With all the fierce competition in the hospitality industry, running a restaurant or takeaway now requires more than just excellent food and customer service. Owners must be willing to make the jump to digitalisation. 

We recommend opting for an electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) system, a technology that has grown in immense popularity over recent years as more features and functionalities have been added to make it an end-to-end restaurant management system.

This article will explore five EPOS system features that explain why your restaurant or takeaway needs an EPOS system and how to choose the right provider for your business needs.

5 Reasons Why Your Restaurant or Takeaway Needs an EPOS System

EPOS systems now offer a wide range of valuable features that can help restaurants and takeaways increase operational efficiency, boost sales, and improve the customer experience. Here are some of the features:

Smart Inventory Management 

Most EPOS systems are able to automatically track and manage your inventory levels, improving cash flow and the customer experience for your restaurants or takeaway.

By tracking sales data, hospitality businesses can quickly identify which food and drink items are selling well and which are less popular with their customers. Owners can use this data to create special offers so they don’t have deadstock.

In addition, EPOS systems can track inventory levels and alert restaurant or takeaway owners when certain items need to be restocked. Having menu items in stock at all times increases customer satisfaction.

Online ordering and payments

One of the best and most helpful features of an EPOS system for restaurant and takeaway owners is its ability to accept online food and drink orders and customer payments. 

Customers can place orders through the restaurant’s website or mobile app, eliminating the need to wait in line or wait on staff. This speeds up the ordering process and improves customer satisfaction.

Integrating an EPOS system with your website or mobile app also allows your customers to pay from their smartphones. Payment flexibility is important to customers, so choose an EPOS system that will accept all payment types and offer split bill options.

Real-time data analytics

Many EPOS systems have embedded analytics tools that provide real-time sales and customer behaviour data. This data lets restaurant or takeaway owners identify their best-selling meals and track trends, which enables them to make data-driven adjustments to their menu or pricing.

EPOS systems also allow owners to create special promotions and discounts on food and drink to attract new customers or increase repeat business.

In addition, by tracking customer preferences, businesses can use behaviours and trends to create targeted marketing campaigns. This can help your restaurant or takeaway increase sales.

Customer profiles

Some EPOS systems allow you to create customer profiles that store a customer’s order history, preferences, and contact information. This customer information can help your restaurant or takeaway:

• Personalise the ordering process;
• Build a closer relationship with each customer;
• Enable personalised food and drink recommendations;
• Offer customised discounts and offers;
• Create loyalty programs. 

A personalised experience enhances customer satisfaction, builds loyalty, and improves retention.

Integrations 

Due to the arrival of digitalisation, it is essential to choose an EPOS system that can integrate with other business applications and software that you already use, such as:

• Food ordering platforms;
• Payment processing software;
• Delivery providers;
• Accounting software;
• Loyalty programs;
• Table booking and reservation platforms;
• Restaurant management systems. 

How to Choose an EPOS System for Your Restaurant or Takeaway

When choosing an electronic POS for your restaurant or takeaway, here are some of the key factors to consider:

• Business size. Consider the size and type of your establishment, as this can affect the number of terminals and features you need. For example, a small café may only require a single terminal with basic features. In contrast, a large restaurant with multiple locations may require a more advanced system with centralised reporting and inventory management features.
• System integrations. Consider whether the EPOS system can integrate with your existing systems and software. This will help streamline your business operations and manage everything from one place.
• Customer support and training. Look for an EPOS provider that offers accessible customer support and training. This can help you get the most out of your system and ensure any issues are resolved quickly.
• Hardware compatibility. When choosing an EPOS provider, it’s essential to check whether the system is compatible with your existing hardware (smartphone or tablet) or if they’ll provide you with new hardware.

Conclusion

This article has explored five features of a robust EPOS system that make it worth the investment for your restaurant or takeaway in 2024.

The features explored here can improve your cash flow, efficiency, and decision-making, all whilst enhancing the customer experience in a customer-first hospitality environment.  

Inventory management features can improve cash flow and customer satisfaction; seamless integrations can improve your efficiency; real-time data will improve your decision-making; and customer profiles and online ordering options will enhance the customer experience. 

Finally, there are many important things to consider when choosing an EPOS provider, but it is essential to select a scalable system that can grow with your restaurant or takeaway to accommodate new locations, menus, and staff. 

Prop trading, or proprietary trading, is becoming more popular in the financial markets. Once a niche practice, the global prop trading industry, valued at $6.7 billion in 2020, is estimated to grow at a CAGR rate of 4.2% from 2021 to 2028. The increase in interest is evident, and even the search demand for the term “prop firm” skyrocketed by 8,409% between January 2020 and March 2024.

As such, in response to the growing demand for prop trading among traders and the resulting need for specialised software solutions among brokerage firms, B2Broker introduced B2Prop, a powerful, sophisticated turnkey solution built to help businesses establish and grow their prop trading firm from the ground up.

