During these current times, it’s more important than ever to make sure your restaurant is using all available digital solutions. Learn about them with us!
Change always comes from need
Covid-19 has changed the way restaurants operate. By forcing restaurant professionals, and RHCs in general, to close their rooms and people to stay home, containment has boosted the use of online order management and delivery technologies. Additionally, as restaurants prepare to revive their businesses with new hygiene and physical separation measures, contactless order-taking and payment technologies have become more than relevant.
To adapt to the rapid changes of the industry, restaurants are turning to digital solutions. Now, the main challenge for owners is to bring together the right technologies and make them communicate with each other for maximum efficiency.
Many restaurant owners have enrolled in a technology management course to learn on the latest digital solutions for them to provide the best service to their customers. But what are the most useful digital solutions that can help your business during the pandemic? In this article you will learn all about them. You may also find a case study useful and should check out Ordering Stack, which is a food ordering platform that is managing well during the current situation.
Delivery Management Technologies
Delivery platforms are growing exponentially, especially in the post-Covid-19 environment. For restaurants, it is increasingly important to adopt a system to process delivery orders and manage delivery drivers or customer pickup. In addition, having the right system in place can reduce staff costs and make it easier to manage orders so that the kitchen runs as efficiently as possible.
The major players in the delivery market are now familiar: Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Glovo, and Just Eat. Their concept is simple: they provide a sales platform to restaurants and manage the entire delivery process for them. Restaurants, on the other hand, have to integrate their various delivery partners into their operational flow, which can quickly become problematic. Indeed, it is not always easy for the staff to retype all the orders in the cash register.
To overcome this problem, aggregators allow restaurant owners to manage multiple delivery platforms from a single interface. Deliverect is the market leader in this area and easily integrates the major delivery platforms with your current systems.
Inventory Management Tools
Inventory management systems help you manage inventory and plan your restaurant’s supply without much effort. In fact, these systems automate many of the tasks that typically take up a lot of your staff’s time and energy. This eliminates the risk of human error, reduces waste and prevents over-ordering.
These tools save you time by automating many processes. In addition, they generate order lists to help you better plan your supply, reduce food waste and save money.
If you haven’t already, consider integrating your inventory management software with your cash register system. With this integration, you’ll be able to easily retrieve your sales figures and get a clearer, more accurate picture of your inventory status, costs and orders to be placed.
Cash register system vendors offer good inventory management tools. However, if you have specific needs and values, you may want to select a more powerful and specialized technology platform. For example, you may appreciate the efficiency of a recipe cost tracking tool such as XtraChef or an environmentally friendly procurement partner such as FoodMaven.
Online reservation tools
Digital reservation systems generally have very useful features for front-of-house staff. For example, some offer visual interfaces that make it easy to manage tables and the waiting list during service. Usually usable on a tablet, this type of software synchronizes with the cash register system and allows staff to add notes about the reservation or customers, which saves a lot of hassle when the shots are fired! If you’re a restaurant owner without a website, there’s no need to worry. With a simple and intuitive restaurant website builder, you can create a fantastic website for your restaurant in just a few minutes.
Knowing your customers is essential. Your reservation system will help you collect as much information about them as possible. For example, you can know your customer’s favorite drink or their food allergies before they even walk through the door of your establishment. The data collected can also help you build customer loyalty. You can reward the most loyal customers with personalized offers – by sending them an e-mail to offer them a glass of champagne on their birthday, for example.
To sum up, with the right tools, you can fully leverage data and use it to build customer loyalty, provide personalized offers and experiences, analyze trends, and improve every aspect of your customers’ experience.
