Tips & Tricks
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5 Nov, 2024
Discover the essential digital systems every restaurant needs to boost efficiency and grow in 2025 and beyond!
Technology continues to redefine just about every industry on the planet at an astonishing rate. Hospitality is no exception.
This guide will provide a comprehensive overview of the various technology systems you can use to make your venue more efficient and profitable - making your life easier in the process. We’ll fill you in on why adopting the right tech is crucial to each and every restaurant.
We’ll also help you discover which tools will have the biggest impact on your venue. Finally, you’ll learn how you can put them to use to get the most possible value.
In this guide:
- Why tech solutions are essential to every restaurant
- Electronic point of sale systems
- Online booking and table management systems
- Digital payments
- Marketing and customer relationship management systems
- Data and analytics software
- Employee scheduling and payroll
- Inventory management systems
- Property management systems (for hotel restaurants)
- How ResDiary can help
Download the full guide to share or read in your own time!
Why tech solutions are essential to every restaurant
Streamlined operations
With the right systems and set up, replacing analogue methods with technological alternatives always yields positive results. Streamlined operations mean you and your team get to focus on doing what you do best – providing exceptional dining experiences.
If you’re a restaurant owner, you're probably familiar with the stress of trying to serve customers with a phone ringing in the background and customers coming through the door. You might find yourself rifling through messy booking notes trying to perfect an ever-changing seating plan. In the back of your mind, you’re worrying about properly storing credit cards and other sensitive customer information. Technology systems will help you manage these situations and just about anything else that comes your restaurant's way.
That’s why 60% of venues expect their reliance on technology to increase in the future, according to our 2024 Hospitality Tech Trends Report for the UK and Ireland. Research in Australia has found that 54% of restaurants plan to increase their spending on technology and automation tools in the future. Don’t risk falling behind your technologically-advanced competitors!
Lower costs
With hospitality profit margins sitting at around 7% on average, owners and operators are always on the lookout for opportunities to lower costs. While setting up tech systems in your venue carries up-front fees, there are often generous savings and greater efficiencies to be made over time. This can come in the form of superior inventory management leading to reduced food waste, using booking data for better rotas and many other examples.
Higher customer satisfaction
With reduced human error and smoother service, it becomes easy to achieve greater customer satisfaction in your restaurant. At the end of the day, your customers want to receive great food and service first and foremost. The right systems in your venue makes this goal more achievable. You can delight your customers with quick wins like swift and convenient payment options. Your diners will also reap the benefits of general efficiency in your venue as your service standards become even higher.
Tech in hospitality by numbers
Still not totally convinced that a technological revolution is needed in your venue? Here are a few cold hard numbers to consider:
- According to our 2024 Hospitality Tech Trends Report, 95% of venue operators believe booking and reservation software is important.
- 93% of diners said they had booked online in the previous 12 months. 81% said it was easier.
- In Australia, 40% of restaurant owners with more than three locations have seen increased profits due to investing in automation.
8 essential tech systems in hospitality
To help you get a handle on the most essential technology in your venue, we’ve rounded up eight critical tech systems for any successful hospitality business. Find out why you need these systems and how you can make the most of them. This essential list applies whether you’re an independent bistro, cafe, or running a restaurant group.
1. Electronic point of sale systems
Electronic point of sale (EPOS or POS) systems are naturally essential for hospitality businesses. They enable you to accept the payments that keep your doors open and can help you improve sales.
EPOS systems have many advantages over analogue systems, which is why they have essentially replaced them. In addition to enabling businesses to manage and accept digital payments, they can help with inventory management, garner customer feedback during transaction settlement and much more. You can even use an EPOS system to help facilitate online orders.
The most important element of a great EPOS system is reliability. These systems need to be able to consistently function at their best. Otherwise, you may completely lose the ability to process sales and digital payments.
Another valuable feature of EPOS systems is POS reports. POS reports conveniently display much of the useful data EPOS systems collect throughout a service. They can help you analyse sales data, improve inventory management and track the performance of specific employees.