What is B2Prop?

B2Prop is a comprehensive challenge-based platform serving various businesses—prop trading platforms, crypto and Forex brokers, and multi-asset brokerage firms—to boost their portfolio with a new product and reach a larger audience. The development process was based on best practices, paying special attention to the brokers’ needs.

B2Prop enables businesses to create customised trading challenges that set specific parameters like profit targets, risk limits, and performance benchmarks. These challenges can include multiple steps and offer multi-currency support to allow traders to trade in various currencies. More significantly, B2Prop does not have extra fees based on the number of challenges, accounts or steps.

When traders successfully complete the challenges, they get access to funded accounts with attractive profit-sharing models that enable them to retain 70-80% of their trading profits.

B2Prop integrates seamlessly with top trading platforms like MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, and cTrader, with plans to integrate B2Trader, TradeLocker and more in the future. B2Prop features advanced dashboards that allow businesses to track trader metrics from registration to getting funded accounts, ensuring the solution is practical and perfectly aligned with the business requirements.

Diverse Income Generation Models

B2Prop offers multiple income generation models:

• Challenge Fees

Brokers can earn from the fees charged to trades when participating in proprietary trading challenges. Traders who fail the challenges can re-purchase and re-take the challenges three or more times, boosting the broker’s income stream.

• Profit Sharing

Only top-performing participants who successfully complete the challenges can access the funded accounts. The broker determines the capital for these accounts and retains a share of the profits generated through the trader’s activities, typically ranging from 20% to 50%.

• Enhanced Trading Conditions

Businesses can fine-tune trading conditions, like commissions, to their advantage. Companies can impose higher commission rates, which reduces the profits on traders’ funded accounts, resulting in reduced payouts that the company must make while benefiting from the difference.

• Copy Trading Capabilities

B2Prop smoothly integrates B2Copy, a powerful copy trading platform owned by B2Broker. This opens up more revenue streams for brokers. Funding limits on trader accounts are adjustable, and the broker can copy strategies from successful traders into its own accounts. This offers the company ways to make extra profits without paying those traders.

A Comprehensive Prop Trading Turnkey Package

The B2Prop turnkey package provides a comprehensive solution for companies to create a lucrative prop trading firm.

A significant feature of this package is B2Core CRM. This is where new traders sign up, buy prop trading challenges, track their performance, and make payments. Moreover, it supports growth by integrating payment services, KYC providers, IB solutions, etc.

The B2Prop package also includes the white-label cTrader platform, which is custom-made for prop trading firms. It combines cTrader’s advanced features and utility with a cost-effective business deployment model. Furthermore, B2Prop can be integrated with MT4 and MT5 if the company owns the license.

The B2Prop package includes B2BinPay, B2Broker’s blockchain solution. B2BinPay facilitates crypto payments and processing, enabling clients to credit their accounts with different coins and stablecoins using 8 blockchain networks. Traders can purchase trading challenges with their funded accounts. This flexible payment system can attract more traders to the prop trading platform.

B2Copy is another key feature of the package. B2Broker’s copy trading platform allows firms to mirror the strategies of funded traders directly into their own accounts, securing extra profits without paying those traders.

The B2Prop turnkey solution offers three transparent monthly pricing plans:

Creating Prop Trading Challenges in B2Prop via B2Core

B2Broker seamlessly integrates B2Prop into the B2Core platform. Administrators can find the Prop Trading page under the Investment Platform menu in the admin panel. This area contains the Challenges List page, where admins can create new prop trading challenges and configure existing ones.

When admins create a new prop trading challenge, they must add the challenge name, description, and image to showcase the challenge on the front end.

Then, they must determine the challenge parameters, such as plans, steps, initial account settings, key performance metrics (minimum trading days, max loss limits, profit targets), fee amount and currency, and trading account amount and currency. Admins can also set the rule for disqualifying participants who breach the daily loss limit.

When the challenges are created, the admin panel shows the participants’ progress, offering a list of active previous accounts with their current status (started, successful, or failed). Upon successful completion, admins can select accounts and create funded accounts for those participants.

Traders can view the list of available challenges, which includes pictures and critical metrics. They can then join a challenge with a single click and pay the entry fees from their wallet if necessary.

As traders progress, they can track key metrics like maximum drawdown, equity, number of trades, etc. The platform also offers day-by-day trading breakdowns with P&L and volume details.

Participants can receive email notifications when completing challenges, with details about their prop trading accounts. Moreover, traders can check their past challenges with comprehensive results and trading data for each account.

Boosting The Prop Trading Market with B2Prop

B2Broker continues pushing the boundaries to deliver excellent liquidity and technology solutions that suit brokers’ needs. The new B2Prop launch expands the company’s turnkey solutions and offers an effective way to create a prop trading platform from scratch.

Businesses can utilise this ready-to-use solution to offer trading challenges, attract more clients and boost their profits.