5 Restaurant Technologies to Improve Efficiency and Service

Restaurant Technology Blog

While it’d be nice to think that when guests come to a restaurant, they’re simply looking for delicious food, this is often not the case. Especially in today’s world of remarkable technology, busy work schedules, and the need for quick food services, creating a vibrant dining experience with advanced and efficient technology is expected of today’s restaurant businesses.

Luckily, you’re looking to make a change in restaurant technologies during a time of vast options and opportunities. We’ve narrowed these options down to the most important one your business should implement right away.

Why Use Restaurant Technologies?
Technology serves multiple functions in society. The most significant function of your business is efficiency. Restaurant technologies simplify processes in your business so orders can be processed more accurately and faster, and you can be more aware of the productivity and needs of your business and be able to communicate more quickly and easily with your staff. Meanwhile, technologies free up time for your employees to focus on delivering better customer service.

Restaurant Technologies for Efficiency

1. Touchscreen Order Stations
While you can train staff on taking orders quickly and efficiently, nothing beats the speed and convenience of a touchscreen station. This is essentially a tablet available for customers to use so they can order their meal upon entering your restaurant. This speeds up how quickly your back-of-house staff receives orders and speeds up how quickly customers receive their food.
Best suited for: Fast-order style restaurants.
Check Out: Toast POS

2. Tabletop Tablets for Self-Checkout
Over the years, these have been popping up at big chain restaurants, and for good reason. Especially in a large restaurant, it can be hectic and difficult to reach all the customers in a timely manner to take their order, bring their order back to the kitchen, continually check on them, etc. With tablets available at the tables, guests can simply look through the menu online and select what they want. And then when they’re finished, instead of having to wait around for their bill and then to get their card back (something that can be disruptive and frustrating, especially if they have time constraints), they can easily just pay on the tablet. This gives wait staff more of an opportunity to focus on customer satisfaction as opposed to rushing orders and brusquely asking if customers are doing okay before running to the next table.
Best suited for: Sit-down establishments with wait staff.
Check Out: Toast POS

3. Mobile & Online Ordering
As everything shifts to the cloud, internet space, and apps, it is essential to appeal to the large crowds that frequent these resources. Maybe an individual is too busy to actually spend time in the restaurant waiting, or maybe they are on the run so they do not have access to a computer. Calling the restaurant isn’t always convenient because orders can easily get mixed up when communicating over the phone. That’s where mobile and online ordering comes in handy. By creating an app or the option on your website to order remotely, you can increase business by appealing to a new market of individuals.
Best suited for: Fast food restaurants and establishments that offer delivery or carry-out can definitely benefit from this, and instead of focusing the majority of their attention on answering the phone, your staff can primarily focus on orders coming in. Even if your restaurant is a sit-down establishment, you can still benifit from this by selling more food through to-go services.
Check out: ChowNow

4. Automated Inventory Management
Asking employees to take time out of their already-busy schedules to continuously count, track, and record your inventory is unnecessary now that there are technologies to automatically do this for you. This type of software is often available on digital POS systems. As items are rung up and re-stocked, the software will keep track of how many of each item you have. What if you are trying to keep track of other non-merchandise items, like cleaning towels, aprons, table linens, food service apparel, and bathroom supplies? Outsource that inventory to a company that provides restaurant linen and apparel services, while also utilizing the latest technologies. At Dempsey, we keep track of all your linen and uniform supplies while laundering them, picking them up, and delivering them.
Best suited for: Restaurants that can benefit from an efficient inventory management system
Check out: ToastPOS

5. Digital Workforce Scheduling
Do you have that one waiter who keeps mentioning his upcoming vacation, but you don’t recall ever approving his time off? Now it’s getting too late and you have no one to cover for him. Scheduling apps and websites make it easy for employees to go ahead and input their request online. This makes it easy for you to view, approve, and come back to look at scheduling information as needed.
Best suited for: Large restaurants with many employees or restaurants with multiple locations
Check out: Branch Messenger

So, what are you waiting for? Upgrade your restaurant with the latest technologies and experience the convenience and ease this brings to both your staff and your customers!

If you’re really looking for a change, don’t just upgrade your technology. Upgrade your linens, uniforms, and facility supplies too! Create a better look with high quality linens and uniforms, and a cleaner restaurant with top-of-the-line facility supplies. Dempsey will even help you improve your look by laundering your linens and uniforms for you!

The less you have to focus on monotonous tasks like running around taking orders, grabbing the bills, and laundering uniforms and linens, the more you can focus on creating a wonderful customer experience. Call Dempsey at 1-800-378-8060 and we’ll show you what we mean!