8 Recipe Management Tips to Boost Your Restaurant’s Revenue

Whether you’re new to the restaurant business or simply taking your already existing business to a new level, customers expect quality food across all your outlets at all times. Failing to keep consistency across your restaurant branches may lead you to lose potential loyal customers every second.

The key, here, to retain loyal customers, attract new ones, and thus increase your restaurant’s revenue-  is recipe management. Below are eight tips to help you maximize profits through using restaurant technology.

1. Serve fast and serve more

A great deal of recipe management relies on time management. When you set a standardized preparation time for all your dishes, your table turnover rate will increase as customers will be satisfied by the quality of your dishes in addition to your quick service.

2. Maintain recipe consistency

To minimize any possible errors while preparing your dishes, include a detailed standardized recipe in your recipe management plan. This way, you’ll keep up recipe consistency while lowering your food costs.

3. Minimize wastage

The lesser you waste, the more you earn. Why is that? Because your recipe management system indicates the ingredients needed for each dish and how much it costs. This process gives you an idea of your estimated stock and your exact next purchase order. Without it, you may find yourself using different quantities of ingredients in the same dish every time you prepare it! A total waste of food!

4. Maintain branch consistency

Keeping a common recipe across all restaurant branches helps you maintain recipe consistency across all outlets besides establishing a solid brand name. But success isn’t just about recipe consistency; it’s about consistency across all branches. In other words, serving the same menu across all branches.

5. Create a central dashboard

Have all your recipes accessible by all your branches in one click. Tweaking recipes or adding or changing them is unavoidable, especially as you listen to your customers’ feedback. By putting all your recipes on a central dashboard, all recipe updates will be accessible to all outlets simultaneously.

If you’re wondering what recipe management technology is like, book a free demo now with Taker

6. Order the right amount of stock

Aside from keeping track of wastage, ordering just the right amount of stock is another excellent way to increase your restaurant’s revenue. Over-ordering stock is a common mistake often made, but with a recipe management technology that measures consumption, you’ll save on stock and level up to boost revenue.

7. Make it easy for your staff

Your business goals should be clear and easy to understand by all of your staff members. Things like recipes, ambiance and the overall customer experience you seek to achieve should be included in the standardized training for all staff members, especially new ones.  With an efficient recipe management system, your staff can deliver their best from the very beginning.

8. Make your staff independent

By independent, we don’t mean your staff members being detached or disconnected from the work cycle. What we do mean is that your restaurant operations are smoothly streamlined that even the absence of any member doesn’t cause a drop in performance. Using a recipe management system ensures that each member is fully aware of your recipes in a way that guarantees efficient delivery at all times.

Using a Restaurant Ordering System to Improve Customer Experience

The key to a positive customer experience is a well-designed and well-functioning restaurant ordering system. It doesn’t matter if your customer is dining in or ordering online. Their experience will determine whether they’ll become a loyal customer or a source of negative word-of-mouth for your business!

How does a restaurant ordering system help your business grow?

For the dining-in customer, an efficient restaurant ordering system can create a personalized experience as the staff takes the customer’s order on the spot and makes sure it is correctly entered into the system. In the case of online ordering, the ordering and tracking process makes the customer feel at ease. While for the kitchen staff, a restaurant ordering system helps them create personalized food experiences.

Why should you back your restaurant ordering system with POS software?

A backed ordering system streamlines orders from multiple channels. This makes it easier for restaurants to track sales as well as give a complete view of order details.  Also, menu adjustments and customized offers can be set based on the insights gained.

How does a POS software process orders?

An evolved, cloud-based POS software processes orders through:

1. Restaurant premises, for the old-school paper and pen method of order taking, can lead to errors. In addition, the traditional order cycle is longer which makes a restaurant ordering system via POS software more accurate and time-saving.

Another thing is that your staff has access to the menu and table numbers on the screen which helps them track and optimize the overall table turnover time. Even in takeaway and delivery, the orders are reflected in the same system as the on-premises.  

Marketing-wise, based on the types of orders, restaurants can tailor offers and discounts. And customers also will find it easy to split bills or do separate checks as the system automatically does the calculations.

2. Restaurant website/mobile application as lately, restaurants have come to realize that a self-owned restaurant ordering system like a website or app is the best way to manage the end customer experience. And the best part about this is the easy integration with POS software. Also, the orders received online through the website or app reflect in the POS. For customers, it’s easier for them to track their orders and view their order history.

As for restaurant owners- based on the collected consumption and customer data- they can create customized offers with notifications being sent to the customers via the app. This makes retaining customers a less challenging job. The insights about the performance of each dish as well may bring restaurant owners to make changes in the central menu which again reflect on the restaurant’s website and app.

Tips to consider when investing in a restaurant ordering system:

  • A single view of all orders across channels.
  • A POS that is equipped with the main requirements of an ordering system.
  • The ability to upgrade the existing restaurant ordering system.
  • A customer-centric restaurant ordering system.

Get started now with a new ordering system for your restaurant tailored to fit your budget and needs.  

