By Noah Rue, Contributor
Restaurants, like most industries today, are quickly incorporating technologies to help them become more efficient, improve the guest experience, and ultimately become more successful. As we move into a new decade, it is becoming apparent that restaurant technologies are going to change the way business is done. And while this might seem like a daunting ordeal, it should excite operators!
Here are a few ways that tech is making a big difference in restaurants’ day-to-day operations.
Inventory & Supply Chain Management
Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of successfully running a restaurant is managing the supply chain and inventory so you never run out of important ingredients but are also never so overstocked that you’re wasting food. Beyond that, many in-the-know guests not only want to be assured that their food is fresh, they also want to understand the food’s journey to get to their plates. Fortunately, new supply chain technologies can ensure clean, safe food with a great story and can easily track inventory to alert you when certain supplies are running low.
Some companies have even incorporated new technologies to gain a better understanding of how much and what type of food is getting wasted. The tech is essentially a large scale that calculates the quantity of food that is going to the landfill and compost piles. This information can be used to help budget the quantity of food that needs to be made on a given day and if there are points in any process where changes can be made that will both reduce waste and save restaurants money.
Supply chain management is an important aspect of calculating and understanding the cash flow of a restaurant. Cash flow is the difference in cash at the beginning of a period versus the available cash at the end. It seems relatively simple, but there are a lot of moving parts that go into it and it is an incredibly valuable metric for understanding the needs of your restaurant going forward.
Cloud Financing
Restaurants, just like nearly every other business it seems, are working diligently to start moving finances to a move cloud-based system. Doing so makes information more secure and easy to access by every important player. Restaurant specific financial software allows for online bookkeeping and payroll services as well as posting daily revenues, price changes in ingredients, and inventory management.
All of this can come together to keep you more organized and focused on your goals. If you aren’t the sole bookkeeper for the business, it can also help everyone else stay organized as different parts of the job are done by different people at different times. This can work to save a great deal of money and keep your staff happier.
In addition, it can actually keep a lot of balls in the air and moving forward smoothly during tax season — many accountants are adapting to the cloud and using it to become more efficient with their work too. In fact, this is a major aspect of the future of business taxation technologies that are likely to take center stage over the coming years, such as robotic process automation.
Tech & the Guest Experience
Some of the most exciting technologies, at least for guests, are those that can be directly interacted with. Many new advances are bringing these ideas to the forefront of restaurant operations and management. Depending upon the restaurant, customers can now order using a touchscreen kiosk, pay from their table, customize orders without speaking to staff, or order food-to-go on their phones.
Fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s are installing touchscreen kiosks to order food in many of their establishments. The tech is helping speed up the order-to-meal turnaround and increases the accuracy of outcomes. Guests can directly order what they want, ask for any special changes, and pay without even talking to a cashier.
As ordering apps abound, the restaurant model is likely to continue to change even more. Many customers love the idea of being able to order food without really having to speak to anyone at all. They can run through the motions on their phone, pay with a card, and kick back to wait until their food arrives. The convenience, for many, is too much to pass up.
All of these impressive tech investments are making waves in the restaurant industry and changing the way that everyone does business. For guests, the most exciting changes are those that impact their experience. But for many managers, some of the biggest and most impressive changes are those that allow for more effective supply chain management, inventory, and accounting organization.
About the Author:
Noah Rue is a journalist and a digital nomad, fascinated with the intersection between global health, personal wellness, and modern technology. When he isn't searching out his next great opportunity, Noah likes to shut off his devices, head to the mountains and read novels based in the American Southwest.