counts
  • Requisitions from Head Office Warehouse
  • Table-Side Ordering
  • Purchase Order Creation
  • Receiving Inventory
• University POS Inventory Management:

With this bird’s-eye view of POS features, let’s unpack what these features are and how they can empower your connected campus.

Watch Tim demo the Bepoz University Cafeteria POS System

Advanced University Cafeteria POS Systems for The Connected College Campus

Today’s colleges and universities prepare today’s students to lead their chosen fields boldly into the future, and technology plays an ever-increasing role in this. Regardless of the size of your student population, technology has likely dramatically changed everything from class registration processes to how professors run their classes. Advancements are also available in the area of university POS technology, but many schools are still operating with clunky, outdated technology.

Older university POS software may be more susceptible to malware attacks, memory scraping attacks and other security issues. Your students expect their data to be protected when they make purchases on school grounds, and the use of outdated technologies places them at risk unnecessarily.

Security is only one of many areas that can be improved with an updated college cafeteria POS system. With a closer look at the incredible features available through a modern university point of sale system from Bepoz, you will discover how the student experience is improved. Likewise, the employees and administration experience substantial benefits. Most schools have more than one cafeteria or dining facility, and these systems may also be connected with various bookstores and other retail areas. A functional college POS software solution connects all of these sales areas together for incredible benefits.

Imagine a typical college cafeteria environment. The dining area may be filled with dozens or even hundreds of students and faculty members, and other people may be chatting in line while they wait to pick up their meals. The cafeteria may have meals prepared on-site as well as pre-packaged options, and the buzz of chatter is combined with sounds from the kitchen and cashier stations. Students and faculty are in a hurry to get through the line, and even a small delay in the checkout process can leave them feeling frazzled. With an updated college cafeteria point of sale system from Bepoz, the entire payment process can flow more easily to reduce congestion and stress. At the same time, behind-the-scenes benefits extend to managers and administrators.

The reality is that college point of sale technology has advanced so dramatically that systems that were designed even a few years ago are now archaic. At Bepoz, we understand the challenges that universities face on all fronts, and we have incorporated advanced solutions for these challenges into our university point of sale software. With a closer look at the many innovative features and benefits in our college point of sale software solutions, you will see that our enterprise-level or multiple site-level systems deliver benefits that your school needs to be taking advantage of.

College Cafeteria POS System Features You Need to Succeed

Older university point of sale software solutions do not take into account modern purchasing methods, which provide convenient, desired benefits for the school and for the students. These include mobile payments, table-side payments and more. A modern university point of sale system addresses these payment methods at an enterprise level. In addition to transactions completed in stores and cafeterias across campus, additional transactions may be completed in stadiums, kiosks and other areas. When you update a college point of sale system, you have the incredible opportunity to modernize and link your POS systems across campus. To ensure maximize benefits from your upgrade, these features should be included in your new college point of sale system.

Mobile POS Terminals for Universities

On a daily basis, your college processes an incredible number of transactions, but the types of transactions and the volume vary dramatically. Consider that your stadium may only process transactions during weekend football games. Tuition and parking fees may be paid within the span of a few weeks before each semester. Bookstores may have ongoing sales, but sales may spike prior to each new semester. In addition to processing these, you must track student and faculty meal plans, manage inventory and more. Some of these transactions only take place in person, and others may be completed online or in a mobile environment. Increasingly, mobile university cafeteria POS system solutions are gaining traction and are providing exceptional benefits in the process. How do mobile solutions play a role in your college POS system? A mobile POS system enables payments to be processed in remote locations, such as via roaming vendors in a stadium. Payments can be processed on kiosks placed throughout the cafeteria to reduce the length of lines. With this type of university cafeteria POS system, students may access their account balance from various stations placed strategically across the campus or online, and they can also add to their balances, make online purchases and more.

Bepoz offers feature-laden college cafeteria POS systems with benefits that extend far beyond the kitchen. Your university POS software solution can be tailored to meet your specific needs, and these are some of the many features that you could take advantage of:

• Inventory Counts
• Purchase Order Creation
• Receiving Inventory
• Store to Store Transfers
• Requisitions from Head Office Warehouse
• Table-Side Ordering
• Drive Thru Line Busting
• Quick Service Line Busting

College Student Meal Plans with Dynamic POS Software

Student meal plans are increasingly complex, but the right university POS software solution can streamline internal account management as well as the student’s management of his or her individual plan. The typical college point of sale system that you may currently be using and that may be offered by other sources today does not typically provide meal plan management benefits. However, the ability to manage meal plan payments as well as charges from anywhere on campus is an essential feature that today’s colleges and students need access to. With the development of a meal plan management app, the college POS software solution can be integrated to work with that app for improved functionality and accessibility.

