Technology in restaurants has come a long way. From a simple cash register to a central point of control for all operations, technology has grown leaps and bounds. In the restaurant space, there are multiple areas where technology plays a crucial role, one of the most important ones being restaurant operations.
Now, let’s get the fact clear that there are a lot of things that an owner must look into. The types of Restaurant operations start from getting the right quality ingredient from the right vendor, ensuring that the kitchen never runs out of stock, checking if all the employees are diligently performing their tasks are just a few to start with.
It might seem that it is a humongous task and probably not possible for a restaurant owner to take it single-handedly. This is where technology can come to your rescue. Technology helps you to streamline your entire restaurant operations and ensure that you have a tight hold on all the activities of your restaurant.
How to Leverage Technology to Streamline Restaurant Operations
Technology streamlines your end-to-end restaurant operations and helps you deliver consistent customer service. However, many of the restaurants are still unaware of how technology can help you to run your restaurant rather seamlessly. Read below and garner the knowledge about how using technology effectively can help you in streamlining restaurant operations:
1. Seamless Order Taking
You must capitalize on the growth of cloud technology to bolster your restaurant operations. A point of sale software that is browser-based and can work smoothly on any hardware such as a laptop, tablet, even a smartphone enables seamless order-taking mobile ordering, table reservations, automatic loyalty rewards and accepting orders from outdoor diners. Various food reservation apps are making the task of table reservations very easy for both the customers and the restaurants.
2. Improved Front-end Operations
There are a lot of daily tasks that need to be done on the front end to ensure that you have seamless operations in the day ahead. The various ways by which technology can streamline your front end restaurant operations are:
- Technology can enable your restaurant staff to provide stellar guest service. Based on the order history of the customer, the staff can suggest and upsell items.
- Self-ordering kiosks are making news nowadays that let customers order food themselves without the need for a waiter to take their orders.
- Digital menu boards are also an attractive way to display your menu items quickly.
3. Greater Efficiency In Kitchen Operations
The food which is the heart of your restaurant is prepared in the backend. This increases the importance of having operations at the back-end on the mark. The time taken to prepare a dish, the inventory, the menu, the generation of kitchen waste, cleaning and hygiene, all needs to be checked regularly, and it will now be made more comfortable with the help of technology.
- A Kitchen Display System is an integral part of the restaurant kitchen operations. The KOT goes to the respective food-prep station directly, and the estimated delivery time becomes more accurate. Proper communications improve the customer experience and reduce the scope of errors on the part of the kitchen staff.
- Executive chefs or kitchen managers can easily organize menus and generate food costs for standard or special-order items
- Keeping a check on inventory becomes easy with a restaurant management POS. The software sends you real-time alerts whenever an item reaches its reorder level. This ensures that you never order an item that is already available or your kitchen runs out of an essential item in a busy hour of the day.
4. Improved Marketing & Customer Engagement
Unless you are visible to your customers, you don’t sell. Here comes the importance of promoting your restaurant and its offers and communicating with your customers religiously. While offline modes of promotions help, they can be expensive as compared to the online channels. Online channels have a more extensive reach, and they are pocket-friendly as well.
- You can list your restaurant on Google, and this will make it easier for all the potential customers out there to locate you.
- You can create your website and social media mages this will help your customer to be updated about the various new happening in your restaurant.
- You can integrate your restaurant with various online delivery platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, and FoodPanda which will help you to deliver food at the doorstep of your hungry customers and it also increases your online presence
- Customers also post reviews on online delivering platforms. This will help you to understand their opinion about your restaurant, and even start a conversation with them.
- You can launch email and SMS marketing from the information you gather from your customer database.
- There are various marketing tools available like Missingletter and Buffer which will help you in scheduling the marketing campaigns.
5. Improved Communication To Reduce Chaos
Simply streamlining front of the house (FOH) and back of the house (BOH) operations is not enough. There is a need to resolve any communication issues- misunderstandings and confusion-that may crop up between the FOH and the kitchen, especially on a busy day.
With a mobile POS in place, communication becomes easy because actions are automated- orders are sent immediately, and there is no possibility of missing out on any specific customer requests. Many restaurant management systems come with in-built logbooks and shift notes that can track the time needed to prepare and deliver orders, and that also carry provisions for staff feedback. This enhances staff communication, thereby improving their productivity and ensuring quick service.
This communication isn’t restricted to the working staff alone but also applies to the tools that a restaurant uses. FOH tools should seamlessly integrate with BOH technology. Your POS software should allow for real-time updation of inventory and menu items so that the kitchen and the management can adapt to rush hours effortlessly. This also ensures that the food doesn’t stay idle and grow cold- leading to improved customer experiences.
A fully-integrated management system brings together all the tools in one place and reduces chaos by securing seamless communication.
These clearly show that restaurant operations can be streamlined effectively with the help of technology. Hence, if you are not using technology in your restaurant to bolster your services, then you must consider doing it immediately!
