How to Improve Restaurant Business Operations?

Previously, restaurants were the weekend spot or places we used to go to celebrate our good times. Now, restaurants have become an integral part of our life! You can't imagine a fun weekend or vacation time without them. You need tasty food, or a sweet dish, or some cold & hot beverages; get it from any restaurant around you, or order online to keep enjoying your time!

With increasing population and advanced technological integration, restaurants have evolved as a multi-billion dollar industry and more client-centric than any other. The food ordering of your choice is now on your fingertips. You can place an order from a mobile app, website, or by a call, and have your meal with your loved ones at your place, and have your precious time saved!

Similarly, restaurant owners are spending huge funds on restaurant theme, renovation, branding, promotion, and re-building to enhance their customers' experience and brand awareness. Under the same trends, the food & beverage industry is going to be the next big thing after the IT; because they serve one of the basic needs of life- food!

And, if you want to keep your restaurant on the growth path, you must optimize and channelize your all business operations, or you might lose your customer and thus the business. Remember, your competitors are already in the queue to grab your market share! So, don't give them any chance of snatching your business!

Well, this is the most critical question that needs to addressed for restaurant business managers or owners, because you can't run your restaurant randomly or in chaos or with poor operations!

A restaurant comprises multiple business operations at every step, like inventory purchase and its entire management. It starts with a vendor identification followed by the type of restaurant you run. For example, if you have a vegetarian restaurant, you'd need green vegetables, pulses, wheat, and other items to cook a dish accordingly. And, so the different types.

Then it comes to ingredient finalization and their utilization in an appropriate proportion! If you use two onions instead of one- you might change the taste of food and so for the customers. 

The third step comes to cooking food. It has to be done by the professional chefs or staff because the final output defines the training given to staff & the team. It can make a difference in taste, food cost, and inventory management. Please note, well-trained staff always result in more productivity than untrained!

Once the food is ready and prepared to go to the customer table, you might like to suggest some beverages or sweet items or anything which makes their taste better. Here, cross and up-selling sales skills matter.

Then, it comes to billing, payment, feedback, and finally the waste management.

These steps need to be managed professionally through some standard operations and procedures to avoid any rush or kitchen chaos; else you'll leave your customers with bitter experience. Such experience reduces client retention rate; irrespective of your numbers of orders in a day!

So, why is there a need to manage and improve your restaurant business operation?- Because as seen above, you need to maintain at every step, and if you already have predefined procedures, you need to improve & optimize them. You can then definitely expect something right out of your restaurant business, else not!

Now consider a restaurant with amazingly tasty food- but they have all the time chaos in the kitchen, order processing, food serving, billing, feedback, and waste management! Can you imagine yourself in that restaurant eating food or enjoying a beverage with your family? The expected answer would be "certainly not". Well, if you can't imagine yourself, just think of others who come to your restaurant and see the same chaos caused by poor restaurant operations! 

Do you think your customers will come next time to see this circus and clap for you? Have a thought on it.

The next question comes- what are the Benefits of Improving Restaurant Business operations? 

Well, you can still run your restaurant without improving your processes & services! But, surprisingly, with just minor improvement in one activity, you can shift your overall restaurant performance many folds.

For example, consider vendor selection and purchasing of inventory. If you have a wrong vendor on your list, you might have dull food-raw material, which will expire soon, hence increasing your cost. And, when cooked, it will be bitter! Similarly, if the inventory management is weak, you'll notice a considerable stock pilled up of the garbage & perished material.

Both the ways above, you are in lose and burning your hard-earned money. But, if you improve your restaurant business operation, inventory management, or vendor selection a bit more; you can utilize the same inventory to its maximum possible days, and keep the food taste unchanged and maintain quality as well as hygiene.

Similarly, if you manage your ingredients appropriately- you can avoid unnecessary consumption of the raw material, and save considerable funds (when calculated for hundreds or more orders).

Talking about staff training and their management, you need to make sure only your well-trained staff cooks food and tarins the rest of the team. This way, you will be relaxed that none of your raw material is consumed more than required, or wasted! All the operations related to training requires keen attention to avoid any wrong information input- because only your staff and chefs are on ground zero to represent your brand!

