"Which POS should we be using?"- I get that question a lot. From an operator opening their first place, and from brands with a few hundred locations.
My answer is always another question; “What matters more to you, the transaction or the customer journey?”
Many people say “the transaction”. And I get it. We all need to take a credit card, run reports, see our sales, manage cost of goods, take an online order, etc. We all need to. But it tells me you're thinking about operations and revenue.
When someone answers “the customer journey”, or even just starts asking me questions about it, that tells me something different. They're thinking about growth. About repeat business. About longevity. It doesn't mean they aren't business minded. It means they understand the business of hospitality.
The transaction is the end of a customer journey, not the start of one. Something has to bring them back to it.
I know a new restaurant owner who bought into a small regional chain. They showed him their AUV and their cost of operation, so he's picturing the profit. What he didn't picture was the road to get there.
He asked me what makes a new store work. He has some of the pieces. A website, a way to take orders. It's a start. I suggested getting the rest in place before he opened. Local search so people find him, email capture so he can reach them, rewards so they come back. One connected thing, not four projects.
He said he'd deal with it once he was open. Too busy right now.
He's been open a week. It's busy. He lives in town, people are excited, his friends are showing up. It feels great. But that's the splash, and you only get one. A month from now the friends have been. They liked it fine. They're not thinking about him. And he has no way to reach a single one of them.
Every one of those first-week guests was a chance to get an email address. If you don't have it, you can't remind them to come back.
There's an Italian restaurant I like that's been around for years. Good food, fair prices, people like the team. They have a website and ordering that works fine.
But social hasn't been touched in months. No email has gone out in half a year, and nobody's sure where those addresses even live. The rewards program drops points sometimes. The business is fine. That's the part worth sitting with. It's fine.
They asked me about doing more. More catering, a better lunch. They know it's there. They just don't know which thread to pull, or whether the foundation under it is solid. That's success by luck instead of success by design.
Neither of these operators is lazy. They built something real, they want more, and they know it's sitting right there. What stops them is not knowing where to start, or whether the stuff underneath is set up right.
That's fair. More tools means more logins, more work, more headache. Of course it gets put down.
And when I ask an operator if they want it to be easy for the guest, every one of them says yes. But easy is a setup, not an intention. You can want it badly and still not have it.
So here's the order I use:
1. Is it easy to order?
Before anything else, I look at whether a guest can order from you without friction, and whether it helps your team execute seamlessly. Your guests already know what easy feels like. If either side is clunky, nothing upstream matters. You can drive all the traffic you want to a bad checkout and you'll just pay to watch people leave.
2. Can they find you?
Local search is table stakes, and it's the first marketing move I make, because it takes time to work. Your listings, your hours of operation, your menu, your photos, your reviews, all accurate and all saying the same thing everywhere someone might look. Most operators know Google matters. Fewer know how much of it the right tool handles for you.
3. Do they come back?
This is where the money is. As I like to say, acquisition costs dollars, retention costs pennies. That's exactly why we don't start here. No sense pouring gasoline on a leaky bucket. So the question is whether you're capturing email addresses, and whether you're doing anything with them. If you're not, every guest you worked to get is potentially a one time guest.
And that's just three. There's more after that. Social, rewards, your own app, reviews, promotions, the stuff you haven't gotten to yet. The key is finding a system that connects all of it.
A lot of rewards programs only work in one place. Online but not in store. It's genuinely hard to find one that covers every channel. But your guest doesn't think in channels. They order online Tuesday, walk in Friday, and expect the credit either way. When it only counts sometimes, they stop trusting it.
Let me show you an example.
DoorDash's direct ordering and marketing tools are built to be that system. Your website, direct online ordering, a branded app, email and SMS marketing, and reputation management with your Google reviews in one place. Then cross-channel rewards, so guests earn and redeem wherever they order. Online, in your app, in store, or on DoorDash.
And here's the part that made me go back to the top of this article. DoorDash's direct ordering and marketing tools can integrate with your POS system — so you don't have to choose between transactions or a great customer journey.
While there are other systems you could look at, the bonus with this one is that if you're already on DoorDash Marketplace, you can manage your restaurant marketing and direct orders in the same place you monitor your DoorDash orders. That means you can get visibility into your third-party and direct orders, and the marketing behind them with a single login.
None of this is about being a better marketer. It's about having tools that make it easier. So start with the journey. Is it easy to order, can they find you, do they come back. Then pick the system that connects it.
That's the difference between success by luck and success by design!
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Do you have any questions about this or need help with your restaurant marketing? Send me an email [email protected]
- Rev Ciancio
WHAT DOES REV DO?
I help restaurants to build guest marketing programs.
I help hospitality tech companies with lead generation and content marketing.
