The weather is warming up, and patio season will soon be here! Setting up your restaurant’s patio for summer involves more than pulling out the tables, and adding summer specials and promotions.
Your patio is an extension of your dining area during the summer months. If you offer full service, it’s important that your customers receive the same quality of service indoors and out.
Before summer starts, take some time to review your POS sales summary, labor stats, and coupon reports from previous years. Check what results your summer promotions had, and ensure you are prepared with the right staff and stock.
If your patio area performed better than indoor seating at your restaurant last year, consider expanding the area. Many municipalities will work with restaurants to allow sidewalk seating, or adjacent patios on public land. In many cases, exceptions to municipal bylaws have been made to help restaurants adapt to COVID-19 indoor dining restrictions.
Consider adding tablets to your point of sale system. Tableside order entry and payment can speed service, especially when you add a patio to the mix. When combining the Link 2500 with either a Windows Surface Pro or Go tablet, you can take orders from anywhere inside of the restaurant, including outdoor patio spaces. You might also choose to secure a fixed tablet POS outside during open hours, and move it inside overnight.
Update your restaurant’s floor plan in the POS system to include your patio during summer months.
SpeedLine customer? Update your floor plan using the Floor Builder in Store Manager. Save a summer floor plan file as well as your winter floor plan. It’s easy and quick to replace the floor plan as needed.
An accurate, detailed floor plan will help servers keep track of tables, especially if they are serving a mix of tables inside and out. Make sure your POS gives servers visual cues and alerts to remind them of the status of each of their tables.
Prepare your point of sale now to be ready to take on the summer heat. Summer can be a busy season for restaurants with patio seating. A little prep now will help you leverage summer traffic into added profit.