14 minutes

The Ultimate Handbook for Efficient Restaurant Operations

Nowadays, managing a restaurant has several obstacles. First, the restaurant business is extremely competitive. Restaurant owners and managers must also keep up with ever-changing consumer expectations, all while managing inventory, growing food prices, and personnel requirements.

This level of intricacy is only sometimes conducive to success. Many new restaurants will fail during the first few years because of inadequate resource management, insufficient funding, or inappropriate location. 

Many sectoral organizations rely increasingly on technology to simplify operations and achieve a competitive edge. As a result, new technology has become a necessity for restaurant operations.

Understanding restaurant operations management

Restaurant operations management refers to a set of processes and procedures that serve as a framework for your company’s day-to-day operations.

These vital duties range from scheduling your staff, allocating work, and managing inventories to regulating labor expenses, processing payroll, and adhering to labor rules.

While your business may be working smoothly right now, little inefficiencies may accumulate and expand, becoming entrenched and overpowering, and jeopardizing your restaurant’s long-term success.

An effective restaurant operations management program may prevent minor issues from becoming major issues, allowing your organization to function smoothly.

Challenges in restaurant operations:

Aside from demand- and inventory-related problems, entrepreneurs must go through the fundamental process of employing the appropriate individuals with the necessary abilities to improve restaurant operations management. They also need to consider labor and time management. Running a successful restaurant operations management business becomes both a full-time job and a way of life for the restaurant owner. Taking on several challenges might rapidly become daunting.

Let’s have a look at some of the issues that restaurant owners confront and how to manage them as effectively as possible:

1. Stock & Inventory Waste

The difficulty for restaurant owners is uncontrolled stock waste. Inventory management at a restaurant requires a lot of moving parts. Inventory is subject to continual change.

Ingredients and raw materials, which are substantial expenditures in the restaurant business, have a limited shelf life. Even minor mismanagement might cost the owner a lot of money. Ingredient expenditures are a restaurant’s major expenses, and effectively controlling inventories can be challenging.

Managing inventory, product location, ingredient expiration dates, businesses, receiving dates, and so on are difficult to follow without accurate information.

Manual data-collecting procedures result in a high rate of disinformation, inventory loss, and manual recounts, all of which are costly and time-consuming.

As a result, many restaurants utilize inventory management software, which automates the whole inventory process, from counting and transferring to billing and purchasing. 

2. Employee Management

It is critical to recruit individuals with the necessary talents for the position. It is also critical that you do not ignore soft talents, which convert into positive client experiences. In the restaurant sector, personnel management is a difficult responsibility, as restaurant employees work in shifts.

Employees work on a rotating schedule, with most taking a weekday off. As a result, manually tracking their leave, attendance, working hours, and overtime is inconvenient. Mismanagement in a restaurant’s operations eventually lowers its total performance and impairs the restaurant’s service and customer satisfaction. To manage your employees, consider using integrated software, such as KNOW.

3. Payroll Management

As previously stated, restaurant personnel work in shifts. The majority of them are contract employees.

They may be required to work extra on special events such as festivals, weekends, or when there is a personnel shortage. When working manually in such complicated scenarios, mistakes are common, resulting in employee unhappiness.

Using scheduling and employee management software allows employees to easily tailor their availability. This will ensure that you do not become stressed out over managing your personnel and instead focus on training and keeping them.

4. Customer Retention

The restaurant industry is very competitive, and maintaining customers requires significant work. To create long-term connections with customers, you must be persistent in your approach. Giving positive and easy customer satisfaction is the first step. The next step would be to use social media to stay in touch with customers and encourage them to return to your restaurant by informing them about new dishes and special events. It is critical to remember that repeat consumers generate significant money for your company.

5. Supplier Management

Each restaurant’s success is determined by its ability to maintain a reliable supply chain. Supplier management is the process of ensuring that your restaurant gets the most value for the money it spends on its product and ingredient suppliers. Because supplies are essential to the successful operation of your restaurant, both the supplier and your business must connect correctly and effectively.

Restaurants work with a variety of vendors for culinary supplies, equipment, and furnishings such as tablecloths and napkins. Keeping track of dependable suppliers, competitive pricing, and timely delivery is a time-consuming procedure. Keep track of your supplies with inventory management software.

How can restaurant operations management software help you achieve the goal?

Here are the top five benefits of Restaurant Management Software and how they may help your business run more efficiently. 

1. Digitize your workflow

Restaurant operations management software may greatly improve your productivity by automating and optimizing many elements of your business. KNOW enables you to easily design and maintain personnel schedules, eliminating the time spent on manual scheduling and mistakes like real-time tracking and automatic ordering. The program also interfaces with payroll systems, allowing for more precise time monitoring and labor cost control.

