Problem Solving with Restaurant Technology

By now you’ve all heard “I’ve got 99 problems…” and people in the hospitality and restaurant industries face their share of them. How can management and decision-makers help alleviate some of the problems they face? Our money’s on technology. We’re not saying it’s the answer to all your problems (we can’t vouch for anything happening in your personal life), but it’s our business to help companies solve their common pain points! While this list is not totally inclusive, you may see something here that hits close to home.

When It Comes to Tech

As usual, we want to share stats to provide context within the industry:

• As of 2021, 91% of restaurants report using kitchen automation technology

• 79% of customers agree that technology helps to improve their restaurant experience

• 83% customers indicate that online reservations are “very important” to them

• More than 80% of restaurants report turning to technology (reservation, ordering, and restaurant an analytics) to help them optimize their business performance

• 51% of restaurant operators say hiring, training, and retaining staff is the biggest challenge they face

• 49% of restaurant operators say a mobile payment option is a must-have technology for diners

Now that we have some background, let’s move into solving restaurant problems with restaurant technology!

Restaurant Problems with Tech Solutions

Mary manages Pasta Matta, a fast casual concept with several regional locations. Like with most businesses, the past two years have been a roller coaster. Mary’s looking for a robust solution that allows her to consistently train staff, navigate peak dayparts, and keep orders fresh. Mary’s not sure how to proceed but is hopeful she can find the right solution.

Mary needs ConnectSmart, specifically, Kitchen and Host. With these pieces of the ConnectSmart suite, Mary can solve several of the problems her business is facing:

• Keep food fresh and hot with bin management and order routing. With these features, different parts of orders with different cook times will be routed to their stations for an overall fresher food experience.

• At the host stand, ConnectSmart Host uses data from ConnectSmart Kitchen to provide accurate wait times. When it comes to reservations, ConnectSmart Host has capabilities to allow guests to add themselves to the restaurant’s waitlist. As a bonus, the technology integrates with over 70 POS partners, which will save Mary money because she wouldn’t have to overhaul the entire restaurant’s technology stack.

• When it comes to training staff, ConnectSmart Recipes allows for consistent training with a digital recipe book as a resource for your chefs, allowing her to create a consistently satisfactory guest experience every visit!

Henry owns Bruncha Breakfast and was severely impacted by closing business during the pandemic. To prepare for future obstacles, he’s been looking into off-premise options. Luckily, he’s already a ConnectSmart customer using Kitchen and Host. What can he do?

With ConnectSmart Go, Henry can easily add off-premise offerings to his business. Since he already has ConnectSmart Kitchen and Host, he can add ConnectSmart Go to his business strategy and maintain dine-in traffic. He can quote realistic and accurate wait times for off-premise customers based on activity in the kitchen. Once again technology within the ConnectSmart Suite of products communicates with each other, therefore a calmer restaurant is created with less chaos!

Business has been good for Ben and What Do You Bean! However, he’s trying to figure out where to go next. What strategic goals should he set for his business? Where should he start?

Ben needs actionable data! With ConnectSmart Insights, Ben can see real-time data with current insights and historical analytics. Ben can also create dashboards of his data to see multi-locational insights to make strategic decisions for the future. As they say, you have to know where you’ve been to see where you’re going! Plan ahead for the future with real-time data!

Conclusion

Businesses, like anything with life, have their own set of problems. However, a robust technology stack can be the solution that your business needs to navigate through those problems efficiently. Whatever problems come your way, face them head on with dependable technology! Got a problem? Let tech solve it!

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About the Author

Devyn is the Social & PR Specialist on the Marketing Team. She has a B.S. in Communication and an M.S. in Global Strategic Communication. She liked QR codes (before they were cool) ever since a two-week trip to China. She’s obsessed with true crime and enjoys quality time with her friends and family. Ask her about books she’s read, Criminal Minds, her dog-child, or her favorite cocktails!