What Technology Do I Need to Run My Restaurant Efficiently?

Improving efficiency in your restaurant can pay dividends. With a more efficient restaurant, your finances improve, customers are more satisfied and team members are happier.

Technology is one of the most important factors in efficient restaurant management. To get the most out of your business, you need the right technological tools.

We've rounded up nine9 critical pieces of technology you need to optimise your restaurant business. Find out how you can start running your restaurant better than ever.

9 tools to run your restaurant more efficiently

Here are nine technological tools you can rely on for more efficient restaurant operations.

1. Table management software

Table management software is one of the most significant tools you can use to improve efficiency in your restaurant. These systems provide a sleek, refined way to manage a range of operations in your business.

Here are some of the ways table management software like ResDiary can improve your restaurant management:

• Control the flow of bookings: ResDiary includes features like smart rules. With smart rules, you can set a number of conditions a reservation must meet to be accepted. Any booking requests that don't meet these rules won't be added to your diary. This automated feature makes it easy to manage your bookings.
  
  
• Accept bookings from a range of sources: With booking widgets, ResDiary enables you to take reservations through your website, email communications and more. With ResDiary’s Meta and Google integrations, you can even take bookings through social media and search results.
  
  
• Table management: ResDiary allows you to view your restaurant in a number of different ways. You can look at a floor plan view or a grid view to efficiently analyse your restaurant during service. You can also use features like segments to adjust your floor plan and number of covers during different times of year, like summer. You can then switch back to your regular diary and save segments to be used again in future.
  
  
• Integrations: If you really want to maximise efficiency in your business, you need to integrate your systems. ResDiary integrates with EPOS systems, marketing tools and customer relationship management (CRM) software. This means you get to use your booking data to get more potential out of your other systems, and can take advantage of two-way data flow.

2. EPoS systems

EPoS systems are a necessity in the restaurant industry. High-quality and reliable EPoS ensures customers can pay for their meals with a minimum of fuss. This ensures your services continue to run smoothly.

The right EPoS system for your business goes above and beyond with additional features to boost restaurant efficiency. For instance, ResDiary's integration with Access EPoS Evo allows for real-time data flow between your table management system and EPoS software.

Access EPoS Evo also goes beyond payments, allowing you to manage floor plans and table statuses. You can accept booking deposits and prepayments through the software.

ResDiary also integrates with PowerEPOS from Triniteq. In addition to enjoying the benefits of two-way flow, this integration enables you to gather important customer data like preferences and requests within customer profiles.

The right EPoS system does more than help you swiftly and accurately process transactions. It also offers a range of additional features to make your restaurant run more efficiently.

3. Restaurant analytics

Restaurant managers have plenty of ideas to improve efficiency they wish they could implement right away. But what about hidden inefficiencies in your restaurant?

To help uncover new ways to more efficiently manage your venue, you need restaurant analytics software. This tool can help your business in the following ways:

• Bottlenecks: Restaurant analytics are an excellent way to identify bottlenecks in your restaurant. Through tools like ResDiary's analytics suite, you can find bottlenecks in the front of house and back of house.
  
  
• Optimise your menu: Low-performing menu items can seriously impact efficiency in your restaurant. They take up time for your back-of-house team members without contributing to the success of your business. Restaurant analytics software helps you find these dishes and improve your menu.
  
  
• Forecasting demand: Using your booking data is a great way to plan for the future based on how busy you will be during specific services. You can forecast demand for your business even more effectively with restaurant analytics. In-depth analytics will help you discover your busiest periods and even predict which dishes will be most in-demand.

When using ResDiary's analytics suite, you'll get to draw in data from your diary as well as integrations like EPoS systems. This gives you the best opportunity to improve restaurant efficiency.

4. Digital checklist software

Embracing digital tools in your restaurant allows you to leave pen and paper systems in the past. Upgrade your pen and paper checklist with Trail.

Trail is a digital checklist software your entire team can access. Set up checklists for cleaning, fridge temperature checks, proper food handling and much more. Trail can also manage things like incident reports and equipment logs.

By transitioning to an elegant digital solution, you can take a more uniform approach to checklists in your restaurant. Your team can access checklists and other documents whenever they need them.

Leave paper chaos in the past with digital checklist software. Improve your efficiency with a digital tool to better manage everyday tasks, increase food safety and more.

