Price is important, but the price doesn’t always make sense without the context of what you’ll actually get for any given amount. After all, even the least expensive POS system will amount to a wasteful expense if the system doesn’t improve your pizza restaurant’s relationship with customers and make it easier for you to manage the restaurant’s finances and operations.

Todays’ web-based, digital POS systems have come a long way from standard cash registers. You can expect much more than solid financial reports and a smooth checkout system, including features like these:

• Online ordering – Many small pizza parlors may still consider online ordering a feature that’s simply nice-to-have in their point of sale system, but we’re listing it here first because we consider it a must-have. As we wrote in our post on the advantage of an online ordering system, giving your customers the option to order for themselves is a convenience that customers increasingly expect restaurants to offer — and that includes pizza restaurants. Especially after COVID-19, customers have embraced the conveniences of online ordering and are more likely to patronize those restaurants that make it super easy to order online.
  
• Customized ordering for pizza – Unlike the ordering systems for other restaurants, customers ordering pizzas should be able to essentially build their meals from scratch, adding any ingredients they want and placing them on different halves of the pizza — and even breaking the pizza down into smaller components! Customers should also be able to add and remove ingredients from set or specialized pizzas on the menu, and be able to customize things like sauce and crust.
  
• Delivery and driver management – If there’s any type of restaurant that typically relies on delivery, it’s a pizza restaurant. Look for a POS system with robust delivery features, including the ability to assign orders to third party drivers or to in-house drivers. The best POS systems for pizza restaurants will have an app specifically for drivers to use, and the ability for managers to track drivers on their routes. Customers should get notifications of drivers’ progress and be able to rate and give feedback on their delivery experience.
  
• Loyalty and referrals – Many Americans order pizza regularly, so choosing a system that encourages your customers to order from your store each time they order a pizza can have big payoffs. Look for a POS app that allows customers to automatically earn points with their purchases, as well as rewards for referring friends or making certain purchases.
• Customer analytics – This is another core POS feature that’s just as important to pizza parlors as it is to fine dining restaurants. Access to the right data can help you analyze customer order trends and understand your customer’s needs by observing how orders change according to factors such as the customer’s location, the time of day or week they order, the types of food they order, and more.
  
• Ingredient tracking and costing – The profitability of your pizza business will depend on many things — the ability to attract new customers and then deliver a consistently excellent experience that keeps them coming back, for example. But it’s difficult to stay profitable if you aren’t charging the right prices for the items on your menu. Good POS software can automatically calculate the profitability of each pizza, salad, calzone, or other meal on your menu, and adjust as raw ingredient prices fluctuate over time. You can even design your menu to emphasize the most profitable menu items.
  
• Ability to handle growth – Many pizza entrepreneurs have dreams of eventually expanding their brands, opening more locations or even starting a pizza shop franchise. If this describes you, it’s best to choose a POS system that can grow along with your restaurant and is built to accommodate multiple locations and even rapid expansion.