With an outdated college cafeteria POS system, students may only be able to use their meal plans in select dining halls. These halls may have long lines and limited food options. With enterprise-level university point of sale software that links all transaction sites, meals and snacks from any location on campus may be paid for with the meal plan. Because meal plans can be used in more locations, students may not have to wait in such long lines to use their meal plan. More than that, these transactions can easily be managed internally with a modern university cafeteria POS system. Both students and administrators can access account details in real-time regardless of where the transactions took place.

Keep in mind that some student meal plans provide for a daily or weekly dollar limit. Others have a cap on the daily or weekly meals allowed. Some schools even offer meal cards that enable the student or parents to load more funds as needed. In many cases, schools offer a variety of payment or plan options to meet the varied needs of students. Regardless of the plan that the student uses, a university point of sale system from Bepoz automates payments, account management, charges and more. With a new university cafeteria POS system, meal plan bills can automatically be sent to students prior to each new semester. Because college POS software solutions automate meal plan management on so many levels, the amount of data entry, analysis and tracking required internally is dramatically reduced.

Added Benefits of Dynamic College Point of Sale Software

Because Bepoz tailors a college cafeteria POS system to meet your school’s unique needs, the benefits can be as pronounced as needed. Regardless of whether transactions are made in person in the cafeteria, in a small on-campus convenience store or in any other location on campus, students can pay with their meal card or student account card. They can also pay with other forms of payment such as credit and debit cards. Payments are processed faster with a connected university cafeteria POS system, which benefits students and faculty. This also alleviates the burden on staff members who are processing live transactions. Furthermore, with an updated college point of sale software system, your college can use a wide range of other technologies that you may not currently have access to. These include card readers, scales, barcode scanners, kitchen displays and more. Online and mobile ordering are also supported. Some of the many other POS uses or benefits include:

• Alerts for declining balances
• Employee payroll deductions
• Self-service kiosks
• Custom receipts and kitchen tickets
• Customized menu and food options
• Modified pricing with automatic adjustments
• Alerts based on preset parameters
• Custom access and permission settings
• Hot keys
• Multiple alternative SKUs

University Point of Sale Inventory Management

The benefits of a modern college cafeteria POS system extend well beyond this. Whether students are buying books and schools supplies in the campus bookstore or they are using their meal plan card in the cafeteria, their transactions must be tracked internally for inventory management purposes. Given the incredible sales volumes on college campuses, the ability to collectively track inventory in real-time through Bepoz university cafeteria POS system solutions is a necessity today. In addition, staff can use a Bepoz Smart PDE, which can be used to count and track inventory in real-time through a barcode reader. This is particularly beneficial when inventory needs to be transferred to another location on campus.

Contact Bepoz to Learn More About the Benefits of a Connected Campus

While you may already have a college cafeteria POS system, you can see that it may not be providing your school’s staff and students with the substantial benefits that it could be providing. Bepoz can assist with the customization of college point of sale software solutions that modernize the connectivity of your campus. Contact Bepoz today for a personalized demonstration of our solutions and for more information on how they can elevate your point of sale system to meet your school’s modern needs.

Learn More by reading our reviews on Merchant Maverick and FitSmallBusiness.

Video Transcription for Cafeteria Point of Sale Demonstration

Hey this is Tim and I’m here to tell you about Bepoz point of sale for cafeterias. If you’ve got one cafeteria or many cafeterias, Bepoz can help you centrally manage all of your cafeteria operations, employees, inventory and much, much more. Let’s take a look at Bepoz.

So we’re looking at the login screen for Bepoz – now you can log in any number of ways into Bepoz. I could use the number pad and type in my number. I could use an employee card and swipe. I could use a fingerprint and just touch it on there. In this case, today, I’ll use a card swipe.

There are many different kinds of cafeteria operations that Bepoz could serve. It may be a standard retail cafeteria or this might be something like a corporate cafeteria, where you have employee discounts, declining balances, payroll deductions or meal plans where people get a certain amount of meals per day, week or month. We will look a few of these in operation and the general cashier functions as well.

