Restaurants everywhere are finding themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Labor costs are up, ingredient costs are up, and basically, it feels like everything costs more. Raising menu prices is one of the first things many businesses turn to in order to balance out the costs and avoid moving into the red, which makes perfect sense. However, raising menu costs is not necessarily the best first move. Customers have endured many price increases over the last couple of years, but have about had all their wallets can handle. Grocery store percentage increases are not as high as restaurant price increases, so people are starting to wonder if maybe they should stay in and cook. If your restaurant has not invested in back-office solutions, here is another reason you should add it to your restaurant management tool belt and see how you can cut spending and increase your bottom line without rasinging menu prices, yet again! Here are a few ways managing software can save you money and help you run a profitable restaurant.
Hitting your labor percent goal is a critical part in improving profit margins. Using a scheduling system will give you the guidelines you need to ensure you are hitting that goal when you create your schedule. You can easily integrate with your POS System and pull job codes, pay rates and daily sales giving you better insight into accuracy when creating your schedules. You also have access to sales projections and can calculate the most accurate projections based on previous weeks performances. See how well your employees are adhering to their schedule and who is clocking in early or clocking out late. You will be alerted of this pattern, so you can correct your employee and let them know the importance of clocking in and out on time before it ends up costing you.
Inventory and Food Cost Management
Ordering too much inventory or too little inventory can really cost your restaurant a lot of money. If you are over ordering, you are wasting food as well as money. If you are not ordering enough of a high demand menu item, then you are losing out on the order that could be coming through. This is where technology comes into play! Figuring out the right numbers on your own is time consuming and complicated. With a back-office software system, you will have complete visibility over what you have and what you need. Receive detailed analysis on actual usage vs. ideal costs and compare trends over time. With automated reports that you can pull up at any time, you are always in the know and able to make educated decisions.
Having access to reports like daily sales, product mix and payroll hours is a powerful tool that will help you make smart and strategic business decisions. Raising menu prices usually seems like the easiest way to go, but technology has made compiling reports and reading reports even easier. You can choose which reports you want sent to you daily and the reporting software does all the hard work! There are also color coded reports that help you to clearly identify top sellers that are income producing and menu items that do not perform well that could be hurting your business.
Raising menu prices doesn’t always have to be your first move when it comes to making more money. Thanks to advanced technology, you can run a more efficient restaurant and save money in ways you never could have done without this software. So, next time you are looking to cut back or raise prices, see if you can simply better manage your business and raise your bottom line.
