Digitalization & Technology for a restaurant  

Your website is like your digital shopwindow. Here your customers can peek in and see what they can expect when they visit you. They get a taste of your style and atmosphere, they see your menu and prices, and sure enough, they will decide within a very short time span if they want to come in.

Your website should therefore be professional, beautiful and to the point. You’ll want to include professional photos of your restaurant, your food, and your menu, but also provide information about yourself. It’s up to you what kind of information you want to include. As long as it is short and sweet, you can share something about your team, your restaurant philosophy, or your special way of sourcing and preparing food.

The tips that follow below for your online appearance should all be included features in your website as well.

To be found by new customers, it is essential for you to register your restaurant with Google. This enables you to be found on the search engine and show up on Google Maps when customers look for restaurants in their area. Registering your restaurant with Google will also help you build a repertoire of great customer reviews that are publicly available for new potential guests. Keep all info up to date and make the reviews work for your good by taking note of what your guests have to say and trying to implement their suggestions.

A social media presence, on the other hand, is not a must have. But for some restaurant types a social media account can be very useful. This is where you can build relationships with your customers, show daily specials or behind the scenes footage and announce upcoming events. If you run a bar-restaurant that hosts musicians frequently for example, you could announce each artist a few days before the event on your Instagram or Facebook account while simultaneously maintaining an overviewing list of all the upcoming dates and events on your website.

There has been a spike in online food ordering since the pandemic hit in 2020, but even before that, the demand for online food ordering and delivery services was on a constant rise.

If you want to scale your sales, online food ordering is a game changer for you, whether you do it on your own website or through a delivery service partner like Uber Eats, Delivery Hero or Deliveroo. Keep in mind that many people just go to the leading delivery service providers’ websites to look for a restaurant option instead of looking on google maps to find which restaurants are near them.

To simplify your customers’ life, you should include a booking tool on your website for guests to book tables in advance without having to call your busy staff. This way, your customer can see exactly how many and which tables are available on their preferred day of visiting and can make a reservation all by themselves. This feature will also save your staff time and hassle.

Some popular options for booking tools are „OpenTable“, „SevenRooms“ and „simpleERB“.

As mentioned in our article about „How to reduce restaurant expenses“, keeping very close track of your inventory is important to keep your costs low and manage your restaurant finances well.

Using an inventory-tracking software will save you a lot of time, ensure greater accuracy in numbers and remind you of when would be a good time to stock up on certain items again. Even the best before dates can be easily viewed. This way you can use your resources to the maximum capacity and reduce your food waste by significant amounts.

If you have created a team schedule before, you know what a long and painful process it can be to shift everyone around multiple times until the puzzle finally fits. Scheduling your staff efficiently can be a struggle, but you can use scheduling software to simplify this process and to keep better track of your employees’ individual working hours.

The restaurant kitchen is the place where the magic happens for your guests. While it can get very busy during rush hours, responding to the taken orders doesn’t need to get overwhelming and chaotic for your kitchen staff. While printed tickets with food orders can diminish your team’s workflow, a kitchen display system that is well visible and readable can enhance it. The possibility to see the different orders at once on a screen with the exact time they were placed, allows for a better organization and prioritization of tasks.