As a restaurateur, how do you feel about your business right now? In these competitive times, many owners and managers have the uncomfortable feeling that things are not quite right within the operation.
So we’ve compiled 20 ways your business might be going all wrong – and looked at how restaurant software and give you the kind of control that makes it all go right.
- 1. I don’t know where my profits are going
- 2. My front to the back of house workflow is poor
- 3. My customers can’t make a reservation online
- 4. We sometimes double-book our diners
- 5. Seating people takes ages
- 6/7. Our service is too slow…and
- 8. Table turn is slow
- 9. Taking payment takes too long, particularly with large groups
- 10. Repeat business isn’t happening
- 11. I often don’t have the right number of staff
- 12. I’m not sure my staff are working effectively
- 13. I think my staff are defrauding the restaurant
- 14. I’m wasting money by duplicating roles across my group
- 15. I’m concerned about allergens
- 16. Costing dishes accurately is hard
- 17. We’d like to do delivery but we’re not set up for it
- 18. I’m struggling with self-service
- 19. Should I have kitchen automation?
- 20. I need a quick ROI
With so many elements to control, from reservations to staffing to stock levels, it can be very difficult to track a restaurant operation from end to end.
The fix? Good restaurant software that provides you with an end-to-end view of the business online, in real-time.
Supported by in-depth reports you can keep track of what’s going on – and act immediately if anything is going wrong.
Great customer experience demands good communication between your customer-facing front of house team and your BOH staff.
But there’s often a huge gulf between the two that creates missed orders, delays, frustration and angry diners.
EPOS software replaces paper with electronic orders sent from hand-held devices at tableside to the kitchen. No room for human error, and no delay in delivery.
As customers demand increasing levels of convenience, restaurants can’t fall behind.
An online reservations solution offers guests the facility to book a table 24/7, often using a popular app such as OpenTable.
A paper reservations book can be easily messed up. Online booking via an app removes human error so you can’t sell a table twice – and it saves your staff time, too.
Restaurant software provides graphical seating plans on your tablet or handheld device – guest management capabilities also mean your staff can give guests a wait time, reducing walk-outs.
We make too many order mistakes
Servers with restaurant software at their fingertips use handheld devices including smartphones and tablets to take orders and send them straight to the kitchen, where it can link with kitchen automation. No room for human error.
Restaurant software boosts table turn in your restaurant by getting guests seated quicker, served quicker and taking their payments quicker.
Diners hate slow payment. But remember those EPOS handheld devices?
Your servers can take payments on them too, splitting bills easily.
Your restaurant software will capture important details such as diner preferences for targeted email marketing.
Technology can’t solve your recruitment problems, but it can provide reports that reveal exactly how many people you need on at any given time.
Making that happen can be as basic as using handheld devices to take orders and relay them straight to the kitchen.
Or it can be as sophisticated as tracking of individual performances, seeing who’s upselling and who needs extra training.
Restaurant software helps provide a fraud deterrent by tracking transactions in detail and flagging up unusual behaviours.
Enterprise-level restaurant software hosted in the cloud reduces this by providing head office access wherever your key managers are, online.
A huge worry for chefs designing menus. The savviest restaurants are using allergen-busting software such as Kitchen CUT, which works with your restaurant software to track allergens right down to ingredient level.
Kitchen CUT makes it far easier to cost each dish precisely, and your restaurant software collects data on what’s selling – it even advises on trends so your chef can respond. So less food is thrown away.
Huge numbers of restaurants who were never able to offer home delivery now achieve it easily using their restaurant software and services such as Deliveroo.
It’s a fast-food trend that is making its way into casual dining – customers are happy to choose from a tablet menu integrated with your restaurant system.
EPOS technology supports both self-service kiosks and tableside ordering, integrating seamlessly with kitchen automation systems where the order is split up and sent to the right preparation station – e.g. fries – at the right time.
The best restaurant software is available at a low-cost monthly rental, or as a cloud option that keeps hardware costs to a minimum and makes deployment swift.
The future is now
Just two years ago, a Deloitte report said:
“The restaurant of the future: Increasing use of digital technology is providing challenges and opportunities to casual dining operators, impacting the full customer journey as well as business operations.”
Digital restaurant software has already evolved rapidly, and now provides unprecedented control for any restaurant business.
So the restaurant of the future has already arrived. And with the help of the right technology, it’s all yours.
Which EPOS is right for you? See our guide.
