Ask any restaurant manager and they’ll make it clear that running a restaurant is no easy job. Long hours, staff management and customer complaints are just a part of it. Luckily, as technology advances, schedules have been streamlined, work simplified, and management activities coordinated. There’s an app for almost everything these days, and restaurants are not being left behind in the software, technology, and services available.There are many productivity apps for restaurants. But, just as you can have too many chefs in the kitchen, using too many tech tools at a time can be more confusing than helpful. To avoid these blunders, the best apps for restaurant owners can be used for more than one essential task at a time. We take a look at why restaurants need apps and some of the best technology services available to restaurants.
Why Are Productivity Apps Important?
Restaurant owners and managers are always on the go with long task lists and responsibilities. Their role, being crucial to business success, often needs help in the form of automation. In this way, productivity apps contribute to the overall health of the company. One of the main areas that productivity apps for restaurants are essential is in inventory. Though important, keeping track of inventory can be time-intensive with a high potential for error. Taking this load off the manager with a restaurant inventory app saves both time and money within the business. Your customer should be of biggest concern to your restaurant, that’s why when it comes to customer service you should pull out all the (reasonable) stops. A customer feedback app can be invaluable in the growth of your business. Taking customer reviews through an app can lead to more honest feedback because they are not put on the spot as with face to face discussions. Name any essential restaurant procedure you can think of and you’ll most likely be able to come up with numerous ways an app can improve the process.
Benefits and Advantages Of Productivity Apps
There are many reasons why apps can be useful in just about every restaurant process:
1. They Foster Collaboration
Through a restaurant task management app, restaurant staff can share updates on current projects with other team members, keep up with progress on different tasks, give feedback to their colleagues, and more.
2. Ease of Reporting
Even with regular staff meetings, some things can fall through the cracks when it comes to reporting on projects and work done in the restaurant. With reporting apps, employees can simply input whatever information is needed and go about their day.
3. Saves Time
Apps automate numerous processes that would otherwise be time-consuming in the restaurant. For example,a restaurant inventory management app contributes to faster inventory processes, quick analytics, and reduced time overall. They greatly increase time efficiency.
4. Progress Tracking
Many productivity apps for restaurants come with analytical features. This handy feature often does a better job of tracking progress, identifying trends, and finding problematic areas than a human would.
5. Enhanced Security
Using apps instead of manual platforms ensures your data is stored securely and kept away from the wrong hands. Most apps come with security features that protect the users’ information, better than any self-created system would.
6. Point of Sale Integration
If your point of sale (POS) solution has an open API, adding productivity apps to your existing solution is an easy option that’s fully integrated. Productivity apps become an instant extension of the POS, offering an even broader range of functionality. Consider leveraging your point of sale’s robust network of integration partners to enhance your system.
6 Popular Productivity Apps for Restaurants
A good app is not only useful, it’s also easy to use and integrates well with other tools. We’ve rounded up a list of some of the best apps available to help restaurant owners and managers.
If you’re going to choose a single restaurant app, you’d be hard to find a more efficient choice than the app behind our restaurant POS system. Revel Systems provides you an all-in-one package for managing the most important aspects of your business. Increase efficiency with mobile order takers, build out a robust loyalty program that keeps diners coming back for more, get granular with ingredient-level inventory management and keep track of the whole picture with comprehensive reporting tools.Other features include:
Food delivery management
Customer display system
Customer relationship management
Gift cards
Self-service kiosks
Online ordering
Contact us today for a free demo of the most powerful restaurant productivity app.
Every manager’s hectic schedule can be dramatically simplified with 7 Shifts. This handy restaurant management app not only does the shift scheduling for you, it goes a level above by using data and analytics to fully optimize it. All one needs to do is feed restaurant shift information and available staff into the app and it will create the most efficient schedule within minutes. This efficiency saves on labor costs and streamlines worker communication.
Food delivery has become big business with the advent of food delivery apps, but as much as every restaurant would like to take advantage of online ordering, they often limit themselves to a few apps at a time. This is the niche that Chowly spotted. This restaurant order management app combines all your third-party online ordering platforms like GrubHub, UberEats, DoorDash, and others with your POS System so your customers get a seamless ordering experience. A big advantage of this syncing of orders is that it highlights the restaurant’s capacity to deliver so that you never have to deal with excess orders.
Como is a favorite amongst businesses that invest heavily in the loyalty space. By creating personalized experiences for customers, operators in turn grow visits and drive spend. In fact, Como has helped boost customer visits and spend by 40% by integrating their technology into various points of sales. Actionable business intelligence, automated campaigns, personalized loyalty programs, and mobile app and integrated ordering are just some of the robust features offered by Como’s various product lines. Como helps deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience across multiple touchpoints, including your website, app, email, and your POS. Loyalty integrations like Como help ensure you’re sending the right message to the right consumers at the right time, driving ROI and incremental spend.
Yellow Dog’s inventory software provides enhanced inventory management for both retail and restaurant operations. With Yellow Dog’s inventory system, users can add and/or update items in the Revel POS and process sales in real-time. While native inventory management tools within a POS are critical solutions for operators, having access to additional inventory management capabilities is an important extension for businesses that operate on thin margins.
New restaurant owners will especially benefit from this app which calculates the edible costs, food costs, portion costs, plate costs, and menu costs of a restaurant. This easy to use restaurant recipe app also allows you to create unlimited recipes with an ingredients inventory that you can use in future recipes. It also provides benchmark costs for meals, which means you can gauge what your competitors are charging for the same meal. As a restaurateur you’re in good hands with any of the above apps. They are tried and tested by many other business owners like you and can help you run a better, more efficient business. Our iPad POS system works well with most restaurant apps to streamline business operations even more. From refining kitchen operations to online ordering, talk to us to find out how we can help your restaurant grow!
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