2. Enhance Customer Relations

ERP solutions will improve customer satisfaction and experience. It enables businesses to easily update menus, cut wait times, and accept precise payment methods such as credit, cash, and cheque. This allows them to provide speedier service, resulting in delighted consumers.

3. Employee Satisfaction

Restaurant operations management software like KNOW may significantly improve employee management by giving a consolidated platform for handling multiple HR functions more efficiently and accurately. This program allows you to simply organize shifts, track attendance, and manage payroll from one location. It also improves communication between managers and employees, providing real-time information on schedules, shift changes, and key announcements. Employees may use the app to view their schedules, request time off, and switch shifts, decreasing managers’ administrative load and improving staff autonomy.

4. Improved Productivity

Restaurant management software conducts time-consuming operations, including table distribution and pricing lookups. However, it also allows your employees to focus on other duties that help your company expand and improve the overall client experience.

5. Reduced Errors

KNOW reduces mistakes by automating procedures like scheduling and payroll processing. This reduces the likelihood of human mistake related with manual data entry and computation. Real-time updates and system integration assure accurate, consistent information, resulting in more efficient operations and fewer costly mistakes.

Top 5 Restaurant Operations Software in 2024 

1. KNOW- The frontline Super-App for Restaurants

The only tool managers need to improve frontline operational performance, create happy staff, and save a lot of money!

• Every day, manage shop opening checklists, equipment inspections, and daily sales reporting as if they were routine.
• Use anything to improve your forms and checklists, including photographs, videos, signatures, QR codes, dates, times, and even GPS locations.
• KNOW’s digital audits function can help you improve the compliance of your internal processes. Schedule audits, run through checklists, document observations with proof, assign scores and follow-up steps, and monitor non-compliance closures — all without paper or bother!
• Train and upskill employees with rich bite-sized material that they can access at any time and from any location using their mobile phones. Easily develop and deliver bite-sized instructional content to your employees using our mobile app.

• Manage shift scheduling for as many locations as you’d like. Simply click a button to track work shifts and attendance.
• Address any malfunctioning equipmentas soon as possible, never allowing repairs to be delayed. Report faults, broken facilities, IT issues, and safety concerns. Promptly notify and fix any concerns that arise.
• Manage incident reports, site audits, hazard management, and safety inspections online.

Empower your personnel to execute projects remotely, on-site, or even on the go. Use specific messaging threads to communicate. Assign and personalize assignments for individuals or teams.

Best For: KNOW is not only best for the restaurant industry. Its features are compatible with other industries, like retail, logistics, grocery, cloud kitchens, manufacturing, cleaning, construction, homecare, field services, hospitality, and security.

Book a demo or get started with a free trial now!

2. Restaurant 365

Restaurant365 is a comprehensive, restaurant-specific operations platform that automates and optimizes various aspects of restaurant management.

• Comprehensive Automation: The platform automates and improves different parts of restaurant operations, saving human labor and increasing accuracy across critical business processes.
• Single Platform Integration: Restaurant365 offers a unified platform from which restaurants can handle all their important business tasks, including financial administration, accounting, inventory tracking, and labor scheduling.
• Enhanced Financial Management: The program provides finance professionals with sophisticated financial task management features, enabling more exact budgeting, cost monitoring, and accounting procedures.
• Inventory Monitoring: Restaurant365 streamlines inventory management by automating stock tracking, ordering, and waste reduction, allowing restaurants to maintain ideal inventory levels while cutting expenses.
• Labor Scheduling: The platform features powerful labor scheduling capabilities that enable managers to design effective staff schedules, align labor demands with company demand, and decrease labor costs.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: By offering real-time insights and analytics, Restaurant365 enables finance and operations managers to make educated decisions that save expenses and increase overall efficiency.
• Restaurant365 is meant to simplify the intricacies of restaurant administration, making it easier to grow operations and boost profitability.
• Profitability Enhancement: Restaurant365’s complete range of tools and features assists businesses in streamlining operations, reducing wasteful expenditures, and ultimately increasing profitability.Best For: Restaurant365 app is best for automating and optimizing restaurant operations, offering an all-in-one solution for financial management, inventory tracking, and labor scheduling, helping restaurants improve efficiency and profitability across multiple locations.

3. 7 shifts

7Shifts is a good scheduling tool for most small eateries, offering features that cater to the unique needs and scale of smaller establishments.

• User-Friendly Scheduling: The platform has a simple drag-and-drop scheduling tool, allowing managers to establish and alter staff schedules with little effort.
• Real-Time Schedule Adjustments: 7Shifts automatically modifies schedules depending on employee availability, ensuring that shifts are always appropriately staffed with no user involvement.
• Attendance Analysis: The program offers features for evaluating attendance patterns, which allow managers to monitor employee punctuality, detect trends, and solve any concerns that may occur.
• Accurate Projections: 7Shifts provides capabilities for estimating future staffing needs based on past data and attendance trends, allowing managers to minimize labor expenditures while avoiding over-staffing or understaffing.
• Streamlined Operations: By streamlining the scheduling process and offering insights into staff attendance, 7Shifts enables small restaurants to function more effectively and focus on providing excellent customer service.Best For: The 7shifts app is best for simplifying employee scheduling in restaurants, offering easy drag-and-drop tools, real-time updates, and attendance tracking, making staff management more efficient for small eateries.

