How to Get Your Restaurant’s POS and Wi-Fi Ready for the Holiday Rush

Get your POS and Wi-Fi ready for the holidays by doing the risky work now, while it’s still slow. Install updates, set up backup internet, test and stock your hardware, clean up staff logins, and post your support numbers where every shift can see them. A few hours of prep in October beats a dead terminal on a sold-out Saturday in December.

Updates to your POS software, card readers, router and access points are worth doing. They fix bugs and close security holes. But an update can also change how a screen looks, reset a setting or knock a printer offline, and you don’t want to find that out with a full dining room.

So flip the order. Run every pending update in the next few weeks, on a quiet day, and test the basics afterward:

Then put a freeze on anything nonessential until the season’s over. No new menu layouts the week of a big party, no surprise router swaps. If something has to change, change it early in the week and test it before the weekend.

Most modern POS systems lean on the internet for card approvals, online orders, delivery tablets and reporting. When the connection drops, the whole front of house feels it, and the holidays are when you can least afford it.

Two things help here.

First, know what your POS does offline. Many systems can keep taking orders, and some can keep taking cards for a while, but the rules and limits vary by system and by how yours is set up. Find out now, and make sure your managers know too.

Second, add a backup connection. Through SORA’s SERVD I.T. program, we offer 5G backup internet as an add-on, and we recommend it for everyone. If your main connection fails, the network switches over to the cellular connection so orders and payments keep moving. The cellular service is billed separately. SERVD I.T. also includes 24/7 monitoring, and we deal with your internet provider for you, so you’re not stuck on hold in the middle of service.

Walk the restaurant like it’s the busiest night of the year and check every piece of equipment:

Then stock spares. Receipt and kitchen paper, charging cables and a spare charger for the handhelds are cheap. Running out of them on a Friday isn’t. If you’re adding stations or replacing worn hardware for the season, our POS services team handles installation and support for Toast, Square, Lavu and Slice, and it’s better to book that now than in mid December.

Seasonal hires are part of the holidays, and every one of them needs to be able to clock in and ring up orders on day one. Set them up before their first shift.

While you’re in there, clean up:

Holiday crowds mean more guests on your Wi-Fi, more phones streaming video and more devices you know nothing about. If guest Wi-Fi and your POS share one network, all of that competes with your card terminals for bandwidth, and any infected phone sits right next to the devices that handle payments.

The fix is to split them into separate zones, called network segmentation. We cover how it works in Guest Wi-Fi and Your POS: Why They Shouldn’t Share a Network. Every network we manage through SERVD I.T. includes a guest network that’s kept separate from everything else by default, and our security rules are built on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, pen tested every year and PCI compliant.

When something breaks at 8 PM on a Saturday, the worst answer to “who do we call?” is “let me find the owner.” Make a short list and tape it up by the manager’s station:

If you’re on SERVD I.T., live help is available from 8 AM to midnight Eastern, seven days a week, from our US based call center staffed by Tier 2 technicians, and the network is monitored around the clock.

When should I start preparing my POS for the holidays?
Now. Do updates, hardware swaps and installs while business is slow, and leave yourself time to fix anything they break before the rush starts.

Do I need backup internet for a restaurant?
If you rely on card payments and online orders, yes. A 5G backup connection keeps you running when your main internet goes down.

Should my guest Wi-Fi be on a separate network from my POS?
Yes. Keeping them apart protects card payments and stops guest streaming from slowing down orders.

You don’t have to work through this list alone. SORA handles POS support and installation, managed networks through SERVD I.T. and websites for restaurants, hospitality and retail, so one call covers the whole stack. POS. IT. Web. Done.

Contact us to get your locations ready for the season, or call sales at (310) 734-2572 or email sales@sorapartners.com.