As a restaurateur, you may have all your attention on creating delicious dishes to wow your customers and tantalize their senses. But in truth, that’s only one part of running a restaurant.
There are several aspects of doing business that you’ll want to train your eyes on, from the logistics side to the financials.
Knowing just how competitive the business is, you’ll need to do a lot to keep your restaurant’s operations smooth. That’s the only way to guarantee that your customers have excellent dining experiences for many more years to come.
Luckily, today’s restaurant business owners have a variety of business solutions at their disposal. Using tools that are specifically designed to streamline your restaurant operations, you’ll see a marked difference in your revenues and your ability to serve a wide clientele.
Below are five restaurant business solutions you should consider integrating into your own resto business:
1) A Portable POS (Point-of-Sale) System
Many modern POS systems are more than just tools used to start and complete transactions. The latest models have features that can quickly streamline the ordering process, like inventory control, order taking, table management, and payment processing integration.
Features like these will provide you with a real-time view of your restaurant’s resources, making it easier to derive clear-headed insight on your business’s sales data. With this kind of technology on hand, you’ll be able to centralize several key components of doing business in your restaurant and minimize errors.
Consider investing in a POS solution like a portable POS device that’s fast, flexible, and user-friendly to both your customers and staff. This will not only modernize your business flow, but it will also improve customers’ perceptions of your business as forward-thinking and responsible.
In the Philippines, restaurateurs can take advantage of the Maya Terminal and its lighter version, the Maya Terminal Lite. A portable Maya POS terminal is specifically designed to complete and record payments in seconds, making it a handy addition to service during the lunch or dinner rush. The
Maya credit card terminal can also accept a variety of payment schemes, including card dipping (EMV), card tapping (NFC), bank transfers, and QR payments. The difference is that the Maya Terminal comes with an additional magstripe function and can print physical receipts, while the Maya Terminal Lite cannot.
2) An Inventory Management Solution
When it comes to managing your restaurant’s inventory, it’s important to be accurate and up-to-date with your resources. Whether it’s the ingredients list or toiletry supplies for your restrooms that are in question, you’ll want to be able to restock the correct number of items to avoid overspending, spoilage, or other inventory-related issues.
Upgrade to a dedicated inventory management solution or onboard an enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite that has inventory management capabilities as soon as you’re able. It’s much better than tracking your inventory manually, which is time-consuming and prone to human error.
With inventory management software that’s tailored to your restaurant business, it won’t be as hard to track a large and complicated inventory of food, beverages, and other supplies. Your software proffers a more methodical approach to tracking your business’s inventory and automating your reordering process.
A good solution can also give you real-time insight into your ingredient usage so that you can restock your supplies at the right time and avoid either scarcity or unnecessary wastage.
3) A Kitchen Display System (KDS)
Of all the areas that you oversee in your restaurant, the kitchen is where precision matters most. The heart of a successful restaurant business is a kitchen that can give customers what they want, how they want it, and when they want it.
This, of course, is easier said than done; to get orders out quickly and accurately, you’ll want to foster excellent communication between the front and back of the house.
Some restaurants still use paper tickets to keep track of people’s orders, but in a large and demanding resto kitchen, things can quickly get out of hand. The paper ticket system is also a cumbersome one for keeping track of last-minute changes to customer orders.
To reduce confusion and errors and to improve your kitchen and front-of-house management, it’s a good idea to invest in a dedicated kitchen display system (KDS).
Instead of tickets, your front and back of the house will use digital screens to manage your customers’ orders, speeding up the order management process and making it much more efficient.
A KDS will also allow you to make modifications to any order in an instant. Thanks to the speed, precision, and adjustability it will guarantee your kitchen operations, you’ll be able to minimize wait times and expedite preparation times. This, in turn, will keep customers happy and hungry for similar experiences at your resto.
4) Staff Management Software
Managing your staff is a complex task that requires you to you keep track of each of your employees’ schedules, absenteeism rates, payrolls, and performance. To simplify your oversight of all these responsibilities, you can use staff management software that’s within your restaurant’s operating budget.
This type of software can streamline core HR responsibilities by automating labor-intensive administrative tasks, like creating shift schedules, tracking your staff’s attendance, and even hiring new employees.
With dedicated staff management software, you’ll also have an easier time delegating tasks to your staff to maximize their productivity. By ensuring optimal staffing levels, you’ll be able to reduce labor costs and enhance employee efficiency.
5) Online Table Reservation and Management Software
Being able to accept reservations is beneficial for both your patrons and your restaurant. Allowing your customers to make reservations will guarantee them a table on the specific day and time that they want, therefore increasing their trust in you.
Table reservations can also provide you with better insight on what your demands will look like for the day, giving you enough time to stock up on your ingredients and ready your staff for preparation for service.
But if your restaurant receives a high volume of reservations, it will be difficult to accommodate all your patrons with a largely manual system.
Fortunately, an online table reservation and management software will easily allow your customers to book their tables online instead of calling your establishment. It will also be much easier for your staff to optimize customers’ seating arrangements, reducing waiting times while maximizing your restaurant’s capacity.
Behind every successful restaurant is an organized and efficient workflow. The business solutions recommended above will help you achieve this and motivate customers to go back to your resto not only for the delicious food, but for service that makes them feel satisfied and valued.
