What does your tech say about your restaurant?

The tech your restaurant chooses can have a profound impact on company culture and the way employees, customers and investors feel about your brand – and how it performs.

Welcome to the jumble
Today, many businesses are accelerating their digital transformation. But it's been a slower journey for the restaurant industry. Some operators still rely heavily on paperwork, verbal communication, and a jumble of older IT systems and newer bolt-on apps.

Unfortunately, this approach can stifle a company's culture. People must follow mind-numbing manual processes, including keying details from one system to another. Data becomes out of date almost instantly, leading to mistakes. And a lack of visibility around inventory, cost, sales, and profit and loss can create inefficiency and a sense that the business is adrift.

Customers will also notice when service is poor and if a brand seems to have lost its way. However, a remarkable shift is happening within hospitality ...

Events captured in real-time
More restaurant chains and independents are discovering that digital transformation is about more than simply replicating old processes. Instead, you can use the latest tech to capture events in real-time as they happen, across your business – in just a click or a swipe.

Virtually every moment can be recorded digitally and instantly, from the receipt of deliveries and stock counts, to batch creation and how quickly dishes are served. 

The smartest systems will then use AI to streamline a host of routine restaurant tasks, to the point where some become self-driving. This can range from creating supplier orders and kitchen prep plans automatically based on data-driven forecasts, to helping managers to create optimised staff schedules and higher-margin menus. 

In essence, next-generation tech puts you on the front foot. Your company culture becomes intuitive, agile, and responsive. And that's great news for everyone. 

Employees benefit
At a time when there's a "crippling jobs crisis" within hospitality, restaurants need to attract and retain quality staff. With the right tech, they can say Goodbye to mundane tasks and start to thrive. The system also notices how hard they work and it's easy to set up incentives. Next-gen tech unites front-of-house teams with the kitchen, so every order is recorded and tracked, on-screen, everywhere. 

Customers notice
With the right tech, you can perfect the simple things that matter to customers. Smart ordering devices let your table waiting staff send accurate orders to the kitchen in a single click, so chefs have more time to create dishes. If there's a danger meals are running late, the system tells the kitchen automatically. And when it's time to pay, every staff member on the floor can take a payment on their device. Customers don't need to wait until a payment handset comes free. 

Investors grow in confidence
The best restaurant tech will have last night's sales, an up-to-date P&L, and a wealth of other performance indicators available 24/7. Stakeholders can get an accurate picture of the business in real-time. This enables greater insight and confidence when it comes to deciding when to take the business to the next level.

• Take a look at iiko's guide to next-gen tech needed to re-imagine the world of hospitality.