What is Restaurant Automation System and How Does it Benefit?

Food is a necessity, so is the automation to survive in the business lately. So let’s combine these two. Ah, do not automate food though! It’s not yet possible for humans to eat automated food. But automate food services – that’s restaurant automation!

While the restaurant automation system is not a newbie, it’s also not widely spread yet. But here’s the big news. The global food automation market will cross $14.3 billion by 2025. This suggests that in near future, we will see a huge rise in the restaurant industry, especially in the automated restaurant ordering system. This also brings promises of lower operational costs, a more efficient customer experience, and an overall boost in productivity. So let’s discuss the complete strategy for your restaurant automation.

What is Restaurant Automation?

A restaurant that employs software and application to assist restaurant owners and managers with the automation of administrative repetitive tasks, workforce management & scheduling, inventory tracking & control, number of orders, and payroll is known as an automated restaurant system.

It focuses primarily on the boring and time-consuming aspects of operating a restaurant so that managers and employees can invest their time and attention on their customers, the most significant component of any fast-food house. Let’s check further why you should implement restaurant automation software.

Why Should You Automate Your Restaurant Business Process?

Whenever we plan for something, we need to know why we are planning. So, take the below reasons into consideration when thinking of automation in restaurants.

• Effective Management: Using a variety of software such as reservation software, you would be in a position to decide how many personnel are needed for various shifts and also coordinate the kitchen employees. When clients with reservation software book a seat online, instead of on calls. This way, you can also avoid potential loss of sales arising from overbooking and double-booking.
• Greater Savings: To prevent any wasting needless resources, labor costs need to be handled correctly. Therefore, using fully automated restaurants software with job costing functionalities will be a great alternative. It will help you prepare shifts with the knowledge and skills of how much resources & wages companies will spend. And compare the expected labor costs to the real costs as well.
• Better Communications: There was a survey conducted citing 84% of millennial employees want to have an open communication policy than perks when choosing jobs. Therefore, for your food product putting a priority on engaging workers is crucial. Scheduling tools for your fast-food chains provide functions that promote and enable contact with your team from various areas & locations, improving the connection.
• Employee Satisfaction: People need to feel trusted, so allowing them more power over handling their shifts is an efficient way to provide them with autonomy. The scheduling program for your restaurant staff can make it easier for your workers to switch shifts with acceptable colleagues. This in turn increases employee satisfaction at work.
• Brand Image: Your foodservice industry software, if, paired with a referral scheme, (which is not an exception) will benefit you from marketing campaigns. These are the categories of advertisement that has a reputation and tend to be reviewed by peers. By decreasing the emphasis on conventional modes of ads, it can obtain new customers from existing clients and increases the overall brand image. This ultimately drive-thru a better restaurant experience.
• Time-saving: Restaurant management tools free up time that would be wasted using excel spreadsheets to quality control the inventory stock. This method also cuts back on the time wasted taking the inventory’s physical count and ensures more detailed outcomes. It helps you to take care of your staff.
• No Theft of Inventory Food: Using tools for inventory tracking will also assist you to recognize irregular stock depletion trends that could be a sign of fraud. To establish the reasons for your lost stock like woks, ingredients, food waste, and food safety, this could lead to further investigation.
• Enhanced Customer Experiences: Customers in an interactive environment enjoy the ease and having the option of an app (or your web-site) to book a table at your restaurant is a way to have this hospitality convenience. A suitable reservation software should be capable of providing real-time right reserved information about table availability to your customers and locations. This will increase the level of your customer service and provide better customer satisfaction.

Do you also want to run a more efficient and profitable restaurant?

It’s time to automate your restaurant with us now.

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What Daily Task and Process You Can Automate in Your Restaurant Business?

Now we know automated eatery houses help you make your businesses more effective and save a lot of money, but only when it is effectively automated. So let’s understand one by one what really can be automated.

1. Mobile Ordering

   Invariably, as we speak about restaurant technology, mobile ordering is the current crucial part. With the introduction of online ordering, most home delivery orders are placed via a smartphone app or website. This feature allows visitors to order eating commodities like pizza from anywhere and guarantees that orders are quickly placed based on demand. This gives customers the luxury to place requests on their preferences and choose between pickup and delivery from their account from any area.

2. Reservation

   Online table reservation tools allow clients to book preferred tables well in advance at restaurants. This platform offers a virtual restaurant preview to help clients select a table before they enter the destination. When consumers can pick their preferred table well in advance to prevent the difficulty of describing their seating requirements, this also helps to maximize consumer delight and improve life.

3. POS System

   You will have a good view of your revenue and supplies, for example, Dunkin Donuts has automated this process. The question source such as why the prices of the particular ingredient or ingredients are rising, but the trading is not, can quickly be drive-thru by Dunkin Donuts. You can scan orders and inventory for errors. You will also be able to monitor the source of the working hours of employees and daily restaurant operations. To make effective strategies for restaurant operations and labor costs.

4. Automatic Billing

   Technology for restaurants has dramatically increased the billing process in restaurants. The POS system produces an instant bill as soon as the client is finished dining. An automated payment guarantees no delays and helps to redesign customer service. The splitting of the billing functionality is also supported by most POS implementations, which make it easier for clients to pay for their orders.

