Go digital and increase your restaurant efficiency
The digital world runs on information. Data and insights are the modern form of market research. Who needs to stand in the rain outside the store with a clipboard when you could just get your information from monitoring online resources? In the digital world, analytical feedback is everywhere… but what if you own a restaurant?
You see, the restaurant world is public facing. Websites are an afterthought, added only so that customers can find the phone number they need to call and book a table with then. The website is not a real marketplace in the world of catering because people do not see dining as a digital experience.
We are here to tell you that you, as a restaurateur, need to change this to stay effective in a digital age.
The Importance of Applying Digital Data to Dining
When we set up a website, we monitor it for analytical data. We can trace our most common customer types, build a customer persona from that, and target marketing materials accordingly. A website’s feedback can tell you at what time of day people shop for your goods or services. It can tell you their age, location, and the pages they examined for longest.
Restaurants that use their webpage to host their phone number are missing all of this. Further: how are you marketing a business that does not have that information? Are you still taking out ads in the local paper? There is an entire world of social media advertising out there that could drive traffic to your site and your building.
Here are some of the ways analytical feedback can be applied from a website or, in our case, from a food ordering app service, to help you streamline efficiency in your restaurant. As we all know, better efficiency means better productivity and less wastage. Targets everyone can strive to achieve.
How Analytics Can Streamline Restaurant Efficiency
There are multiple ways you can use your customer data to your restaurant’s advantage. When you use a food ordering app like Kayana, you can track patterns in service and preferences. Here are some of the way going digital can help your increase your efficiency:
Popular/Unpopular Dishes
If the feedback tracks how many plates are ordered, it can tell you which dishes are most and least popular. You can remove menu items that customers never order, thereby saving yourself from stocking any extraneous ingredients.
Busy Opening Hours
You can monitor both when people use the app to order most and track when those people want to eat. This will tell you when the business is reliably busiest. You can then adjust the rota so that staff are on at peak times, and off at quiet times.
Average Spend
The customers’ average spend is another feature that restaurant data could reveal. If you can work out how much the average person spends in one visit, you can work out reliably how many covers or tables you need to complete to break even each day.
Related Items and Purchase Patterns
People always combine certain foods and drinks with others. Analytical insights from the Kayana app could reveal that those that eat a T-Bone steak never have room for desert but do drink more. Information like this could show you that the portion sizes are too large and you trim them. This would encourage customers to spend on that sweet where they would not have before. Consumer behaviour insights can help your drive sales.
Average Length of Stay
In a previous article, we talked about how a food ordering app like Kayana could help you shorten the average length of stay and therefore increase table turnover times. The more customers we can fit in, the more money we make. Kayana could help you deduce the average length of stay and even contribute to lowering that time through online ordering.
Allergen Information
Customers who routinely use a food ordering app will store any allergen information they have there. This will pass straight to the chef when the customer places the order. Customers can order from home, passing allergen info on, and arrive at the table to eat. You will receive general feedback on allergen sufferers as well. For example, you will witness rises in intolerances or certain allergies prevailing.
Analytical Restaurant Data Personalises the Customer Experience
Of the other benefits to streamlining your service with a digital app, the app allows your customers to personalise their dining experience with you. Think of it like a social media centre focused on your restaurant. You can encourage and build your customer community.
Customers can bookmark their favourite dishes or leave independent reviews on them. They can recommend food to friends, set their preferences and allergen information, and even chat to you directly when they need advice.
Kayana Puts the Customer First – and You in Control
Using a digital ordering app like Kayana for your restaurant business, means increasing the amount of analytical data you receive. This works to help your business in a number of ways. Used to its full potential, Kayana can:
Cut ordering and payment time, saving queues and serving staff’s time
See patterns in customers orderings, most ordered dishes at a certain point of the day, behavioural data,…
The split the bill feature lets groups easily split cheques without taking up employee time
Online payment means less time at the cash register
Increased table turnover due to increased efficiency in the ordering system
Direct to kitchen order
Less public contact for all employees
Easy retrieval of data which helps streamline your business
Reduced delivery times for takeaway restaurants or orders
A reduction in the number of mistakes in the ordering process
The ability to schedule pickups and drop offs
When you use the feedback from the app to increase your restaurant’s efficiency, you boost traffic, drive leads, and increase sales.
Restaurants need to go digital to increase their efficiency
It is time. Let us do this. A website and a phone number are no longer enough.
Katriona MacMillan