To get the most out of your EPOS systems, you can integrate them with other pieces of software. For instance, EPOS systems can be integrated with payment terminals. This helps to reduce human error and speeds up your ability to get through lengthy queues, as transaction details are automatically transferred from your EPOS system to the terminal.
Another valuable way to integrate your EPOS system is with your table management system. Syncing data between two of the most important systems in your venue has many benefits. For example, SumUp EPOS enables you to get an accurate view of your venue’s bookings, walk-ins and table statuses at all times thanks to two-way data sharing.
Prepayments are easily transferred between the systems and critical customer information is collected. Similar benefits are available with other ResDiary integrations such as AccessEPoS in the UK or Bepoz in Australia, making it easy to understand spend data and how frequently customers visit your venue.
Check out our full list of integrated EPOS partners and bring your essential restaurant systems together!
2. Online booking and table management systems
Combining online bookings and table management into one easy-to-use system can be a game-changer. An online booking system has enormous benefits, with 93% of diners booking online last year. It’s essential for ensuring your business is in position to attract diners and drive table bookings.
ResDiary helps to put your business in the ideal position to accept online bookings simply and effectively across multiple channels. It's easy to take bookings from your website via your own custom-built booking widget, while paying nothing in commission fees.
You can also take bookings from a range of online channels. For example, our Google integration can be used to accept bookings from Search or Maps.
According to Google search volume data, the term “restaurants near me” is searched around 10 million times each month around the globe, making this feature potentially very profitable for your venue.
ResDiary also integrates with Meta, enabling you to place booking buttons on your Facebook and Instagram profiles. You can also use ResDiary’s own discovery platform, Dish Cult.
ResDiary has plenty more premium features for accepting online bookings, including:
- Easy creation of branded communications for effective customer interactions.
- The ability to set rules which automatically control the flow of bookings in your venue.
- Owning diner data which you can put to work by personalising your customers’ experiences and creating marketing materials.
Table management systems
Your online booking system is only as good as your table management system. With ResDiary, you get to enjoy the benefits of these systems in one easy-to-use package serving multiple touch points in your venue.
A table management system can cure many of the headaches that come with operating a busy and successful hospitality venue. They can automatically assign bookings to particular tables and help to control the flow of bookings in your venue - giving you complete control for every service.
These systems also enable your team to view your bookings in a number of different ways and on different devices. In ResDiary, you can see your bookings in a simple grid view, running order or in the form of a floor plan. This means that you and your team can analyse your service in the manner most useful to them at any given time during and outside of service.
An online booking system and a table management system working in unison is the perfect combination for any hospitality venue. Manage your bookings with ease and enjoy a simple service when you integrate these tools.
3. Digital payments
Convenience is king for the modern consumer. Your diners have various ways they want to pay for your services, and it’s in your interest to accept as many payment types as possible.
Digital wallets are a feature of most modern smartphones, and this has encouraged many consumers to leave their wallets at home. In 2023, the global value of digital wallet transactions was USD$9 trillion.
As a result, it's a great idea to opt for payment processors and POS systems that enable you to accept these payment methods. This makes the purchase process more convenient for your current customers and can help to attract new ones. Another increasingly popular example of digital payments is at-table ordering with QR codes. This enables your customers to place orders without needing to interact with a waiter.
At-table QR code ordering can save time for your staff, allowing them to focus on other ways to delight customers. Many customers love the convenience of this ordering method, and it can also make your venue more accessible for diners who live with certain health conditions.
ResDiary makes it easy to accept a widely-used digital payment method: Digital vouchers. Available as part of ResDiary’s integration with Stripe, vouchers are a simple way to sell gift cards to your customers. After setting your desired voucher value you can promote your vouchers on your website, social media and other channels. You can sell physical gift cards or convenient digital vouchers.
You can also use Stripe to accept pre-payments and pre-orders. This is another opportunity to allow your customers to pay the way they want to while making service simpler for your team.
