5 tools to get your restaurant off the ground and up and running

Your team is the backbone of your business. It's important that each and every one of them feels invested in the company and supported in their professional growth. One of the best ways to make sure that your staff feels like part of a tight-knit team is by providing excellent training.

Managing a restaurant is an exciting job, but also a stressful one. A typical day means juggling a huge range of responsibilities, lots of different personalities and even a few crises thrown into the mix. No wonder the workdays can be so long.

However, restaurant managers have some secret weapons at their disposal that they didn’t have in the past. Today’s high-tech tools for running a restaurant can put a little time back in your day, keep your stress in check and even enhance your bottom line. Technology solutions abound for just about every aspect of restaurant management. But here are some key areas where you can expect to see the best return on your investment.

1. Get a handle on your sales and costs

A point-of-sale (POS) system is the technological heart of your restaurant. If you haven’t yet invested in one, you might be experiencing problems like difficulty tracking sales, a lack of security around credit card transactions or even the inability to accept card payments at all. Choosing a POS is a huge decision for any restaurant.

You’ll find lots of options — from basic revenue management to systems with more advanced reporting features. What works for one business might not be the right choice for another.

Your final choice for a POS system should be based on the KPIs you want to track and goals you wish to achieve. With the right POS you can gain insight into which items are selling the best, which of your staff members are the top-sellers, which of your locations are outperforming others and more. With mobile POS terminals you are able to speed up transactions, split tickets and prevent errors that frustrate customers.

Get familiar with some of Planday's POS partners.

2. Streamline scheduling and improve communication

You've just finished scheduling your staff for the week ahead, only to have to redo all shifts, because someone is ill, two team members wish to swap shifts and one didn't show up... Sound familiar? 

Scheduling ahead and creating an inclusive and motivating work culture can be difficult. This is where technology can help you reduce the daily headache with schedules and improve communication with your team.

Planday helps you schedule ahead, lets you approve shift swaps and requests on the go via the mobile app and make quick changes to the schedules, while keeping your staff up to date on shift changes. Read more about Planday's smart scheduling features.

3. Make your marketing pay off

Sales reports are gloomy right now, which makes it even more important to help your restaurant stand out with smart marketing. You know it’s essential to use social networking to spread the word about events and promotions and to engage your customers. But it can be hard to find the time for the regular posting it takes to get results.

A social media management tool like Buffer or Hootsuite is the key to being more organised and consistent. Tools like these let you manage all your social media accounts from one dashboard. Have a (rare) spare moment? Schedule a week’s worth of social media posts so that you’re not worried about social media sharing when you’re in the midst of other tasks. Smart social media management helps you reach more customers in less time — and makes it easy for your already loyal customers to spread the word about you.

And here’s another way to maximise a service you might already be using: In addition to managing reservations, OpenTable can also help you produce highly targeted marketing campaigns.

4. Take the pain out of reporting and inventory management

Reports show that many restaurant owners admit they either put off taking inventory or that they don’t do a very good job of it. That hurts the bottom line. Having too much stock wastes money and facilitates theft. But when supplies are out of stock and you can’t offer certain menu items, customers get frustrated.

The right tech tools can help you manage inventory quickly and accurately. You’ll get more control over costs, deter theft and ensure that you never have to tell a customer they can’t order their favourite dish because its out of stock.

Some POS systems include inventory tracking, but there are also some tailor-made solutions to choose from. Tenzo, a Planday partner, offers a broad range of reports and integrates with the most popular POS solutions out there. Another Planday partner, Apicbase, offers restaurants and hotels with multiple locations a clear overview of their food costs, wastage and more.

5. Manage table bookings and seat your guests with ease

Few things make customers more irritated than having to mill around waiting for a table when they’re hungry. They will be more inclined to complain on Yelp. No, apps can’t make time pass faster for them, but technology can help you make the waiting experience better (and shorter) for your diners.

The Direct Capital blog includes a couple of waitlist and seating apps recommendations. Nowait and Waitlist Me aim to make pagers and cries of “Smith! Party of three! Smith” a thing of the past. Instead, you can notify customers via their phones when tables are ready. Your customers can enjoy more spontaneity in making plans and more freedom while they wait to be seated. Meanwhile, you save money on pagers, build customer loyalty and get analytics on your performance.