By Sam Molony, Contributor
Every restaurant owner or manager wants their restaurant to run efficiently. The best way to do this is by simplifying your restaurant operations. Many processes can be simplified using automation -- including inventory, payroll, food safety, ordering systems, and more.
The data gained from automated processes can provide valuable insights into how to run your restaurant better. Keep reading to discover the seven best strategies to simplify your restaurant operations and make your restaurant more efficient.
What is Restaurant Operations Management?
Restaurant operations management is the oversight of all the significant areas of the business. It encompasses everything that keeps the restaurant running efficiently, including staff schedules and inventory management.
Restaurant operations management is vital because small inefficiencies can cause significant issues down the line. For example, buying too much inventory can result in waste. Even if the surplus seems small on a day-to-day basis, it will add up over a year.
If you improve your restaurant operations management, you’ll reduce your expenses and save your staff time on repetitive or unnecessary tasks.
Here are the components of a good restaurant operations management strategy that improves efficiencies in every part of the restaurant.
1. Restaurant Shift Management & Digital Food Safety
Digital food safety means using a digital system to monitor food safety. You can use automation to improve the way you gather and monitor your food safety records.
A good digital food safety tool to use is Squadle. Squadle logs and stores data in an easy-to-read, structured way. It allows effortless search and analysis of your data in report format in real-time. If you have multiple restaurants, you can use Squadle to track data from all your restaurants in one place.
If something goes wrong, it’s easy to give real-time feedback and make adjustments. Using digital food safety systems saves time and money for your restaurant.
You can also use Squadle to help with your shift management. For example, remote temperature monitors can help avoid equipment failures. Also, you can monitor inventory to avoid waste. You can track tasks and conduct digital audits to ensure employees are performing their jobs properly and efficiently.
Automating everything done with pen and paper saves time and money. It also makes tracking easier and more reliable.
2. Ordering System Available Online
You can improve the way you interact with customers using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. A CRM system allows you to track customer data to reward loyal guests, provide relevant offers, and potentially anticipate orders.
Customer preference data also helps you tailor your menu for the guest, hopefully resulting in more and higher sales.
The customer data you can gather using CRM is detailed. It includes:
Guest details and contact information
Order details, including time of order
Order value
Order location (this only applies to restaurants with multiple locations)
Order channel (eat-in or takeout, for example)
Order frequency
The depth of analysis CRM provides means your loyalty schemes and offers will be tailored to your customer’s needs. That means they’ll provide more value for the guest.
You can use CRM to keep an eye on daily cash flow as well. CRM can help streamline and speed up the ordering process, too, reducing the risk of mistakes.
CRM also gives you valuable long-term insights into how your restaurant is performing. You can track the retention rate to see how many of your guests come back. You can also measure profitability. Tracking how your customers use their loyalty benefits and promotional offers gives you insights into how your marketing is performing, too.
All of these things will improve customer experience and help boost sales.
3. Apps for Purchasing Inventory/Supplier
If you want to streamline your inventory management, inventory apps are the solution for you. Inventory apps allow trackable reports and analytics so you can see what’s selling and what isn’t selling.
A supplier purchasing system helps maximize sales. It also helps minimize costs by allowing you to manage sales across multiple channels.
The advantage of using apps is all your information is in one place. Apps are more accessible than other methods and lead to fewer errors. If you can eliminate as many errors as possible, you’ll save resources otherwise spent alleviating the errors, saving money and time. Also, your communication is improved and the need for manual input is reduced.
4. Automated Payroll
Want to save time on wage calculations? If so, consider automating your payroll. Using a payroll app means you don’t have to manually input payroll information anymore.
Payroll apps such as Square Payroll can handle both hourly and salary-based wage structures, so it’s applicable for both floor staff and management. Payroll apps are more accurate. They make tax deductions and other processes effortless.
Also, it’s easy to access previous wage-related information when you automate your payroll.
5. Employee Scheduling Automation
Something that causes problems for many restaurants is employee scheduling. Errors and miscommunications in scheduling harm employee morale and cause staff shortages on busy shifts. You can resolve this by automating employee scheduling.
If you automate your employee scheduling using restaurant scheduling software you can ensure the schedule is accessible 24/7, and staff receives notification of their shift. Automating this process also makes changing shifts easier, as employees will be notified of changes right away.
By using an automated scheduling platform, communication regarding shifts between management and staff is effortless. Staff can easily change their shifts, which keeps the staff happy and reduces turnover. The burden of arranging shift swaps is reduced, so management has more time for more important things.
6. Make Inventory Management Easier
In an average restaurant, 10% of food is wasted. That’s preventable if you manage your inventory more efficiently. Losing just 10% of your inventory can be very costly, so this should be a priority.
To efficiently manage inventory, you need data points from various places, including your point of sale (PoS), stock levels, and vendors. The solution to tracking and managing all these quality data metrics in an integrated inventory management system.
Having an integrated system makes tracking trends easier.
You can use the information to manage your inventory better and make informed decisions on what to change.
7. Proper Staff Training
It doesn’t matter how much you simplify your restaurant operations. If your staff isn’t trained properly, you won’t see the benefits. The goal is to get all your staff on the same page to work as an efficient team. You can do this by implementing a detailed training program.
A detailed training program establishes standardized procedures and solutions to common problems. By doing this, your restaurant will run more efficiently. You will save on costs caused by mistakes. But leave some room for staff autonomy. A good restaurant experience for the customer shouldn’t feel robotic or formulaic.
You should take employee feedback into account as well. Even the best training program can overlook problems that only staff recognize by doing the job. Using employee feedback is also cost-effective to improve the customer experience because you don’t have to hire experts to suggest changes.
Bottom Line
These seven strategies will help you simplify your restaurant operations, which will increase efficiency and profit in turn. But to further increase profits, you can’t neglect engaging with your customers after they’ve left the restaurant. An excellent way to do this is by offering promotions and discounts via email, phone, and social media. For instance, you can use email software that can send out an email asking the guests who have just visited your restaurant for a review or to offer a discount for their next visit.
Using technology for digital food safety and shift management is one of the steps in this process. You can easily log, store, and analyze the data to make adjustments using digital food safety tools. Technology helps with shift management by monitoring equipment for failures and keeping an eye on inventory levels to reduce waste.
You also need to make your ordering systems available online. Apps can help with purchasing inventory/ suppliers. An automated payroll increases efficiency by reducing errors and allowing greater flexibility for both staff and management. Automating your employee scheduling also means that staff always know when they’re on shift.
Finally, use an integrated inventory management system to integrate all the inventory data points to manage your inventory more efficiently. But you need to train your staff properly as well.
Follow these seven strategies to simplify your restaurant operations. You’ll save time, reduce errors and have better insights into making improvements.
About the Author
Sam Molony is part of the marketing team at Milkshake. Sam’s goal is to inspire people to not just “hang in there” but to thrive. When Sam's not publishing or promoting new content you can find him playing sports and cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
