There is one huge marketplace which is still as yet largely untapped and it certainly would not have been possible without point-of-sale systems. I think this is fair to say that POS has been singly responsible for the vast boom in online ordering…… and I am not just talking pizza!

We are all used to seeing and ordering from that well-known pizza chain which has been going for years and years and whose name has become synonymous with overpriced pizza and massive profits. It started out as most takeaway-type operations through the medium of the telephone – but things have moved on and there is absolutely no reason why even you, a local restaurateur cannot add yet another revenue stream through online ordering.

Just with one additional module on your POS system, you will be able to accept orders even if you are a small restaurant in a small town. If people know you offer the service, you may be surprised by the increase in sales that you can experience.

All you need to start with is a restaurant, a website, maybe a couple of Facebook and/or Twitter links, some local promotion and your local world is your oyster!

The potential you have is only as much as the volume of food you can produce and deliver or which can be customer-collected.

You will need an online ordering facility as well as a website which is mobile compatible, because let’s face it we are all beginning to do our banking, clothes ordering and now food or drink buying is also increasingly via our smart phones. If you ask your supplier for the correct module, payment will have been made even before the first prawn goes in the wok or the first piece of pizza dough is flattened.

I have figures which show that the average growth of a properly constructed and conceived online ordering site increases turnover by 10 to 15% month on month. Thereafter even examples of restaurants who have HAD to expand because the number of orders coming through have been so fast, vast and unexpected.

Talk to your POS supplier about suggestive selling. That simply means that when somebody orders from you online, your system analyses the order, and then makes additional suggestions based on the order or it tells the customer about your latest offers. Once again the name of the game is to optimise what used to be face time with your client and now it is the optimisation of online time with your client.

If you invest in the right software, for instance something that includes commercial analytics that help you to establish your customers online behaviour, you will become far more knowledgeable about your customers through social media and your website than you ever did when all you had was face-to-face contact.

If you have come across the word OLO and are still wondering what it means, you are already falling behind the curve! (On Line Ordering).

They used to say that ‘children are the future’. That is no longer the case – the future is OLO – so talk about it to your POS supplier NOW! If you’re not talking about it, I do assure you that your competitors are.

There are already those who have been in the OLO business for quite a long time and you should be grateful to them because you will be benefiting from all the mistakes and miscalculations before systems were properly ironed out. It is now time for you to take advantage of all their hard work.

There is no business which is too small to take advantage of online ordering so even if your restaurant only has 10 to 20 covers, you are still big enough to take advantage of OLO because any investment you make will be paid for within months – and that is no exaggeration because I know of small businesses who have paid for their investment within weeks.

Call your POS supplier now! He could do you are very big favour!