Restaurateurs are facing a revolving door of obstacles, ranging from inflation to a lackluster labor market to supply chain woes. Amidst these challenges, guests are still looking for a five-star experience with high-quality meals and stellar service.
In this landscape, technology is a crucial weapon in a restaurant brand’s arsenal. A robust core tech stack, particularly a modern point-of-sale system, can act as a powerful ally that helps restaurants reduce operational errors and increase staff productivity, freeing them up to focus on what truly matters: delivering convenience and incredible experiences for guests.
That’s why we are excited to announce the latest enhancements to the PAR Brink POS software. PAR Brink’s Spring Release is packed with new features that enhance table service operations, reduce staff bottlenecks, and expedite guest service.
Enhancements for Table Service Restaurants
This latest release introduces a suite of features designed to optimize table service operations to benefit both guests and staff:
Prioritizing Guest Convenience:
- Pay-At-The-Table Powered by PAR Pay: Now guests can review and pay for their meals directly at their table. This ultimately eliminates unnecessary wait times and gives guests the flexibility to pay how and where they want. Restaurants unlock operational versatility and speed up the transaction process by 2-3 seconds when pairing PAR Brink with PAR Pay.
- Smoother Bar Service: PAR Pay’s Credit Card Pre-Authorization allows guests to seamlessly keep tabs open throughout their visit via a pre-authorized credit card with a pre-set amount. This protects restaurants from potential walkouts, improves speeds of service, and allows staff to focus on guests without having to require payment for each round of food or drinks.
- Auto-Split Orders by Seat: This release also provides operators with order splitting by seat and effortless one-click printing of individual checks. These features significantly expedite table turnover, remove manual steps, and ensure each guest receives their accurate bill quickly. This is especially beneficial for larger groups, allowing you to keep your service smooth and efficient.
Foster Staff Satisfaction and Engagement:
- Encourage Sales with Gamification: Get your team excited about sales with item group sales tracking on employee checkouts. Boost upsell efforts and promote friendly competition.
- Transparent Tip Sharing: Facilitate the inclusion of tip amounts for all staff involved in serving your guests. Foster a more transparent workplace and ensure equitable distribution of gratuities, benefiting both your back-of-house and front-of-house teams. This can also be used to enhance the customer receipt to show suggested tip amounts.
New Features that Ease In-Store Administrative Burdens
As part of the Spring Release, Brink has evolved its architecture for strengthened in-store resilience. This aligns with Brink’s product philosophy that operators should never lose access to their in-store POS. Now, if a primary register loses connection to the cloud, a designated backup register will take over and conduct in-store operations independently of the cloud. This added layer of redundancy ensures seamless in-store operations even if the primary terminal fails or internet connectivity is lost. Consequently, this reduces downtime and mitigates a hard-down state and risk of revenue loss.
Additionally, this release provides operators with new features, including:
- Seamless EBT Payments Process EBT payments directly on PAR Pay devices – no extra device required. Reduce fraud, manual tasks and alternative processes, and reporting inconsistencies.
- Support for 24-Hour Restaurants: With this update, Brink can easily support restaurants with 24-hour operations. Open orders on the register and KDS screens will remain actionable even after the end of the day occurs so staff can pick up where they left off. Tendered orders not yet fired will also persist and be sent to the kitchen at the right time. No more lost orders, remakes, or confused staff.
