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Hospital retail finds itself under increasing pressure to meet revenue targets
Facing rising costs and financially challenging times, healthcare organizations are looking to their retail segments as an additional source of revenue generation. Although hospital food service operations are best known for providing meals to patients, most, if not all, of their onsite cafeterias, snack bars, and/or coffee bars are also responsible for the retail side of the food service operations. While working to increase their revenue contribution to the hospital, many directors of food services and cafeteria managers are taking creative steps to increase patronage. Increasing employee involvement, attracting members of the local community, and tailoring their food and beverage offerings to patrons’ needs and culinary preferences are all goals of aggressive food service operators.
grab and go
In a busy healthcare environment, speed is key! That’s why over the past few years, many hospital cafeterias have redesigned their space to accommodate new coolers stocked with delicious pre-packaged meal options; From yogurt and fruit parfaits to sandwiches and salads. These portable food options provide a highly convenient and fast way for busy healthcare workers to quickly grab something to eat or drink while on the run. Pre-packaging also enables employees to bring these items back to their desks or another area for consumption in a location other than the cafeteria. When used with a POS system and bar coded labels, it only takes a few seconds to check out these items at the point of sale.
dining experience
Many health facilities have renovated their cafeterias to provide a more attractive restaurant-like dining experience to attract staff, visitors and guests. Their goal is to entice hospital workers to stay on-site rather than seek out-of-site options for lunch, appeal to visitors, and in some cases attract the local community. To accomplish this, the Director of Foodservices is not only creating an attractive dining area, but also hiring highly talented and experienced restaurant chefs with expertise in engineering new and delicious menus. Using a POS system with menu item performance tracking gives chefs a clear picture of which menu items are performing well, and which should be removed from the menu rotation.
employee salary deduction
Managed through a Point of Sale system as an employee payroll deduction to be deducted from future pay checks, the ability to make retail purchases by scanning employee badges already held by the health care worker is considered a valuable benefit and convenience. is seen as When employees can present a pre-existing badge as payment, they won’t need to carry cash or credit cards throughout the facility. Often, this convenience means the difference between a skipped lunch or snack and time to enjoy a delicious meal. Cashless payments also lead to an increase in food and beverage purchases when the employee does not have enough cash on hand to cover all the options they wish to make.
credit card processing
It is not uncommon for visitors to be out of cash when visiting a patient in a hospital. All of us consumers are used to paying for most everything with our debit or credit cards, and hence are quite surprised to learn that the hospital cafeteria does not accept credit or debit cards. Although most hospitals offer onsite ATMs, the inability to accept credit or debit card payments causes a decrease in sales; And possibly full trays of food were left at the checkout counter because the visitor didn’t have a convenient payment option. The checkout process is a huge part of the customer experience, so it’s important that credit and debit card processing is fast and fully integrated with the cash register operations of the POS system.
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