Using Kitchen Technology to Improve Efficiency in Your Restaurant

The restaurant of yesterday that was inefficient and too often relied on good luck and timing to provide good food and service is gone, replaced by one that has technology at its center and is extremely efficient as a result.

When you think about it, it is no wonder that the standards for great restaurants was so low previously. Very few very good restaurants had the ability to maintain a high level of quality and efficiency day in and day out and over an extended period of time. The best they could hope for was to do it a majority of the time and critics accommodated this reality.

Today however there are many great restaurants that can deliver the best quality service and food on a daily basis. The simple difference between twenty years ago and today is the use of kitchen technology. Here is some of the best kitchen technology in use today that will make your restaurant better.

The Kitchen is the Heart of a Restaurant

The kitchen, or back-of-house, is the center of a restaurant and where the vast majority of the activity takes place. Although it is usually out of sight from your customers, its smooth operation will directly influence the experience each customer will have at your restaurant. The kitchen is a very high traffic area with orders, demands and workers squaring off in a coordinated dance that sometimes is beautiful to behold and other times looks like an accident waiting to happen. Because there is always so much going on, the potential for a calamity to occur is very high. This is where restaurant technology software and hardware can be very helpful.

Valuable Restaurant Software

Your restaurant should use a software that coordinated the workings of the kitchen and allows the kitchen, and dining staff to get on the same page and management to have a clear oversight of what is happening every second the restaurant is open and serving customer.

Kitchen Display System

Today many restaurants still utilize paper tickets and printers. This process is slow, often inaccurate, and creates a bottleneck at your restaurant’s busiest times. To improve your kitchen’s efficiency use a Kitchen Display System, or KDS. The best KDS Systems becomes the heart for ordering in your restaurant. It allows orders rung through by a guest to be displayed on a screen for your kitchen staff, saving time and reducing mistakes. Your KDS system should integrate with you POS terminal, track food routing and provide data to you on order flow. You then have a real time coordinated order management system that will track your orders, deliver efficiency statistics, and deliver information to improve each component. The result will be improved serving time, more tables served and happier quests. More served tables means more revenue for your restaurant.

Inventory Management System

Your standing resources tell you what can happen and when in your restaurant and knowing their status greatly impacts your efficiency. An inventory management software system automates key aspects of your restaurant business allowing you to track food and beverage usage, calculate your cost of goods sold, and determine food costs on an ongoing basis. When in use restaurants can eliminate waste detect theft and lower food costs considerably.

Recipe Viewer

Accurate food prep allows for your kitchen staff to deliver great and consistent meals to guests every night. With so many different employees involved in the process, variables can be introduced making food prep inconsistent leading to meals that are not of the quality standard you demand. Recipe Viewer software standardizes food prep by creating a digital recipe book your staff can follow. This will ensure that no matter the experience or skill level of each of your staff members, food prep will always be of the highest quality. A Recipe Viewer can also be used across restaurant sites to ensure quality standards in each. Finally it will save on food waste which will impact your restaurant’s bottom line. You should aim for a recipe viewer that is high quality, interactive and easy for your staff to learn.

Let the new restaurant technology become the core part of your restaurant and you will notice improved sales and happier guests.