While reading it I thought it explains really fine. For most people a POS system is still nothing more than a tool to print tickets so what people finds interesting is still that. However SambaPOS is here, it is free, does everything, all restaurants can use it and in the near feature everybody will do such things without making big investments.
We release SambaPOS for free because we believe traditional ways of doing business is changing fast so what a traditional POS system offers will not have a big business value anymore. Probably everything will fit in to a tablet and it will stand on the desk like the calculator. These are still expensive (like calculators was expensive before) as there are no real alternatives but SambaPOS changing that… because it should change.
Few days before one SambaPOS user sent me an invoice. It was what he needs to pay to the online ordering service. Thousands of dollars every month. This is too much as it brings too few new customers. Most of these people are still old neighbors but they prefer to use Internet. As more restaurants defers orders, reservations, loyalty to third parties they need to share more from income.
Yes Everyday thousands of genius level entrepreneurs trying to figure out ways to receive more shares by offering consumers new tools to interact with restaurants. This is very critical because as you give more share you’ll need more customers and to be able to get more customers you’ll need to pay more (or decrease prices, make promotions, etc).
That needs to be fixed. POS systems will always be the essential part of the business but what POS systems can offer won’t be able to fix that. It needs a different approach. That’s the reason why I’m thinking traditional POS systems will not be valuable as they are before. Also that’s why I’m focusing on something else and SambaPOS is different. Yes other POS providers will improve themselves by offering cloud based solutions, tablet menus or other fancy stuff but none of them will work fine because too few people understanding the real picture.
What customers are expecting from us is not the “tablet menu” that offers nothing more than paper alternative. Swiping all food images one by one is a real bad experience. We need to understand how technology changes consumers life and how they want to interact with us. New technology improvements allows us to interact with customers very personally without contacting them in real life. For example we can even know how much calories they need by connecting their health apps. This is crazy awesome…
Awesome but… only if your POS system supports that… Umm. Sorry don’t expect point and click technology anymore. Because that approach standardizes how restaurant works. Everybody can offer (or can’t offer) same thing so to be able to be “different” we need to customize how our system works for us. So if you think you need to reach more people, offer a highly personalized experience to your customers and do something to get your customers back from third parties, understanding how SambaPOS works is essential. Because it will be the language you’ll speak with your customers. This is our vision and we want to stand there.
Of course this is my personal opinion. As the developer of SambaPOS we’re depended to community support and it is beyond my powers to direct SambaPOS to a different direction than what community wants. Yes we don’t know exactly what needs to be done but I strongly believe if we communicate better and if more people contributes we’re able to do amazing things.
Sorry for that long post but I hope that explains my point. I didn’t wanted to upset anyone. Thanks for your reading.