Pizza Today - December 2019 - 26

FRONT OF THE HOUSE

Mastering the POS System
Seven ways to get employee POS training right
S TO R Y D A N I E L P. S MI TH P H OTO JOS H KE OW N

ils Kravis has big plans for
Rad Pizza.
A long-time restaurant
executive who began his career with
Pizza Hut in Canada before becoming
the chain's director of operations in Australia, Kravis has been involved in more
than 500 restaurant openings in his
career. His latest one, however, represents his most daring endeavor to date.
Last April, Kravis and his wife, Jennifer, launched Rad Pizza in Hamilton,
Ontario, a scenic Canadian city of some
600,000 located southwest of Toronto.
As the flagship unit for Rad Pizza, Kravis knows the 3,400-square foot unit's
early success is paramount to the larger
2 6 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9

pizzeria empire he aims to create. As a
result, Kravis has crafted everything -
the menu, the mission, the operations
- with growth in mind.
But before Kravis reaches 100 units,
or even 10 units, he understands the
mothership must shine.
Long viewing technology as an
enabler, Kravis looked for a point-of-sale
(POS) system that was intuitive and user
friendly. Such a POS, he reasoned, would
help Rad Pizza employees serve customers craving speed and convenience alongside a good pie, but also ensure accurate
data that Kravis could later analyze to
tweak his upstart fast casual.
"Given the growth we envision, an

intuitive POS and, just as important,
employees trained to use it is critical,"
Kravis says.
A restaurant's nervous system, the
POS connects servers to the kitchen
to the back office, and employees'
ability to learn and navigate the
POS positions the operation to work
seamlessly and successfully. Poor POS
training, after all, can dampen profitability, heighten wait times, result in
incorrect product being delivered to
the customer and lead to ill-informed
decision-making.
"Effective training on the POS
is fundamental to fast service, order
accuracy and good customer experience," confirms Graham Campbell,
chief operating officer of Givex, a
cloud-based operations management
solution that pairs POS capabilities
with other key functionalities like gift
cards, loyalty and tableside ordering.
Though confronted with the challenges of time, labor costs and staff
turnover, savvy pizzeria operators nevertheless prioritize employee training
on the POS and see it as a critical
piece of business operations. Here's
how pizzerias can get employee POS
training right:
START WITH MENU KNOWLEDGE

Before employees ever touch the
POS, Kravis first ensures staff
understand the menu, namely what
the restaurant sells and what the
kitchen can produce. Thereafter, he
says, it's much easier to dive into the
POS.
"If they know our product first,
then the POS is simply a visual
graphic of the menu," Kravis says.
LEVERAGE TRAINING FROM POS
VENDOR

From online tutorials to in-person
training from a POS vendor rep,
many POS providers provide training
tools restaurants can use to introduce
a system's basic functions or as a
supplement to existing store training
programs.

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Pizza Today - December 2019

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