Can Tech help you run a restaurant successfully?
Can Tech help you run a restaurant successfully?
As in much of our daily lives, tech has become a necessity rather than a fun but rather useless gimmick. We operate our cars, homes and lives with the use of AI and tech. The restaurant industry especially post covid has really embraced tech to help augment, speed up, organise or create efficiency within their businesses. The best tech are ones that integrate with each other. We have worked with a great many solutions and here are some of our favourites.
EPOS systems-
Rather than just taking payments either by cash or card. Many modern EPOS systems can help you administer your entire business. A good Epos system should be intuitive for the staff to use and connect well to other key software such as accounting platforms, booking software and stock management. Many restaurants prefer a portable tablet based system, cutting out the need to take a pen and paper to the table.
Basic functionality would be that of sales reporting and an indication of a sales mix. But many offer so much more
- Stock management and reporting
- Depleted ordering via a 3rd party platform
- Clock in/out function for staff
- Costing template
- Integration with booking and CRM software
- Table ordering via app or QR code
- Integration with delivery platforms (Deliveroo/Uber Eats etc)
There are many great platforms that can supply EPOS solutions for your company. Our personal favourites are Square
and Lightspeed
Food safety management-
5 stars or the scores on the doors, not only give confidence to the customer, but indicate a well run business. Lets face it, if you are managing your stock well, your kitchen is clean, then your food will be good and your customers will be happy. It all goes hand in hand.
Historically this would mean tonnes and tonnes of paperwork. But of course there are online solutions for this. The benefits outweigh the costs every time. Having an automated, live HACCP plan and document access that is always up to date, that prompts your staff to complete their tasks and keeps all of the training and recording in one place.
Shield safety and Food alert are our go to solutions for Hygiene, Health and safety and due diligence training
Rota & HR training management-
Staff training is an on going task, investing in staff is well proven to aid in retention, better work practices and naturally a better customer experience. We can log the training and development of a team with the clever use of apps such as Flow and the management of the team with portals such as Deputy or Trail
Booking & CRM-
Booking platforms are super intuitive and allow for the best customer management. They typically integrate with the restaurant Epos system and can be imbedded in the website or social media for customers to book directly. The parameters can be adjusted so that bookings over a certain amount are directed to the management team, timings are staggered and critical data such as contact details or allergen data are correctly stored.
Our go to platfoms are Design my night and Open table
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