The art of running a restaurant has always been a costly business. Salaries, utility bills, and ingredients — the list is seemingly never ending.
We know that restaurants are worried about rocketing costs and the growing impact these are having on both hospitality teams and their customers.
Yet it’s not all doom and gloom. Our summary displays restaurant apps that can help your business prosper during difficult times. Here’s what to know.
Believe it or not, a completely free restaurant management app with an online booking system is available right now. Sign up and contact us to learn all about what Carbonara App can do for you.
What Are Restaurant Overheads?
This refers to the multitude of restaurant expenses related to the everyday practices and mechanisms of a hospitality business. When starting up a restaurant, every owner has to consider them.
Restaurant overheads require a healthy attitude to business. A commercial cost review is a key requirement needed to work out and identify a restaurant’s usage and overall spending on resources — for example, utility bills.
As such, potential opportunities for reducing these costs are always welcome. The quick way to make a sustainable change is to gaze into the world of modern hospitality technology and to take what it offers.
Business support is available from governments worldwide. Make sure to connect with your local official body that help businesses reduce their costs and manage themselves both sustainably and sufficiently, such as:
Whether you’re just starting out, need financial support, or looking to grow your restaurant, these institutions are always here to help.
The Apps That Cut Down on Restaurant Expenses
Over the course of the past decade, restaurant overheads have been on the increase.
General costs are essential to the everyday operations of a typical food business such as energy, general goods, and labour costs — and these have all hit dramatic heights.
Some restaurants have felt the immediate effects of such fluctuations: one popular venue in the UK has witnessed the price of essential ingredients go up by 20 per cent.
Though these effects may seem inevitable, the good news is that restaurants can make a choice: to use technology to mitigate the problems associated with rising overheads.
Remember: your restaurant overheads are the total amount of money spent on grand totals over a given business period. An overhead is the figure you can divide into days, weeks, months to find out how much money your restaurant needs to make a profit.
Cutting Out Food Waste
Formulating recipes and buying ingredients to create a menu presents a tricky situation connected to start-up costs. However, in the everyday operations of your food business, it is difficult to keep an eye on the exact number of ingredients and fluctuating food products that you need.
Popular items on the menu, for example, may help to give some indication; but the exact amount can be a hard sum to calculate.
Otherwise, restaurants face a costly circumstance: food waste. Buy too much of an item and a restaurant risks throwing it all into the bin. Analysts have found that food waste produced in the US comes close to an estimated 103 million tons per year — the actual cost of which amounts to well over a billion dollars per annum.
On the other hand, restaurants can help control their food spending with the use of a digital menu. A digitised iteration of your restaurant’s menu accessed via a QR code with an order system in place can regulate the use of ingredients and foodstuffs, helping owners know exactly what guests are ordering.
Did you know an inventory management can further regulate related costs? Far superior to a paper-based system, inventory technology automates all the counting, stock-checking, and summing up of items. Our ultimate guide on restaurant inventory management tells you everything you need to know.
Steadying Staff Expenses
Have you ever thought about the fact that staff scheduling costs money? This is a thankless task that requires restaurant staff to commits loads of time assigning places for their teams.
Every hour a manager spends on this is another hour’s worth of payroll — especially when a manager needs to:
- Avoid schedule conflicts, committing energy to getting it just right
- Amend negotiated hours, changing physical schedules as they go
- Arrange payroll, returning to their desk to ensure outgoings coincide with a team’s contract hours
However, all this time and money can be saved with an automated process: employee staff scheduling software. This does exactly what it says on the tin, including many useful features, such as:
- Sharing schedules when they’re ready, digitally with staff
- Notifying staff about changes made to their schedules
- Syncing digital calendars with staff shifts
- Adjusting automatically staff payrolls to the digital record of their workhours
- Lessening the overall burden on teams, to reduce common problems such as schedule conflicts
Scheduling software can make positive changes to overall restaurant costs and expenses, ensuring that no money is wasted on the mistakes made using manual practices. Learn more about automatic restaurant scheduling software — it could save you more money than ever expected.
Making a Profit — Drinks Pre Ordering
What better way to tackle restaurant costs? Make a profit!
This is one of the central and most impressive features of a drinks pre ordering system: that is, it allows customers to pay for beverages and alcoholic drinks while they wait for their tables, before they have even entered the restaurant.
As such, a pre-order/pre-pay mobile drinks ordering system can increase sales. Bar staff at a food business now know what exactly to serve their guests, waving goodbye to any mistaken orders.
Customer Service Times
Long customer service times can dissuade guests from returning to repat their visit to a restaurant — worse, they can lead to a restaurant no show, which has an immediate impact on a businesses’ finances.
However, a free app is available to conquer customer waiting times, using instant messaging technology to boost communication between restaurants and their customers.
Standby seating is a unique technique exclusive to Carbonara App users — and it can be learned in minutes. The idea is super simple and super efficient: it brings in customers on the cusp of their table being ready, seating them immediately when they arrive indoors, ready to eat in minutes. Discover the ins-and-outs of standby seating with our free app.
Carbonara App has many other features to help your food business save time. Discover more about how it contributes to cutting down on pricey restaurant overheads — and don’t forget, Carbonara App is completely free!
