Last week we talked about the importance of employee retention and ways your restaurant can reduce turnover rates. While you work to improve your staffing retention, you can also evaluate your back-office software to further help with staffing shortages. You might be surprised to learn that automation can significantly help your restaurant in many ways, one of which is by lightening your workload and increasing accuracy and efficiency. If you are going to be short staffed, you need to be sure you have up-to-date technology that can help carry you through this tough time.
Let’s begin by looking at ways automation can lighten your workload. It’s 2022, so if you are still operating on analog technology, like taking inventory and entering in data with pen and paper, you are working harder than you need to. Short staffed or not, operating your restaurant in the most efficient way possible will help your managers do their job with less burnout and create a more balanced work environment for everyone. With data configured for you based on information from your POS System, you can now count inventory right from your smartphone, get detailed food cost reports and accurately track food waste. You can also quickly and easily schedule employees and view important metrics and analytics of labor performance. So, not only are you able to get the work done faster, but you’re also able to access important data about how your restaurant is performing.
Automation can eliminate human error and increase productivity and margins. When people are taking inventory by hand, especially after a long day, it is easy to make mistakes. With inventory and food cost management software, you no longer have to stress about the time this takes or mistakes that could have been made. When you add up how much you are spending in paying staff to stay longer for tedious tasks that automation can do for you, or the cost of food that is wasted daily, you will quickly see that there is no question about it. An automated software system is going to save you many headaches and a lot of money.
If you want your restaurant to thrive instead of just survive and keep the employees you do have around longer, embracing technology is going to be key in getting you there. Automation provides you and your employees the necessary time to sharpen skills, review data and see what changes need to be made in order to increase profits. When you are struggling just to keep up with daily tasks, it’s difficult to take a step back and evaluate where you’re at and where you need to be. Automation can help you do this, and can be a complete game-changer for your business.
