Keep Your Customers Safe: Use Your Restaurant's Point of Sale to Deal with Allergies Efficiently
Almost 4 million Australians avoid a food type due to allergy or intolerance, and some of them may be dining at your restaurant. They expect to receive information and find menu choices that will keep them safe. Recommending the best options for customers with allergies used to be a complicated process that involved negotiations between the chefs and the service staff. Now, with the right point-of-sale (POS) system, it's much easier to give your customers all the information they need and make sure that their needs are taken care of.
Use a special code to mark the items that contain allergens
You can program codes (images, colour or word codes) for different allergens in your POS system. This will help your waiters recognise a potentially allergenic item at a glance, without having to read the whole list of ingredients. You can also mark items that are gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free or vegan, so that your waiters can quickly identify suitable options and recommend them to the customers.
Have the full list of ingredients listed for each item
Sometimes you will have customers with allergies that are less common and it doesn't make sense to create a special code for them. In that case, your waiters can look up the full list of ingredients in the POS system to ensure that the customer receives an allergen-free meal.
Choose mobile POS for table service
With mobile POS equipment the waiter will have access to all this information immediately, without having to walk away from the table, which will improve the speed of service and the customer satisfaction.
Send notes about allergies to the kitchen
All allergies can be noted on the order and sent to the kitchen automatically through the POS system. You don't need to worry that the waiters will forget to pass the information or it will get lost due to illegible writing.
Educate your staff
Even the best POS system can fail, if your staff doesn't understand the importance of providing full information and sees customers with allergies as a nuisance. A customer in the UK died after his request for a peanut-free meal was ignored. Providing your customers with the right information and treating their dietary requirements seriously can literary be the difference between life and death. On a brighter note, when your visitors feel safe and respected in your restaurant, they will come back and bring their friends.