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date

March 3, 2025

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blog

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6 min

The Ultimate POS System for Bubble Tea Shops

Milk tea shops and bubble tea shops are all the rage in today's food scene and with having a POS system that can easily manage the constant incoming orders, thirsty customers, and busy staff is crucial for long term success and survival.

A delicious brown sugar bubble tea with golden and black tapioca pearls, promoting MenuSifu's POS system for bubble tea shops.

What is Bubble Tea?

Bubble tea, in the milk tea category, is also referred to as boba.

It originated in Taiwan and it's most simple form is tea, milk, and tapioca pearls, but is customizable with different flavour options, toppings, sweetness level, and temperature.

Today, the bubble tea business has gained immense popularity and thousands of bubble tea stores are developing new flavours, textures, techniques, and concepts to still be relevant within the bubble tea phenomenon.

With the rise of social media, bubble tea has been a focal point in food photos due to it's fun and customizable look that attracts bubble tea enthusiasts worldwide, and with such a large demand for bubble tea, the competition in the bubble tea industry is higher than ever.

A smiling woman enjoying her bubble tea while checking her phone in a modern bubble tea shop, showcasing a seamless customer experience.

Why Do Bubble Tea Shops Require Specialized POS Systems

Although to a regular guest, a milk tea business might seem like a simple shop to upkeep and does not require much technical technologies, but a bubble tea shop owner understands the specificities of their shop and specialized solutions it requires for smooth business operations and management, as well as a good customer experience.

Bubble tea shop POS systems need to be fast, reliable, and flexible.

With constant menu upgrades and changes, as well as thousands of possible customization requests, having a bubble tea POS system that can easily and seamlessly adapt is crucial for all customer preferences and the perfect bubble tea.

Two glasses of classic milk tea with black tapioca pearls, surrounded by tea leaves, tapioca, and fresh milk, highlighting bubble tea craftsmanship.

Hardware Requirements for Bubble Tea Shops

Touchscreen POS Terminal

Having touchscreen POS systems for bubble tea shops is crucial for fast and errorless service, increasing customer satisfaction and order turnover.

This is a obvious choice for all bubble tea shops in today's competitive bubble tea industry for smooth order processing.

Dual Display Screen (Staff & Customer)

A normal POS system will only have a staff ordering screen, but with a customized bubble tea shop POS system, there will be the option to add a customer display screen to give customers a chance to review orders, process payments, select tips, and find recommended bubble tea drinks for smooth order processing and operational efficiency.

MenuSifu's POS MX has the ability to add a customer display screen that many bubble tea shop owners have used and proven to be helpful to bubble tea sales and customer service.

Integrated Receipt Printer & Label Printer

Having a built in printer is necessary to give customers the option for a traditional receipt.

The printer can also print out order labels for bubble tea drinks, and with an integrated printing system, both in store and online orders can be automatically printed for order accuracy and reduced customer wait times.

Having a thermal printer is useful for better quality printing and reducing long term costs.

MenuSifu's POS MX system comes with a thermal printer for all your bubble tea sale needs.

High Speed Barcode Scanner

Having a quality barcode scanner is a plus when scanning membership cards, discount codes, and promotional QR codes.

These small customer interaction points can be a huge part of customer loyalty when the entire ordering process is smooth and efficient.

Kitchen Display Screen

If your milk tea business is on the larger side, having a kitchen display screen can exponentially increase order accuracy and reduce communication errors.

The language on the screen can also be changed to the language of the staff for ease and better understanding.

MenuSifu's Kitchen Display screen can send order info in real time from the bubble tea POS system to the kitchen display screen with instant order tracking and management.

Self Ordering POS Kiosk

Self service kiosks are crucial to a bubble tea shop's success. Due to the large amount of orders and customers coming in and out, a self standing ordering kiosk is necessary for a constant and seamless flow.

Self service kiosks also reduce the possibility of ordering errors due to the large possibility of order customization for bubble teas and milk teas, therefore saving costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

POS kiosks can also give bubble tea shop owners labor cost savings since taking orders require staff to be present and alert at all times. The kiosk can easily replace a order taking staff member, allowing them to focus on making drinks, and therefore increasing efficiency and decreasing customer wait times.

The MenuSifu POS Kiosk is an excellent choice for bubble tea shops that want to give customers the option to order themselves.

