Restaurant management is an all-encompassing task. Anyone in hospitality knows the score; it feels like you’ve constantly got fingers in every pie. From minimizing food waste through inventory and stock control to payroll management, running restaurants is stressful. That’s why restaurant management software can help.
Outsourcing some of the tasks can streamline your entire business approach. It automates the parts that can function through automation, allowing you to spend more time on demanding manual responsibilities. Think of management software as a tool to lighten your burden as a restaurant owner or manager.
In this guide, we’ll show you how the right software can facilitate better restaurant running. Get ready for definitions, benefits, and a breakdown of the critical features of restaurant-specific management software. In as little as five minutes, you’ll have all the details you need to move forward.
Ready? Let’s go. Here’s how to optimize your restaurant management by investing in software!
What Is Restaurant Management Software?
Restaurant management software is a special technology that helps food businesses better manage their operations. You typically opt-in on a monthly subscription basis, paying a fee between $40 and $70.
When you put this in parallel with a restaurant manager’s salary, it’s really a no-brainer. This handy strategic investment can be a real game-transformer for restaurants.
It’s a bit of an umbrella term, though. Each software could offer different features. For instance, one might include menu management, while another might provide restaurant inventory management.
Restaurant management platforms are versatile, so as a business owner, checking the included features before choosing software is vital.
As a general rule, these are a few of the automation you can find in restaurant software:
- Reservation management
- Payment processing
- Stock reordering
- Inventory analysis
- Staffing rotas
- Reputation management and analysis
- Seamless integration with social media analysis and platforms
- Table management
As you can see, good software that ticks off lots of these features would be worth its weight in gold.
You can find management software across all industries, but that speciality is something to appreciate too. It helps to have specialized software within your niche.
5 Benefits of Using Software to Manage Restaurants
There are so many reasons to invest in software to manage your restaurant. Honestly, if you aren’t doing so already, you’re doing yourself a massive disservice.
Marketing plans for restaurants in the 21st century tend to incorporate some form or another of software. The trickiest part is knowing which one or type to choose. Management software is one of the most comprehensive options (which is actually a sneak peek into its leading benefits).
Without further ado, these are the five top benefits of using restaurant management software.
1. Saves Time
This is a big one. By using management software, you drastically reduce the amount of time you need to dedicate towards menial tasks. Because of this, it causes a torrent of other benefits, including cost reduction, which we’ll cover in a second. At the very least, it reduces the chance of burnout.
Time is so precious, and when running a business, it can feel like it’s running short. The ability to give yourself more minutes in the day is easily a leading benefit of investment in management software.
2. Reduces Costs
By reducing the time you need to invest in management tasks, it reduces the costs you incur. For instance, you don’t need to pay a manager $30 an hour to complete payroll or handle phone reservations.
Software with a wide range of features dramatically lessens your cost burden by decreasing the necessary paid staffing hours. It’s a win-win. You get less work and more money to reinvest in your business in savvier ways.
3. Improves Customer Experience
Why, you might wonder, would management software improve customer experience? Well, freeing up human management and outsourcing the menial automation tasks allows more focus on customers.
This means managers can be more proactive in resolving queries and curating a perfect dining experience for guests.
If you’re wondering how to improve your restaurant’s customer experience, chances are you just need to free up staff. Staff members can do a lot more when they have time on their side.
4. Removes Human Error Risk
The best restaurant inventory management software promotes accuracy and attention to detail. Whether it displays floor plans or dissects the efficiency of food costs, you know it’s free of error. And that’s one huge benefit of using technology over people—less room for human error.
While monitoring your business, it’s also way less likely to miss the signs of brewing patterns. It’s a great way to avoid missing red flags and warning signs.
5. Enhances Collaboration
When a human manager works alone, their thoughts and progress become quite inaccessible for other staff members. When you use management software, the platform is much more accessible. This is great for enhancing collaboration and performance awareness amongst employees.
If you run a restaurant chain, this becomes even more important. It’s so useful to be able to communicate despite differing locations and access the same data instantly. Whether one branch manager has a laptop and the others have mobile devices, everything is accessible. This flexibility is a godsend.
The Role of Restaurant Table Management Software
Now you know the general benefits, what about the role of specific features, like restaurant table management software? First things first, table management is the process of allocating seats to customers based on availability.
It can require a lot of juggling. And if you’ve got people booking in online and via the phone, plus receiving walk-ins, it’s tricky to balance. You’ve got to be accurate in your estimates of time slots, too. Otherwise, you end up with unhappy waiting customers.
If you find software with table-managing features, it automates and monitors this process for you. This means there’s less chance of you accidentally overbooking and no expectation of doing rapid time slot calculations for walk-ins.
Improving Profits With Restaurant Stock Management Software
Another great feature to be aware of is restaurant stock management software. Stock control is everything, especially in the restaurant industry when working with perishables. With the right assistance and automation, you can improve profits by limiting waste.
The software monitors your average use of items and prompts you when you need to reorder. Some software even allows you to automate reordering.
Do You Need Restaurant Inventory Management Software?
Yes, most people need inventory software. To understand why, you’ve got to know the slight difference between stock and inventory. You probably won’t need stock software, but help tracking your inventory is really useful.
Stock is the finished product, while inventory is the finished product plus all your ingredients. As a restaurant manager or owner, keeping track of every ingredient is exhausting. Many of those responsible for inventory management are also not chefs or trained in cooking.
Because of this, we’d recommend restaurant inventory management software for every business, even if you don’t need stock management. It just simplifies things.
FAQ
Where are you rushing off to? It’s time to consolidate all you’ve just learned about restaurant management software. It’s a complex topic, so let’s ensure you have everything you need.
What is restaurant management software?
It is a type of software technology that allows restaurants to manage various operations. Restaurant owners typically purchase monthly subscriptions to access the software, usually ranging upwards of $40 per billing period.
The actual features vary on a software-by-software basis. However, they generally include table, reservation, and staffing management features.
How many restaurants use inventory management software?
Most restaurants of any substantial scale use inventory management software, especially chains. Inventory management varies drastically from stock control, even though there’s only a small variation in their definitions.
Stock is just the finished product (e.g., bottles of lemonade), while inventory is all the products and ingredients. Because inventory includes more items to monitor, investing in management software for this task is more common.
How often should you manage restaurant software?
It’s wise to check in with your restaurant software on a daily basis. Just because it’s a management solution doesn’t mean you should allow it to run totally unsupervised.
Set it up to send notifications (like requests to reorder stock) and check in with its analytics each day. This approach also reduces the likelihood of overlooking a computer error.
Beambox: WiFi for Restaurants
Now that you have learned about how to make your most dreaded management tasks passive, what else can you do?
Did you know you could also find a passive solution for your restaurant’s WiFi? Setting up guest WiFi for restaurants is non-negotiable. However, there’s a way to transform this expectation into a funnel for collecting marketing details.
The answer lies with captive portal systems. A captive portal is a pop-up webpage that triggers guests when they click to join your WiFi network. The page contains a form that business owners can customize to request the details of their choice. How convenient, right?
Once guests comply, they get full internet access, and of course, you get those valuable details. It’s a win-win.
At Beambox, we offer an elite all-in-one WiFi marketing platform that can offer you just that.
Now you’ve got your restaurant management software, start your Beambox free trial today so you can focus on marketing!
