Summer is the season when life moves outdoors. When the mercury rises, that’s when the crowds start to gather in parks and squares, out on the beach or in country beauty spots – or basically just any kind of open space. As a business, you always want to be where your customers are. So rather than try to tempt them into your store, deli, bar or restaurant, why not flip things around this summer – take your business to your customers outdoors with a pop-up store.
This is also the first time since before COVID-19 that festivals, carnivals, markets and other outdoor gatherings will be able to go ahead more or less restriction free. That’s even more of an incentive for people to get outdoors, so we can expect crowds will be bigger than ever.
That’s not a business opportunity anyone wants to miss out on. So here are some tips on how to make your pop-up store a feel-good summer hit.
Get yourself some mobile POS tablets
The days of being able to run a stall or a pop-up kitchen with nothing more than a price list and cash belt are long gone. People expect to be able to pay with their card or digital wallet wherever they are these days, in a bricks and mortar establishment or out in a field somewhere.
That means you need a card reader for payments. But if you’re going to take a digital card reader with you, you might as well take a full POS system. And no, that doesn’t mean you have to take a full desktop terminal with you and think about how you plug it in. These days, mobile POS tablets let you do everything on the move.
One of the big benefits of having a mobile POS for your pop-up store is that you connect directly to your business’s digital records. With every sale, your sales ledger, your accounts, your inventory are automatically updated. No having to input anything manually after the event.
Take a 4G LTE router with you
One challenge setting up pop-up stores throws up is connectivity. If you’re running a card reader and a mobile POS, you need an internet connection. You don’t want to be relying on public Wi-Fi for security and performance reasons.
To connect to 4G, you need devices with SIM cards and a data plan. While tablets with SIM cards are readily available, it’s more economical to have a single 4G LTE router on a single data plan and connect your other devices to it via Wi-Fi.
Bring back ups
Nothing will make your pop-up store fall flat like a hardware failure. Your card reader stops working, a cable breaks or your mobile POS tablet runs out of battery, that’s it, game over. You can’t make any more sales. And you leave a bunch of frustrated customers, which is never great for your business’s reputation.
Always take spares and back ups with you. That includes cables and chargers, and also battery packs so you can charge things up even if there’s a power outage.