Leveraging Technology to Optimise Your Restaurant

The global F&B industry has undergone a massive paradigm shift in recent years.  The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, with contactless ordering and payments at the forefront; Gen Z, a generation born into technology, have now grown up into adults with purchasing power; and the ongoing global manpower shortage are factors that restauranteurs today have to take into account.
As we enter the new year, and the second half of the 2020s, it is time to take a step back and recalibrate your restaurant’s operations to ensure that your restaurant is maximising its operational efficiency, and that it remains scalable and future-proof.
QSRs are also often the front-runners in the adoption and integration of technology into their operations due to their casual dining nature and size of operations.

Adopting Technology to Optimise for the Digital Generation

The COVID-19 pandemic forced both restaurants and customers to rethink traditional dining experiences. In those years, contactless menus, mobile ordering, and cashless payments became the norm. You would be hard-pressed these days to find many millennials or Gen Zs who carry cash around. You might also be surprised to learn that many Gen Xs are also extremely tech-literate and cash-averse.
Basic mobile ordering and payment is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, at Waitrr, we provide our restaurant partners with live feedback from their customers, as well as incentivise them to keep coming back for more with our built-in loyalty program. 
Mobile ordering and payments also provide a wealth of other benefits. For example, key findings from our internal research indicates that, on average, restaurants that have adopted our technology experienced a 20% increase in table turns, as well as a 25% increase in revenue per customer thanks to our cross-selling and upselling features.
Aside from customer-facing technologies, there are also many other digital technologies that can help you optimise your restaurant’s operations, from delivery apps and ghost kitchens, to automated inventory management and decentralised customer service.

Overcoming the Manpower Crunch and Scaling for Success

Approximately 30% of a restaurant’s operational costs goes towards manpower wages alone. On top of that, you could be spending thousands more on job ads, hiring, and training. With the global manpower crisis, you might fork out even more as your existing staff continuously leave for better opportunities. This is especially true for restaurants that experience seasonal ebbs and flows. 
By allowing your customers to place their own orders and make their own payments, you can easily reduce your manpower requirements by 30-50%, which would in turn reduce your hiring and training expenditure. You can also further optimise your manpower requirements by automating menial processes like inventory management, drastically reducing the number of man-hours spent on them.
With this overall decrease in reliance on manpower, you are setting your restaurant up to be easily scalable. Digitising as many operational processes as you can means that each expansion of your restaurant requires significantly less staffing and training. Setting up the technology for each new outlet would simply take a few hours, and you are good to go forever.

Increasing Your Restaurant’s Reach and Customer Base

Delivery apps and ghost kitchens are other great ways for you to ensure the success of your restaurant.
Outsourcing your delivery to a delivery app has the obvious benefit of allowing people who are too busy or lazy, or people who are slightly too far away, to still order from you. But delivery apps also have a slightly less well-known benefit of helping your restaurant be discoverable.
By placing your restaurant on a delivery app, you are essentially giving yourself free advertising by allowing people to chance upon your restaurant when they search for food options around them, or when they are looking for a specific cuisine.
Ghost kitchens are another less well-known but extremely effective way to reach customers that you would not have reached otherwise. For example, delivery apps generally have a radius around your restaurant that they will deliver to before the delivery costs become prohibitively expensive.
Employing a ghost kitchen, especially in a different part of the city or town, effectively doubles your restaurant’s potential customer base because you can now deliver to customers around the ghost kitchen’s radius. This is another great option to scale your restaurant as you are essentially opening a second outlet with significantly lower startup costs.
Alternatively, for restaurants that experience significant daily or seasonal off-peak periods, being a ghost kitchen is a great way to diversify your restaurant’s revenue stream and maximise your restaurant’s output. 

Focusing on the Important Things

No matter how optimised a restaurant is, they would have no customers if they had bad food. Similarly, shoddy dine-in service can be a dealbreaker for many customers. With the substantial reduction in overhead costs, and the increased revenue that technology can bring, you can now focus on improving the things that matter the most to your customers.
The time that you would have spent on managing your restaurant’s staffing can now be used to develop more in-depth training regimens to ensure that your chefs consistently output high-quality food, and that your floor staff provide top-notch customer service.
Across our restaurant partners, more than 97% of positive four- or five-star reviews cite good food or exceptional service as the main factor for their satisfaction with a restaurant. We also see a 95% approval rating for our ordering and payments web-app.
However, your customers are not the only stakeholders in your restaurant. Your staff also play an integral role in your restaurant’s operations and the satisfaction of your customers. Sharing a percentage of your increased savings and revenue with your staff is a great way to increase your staff’s satisfaction and loyalty, and therefore your overall staff retention, which will lead to even better outcomes for your restaurant.
If you are motivated to adopt and integrate technology into your restaurant, feel free to contact Waitrr for a free consultation and demo.