A modern self-ordering POS kiosk designed for bubble tea shops, enhancing efficiency and customer convenience with a touch-screen interface.

Integrated Payment Terminal

An integrated payment terminal is a must have to provide good and thoughtful customer service.

It is important to have a variety of payment options including tap to pay, contactless, apple pay, and mobile payments.

With an integrated system, payment processing is more secure and speedy.

Cloud Based Access & Backup

Having a cloud based POS system is necessary in to avoid errors or glitches in the system.

Even when the wifi is down, the MenuSifu's cloud based POS system can still function with a simplified offline system.

Software Requirements for Bubble Tea Shops

There are definitely some must have features for bubble tea POS systems that cannot be missed because of how their business model differs from traditional restaurant business models or even cafes and coffee shop business models.

Key features can include menu adjustments and integration with delivery platforms, and more comprehensive POS systems can include additional features such as loyalty programs and sales data and analytics.

MenuSifu POS systems include all basic and advanced features that a bubble tea store will need.

Bubble Tea Menu Customization / Modification

A milk tea shop's business principle is to sell a variety of drinks that are able to be immensely customized to customer preferences.

Due to this business type, the POS system must be flexible to adapt and keep up with the variety of drink orders.

In addition to various drink types, POS systems need to be able to easily keep up with new releases, limited time specials, and seasonal offerings. With an easy POS system with user friendly features that business owners can effortlessly control, adjusting anything within the menu is straightforward.

Easy Drink Customization

Traditional customizations can include adding or removing toppings, and choosing sweetness level, ice level, drink size, and milk type.

Other customizations can be more specific such as personal allergies or intolerances.

The changes to each drink are usually different so having an user friendly feature where customers can easily write in customizations is key for good customer service, consistent quality, and avoiding mistakes.

A top-down view of various bubble tea toppings, including black tapioca pearls, fruit jellies, and popping boba, displayed in small bowls.

Online Order & 3rd Party Food Delivery Integration

Food delivery is an important part of bubble tea sales as more than half of all drink orders are from online orders either directly from an app, website, or third party delivery services.

By having direct integration with key third party delivery services and delivery partners, bubble tea drink sales can exponentially increase.

With MenuSifu's Central, direct integration with delivery platforms such as Doordash, Ubereats, and Grubhub is guaranteed seamless and effortless.

Auto integration with 50+ other delivery partners can also be easily linked with setup to ensure swift delivery of bubble tea drinks to customers.

Multi Language Support

Having multi language support is necessary in all business types include milk tea shops because the wider your customer base is, the more customer orders and sales you will have.

Language support can help staff increase efficiency, as well as increase the ability for customers to place an order on self ordering kiosks without having trouble with language.

Precise Inventory Management

Unlike a regular cafe or restaurant, bubble tea stores need a much more comprehensive and detailed inventory control and ingredient tracking and monitoring.

With a customized bubble tea shop POS system, any bubble tea store looking to create new flavours or add new toppings can easily do so and add them to the inventory management list.

In the long term, this will help business owners cut costs, decrease waste, and understand customer preferences.

Employee Management

Bubble tea businesses are always busy so having a large database of employees is common.

With a POS system customized for bubble tea shops, staff management will be seamless and optimizing employee schedules will be effortless.

Real Time Sale Analytics & Insights

Sales reporting is necessary for all businesses but for milk tea stores especially, you need to know which drinks are selling better to quickly adapt to the constantly evolving market.

Due to the trend driven drink market, bubble tea shops need to continuously adapt and evolve their drinks to the newest tea flavour, the best toppings, and the largest variety of milks.

With MenuSifu's comprehensive data analytics and insights, bubble tea shop owners can quickly and easily understand the necessary changes needed to be made for better operational efficiency and overall success.

Two smartphones displaying sales analytics, order tracking, and revenue data, demonstrating MenuSifu's business reporting tools.

Loyalty Program & Points system

Loyalty programs made for loyal customers is important to keep guests coming back for more.

These programs keep loyal customers engaged, and by rewarding them, they can feel more excitement towards your brand.

This can better your customer relationship management (CRM) as well as the overall customer experience.

Illustration of people using data and analytics tools to optimize restaurant operations, with a QR code to learn more about MenuSifu's offerings.

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