Stripe also allows you to easily accept deposits for bookings. This is a vital tool for reducing no-shows and filling more seats in your venue.
With the right systems in your venue, it's simple to stay on the cutting edge of digital payments, keeping your customers smiling as they can pay any way they wish.
4. Marketing and customer relationship management solutions
Fortunately, there are plenty of tech solutions available for attracting new customers and turning them into valuable regulars.
A solid base of regulars can be the backbone of success for any venue. These are diners who know and love your venue, meaning you don’t need to spend money to lure them in. Best of all, repeat customers spend 67% more than new ones. For these reasons, 40% of restaurant owners are making use of marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions (according to ResDiary’s 2024 Tech Trends Report).
SMS and email marketing are popular channels for a wide range of industries. These avenues can be a vital way to stay in touch and build strong relationships with your customers. ResDiary allows you to send branded emails to your customers in response to actions such as making a booking. This helps to ensure that customers remember their bookings, and allows you to build your brand in the minds of your diners. You can even take the opportunity to promote specials and upsells. With a single automated email, you can encourage an entire service’s worth of customers to try a profitable upsell when they come in.
ResDiary’s integration with Silverstreet offers another way to interact with your customers. With a simple set-up process, Silverstreet can automatically send messages to your customers in response to bookings, cancellations and more. It can also be used for one-off messages, like promoting a particular event. Another key ResDiary integration is Wireless Social. A leading guest wi-fi provider, Wireless Social collects customer emails and adds them to your database.
Want to focus on your customer communications even more deeply? ResDiary also integrates with leading CRM systems. ResDiary’s powerful integration with Acteol brings together your diner data into a single dashboard. This makes it easy to understand your customers and the marketing campaigns that will be most effective for them.
Taken together with ResDiary’s other marketing integrations, you’ll begin to know your customers inside and out. You’ll also have the tools you need to communicate with them most effectively, creating a steady stream of bookings, building diner loyalty, and empowering upsell opportunities.
5. Data and analytics software
Mathematician Clive Humby famously said that “Like oil, data is valuable. But if unrefined it cannot really be used.” To get the maximum value out of all the data your venue gathers, you need the software to help you refine it.
Every technology system worth its salt will have data to offer your business to work smarter and deliver a strong ROI. ResDiary has a range of tools by which it automatically collects diner and service data while also enabling you to effectively analyse it.
For the most effective data analysis, integrations are essential. From POS systems to marketing solutions, ResDiary is the perfect tool to sit at the centre of your tech stack when it comes to data collection and analysis. ResDiary’s analytics suite includes tools to understand your booking data, identifying trends, peak times and much more. This is massive help when getting ready for service and creating rotas.
You can use restaurant analytics in other ways, including optimising your menu by identifying low-performing dishes, forecasting future sales and reducing food waste. These tasks become even easier with the help of data from ResDiary integrations. Marketing tools like Acteol and Wireless Social help you collect and understand your customer data even further. This enables you to leverage your data to grow your venue.
When you incorporate data and analytics software into your business, you’ll find out why 85% of respondents to our Hospitality Tech Trends report describe these systems as important to their business. They give you everything you need to make informed decisions.
6. Employee scheduling and payroll
Your team is absolutely pivotal for the success of their venue. Creating the best rotas and taking care of payroll is not always a simple task, but the right technology systems can be a big help. As hospitality wages continue to grow in many parts of the world, finding ways to create optimal rotas can make a big difference to your bottom line.
Employee scheduling software such as Rotaready, a ResDiary integration partner, provides an intuitive system for creating effective rotas. It also offers valuable insights to help you create cost-effective rotas that are aligned to how busy your venue is set to be. Rotaready serves as an easy digital database where you can monitor wage spending, attendance, timeliness and timesheets. When integrated with ResDiary, it becomes simple to perfect your rotas with real-time reservation data and upcoming events.
Essential employee scheduling software makes payroll easy as you’ll have access to high-quality timesheets and overtime tracking. Dedicated payroll software can make things even simpler, offering automated payroll runs, managing pay rate changes, and more.