Features to Look for in Your Restaurant Management Software for Employee Scheduling

In recent months, Covid-19 has made restaurant management more difficult than ever. And since employees are responsible for delivery kitchens, having their shifts scheduled systematically is key to their success. To help you as a restaurant owner or manager benefit from your workforce to the fullest, we listed the features to look for when choosing your restaurant management software for employee scheduling.

1. Easy shift-based scheduling

Starting from your employees’ availability, work schedules, and leaves, all the way to data tracking, the scheduling process should run smoothly. Considering efficient restaurant management depends on having the right employee work their best for reasonable hours, the system ensures your employees are neither overworked nor facing any obstacles while working.

As for takeout and delivery restaurants, a shift-based scheduling feature is a life-saver, for you may find yourself in need of twice as many employees as you did in the past.

2. POS integration

Another important feature is POS integration with your software. A POS system helps you gain a better understanding of your employees. Through your customer data, you identify areas of strength and weaknesses. Information such as the number of upsold orders, frequent and successful deliveries, and hours worked by each employee are all provided by the ideal restaurant management software.

As you analyze the data, you get a clearer vision of your employees’ true potential and possibly give incentives as per performance.

3. Mobile-friendliness

A part of smart restaurant management is to accommodate everyone. To have an employee scheduling software that is compatible with all devices- mobile phones included- is another important point to consider. Not all employees have access to laptops or computers all the time. This is why your restaurant management software must be optimized for mobile devices.

Also, this way, restaurant owners and employees can keep track of shift timings and tasks making it easier for both to remain updated throughout the day.

4. Faster communication

Ease of communication with employees is an essential feature of any restaurant management system, especially with employee scheduling. Efficient communication in terms of employee shifts, leave requests, and performance management should be covered by the software. With such an integrated platform, employees get to plan their vacation and you can keep track of their schedules at all times.

5. Unusual periods of activity coverage

Even during the chaos of the pandemic, it is unacceptable that restaurant employees are overworked. Your restaurant management system should keep track of unscheduled breaks, planned employee activities, and absence shifts.

Of course, adversity may result in management challenges, but having efficient software for employee scheduling can help you stay ahead of crises.

Check out Taker for customized features for your restaurant management system.

How Co-Kitchen Spaces Can Grow Your Food Delivery Business

If you haven’t heard of co-kitchen spaces, then you should probably know it’s the next big thing in the food delivery business. Evolving from cloud kitchen, ghost kitchen, virtual restaurant, or delivery-only restaurant; as the name suggests, the concept operates online, reducing the cost of setting up a restaurant while spiking the demand on food delivery.

Co-kitchen spaces help restaurants excel

The rental costs of restaurants and the expenses of their operation and setting up have forced many brick-and-mortar restaurants to shut down. A study shows that restaurant rentals may cost up to 25% of a restaurant’s revenue!

Co-kitchen spaces are known by many as shared kitchen spaces or commissary kitchens. By definition, co-kitchen spaces are centralized, licensed, commercial food production facilities where several restaurants could rent space to prepare delivery-optimized menu items. The spaces are equipped with infrastructure, kitchenware, and utilities such as freezers, stoves, etc. needed for running a delivery-only restaurant business.

The flexibility of the rental plans of co-kitchen spaces gives them an edge over traditional restaurants. When you hire the area, you only pay for the expenses of kitchen use for a certain period, thus, cutting down on fixed monthly rentals, staffing, and equipment expenses by almost 30%. 

Co-kitchen spaces contribute to the long-term success of restaurants

Here are four reasons why co-kitchen spaces could be beneficial for your restaurant business in the long run:

1. Cost optimization

Co-kitchen spaces are equipped to run food production on a large restaurant scale, including all the required kitchenware and tools for operation. The cost of buying them is, hence, optimized.

Within only a month, you’ll find yourself starting to make a profit and penetrating the business market faster than you’d expected.

2. Easier market entry

For start-ups and entrepreneurs wishing to kick off a smaller food-delivery restaurant business, co-kitchen spaces are the perfect place to start. Also known as kitchen incubators, such businesses are given a chance to experiment and grow on a limited budget while making use of a fully-equipped kitchen.

The hassle of obtaining licenses and permits is greatly cut down with co-kitchen spaces. Besides, sharing experiences with fellow restaurant owners is an advantage that comes along with sharing kitchen spaces in the same building.

3. Increased order volume

Typically, co-kitchen spaces are located in busy areas where there is high demand for food delivery. These areas could be residential, commercial, or both. Hence, creating an opportunity to serve a larger market and cater to the specific food preferences of its customers.

Many delivery-only restaurants resort to online food ordering systems to organize their operations and reach more customers. Check out Taker for more details.

4. Efficient food delivery

As mentioned above, sharing kitchen spaces is a major contributing factor in business growth and increasing order volume. Considering that there is no dining-in option, it is easier for delivery services to pick up orders once they’re ready to go.

The more orders are out for delivery, the less the delivery cost is which ultimately optimizes the overall cost for co-kitchen spaces.