7 Ways You Can Bring Your Restaurant to the Digital Age

Running a restaurant is tough. You’ve got customers to look after, staff to manage, bills to pay, and there’s lots of competition out there. Add to this the fact that technology seems to be endlessly changing the way we do things, and it can seem difficult to keep up.

So, how can you bring your restaurant to the digital age and exceed customer expectations?

On the Floor

Everything comes together on the floor. It’s the part the customer sees and, ultimately, it’s going to play a major part in how they judge their experience.

While the most polished restaurants might make this seem effortless, there’s a lot of coordination that goes into creating a seamless experience.

Point of Sale

Your point of sale (POS) is involved in every aspect of your business. The POS system is your staff’s point of reference. It allows them to input orders, communicate with colleagues, take payment, and generally manage the running of the floor.

Most importantly, it allows your wait staff, bartenders, and kitchen staff to work together as a coherent unit.

Speed and accuracy are vitally important when serving the customer, and if your POS is too complicated and difficult to use, then it will result in errors. Mistakes happen, but one of the key things in a restaurant is making sure they don’t get to the customer, and a good POS system helps to ensure this.

Meals not being what the customer ordered appears on 62% of complaints and a poor POS contributes to this. To run an efficient restaurant, you have to have the right POS system, and in the digital age, you have some great options.

Digital Signage

The modern consumer loves experiences. You can have great food, and you can have great service, but the big thing is how does everything come together to create an experience?

Groups like Millennials and Gen Z are also extremely connected and love to incorporate the digital experience with the physical experience.

This is an opportunity for your restaurant to stand out by embracing the digital age within the dining experience. Of course, every restaurant is unique and will incorporate technology in slightly different ways, but it’s important to think about how you want to use digital experiences within your business.

Digital signage is a great way to link the digital and physical spheres, allowing guests to connect and share on your social channels. This can boost the experience and also become a form of free marketing.

In the Kitchen

Your customers might only see what happens on the floor, but to create the right experience, a lot of hard work has to be done behind the scenes. Great food is made by highly skilled people, but the organization of a kitchen still relies on the tools of the digital age.

Inventory Management

A good POS system should mean your kitchen and bar staff know exactly what they need to serve and when.

But what happens when they run out of ingredients?

Customers understand that occasionally, an item might be off the menu (even so, it might diminish their experience). When multiple items are unavailable, though, they’re going to be disappointed.

Having the right ingredients might seem like one of the most simple parts of running a restaurant, but when you’re doing it at scale, it’s not that straightforward. You need to make sure you have fresh produce, and also that you’re not wasting food.

Predicting demand and making sure you have the right inventory isn’t easy, and this is why many restaurants turn to inventory management software.

In the Back Office

When a customer comes to your restaurant, they see waiters, chefs, and bartenders, but they don’t see what goes on behind the scenes to bring all of this together. The back office is an important part of a restaurant and it needs to have the right technology.

Scheduling Software

The hospitality industry has notoriously high turnover rates. Finding the right staff isn’t easy, which also means that scheduling shifts can also be a challenge. A restaurant brings together employees with many different skill sets (management, customer service, mixology, culinary, etc.), and you need to make sure you have the right people working at the right time.

Shift scheduling is a big part of employee satisfaction, and if you’re not offering people the clarity they need, then it can be a big problem for your business.

Scheduling can take up hours of a manager’s time that could be spent on other jobs. One way of making sure you’re on top of your scheduling is by using specialist restaurant scheduling software.

Payroll

Making sure people get paid correctly and on time is an essential part of any business.

With restaurant staff generally working in shifts, it’s important you’ve got restaurant payroll software to make sure hours are tracked properly and everyone gets paid accordingly.

One of the biggest challenges facing restaurants is attracting and retaining the right talent, so naturally, payroll is going to be important. If you’ve got the right payroll software, then it’s one less thing to worry about, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your employee development.

With Your Marketing

How do people find you in the digital age? Marketing has changed, but is your marketing still bringing in the ROI you need?

Local SEO

For many restaurants, the aim isn’t to reach a national audience. Getting people to your website from the other side of the country probably isn’t going to translate into new customers. Instead, you want to reach local people who are going to visit your restaurant.

This is why local SEO should be a major part of your marketing strategy. It might not get as much attention as regular SEO, but it can be even more important.

46% of Google searches are looking for local information, and these are the people who are going to visit your restaurant. If your business is showing up in the local pack, then it’s going to increase your footfall and help bring your great dining experience to new people.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is an important tool for any business. When it comes to food, platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook are especially huge.

People love to engage with their favorite brands on social media, and with the right strategy, you can showcase your amazing food to a huge audience. The key thing is understanding how the digital age fits with the experience you offer and finding ways to utilize it to your advantage.

With the right strategy, social media can become an important part of your restaurant’s marketing.

Conclusion

Good food and amazing service create the dining experience. It’s not easy to consistently achieve this though and technology is a vital cog in helping restaurants to keep up their high standard.

There’s a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes to put an amazing plate of food on the table, and in a modern restaurant, technology plays a key part in this.

Whether it’s on the floor, in the kitchen, the back office, or as part of your marketing, it’s time your restaurant embraced the digital age.

Author/Contribution by: Sam Molony

Sam Molony is part of the marketing team at ZoomShift. Sam’s goal is to inspire people to not just “hang in there” but to thrive. When Sam's not publishing or promoting new content you can find him playing sports and cooking up a storm in the kitchen.