1. You can minimize overall expenses and decrease the operational cost, significantly!

2. Increase the restaurant performance, and thus the profit

3. Increase productivity with the same staff

4. More time on the clock. Each optimized operational procedure helps you to save time and utilize it for betterment!

5. Enhance customer satisfaction and retention

6. Maintain the same traditional taste of your restaurants

7. Reduce waste generation, and 

8. And avail many more benefits of operations-optimization!

There are many ways you can avoid operational chaos. Improved business operations can increase restaurant performance as shared here;

1. Optimize your vendor selection process. Make sure you sincerely choose only those vendors who have fresh raw stuff (and offer you a discount. Well, this is optional, but if you can get it, it will be add-on!). Try to save at this stage as much as possible and this small saving, done daily, will be some thousands very soon. Here is a tip! Offer your vendors some discount coupons for your restaurant to make sure a better bonding, for always fresh & affordable material from them. Plus you add a new name in your customer list!

2. Manage your inventory in the best possible. Try to utilize the perishable material first, or those with expiry seems close. Don't try to stock too much or too expensive raw material. Remember, the market is always there for you. You can go out and purchase inventory as per the need. So, avoid overstocking. Inventory management is considered one of the required elements of any restaurant business operations as this governs both; expenses and profit!

3. Train your staff, and thus they will take care of your restaurant. Make sure you impart proper training to your team about cooking, ingredients selection, food serving and cross-sell or up-sell strategy & tactics.

4. Billing and food ordering operations should be optimized, as well. Your staff member should be able to cross-sell and up-sell while creating the main menu or give a new dish as complementary to your regular customers. It will bring a smile on their face and let them feel unique about themselves! Caring for your customers is also very important!

5. Leverage digital media. You can hire a dedicated digital marketing agency or partner with digital experts to take care & boost your digital presence. You can run offers, discount coupons and attract a new set of customers. Hiring a consultant helps you better focus on your core operations and improve them while taking care of your digital presence.

6. Have essential tools for your team. A battle without armors is worthless to fight because you'll lose anyhow! Similarly, if you don't have the necessary tools for your chef and restaurant management staff- they will not be sufficient enough to work at their maximum possible capacity. Hence, you'll notice reduced performance.

7. Always have food costs and waste produced chart ready. Before serving any food, you can calculate food costs at your end and add margins to avoid market fluctuations. It will help you cover the ups and downs of the market and help you keep your serving price the same! It makes customers happy because when the market hikes their food price; you are still serving food at the same price! Is it not good? Similarly, you can get an initial idea of waste produced corresponding to a dish, and try to minimize it, if possible. When waste management is done on such a tiny level, the overall impact on your restaurant operations will be unmatched! You will generate less waste generated and thus utilize your inventory better.

Automation is the key to the improved performance of many industries. The majority of the manual tasks now shifted to either a machine or an efficient software or a tool.

The restaurant business is also not untouched by it! You can see hotels, restaurants, and food & beverage outlets using automation in the vendor section, inventory management, ingredient finalization, cooking and even in the serving as well. Also, automation is redefining waste management in restaurants, unlike before!

Automation has redefined restaurant operations to the next level and made them much easy, unlike you were doing before, old-fashioned. It takes care of your order processing, billing, taxation, inventory & stock management, table booking, avoid kitchen chaos, and maximizes staff efficiency.

Restro Sense, from Sixth Sense IT Solutions, is the next-generation Artificial Intelligence powered, cloud-based, restaurant management system. This tool is one of the best examples of restaurant automation. With Restro Senses, you can not only manage all the above operations with just one touch or a click but can optimize them like never before. You want to manage your inventory- get it done with Restro Sense! Want to decide which item should serve today or some other day?- get the expert advice from AI-powered Restro Sense!

Similarly, do you want to make sure none of your ingredients wastes, or utilized in the best possible way, or wish to generate performance report and analyze shift performance of your restaurant & employees?- Install Restro Sense, and it will optimize & improve all restaurant operations brilliantly.

The market may have many tools but, Restro Sense uses its AI- algorithms to calculate and suggest you most viable food option to cook and serve, to generate maximum profit for you, apart from regular restaurant management operations.

Restaurants that use automation, always have better performance because of optimized and channelized restaurant business operations. Also, have better client satisfaction and retention rate, along with a higher number of orders processed and minimum waste produced, comparing to those who don't have automation in their restaurant.

Restaurant business has the most promising future, unlike any other industry because it helps you get the food on your table, and you can't ignore food! But with increasing competition and technological advancement- the same sector is facing some challenges like how to; reduce operational cost, optimize operational procedure & performance, and improve growth, production and of course profit with the time!

There are many proven ways to revamp your restaurant operation, and most of them shared above. Still, you also have to find new ways you can adopt (automation, digitization, and staff training), to improve your restaurant business operations, to remain on the top of this business.

For any consultation on your Restaurant Business Operations or information about Restro Sense, please feel free to contact us.