You put your heart and soul into your restaurant and are constantly looking for ways to help you become better, more competitive and more profitable. It is a great challenge causing your focus to vacillate every day between keeping your great staff, fighting off the competition, and satisfying finicky customers. One thing is clear is that you need to do all you can to keep ahead of the game and this today means adopting the best restaurant technology available.
The great news is that there is great restaurant technology that can assist you to help you improve efficiency and your bottom line. Here are the most important types of restaurant technology tools available today to make your restaurant it’s most efficient and productive.
Point of Sale Terminal
A point of sale terminal or POS is where customer’s orders are input. It consists of a terminal and software that coordinates to provide improved service over a standard cash register. On the front end, it is faster and can provide a more detailed receipt that a cash register. On the back end it is a powerful computer that can track sales, track employee performance, and do most of your business accounting. Best of all, it can be handled through a smart phone or tablet computer.
Guest Management System
The need for a sophisticated restaurant waitlist and reservation software has never been higher in the restaurant industry and guest management software answers the call. This front of the house solution coordinates all elements of your guests experience with you. It will create and track guest and waiting lists, provide accurate wait times for guests through a consumer app, and give you analytic and other important data to help you improve food buying, staffing and the use of key restaurant resources. You can also use the system to get additional key data on your guests allowing you to provide a better dining experience for them and to offer specials to them online.
Kitchen Display System
In the back of the house of each restaurant is its most busy area, the kitchen. Here is where the font and the back area staff meet to provide your foods and beverages to guests. This area of the restaurant can be chaotic when things get busy and often this chaos leads to slow food service, inaccurate food orders and even injuries. Having a central piece of software to coordinate the activates in the kitchen can save a restaurant lots of money and help them to give their guest a better dining experience. A Kitchen Display System (KDS) is a software and hardware ordering system that replaces paper tickets and kitchen printers. When a server rings an order through POS device, it displays on the KDS in the kitchen. It can then be viewed by the kitchen staff and the order is filled. This however is only the beginning of the benefits of this powerful system. It can also mange food routing, recipe storage and every other piece of key kitchen data. By automating and tracking the entire process, a KDS will organize your kitchen, improve efficiency, reduce ticket times, and raise the quality of the food you serve.
Inventory Management
Knowing what food you have on hand means never having a customer make an order that cannot be filled. This is the importance of an inventory management system. This powerful software fully integrates with other technology in your restaurant including your POS and KDS to manage your inventory. An inventory management system will help you plan your menu accurately, track food usage, accurately calculate food costs and cost of goods sold, and control waste and theft.
Use these amazing kitchen technology tools to improve your restaruant’s bottom line and your customer’s satisfaction