5. Rostering and payroll software

Creating the right rotas is a constant challenge for restaurant managers. Having the right number of staff is important to avoid wasting money, but you also don't want to strain your team.

Software like Rotaready helps you create better rotas. By integrating Rotaready and ResDiary, you can use booking data to determine how many staff members you need for each shift. You can also track attendance and timesheets through Rotaready.

Rotaready also helps you track things like overtime, making managing your payroll easier. This is another example of digital tools enabling you to leave unwieldy paper systems in the past.

Boost your efficiency with tools like Rotaready, and supercharge them by integrating them into your table management software.

6. Mobile ordering software

One of the most time-consuming parts of managing any service is taking orders from your customers. Fortunately, there are systems that can reduce this load on your time and massively boost your efficiency.

Tools like QikServe allow customers to place orders and pay at their tables. For many customers, this is a strong preference.

In addition to meeting customer expectations, mobile ordering software allows your team to save time. Rather than dashing around collecting orders from every table, a certain segment of diners can place orders themselves through tools like Qikserve.

This allows your team to spend more time with diners who want more interactions with your team, enhancing their customer experience. It also reduces human error that can occur with the ordering and payment process.

Mobile ordering software helps you provide excellent customer service while also making your restaurant more efficient than ever.

7. Automated phone service

During a busy restaurant service, a ringing phone is often the last thing you want to hear. While this can lead to a profitable reservation, needing to repeatedly answer your phone can seriously impact restaurant efficiency.

An automated phone service resolves this issue for your business. With ResDiary's ResPhone feature, phone calls you can't take go to the service. ResPhone connects directly to your booking diary, accepting bookings if they match up with availability and smart rules.

ResPhone is a simple step to improve restaurant efficiency. Automate away this task so your team has more time to focus on what matters.

8. Customer relationship management software

Building great relationships with your customers is crucial for your restaurant. However, you obviously don't have time to individually message every one of your diners.

That's where customer relationship management (CRM) systems come in. These tools allow you to automate this critical part of running a restaurant, allowing you to operate more efficiently.

Tools like nollie use AI to maximise your ability to grow relationships with customers. Through nollie, you can segment customers based on real behaviours like visit frequency and average spend.

You can then automatically generate marketing campaigns to keep in touch with your diners. By integrating nollie with ResDiary, you also get the benefit of incorporating your booking data into your CRM software.

ResDiary also integrates with Acteol. Acteol brings your customer data, including ResDiary booking data, together into customer profiles. This allows you to truly understand your customers and how to appeal to them.

With these insights, you can create communications and promotions that appeal to them. It's a highly efficient way to maximise customer satisfaction and draw more diners to your venue.

9. Marketing tools

Everyone knows how important marketing is to a restaurant. However, this crucial operation can fall by the wayside. Most restaurant staff don't have expertise in this area, and finding the time to get this done can feel impossible.

With the right marketing tools, you can attract more customers to your venue with impressive efficiency. To achieve this, you can rely on channels like:

• Email marketing: With ResDiary's built-in email marketing features, you can automatically communicate with customers. For instance, you can trigger emails to automatically send when a customer places or booking or as a follow-up. It's a set-and-forget solution to ensure your business stays in the minds of your diners.
  
  
• SMS marketing: Another way to ensure your customers are continually thinking about your business is SMS marketing. Solutions like ResDiary's Silverstreet integration offer a highly efficient way to manage this marketing channel. With Silverstreet, you can automatically send messages based on rules and triggers you set up.
  
  
• Social media marketing: Social media marketing can be a major investment for your business in terms of time and money. To maximise the chances that social media visibility results in reservations being made, turn to ResDiary's Meta integration. It allows diners to place bookings directly through your social media profiles.

With the right tech tools at your disposal, you can take a unified approach to marketing your restaurant, resulting in maximum efficiency.

Optimise your operations with ResDiary

The right tech stack is essential for effective restaurant management. With ResDiary, you have the perfect table management system to keep service running smoothly at all times.

ResDiary is easy to use but has advanced features to manage your reservations more easily than ever. Set smart rules to control the flow of bookings, use segments to adjust your table plans and much more.

You can also rely on an array of features and integrations to enjoy wider benefits of restaurant technology. This enables you to market more effectively, build better rotas and automatically accept bookings over the phone.

Book a demo today with ResDiary today to explore how we can help optimise operations in your hospitality business.