From pen and paper to digital: Streamlining restaurant operations

Having said that, restaurants adopt technology to varying degrees. Many restaurants rely on traditional pen-and-paper methods where a waiter seats and accommodates you. Other restaurants have ticket machines or advanced PoS systems to streamline the ordering process.

While there are many ways to run a restaurant business, integrating technology into the mix can help ease bottlenecks and make operations more efficient and stable.

From picking the optimal shifts for your staff to enhancing the communication between the front-of-house and the kitchen, every activity your workplace may engage in manually has a technological tool that can assist the process.

If you're looking to streamline your restaurant's operations and stand out among the competition, then check out these digital tools that can help you succeed in the restaurant industry.

Let's start!

The goal is not to haphazardly incorporate technology into your restaurant in the name of improving your business. Technology should be strategically incorporated in tandem with your underlying business goals and financial circumstances.

Here are some signs your restaurant is ready to take the next step and incorporate technology into its existing operations:

A good way to know how your business is faring for certain is by performing a SWOT analysis. Through this method, you can see where your business is lagging in and what can be improved.

If, upon further analysis, you've recognised some problem areas when running your restaurant business, you can focus your efforts on solving these issues. In most cases, there's often a technological solution to help you overcome these problems.

That said, every restaurant's situation is different, so be sure to collect your own data and run through other options before committing to just any tech tool.

Once you've identified a problem area in your business, you can more accurately find a technological solution to help address it.

Here are five technology tools that you can consider to streamline and improve your business operations.

If you don't want to spread your wait staff thin, then a good piece of software to invest in is a digital menu system.

This contactless ordering tool is accessible via the Internet by a QR code or URL and allows customers to place orders without needing a person to attend to them.

All the restaurant has to do is put its menu up on a digital platform alongside the meal's respective price. Once the table has placed its order using this digital method, the information is electronically received by the kitchen, prompting them to prepare the meal.

A neat perk about this ordering system is that it can also be customised to your liking.

If you want to request payments (through digital methods like credit cards or e-wallets) before a meal, you can do so through this method. If you want to upsell or cross-sell a certain beverage, then that can be done as well.

You can also choose to display this digital ordering system on a store-specific tablet or solely through your patron's WiFi-connected devices. This added flexibility allows you to acquire assets according to your current financial circumstances.

A digital ordering system makes for a quick and reliable way of receiving and handling orders. Not only is it a good substitute for wait staff, but it's also a potent data collection tool-allowing you to recognise trends and order patterns to help you make better profit-driving decisions.

A digital ordering system is often paired with a kitchen display system, a digital screen that replaces paper tickets. Kitchen staff utilise this tool to see, prioritise, and track customer orders as they get placed.

This system is useful since it greatly reduces the intermediary activities between orders, particularly the verbal exchange between front-of-staff and kitchen staff. This makes staff more productive while simultaneously reducing the chance of errors, like misreading written text.

Furthermore, KDS tools also have robust menu options that allow staff to track past and pending orders. This data can be useful for giving the kitchen staff an idea of the time it takes to prepare each dish and what to expect in the subsequent orders.

For restaurants with high demand, an online reservation system can be useful to track and manage upcoming bookings. Using this system allows customers to reserve their seats online through a web page or app, reducing the need for phone calls and minimising booking errors.

This tool not only frees up staff time but also maximises your seating, since it can be customised to dissuade no-shows (i.e. No revenue for an unused table) by imposing penalties.

This tool also improves the customer experience in general since it can automatically send customers reminders of their upcoming bookings.

Besides elevating the customer experience, a restaurant reservation system can also help your staff optimally prepare their operating procedures for the designated period. It allows them to arrange seating efficiently, reducing the wait time for walk-in guests and improving the customer service experience.

This is because your staff will know what to expect, including any special requests that customers may have indicated in the reservation form.

If you find that your restaurant is understaffed or overstaffed often, then you can get staff management software to optimise staff shifts.

This software system allows supervisors to create and adjust schedules based on employee availability and business needs, ensuring the right number of staff during peak and off-peak hours.

This system can also be useful for employees, as they can access their accounts and request leaves, swap shift timings, and make other adjustments based on their current state of affairs. These adjustments are intuitive and accessible to everyone, streamlining communications.

This tool helps reduce any miscommunications between staff, allowing the workforce to operate efficiently. It also improves the company culture overall, promoting organisation and accessibility across all hierarchies.

A vital factor to always consider when running a restaurant is your inventory stock levels. It's something you have to delicately balance; too much inventory can lead to spoilage and wasted inventory, and too little caps your profitability potential.

While you can manually track your inventory and optimise it yourself, having inventory management software has a lot of benefits. For starters, it can track your inventory in real time, removing the need to manually count your stocks.

Furthermore, these tools can also automate activities like purchasing when a certain condition is met, like when supplies of a particular item are low, based on historic price patterns.

This keeps operations flowing smoothly and reduces the risk of needlessly spending too much on inventory and other business costs.