5. Online Payments

   Thanks to advanced food-service technology as online payments have made the lives of both customers and self-service suppliers much easier. It has also been shown that bill generation and payment through cell phones or virtual wallets like google pay, credit cards, debit card, etc. speed up the process of bill settlement.  In the restaurant industry, a lot of online payment gateways have arisen which has greatly enhanced the operation.

6. Accounting and Reporting

   When you automate restaurants with accounting processes & tasks, you are able to monitor the restaurant’s financial database. All the company statistics and receipts will be displayed in tabular forms and graphs to help you develop an overview of your restaurant industry. You can also try customized POS software to leverage full accounting benefits and challenges. It lets you track all the foodservice purchases & transactions, and gives you access to all of the information right on your mobile app screen in real-time.

7. Checkout System

   Waiting in line for the checkout for the cashiers is one of the exasperating parts of eating out. In planning to pick it up, process, and return it, it still seems to take the server forever. On a good idea & change, send the client home, and give an automatic checkout system. They’ll be happier to leave a positive review and even be encouraged. Plus, your tables will increase turnover sooner, allowing more diners to serve with a smile.

8. Feedback Management

   Restaurants have been pursuing consumer input for years through feedback forms that had to be manually filled in and answer questions. However, clients can be discouraged by the manual tasks of filling in a feedback form. So, by incorporating a detailed consumer feedback form in the restaurant order app for waiters themselves based on the dinner they ordered and their customer experience.

9. CRM System

   We know, to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, the development of customer relationship management (CRM) software is most common these days. Based on the ordering preferences of the clients, you can use a powerful CRM database to come up with personalized deals and discounts. So, automating this process for most companies has become a compulsion and how.

So, by applying an automated restaurant management system you are able to automate the above 9 daily operations of your restaurant.

How Automation is Changing the Way Restaurants Do Business?

In recent years, so many restaurants have come to the conclusion that automating businesses can expedite the process from ordering to billing! Buzztime, for example, claims that a self-service POS system boosts customer checks by an average of 21 percent. This proves that a more efficient dining experience can also encourage higher profit.

You also have a clear blueprint for a viable, lucrative company model as you mix improved productivity and profits with fewer expenses charged to staff and fewer errors made by those human employees.

In addition, there’s a new drift in foodservice automation – kiosks!

In the fast-food industry, self-service kiosk machines (robot-based) are increasingly becoming standard and its popularity is marking the stand. In some of their markets, big franchises and chains, for a few examples, Domino, Mcdonald’s, Wendy’s, and Panera Bread, Spyce (based in Boston states, founded by MIT engineers, the world’s first restaurant to make a robotic chef incremental approach) are exploring content drifts of self-service kiosks machines at this point.

Without any support from human workers, human touch, or human interaction, these kiosks concept allow customers to stroll up, tap the request in, get the bowls of the meal, and complete payment. So far, so soon, it is indicated that smaller restaurants would also accept robotics eventually (targeting California – Bay Area, and U.S), though it is in the early stage of acceptance at the moment.

Automation will help chefs to spend their time making new food dish ideas, rather than serving customers. It will also end the daily challenges of restaurants like managing labors, regular customers and personalized food orders. The self robotic system will interact with customers and store their food preferences. This will bring enhancement in the foodservice industry. 

Haitham Al-Baik CEO of Wings predicts automated restaurants with self-organized robots. Using robots in restaurants will help to manage the shortage of staff. Wings have also received $750,000 of funding to built purpose full robotic systems. The customers will be able to order food by using QR codes of menus as digital order placement. It will also allow them to pay for food online using digital payment methods.

Additionally, CRV a capital venture develops an interest to invest in enterprise software for the consumer sector. They focus more to develop a restaurant app or software that allows customers to signup for pick-up time. That helps shops to avoid the long queues of people waiting for food orders.

In many cases, automating the business process not only changes the outcome of the selling but also the value, cooking process, reputation, and goodwill of the company which is equally crucial for long-term establishment.

Our Work For Food Industry Automation

Custom Software Solution for Meat Processing Industry

We, at Space-O Technology, have designed and developed a durable meat processing and packaging suit, including the admin portal, customer portal, kill room portal, and shopfloor portal. This complete suite automation in the food industry is specifically designed for the concern of a meat processing corporation based in North America to manage and streamline the workforce & the entire company operation of meat production and delivery, packaging, and storage.

Solutions We Developed

Custom software system technology – to help them to manage customers, finish receivers, set the order, run production, and generate shipping data. The Kill Room Gateway, Shop Floor Gateway, Consumer Portal, and Admin Portal are also included in the full solutions.

Result:

Conclusion

There are no ways except accepting fast food restaurant automation! That’s it. If you think automation is just a new strategy that we can ignore, rethink. It is the most widely used technology to keep up with the high operating cost and growing competition tackling a common problem. And it is the future and a talk of the town. So, all the kitchen & restaurant operators out there, gear up and start automating the business process with an app development company today.

If you need any guidance, feel stuck, want suggestions, or have opinions, do contact us at any time. We will respond to you back shortly and that’s our promise.