Benefits Of IT Support for Restaurants and Bars
Owning a restaurant business is extremely profitable when it works well. It also drains cash quickly if the place never gets busy. For that reason, you need to find external ways in which to stimulate people to come over and enjoy one of your delicious meals or just sit in your bar area.
Just like everything in our lives, this sector has evolved with the help of IT. Visitors finally have a say in what’s good and what’s not, and this has helped many owners cater to the tastes of their most frequent guests. Click here to read more.
Online review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google Reviews are a must if you want to be picked instead of your competition. Now, everyone knows that guests don’t want to be kept waiting for a lengthy period of time.
They want to get their meal quickly, eat, and jolt away to go sightseeing again. The pandemic showed that delivery services are making a huge comeback, and dietary requirements are getting even stricter.
Dairy, gluten, and nuts are still among the most things that people are allergic to. When you have to adhere to the specific taste of all of your guests, it can be quite difficult to incorporate a digital twist. However, there are still some benefits that you can experience.
Touchscreen devices
The era of buttons is long gone. Now, everything has a touchscreen, from our phones to our laptops, to our ovens in the kitchen. The modern way to take an order is through a screen. A lot of restaurants are using tablets when it comes to ordering because that gives your customers the most freedom. Follow this link for more info.
They can pick and choose exactly what they like, and they’re also durable hardware devices that can withstand the wear and tear of daily life. If you want to implement them in your business, then make sure that the user experience is on a superior standard.
The interface needs to be simple and easy to understand. This will also allow your employees to move around quickly and take an order if someone can’t figure it out. The faster you fulfill orders. The more people pass through your place, which leads to bigger profit margins.
The most modern devices can also accept mobile payments and credit cards, which can be linked through a reader. For this to operate smoothly, you need to install NFC, which stands for near-field communication.
Handheld POS devices
Let’s build upon the thing we mentioned above. Let’s say that a family of four comes and decide on what they want to eat, and they enter it into a tablet that’s linked to their table. When the server comes, they just need a confirmation from everyone, instead of asking and suggesting specials.
That increases their speed. When they come back a while later, and it’s time to pay, even more minutes can be saved if they carry a point of sale device with them. They can deliver a receipt instantly, run a credit card, and keep on working.
If the POS machine is further away, they would need to go there to print the receipt, walk over to the table, hand it in, then walk back again to run the card, and then go to the table to hand the credit card over.
That’s quite normal in most restaurants, but technology can make up for that by making everything faster. This will lead to faster table-turning, and everyone wouldn’t have to wait a lot for their drinks and food, as well as their bill. This increases the number of people that each server can interact with within a shift.
Payments without contact
After the pandemic happened, everyone became more aware of how they used their hands. All of that washing and mask-wearing has made everyone better at recognizing their body language, itches, scratches, and hygiene when it comes to putting food in their mouth.
Unlike before, people now go to the bathroom to wash their hands before they eat. Also, the percentage of people who want contactless payments has increased. That’s why going digital with firms like FocusConnect IT of Denver is such a good option. Cash is the dirtiest thing that we can touch. It has been passed along through so many hands, and it’s full of germs. That’s why people prefer using their credit cards.
A credit card that you can bring near to the terminal can’t possibly come in contact with any sort of bacteria, virus, or germ. Allowing your customers to swipe, tap, or dip when it comes to paying you to help keep the environment secure and safe. During these times, keeping a distance is crucial, and there’s no need for unwelcome physical contact between your workers and visitors.
A kitchen display screen
Everyone’s too familiar with the printer inside the kitchen and the main cook stacking pieces of paper when it gets busy. Well, that’s doesn’t improve communication on a massive level. A display screen is a much better option since that can keep things flowing much faster.
When a server comes to take their food, they can check how much time is left for their next order to be complete. That gives them time to take another order or bus a table without being a nuisance to the cooks. A KDS is much more user-friendly compared to a traditional ticket printer, and it’s also much better for the environment.
Plus, it saves money since you won’t be going through rolls of ticket paper. Additionally, a ticket can fall on the ground, and an order can be lost. However, when it’s on the screen, everyone can see it at all times, and there’s no way for it to get lost. Both the front house and the back house will be in sync.
A few final words
Combining new technology with the old way you do business may skyrocket you into more profits. There are so many ways to confidently use these new services and let them play an important role in the way you operate. The more mouths you feed, the happier everyone is.
