Restaurant Management Software For Your Business

Despite the challenges that the pandemic has brought global businesses and the economy, people are still willing to take the risk of putting up their businesses. Business leaders are always on the lookout for business improvements that they can apply to their companies.

If there’s anything that business leaders learned from the pandemic, it is the value of innovation through automation. With high-quality food, excellent service, and innovative software, your restaurant can experience growth.

Why Should You Use a Restaurant Management Software for Your Business

The restaurant management tool market has snowballed over the years. It’s forecasted that it could hit $6.94 billion by 2025. The reason it’s so popular is because of the many benefits of a restaurant management system. Monitoring sales, payment transactions, inventory, and employee attendance are just some of the many restaurant management software features that you can use to run and manage your restaurant. 

The purpose of these management tools is to improve the overall restaurant experience both for the employee and the customer. The scope of the restaurant management system includes the following parts of restaurant operations: 

  • Employee management — Including payroll, shift management, and many others. 
  • Sales and analytics — To report daily sales performances. Some restaurant management software even has deeper insights, such as top traffic during the week, top-selling items, and so on.
  • Payment gateways — To receive digital payments
  • Reservation systems — For guests who want to book their tables ahead of time. Some systems even publish these reservation systems online so guests can simply choose their best times when available. 
  • Customer feedback system — To get important insights from customers on how they perceive service, food, and so on.
  • Inventory management — To track food ingredients and raw materials and ensure that the restaurant has everything it needs to deliver a full menu. Shops can even set automatic reminders for when certain inventory items reach a critical volume. 

Restaurant management systems bring about all kinds of benefits to a small business. Here are just some of the most common. 

Better employee experience

With more systematic ways to handle employee activities, the employee experience significantly improves. Employee shifts are easier handled and restaurant staff can switch shifts or take leaves with more ease because there’s a system to handle everything. No more waiting for days for the manager to approve one’s leave.

Better customer experience

The end-user should be the top priority of any thriving food business. When customers are happy, businesses will thrive. That’s why investing in restaurant management software is so crucial—it helps improve customer experiences by streamlining operations and ensuring efficiency. For example, in a fine-dining restaurant in London (or elsewhere), such software can assist with inventory management to ensure all menu items are available, reducing the chances of disappointing a guest looking forward to a specific dish. Similarly, it can optimize reservation systems to minimize wait times, and enhance communication between kitchen and front-of-house staff to ensure flawless service. By addressing these critical areas, restaurants can consistently exceed customer expectations and create memorable dining experiences.

Improved sales

By improving customer experience, it’s more likely that sales will improve. A restaurant is a business, at the end of the day, and profits play a crucial role in making sure businesses stay open. Amidst COVID-19 protocols, some restaurant management software also started to launch delivery management systems to adapt to the new normal. 

Restaurant management systems can help with better monitoring, improving employee engagement, and expanding customer service. However, the scope of the management tool is not limited to these only. They are flexible enough to meet the specific needs of your restaurant. 

Top Restaurant Management Software for Your Business

So what restaurant management systems should you check out? Here are some of the most popular restaurant management software today.

Toast POS

Toast POS is a restaurant management software based on cloud technology and can be conveniently used via tablet. This restaurant management platform improves your restaurant by providing you with a more efficient way of monitoring your POS transactions in real time and at all times.

It improves customer experience through its feature called “pay at the table.” This allows the printing of receipts or emailing them and receiving tips for servers directly from the tablets. It also provides the information you need to monitor your menu sales and analyze which product combination receives the highest orders. 

When I Work

When I Work is a restaurant management platform that allows restaurants to reach higher employee productivity, engagement, and efficiency levels. This platform does this by organizing staff scheduling, providing better staff communication, improving accountability during shifts, and especially conserving time and resources. In addition, its restaurant software features allow you to navigate through staffing issues by simplifying the process. 

Another one of its software features is that it can give you very detailed information about your expenses and resources. So, for example, you can easily project overtime hours and their compensation.

Cake

CAKE is a guest management system designed to deliver quality and effective service to restaurants. Cake can do several tasks to help you run your restaurant and deliver high-quality customer service. Moreover, it can organize all the restaurant operations and help increase profit generation.  

One of the benefits of this system is taking care of repeat customers. CAKE can help restaurants provide the highest possible resto experience. It can manage reservations and waitlists, but its most outstanding feature is analyzing how much time customers would have to wait to get a table. Doing this would increase customer show-ups and encourage second-time visits.

ShopKeep

ShopKeep by Lightspeed is a restaurant management system with impressive features that include inventory management, invoicing, and processing of payments. Shopkeep takes pride in its design built by merchants for merchants, which means that it has all the details that every restaurant owner would need to deliver excellent customer service. 

On top of offering a system that manages processes and resources, ShopeKeep also offers employee management tools that can help you better manage your staff by recording employee hours and tracking their productivity. ShopKeep can also minimize processing fees by integrating payment methods that allow you to receive all kinds of payment types whether cash, credit, debit, or touch-free payments.

Clover

Clover is a restaurant management software that allows owners to manage their business on different devices while still having a user-friendly feature. It can facilitate effective payment options for better customer transactions and a higher level of security for the customers’ data. 

This software helps you process payments via credit card and chips without using terminals, barcode scanners, and cash registers while maintaining the security of the customer’s information. Their restaurant management software features include making promotions, printing orders, applying for loyalty programs, and revising menus. 

These are only some of the many others available in the market today. To get a full breakdown of more options, visit this list of restaurant management software tools that will provide all the benefits and advantages discussed in this article. 

Digital Tools for Business Growth

Food and beverage are slowly on the rise once more. In 2021, the US food and beverage industry shot up to $789 billion from $659 billion in 2020. As the economy improves, restaurant owners should take the chance to use tools to automate their processes and generate more sales. Using a restaurant management system helps ensure that a restaurant is a well-oiled machine that produces quality food and brings excellent service, which will directly affect the business’ bottom line.

Photo of the Remarkables mountain range in Queenstown, New Zealand.

Source : Chetu