Major Problems faced by restaurant managers and how technology can help in resolving it

Every business has its challenges, scope of growth, and set of opportunities. The restaurant business is one of the most dynamic, high-risk businesses in the market. You can see many food joints, and restaurants around them, but only a free of them survive longer; some even last for centuries. As per one survey, around 60% of restaurants file for bankruptcy within the first year of the commencement. Only a few meet customers’ expectations in terms of ambiance, health, changes, safety, and service. Plus, the competition in the market is high and financial risk is existing anyway.

There are multiple challenges faced by every restaurant and their managers, every day in order to serve customers the best. However, these restaurants are finding solutions in technology.

Let us find out how technology can help restaurants to overcome challenges and serve with better efficiency, safety, and productivity.

To run a restaurant business is not a cakewalk. One has to manage multiple responsibilities and face multiple challenges. Let us dig deeper:

The Menu

The restaurant menu has to be in alignment with the number of dishes your kitchen can cook without compromising with service experience, attractive presentation, and diversity of orders. Plus, the menu has to be in line with the theme of the restaurant, taste suiting the digestive system of the local. This is a tricky task. Keeping the right price for each dish without comprising all the above-mentioned factors is another tricky job.

Health & Food Quality Standards

Keeping restaurant operations in compliance with health standards is one more challenge faced by restaurant managers. They are bound to maintain proper sanitary conditions, high food quality, reliable supplies of raw material, and more. This has to be every day for every item of food, spices, or any other material that enters the kitchen.

Price management

One of the vital tasks of restaurant management is maintaining a balance between menu costs and profit margins. The manager would handle the work, its allotment, employees’ salaries, along with employees’ grooming & personality development, inventory management and more to ensure standard services, least losses, and smooth operations.

Marketing

Having a popular name, and an attractive restaurant theme is not enough in today’s time. Your interactions with customers through online and offline/face-to-face mediums matters as much as your food. 

You better know the latest trends, customer feedback, their taste preferences, and more in order to serve better. Customers loved to be treated exclusively. 

Apart from marketing, sustainability and security is also a factor to work on. All these challenges and more can be dealt with skillfully and efficiently with technology solutions.

Let us see how technology can help restaurant managers in this.

Restaurant businesses are leveraging technology to handle immense footfall, workload, and challenges. 

Smart kitchen technology

Every smart restaurant would need state of the art kitchen technology. A kitchen with smart appliances, contemporary kitchen design, advanced gadgets, and more, will be more equipped to handle increasing footfall, orders, variety of food and would be able to maintain hygiene too. A smart restaurant would be able to meet customers’ demands and create a  sense of credibility in their minds. 

Imagine having an IoT powered refrigerator, that can notify the owner and the staff about the expiry date of the products, update of what is finished and what needs to be bought, a fridge that might recommend you to put a certain item in a certain compartment for better temperature.

Intelligent kitchen gadgets that can detect smoke and pollution in the atmosphere would help in ensuring better safety. 

Plus, an IoT supported kitchen will remind you of maintenance, repairs, upgrades, and more.

Customers ordering food would get an estimated duration within which they can expect the order on the table. Customers can also be notified if the dish is going to take less or more than the given estimated time.

Restaurants would know when the peak time is and time is and when more staff or food preparing stations are needed. 

AI-based menus

AI can fuel a smart restaurant menu technology.  Restaurants can create personalized menus based on the customer’s eating preferences, past orders (if applicable). 

Last year, in 2019, McDonald’s signed a $300 million deal with one AI-based company to develop a customized menu solution as per weather, past orders, and dietary preferences, and more.

Menu engineering

Menu engineering is to enable the manager to decide the food experience. By inspecting the popular items on the menu as opposed to the items that are rarely ordered, managers can decide which of the items to keep, which to modify and which to remove. Plus, sometimes, a few items will have more ‘take-away’ demand and less ‘dine-in’ demand or another way around. All of this and more will be scrutinized to balance cost and profit.

Digital inventory tracking

Any business that demands regular or often supplies of raw material or products highly depends on the timely delivery of these materials. Implementing digital inventory management software would be beneficial. Right from tracking the shelf life to automated order placement, everything can be done. Wearable technology is already making a mark in the health care sector, one can leverage it for better communication in the restaurant business too.

Operation Management Software

Operation management tools or software can help restaurant managers with task scheduling, salary management, assigning duty, tracking working hours, and more. This software makes sure that a manager focuses more on the restaurant’s relationship with customers by allowing technology to control these daily chores and maintain a high level of business productivity.

Restaurant Analytics Systems

The restaurant business, just like any other business works on customer satisfaction. A successful restaurant has regular customers that recommend their food and services to others. However, the existing competition and dynamic customer behavior push restaurants to do better and stay unique. 

Any restaurant analysis system would provide managers with all the required data that can help in streamlining staff management plans and menu selection, table settings, theme upgrades, and more.

The restaurant industry can certainly leverage technological advancements for capacity extension and meeting ever-increasing customer expectations. Adopting a new technology might demand you to train the staff and educate the customers about the usage. However, once they realize this can save their time, they will be more than happy to accept it.