Employee scheduling and payroll software is made even more useful when integrated with data from ResDiary’s table management system. This helps you to manage your team and your labour costs as effectively as possible.
A small suite of employee management tools can save your business a whole lot of time and stress. It’s no surprise that staff requirements topped the list for reasons restaurants integrated technology into their venue according to our 2024 Hospitality Tech Trends Report.
7. Inventory management systems
If inventory management isn’t top of mind for your hospitality business, it should be. Food waste is a major environmental and financial issue facing hospitality venues around the globe. The average UK restaurant spends £50,000 sending food waste to landfill every year. The Australian hospitality sector wastes 1.2 million tonnes of food each year, which is 16% of Australia’s total food waste.
Do you know how much food waste your business is generating? If not, an inventory management system is the tool you need to take control. These systems are a valuable asset for reducing the amount of food wasted in your hospitality business. These systems often integrate with POS systems to automatically update inventory levels as dishes are sold.
This has plenty of in-service benefits. Your team can quickly identify when a product will become unavailable, stop taking orders for it and prevent customer disappointment. It also makes it much easier to analyse inventory levels outside of service, making it easy to place orders as required. Some inventory management systems can even automatically make orders for you.
With comprehensive inventory tracking, you can get a clear view of stocked items. You can see which dishes need to be pushed to prevent inventory from being wasted, and find ways to optimise inventory management procedures.Inventory management becomes even simpler with the help of booking data. When you know how many covers you have for any given service, your kitchen staff can plan their food ordering more efficiently.
Inventory management systems are an ideal tool for understanding and bringing down food and beverage costs in your venue. By bringing down food waste, your venue can be set on a more environmentally and financially sustainable path.
8. Property management systems
Operating a hotel or inn can be significantly more complex than other hospitality venues, especially if you have a restaurant or bar attached. If you haven’t taken advantage of a property management system, your business is destined to miss out on operating efficiently and maximising its profits.
Property management systems allow you to discard your paper records of your rooms. Get a modern, intelligent view of your hotel and its available space. Property management systems such as Guestline offer a self-service portal for your guests. Customers can conduct their own pre-arrival check-in, modify their room reservation or add extras like breakfast or parking. This streamlines operations for your team and your guests.
ResDiary integrates with Guestline and other systems including Elina, Hop and ResortSuite. With these integrations, owners and operators can see room and table reservations in one convenient system. This makes it easy for your team to book guests in for dinner, or to make necessary changes in response to customer requests and cancellations.
Integrating ResDiary with one of our PMS partners can offer many other benefits to your business, including more extensive analytics capabilities and effective promotions strategies. It’s the critical combination your business needs to prosper.
Depending on your hospitality business, a range of different tools may be necessary to take your venue to the next level. What’s important is that your business understands the systems available to you and everything that they can offer.
Worried about taking the tech plunge? We understand that hospitality owners and managers have expertise in many areas, but technology might not be one of them. That’s why ResDiary, and many other leading technology systems, are designed to be as intuitive as possible.
Consider the various systems covered in this ebook and imagine the transformative impact they could have on your venue. A tech-forward approach might be the game-changing move your venue needs to make to unlock your growth potential.
ResDiary: The centre of your tech stack
Ready to bring cutting-edge tech to your venue?
ResDiary integrates with top tech solutions to transform your restaurant’s efficiency and customer experience. Easy to use for your customers and your team, ResDiary has a range of features which make it easy to grab bookings from eager diners.
Meanwhile, ResDiary’s table management functionality is the perfect reason to replace your paper diary or open your new venue the smart way with a simple tech solution. It features a host of features to help you capture and manage table bookings automatically, while still giving you complete control over your business.
ResDiary also boasts a broad array of over 60 integrations, from EPOS systems to marketing solutions, to property management software and much more. As an online booking system and table management system, ResDiary is the perfect centrepiece that helps all your other systems click into place.
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