Handling Standard Cash Transactions

First, we’ll do a standard cash transaction. When we’re ringing up in a cafeteria, we’re presented with a menu. Now this menu is completely configurable – you can lay it out however you’d like. And you can have modifiers you would print to a kitchen. In traditional cafeteria settings, this isn’t necessary, but Bepoz does have the option of sending instructions to a cook at several different places by printer or kitchen display. In this case, all of those options have been removed. So if I want to sell a cheeseburger, I ring up the cheeseburger and a grilled cheese. And if I wanted to sell some kind of alcohol, like I’ve got a Becks here, I’m presented to scan the customer’s driver license and I could actually scan the driver’s license and save their date of birth in the transaction log. So if I were to be audited by my liquor control board, I would have record. In this case, I’ll override, which also gets stored in the transaction journal. So I have a total here – my total is $17.05 and I have fast tender keys down at the bottom, which are completely configurable. So if someone gives me a cash amount of, let’s say $20, I can press “$20,” my receipt printer prints, and my cash drawer opens, and there’s my change due. This is a very simple operation.

Paying with Payroll Deductions, Declining Balances and Interdepartmental Charges

The next scenario we’ll look at is if you have employees with payroll deductions or declining balances. So in that case, many times your employees may have a badge that they are issued, and that badge may have a barcode, magnetic stripe or RFID card. In this particular case, I’m using an RFID badge, and I can just touch that to the proximity reader and that will automatically pull up the account for the employee. Now employee discounts automatically apply, because this is an employee, and I can either do payroll deductions, declining balances or meal plans based on whatever this employee has set up. So we’ll ring up a cheeseburger and a grilled cheese and the same thing we rung up last time, we’ll ring up a Becks. Now if I have discounts applied, they automatically apply, but I can now take this – in this case, I have this employee set up with a declining balance, but payroll deduction is the same thing. Payroll deduction just takes the dollars that were spent and exports them out to your payroll service and we can do that on an automated basis or more manual export basis depending on how you’d like that done. So we’ll take the payment as an account charge. Now many times in a corporate cafeteria environment, there may be interdepartmental charges – let’s say the marketing department is bringing some important guests down to the cafeteria and they’re just going to pay for those guest’s meals on a departmental charge. I could then look up those departments, either by a name or by a number or by looking them up on a list. So I pick the department, and then I now I have their account balance and can ring up whatever it is that I’m going to ring up for that customer and then charge that on the account. And then those interdepartmental charges can be automatically sent to the accounting department.

Issuing and Redeeming Vouchers

Another situation you might run into is you want to give a free meal to somebody or a discounted meal to somebody. And this might be for volunteers, for people who’ve just done a good job, it might be an employee perk, could be all sorts of different methods. One of the ways that you could give that to a person would be in a gift card. Another way is I could just print a receipt with a barcode on it. So in this case, this barcode is good for $6 or any sandwich or burger in the restaurant. So I can ring up a cheeseburger and I’ll have a fountain soda with it, and if I scan the barcode, the discount will automatically apply. So I had a $7.25 burger and a $6 voucher – so it left $1.25 and they got a Mountain Dew for $2.75, so my total balance is $4 left. But the $6 voucher completely applied. So I can take a payment on that.

Now the next question is going to be, “What happens to the voucher if someone comes in and tries to buy another cheeseburger with it?” So I have the same cheeseburger rung up, and I scan the barcode, and the system tells me that this voucher has been fully redeemed. This voucher is unique and it could have had an expiration date – let’s say I’d give it a 2-week expiration and if they don’t come in within 2 weeks, the voucher is no longer valid.

Paying with a Meal Plan

Now let’s look at a plan where you might have an executive or an employee who has a certain number of meals available per day, week or month. In this case, I have the same RFID badge, and it could be barcoded or magnetic stripe, but I have an RFID badge in which I pull up the employee. And if I ring up a cheeseburger for this person, the system prompts and says, “You have a valid voucher for this meal.” Now in this case, this person has a meal plan that includes 31 meals for the month and I can redeem the meal. And now the balance is $0 because they got a free meal. If I had included, let’s say Becks on the transaction, that would not come off because the voucher is only valid for meals, not for alcohol, in this particular case, that is the rule and that’s how it was applied. So they’re going to pay off the difference. So now if I pull up that person’s meal plan, I can see that they have a 31 meal per month plan, and they have 30 meals unclaimed. So I can check how many meals are still left on their plan.

That’s it for our short presentation on Bepoz point of sales for cafeterias. Of course, there’s way more features than we could possibly present in this short presentation. If you have questions, call us today – we’ll be happy to answer them.