Running a restaurant means juggling a variety of demanding tasks. Scheduling shifts, staying on top of inventory, preparing for payroll - the list goes on. It’s safe to say that restaurant life is hectic, so why not try to streamline the day-to-day tasks to ease the ever-mounting workload for you?

The key to simplifying daily restaurant processes is to implement a restaurant management system. This system can lessen the burden of manually tracking everything, and instead, add automation to make managing a restaurant vastly simpler.

Your employees and managers will thank you when they can focus on their roles rather than waste time on antiquated processes.

Let’s dive in and find out why investing in restaurant management software will improve the daily operations of your restaurant.

1. Simple Scheduling

Creating and keeping shift schedules up to date is one of the biggest logistical nightmares of running a restaurant. You want to make sure you have your bases covered while balancing employee availability, maintaining labor law compliance, preventing double shifts, and ensuring you have the best mix of team members ready to work the busiest brunch and dinner rushes.

Say sayonara to using rudimentary spreadsheets and taking up hours of your week trying to accommodate shift requests and personal days. With a restaurant management system, you can schedule shifts in an easy online user interface that can be edited at any time. You can then easily email the schedules to your employees so they can easily keep track of their future shifts and the number of hours they’ve worked.

2. Save Paper and Make Accounting Easy

Are you the type of restaurant owner who has a paper trail of invoices and receipts overflowing in your office? No judgment here, but there’s an easier way to keep track of important documents pertaining to the business.

A restaurant management system will let you snap photos of paper documents and will automatically upload them to the software. For example, invoices will be filed into your accounting system, where you can pay them before they are due. Looking for a specific document? Simply search the interface to find what you’re looking for instead of ruffling through haphazard filing cabinets.

3. Reduce Costs and Stay On Budget

The restaurant industry is characterized by razor-thin profit margins - 52% of restaurant professionalsnamed high operating and food costs as a top challenge. That means it’s essential to create precise forecasts based on seasonal inventory for your restaurant. The accurate projection of food costs will increase your bottom line and reduce food waste.

Food costs are some of the highest when it comes to running a restaurant, so it’s imperative that you stay on top of what each ingredient costs you, as well as the food cost per dish that you serve on your menu.

A restaurant management system lets you view reports at any time on these costs. If the cost of avocados has risen, therefore cutting into your profit margin, you can decide: do you raise the price for that item as an add-on or do you nix it from certain dishes? Staying on top of these expenses helps you keep costs down.

4. Keep on Top of Any Staff Issues

In any restaurant environment, issues may arise with your staff members. These can relate to the need to alert employees on areas they need to improve on, or maybe you need to be better about recognizing employees for their hard work.

To keep you up to date on what’s going on with specific staff members, a restaurant management system enables easy tracking, recording, and updating of issues and is essential for performance management and employee motivation.

5. Get Restaurant Supply Orders Right Every Time

If you’re still filling out paper order forms and faxing them into your suppliers, you know how easy it is to make human error. A hard-to-read 6 on a form could be misinterpreted as 60…giving you 60 cases of pickles instead of the 6 that you wanted!

Ordering inventory should be based on what supplies are actually being used in your restaurant. A restaurant management system allows you to be accurate so you’re ordering the right items in the right amounts. The accuracy will allow you to automate and optimize your supply chain since you’ll have the data right in front of you, and ordering is as easy as a click of a button!

With restaurant management systems that connect the dots between your restaurant and your suppliers, you streamline the order process, eliminate the potential for errors, and can even check the status of your orders at any time.

6. Control Operations Between Multiple Locations

If you own more than one location of your restaurant, using a restaurant management system that helps you view data for each location can be immensely helpful and time-saving compared with a separate system for each location.

Since restaurant management systems are cloud-based, it’s easy to toggle between restaurant locations and manage shift schedules, inventory, sales, ordering, accounting, and more.

When managers and staff are roped into using restaurant management software, it keeps everyone in the loop about what’s going on at each location. For example, it ensures staff members are in the right place at the right time - no more confusion about which location they need to show up at to work a shift.

You can also manage inventory across all locations and place orders with suppliers in bulk so that you save per item, as well as view which menu items are most successful at each location so that you can deliver what your customers want locally.

Issues to Consider When Choosing a Restaurant Management System

While restaurant management systems all try to have the common goal to make running a restaurant easier, it’s important to have all the information you need to identify potential issues and ultimately choose the right now.

• Data Transparency: Be aware that the software you choose gives you real-time visibility into all of your data, across the restaurant, so you can make decisions quickly.
• System Unification: The right software will cover your restaurant from end-to-end and will cover all operations needs, instead of interfacing multiple solutions.
• Software Flexibility: The ideal software will be feature-rich and work beautifully out of the box, but would also support customizations and integrations.
• Choosing A Reliable Provider: Choose a provider with a trustworthy, consolidated presence in the industry that comes with dependable customer support in case you need any help at all.

It just makes sense - a restaurant management system will help you keep tabs on all operations, which makes it easier to do your job well. There are different types of restaurant management software out there, but overall they will help you maximize profits, provide exceptional customer services, keep employees happy, reduce costs, increase efficiency, and more. Looking for a restaurant management solution? We can help.

‍