Customer Experience
The Restaurant Tech You Need to Tackle Busy Seasons
Katie McCann
Does the busy season have you feeling swamped? If it does, it may be time to invest in the right restaurant tech.
Busy seasons are a welcome time of the year: With more guests, comes more revenue and profits. But, these periods aren’t without their problems.
You have to contend with a multitude of challenges. You have to make sure you have enough staff on shift to cope with an influx of guests. You also need to make sure every one of these guests is still getting VIP treatment, despite the craziness.
On top of that, you have to:
And that’s only the half of it.
We don’t need to tell you it’s challenging to maintain your sanity during these periods – you already know that. What we can tell you is how to better cope in these times. The solution?
Invest in the right restaurant tech.
The right restaurant tech will assist in handling all the challenging scenarios associated with those busier periods.
It will also help you save time on all those general restaurant tasks you have to do regardless of the season, like analyzing reports and creating work schedules. The time-savings lighten your load and make running a restaurant during busy times just a little more manageable.
Read on to learn about four restaurant technologies you can use to overcome the challenges of the busy season and ensure your operation runs like clockwork.
A POS system is your restaurant’s central transactional hub. Unlike traditional cash registers that record transactions and rely on staff taking orders via pen and paper, a modern POS can do so much more, including:
A modern POS is particularly useful during peak periods because it:
But, perhaps, the real strength of a modern POS sits in the data it provides you to handle the peak periods. You can access labor reports in your POS to make better scheduling decisions and save money.
These labor reports will help you:
Scheduling software is the technology you need to prevent either of these scenarios from happening.
Unlike more traditional scheduling methods (think pen and paper or spreadsheets), scheduling software automates and digitizes the entire scheduling process so you can make smart scheduling decisions with ease.
Creating and managing schedules can be challenging at the best of times. It’s even more difficult in busy seasons.
Both over and under scheduling can be a problem. If you don’t schedule enough people, the team on the floor will find themselves stretched thin, making it hard to deliver a great experience. If you overbook, you’ll be burning money as your team struggles to keep themselves busy. Trying to find the right balance can be majorly time-consuming.
And not only do you have to find the perfect number of staff to have on the floor, you also have to schedule around the influx of time-off requests that naturally are more common around the busier times of year.
The right scheduling software helps address these two core problems. Firstly, you spend less time creating your schedules. Simply use an auto-scheduling feature or re-use a scheduling template. For example, a tool like 7shifts lets you create schedules in less than 30 min.
Secondly, managing schedules is no longer a time-suck because you don’t spend time flipping between spreadsheets. Instead, you can:
This technology can be especially powerful when you find a solution that integrates seamlessly with your POS.
All of these benefits help you make swift and smart decisions when you’re busy! Staff scheduling software lets you track hours worked, wages, tips, and performance – keeping you in control of staff and labor costs, no matter how busy things get.
Self-ordering kiosks are terminals that let customers place orders without a server present. Orders are automatically pushed from the kiosk through to the kitchen.
Besides offering basic ordering functionality, these kiosks also act as a silent salesman. They give diners opportunity to spot items they may not normally see and they upsell with automatic add-ons.
By using these kiosks during peak periods, you:
A word of caution: Because these kiosks can increase order volume, they may put unwanted strain on the kitchen staff. So, make sure you plan ahead and think carefully before investing in kiosks.
Restaurant reservation software is a tool you use to manage table bookings. The software helps you accept new bookings, store guest data, send automated text reminders to guests, and provide you with reports and data to make informed decisions.
Tracking bookings, controlling your waitlist, and even managing diner preferences – these are just a few of the many tasks you need to handle with restaurant reservations.
It seems straightforward enough, right?
Well, if you’ve ever tried to manage reservations when you’re busy, you know how tricky it can be – especially if you rely on handwritten notes and spreadsheets. It becomes easy to mix up bookings, forget to remind guests about reservations, and even write down information wrong.
The right restaurant reservation software helps you organize the chaos, ensure everyone gets a seat, and boost profits. Here’s how:
Running a restaurant during the busy season can be a nightmare as new challenges arise.
But it doesn’t have to be. You just need to us the right restaurant tech: a modern POS, employee scheduling software, self-ordering kiosks, and restaurant reservation software. Upgrade your tech and you’ll be more equipped to tackle the problems that come with the busy periods!
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