Part one – Building your “brand” with POS receipts:

  Since most businesses are handing out POS receipts (about 250 billion of them a year, according to Receipt.com), why not make the most of it?   There are ways to communicate on a receipt that are better than others – some receipts can amuse, some receipts can engage, some receipts can stimulate more purchases.   For example, we could design a receipt that simply prints the name and address of the store, or we could print the logo and make the receipt infinitely more attractive at the same time we reinforce our brand. 
Below are several receipts with logos that I’ve come across recently:  (please note that they are not perfectly straight, and that is my fault – they didn’t lay well in the scanner)

I love these receipts!   All of them have a certain flair.  They are NOT boring.  That old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words certainly seems to apply here.

You don’t have to be a 800 store chain like BWW to do it. Pastry Arts, a local Sarasota coffee shop has just one location as far as I know, and they have a nice logo on their printed receipt.

Notice how the POS receipt instantly communicates who the vendor was. The company is easily identifiable, even for someone who needs reading glasses. You could not do that with a receipt that only had the address in text format.   So, now that you realize the value, how hard is it to add a logo to the top of a receipt?  Methods for adding a logo vary by printer and manufacturer.

Links to some major receipt printer  manufacturers are listed here – be sure to look up your exact model for instructions.  Epson    Star    Seiko    Citizen   Brother

Part Two – Making Money with POS Receipts

      Now that you’re thinking about what you can do to improve your receipts – why not take it a step further – and engage the customer with your receipt?   A company called SmartReceipt is doing just that!     This company has a product that will let your printer dynamically create receipts with specialized coupons and other offers. Here are some sample receipts:

This pizza receipt (showing only the bottom here)  has a dated coupon inviting the customer to a discount if they order online, or another discount on a topping.  This gives the customer two good reasons to save a receipt that would otherwise be discarded in moments.

The company claims that the technology-enabled solution can reside on any POS system and is centrally managed online.

This second receipt (on the right) also has compelling information and is likely to be valued by the consumer!  Notice both the use of the QR code, and the free offer of a cookie, to get the customer to the website.