4. Lightspeed

Lightspeed’s restaurant software allows you to connect and manage many locations. Turn tables quicker, increase money, and expand with superior analytics. Switching to Lightspeed is simple. From data transfer to hardware and payment setup, our industry professionals will be with you every step of the way.

• Multi-Location Management: Lightspeed’s restaurant operations software is designed to seamlessly link and manage numerous restaurant locations, giving a single platform for managing operations across many sites.
• Faster Table Turnover: The software assists restaurants in optimizing table management, resulting in faster table turns, improved sitting capacity, and more income.
• Income Growth: Lightspeed provides technologies that help businesses improve their income by streamlining processes like order processing, improving customer service, and managing employees more effectively.
• Advanced Analytics: The platform offers better analytics, including deep insights into corporate performance, consumer behavior, and operational efficiency. These analytics enable managers to make data-driven decisions that increase profitability.
• Simple Transition Process: Transitioning to Lightspeed is simple and hassle-free. The software allows for quick data transfer, ensuring that your old information is easily incorporated into the new system.
• Comprehensive Setup Help: Lightspeed’s industry expertise provides full help during the transition, from hardware installation to payment setup, ensuring that your business runs smoothly and without disturbance.
• Scalable Growth: Lightspeed’s features are designed to facilitate restaurant expansion while maintaining consistent operational efficiency across all locations.Best For: Lightspeed app is best for managing multi-location restaurant operations, offering tools to accelerate table turnover, boost revenue, and provide advanced analytics, with seamless setup support from industry experts for easy transition.

5. Jolt

Jolt is a smartphone and tablet-based operations execution software that enables restaurants, retail, hospitality, and other industries to improve team accountability, digital food safety compliance, and staff performance. Jolt is utilized by hundreds of worldwide businesses, including Smoothie King, Jimmy John’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Legoland, Marriott, Chevron, and Cinemark.

• Mobile-Based Platform: Jolt is intended as smartphone and tablet software, making it extremely accessible and simple for usage across a variety of devices, allowing employees and managers to connect with the system while on the move.
• Versatile Application Across Industries: Jolt is notably popular in restaurants, but it is also extremely successful in retail, hospitality, and other industries, providing a versatile solution that meets a wide range of operating requirements.
• Enhanced Team Accountability: The program boosts team accountability by giving explicit work assignments, real-time tracking, and automatic reminders, ensuring that all team members are aware of their obligations and deadlines.
• Digital Food Safety Compliance: Jolt features powerful solutions for digital food safety compliance, which help restaurants and other food-related enterprises comply with health laws by digitizing checklists, temperature logs, and other important food safety operations.
• Performance Monitoring: The platform includes capabilities that enable managers to monitor and assess employee performance, offering insights into productivity, job completion, and general effectiveness, thus promoting continual development.
• Real-Time Communication: Jolt enables real-time communication between team members and supervisors, ensuring that everyone is aware of critical updates, tasks, and changes, resulting in smoother and more efficient operations.
• Task Management: Jolt’s task management tool allows organizations to simply create, assign, and track tasks, ensuring that all essential actions are executed on time and to standard, hence enhancing overall operational efficiency.Best For: Jolt app is best for improving operational efficiency in restaurants and retail by enhancing team accountability, ensuring digital food safety compliance, and simplifying task management through a mobile-friendly platform for real-time communication and tracking.

Components involved in restaurant operations

The list below depicts the many parts of restaurant operations:

1. Staff Management:

This is undoubtedly one of the most important parts of restaurant operations. It is critical to have a systematic training program in place so that each team member understands what is expected of them and how to complete their daily work. It also allows them to make better, more informed judgments.

Create an employee handbook that outlines clear rules, principles, and policies for the whole firm in order to establish standards and unify your employees. However, you’ll also require specific training courses and resources for each role. After all, the expectations and skill sets for a waitress and a cook are likely to be very different. 

2. Inventory Management:

Take inventory on a regular basis and have a mechanism in place to do so. Both the front and back of the house will be responsible for acquiring and keeping goods, therefore this duty will most likely be divided among numerous personnel. 

Of course, the kitchen will spend the most on food inventory because they purchase all of the ingredients. However, you will also need to acquire front-of-house things such as alcohol and cocktail garnishes, takeaway containers, plastic cutlery, paper napkins, office supplies, and coffee and tea.

3. Financial Management:

Managers and cooks are often in charge of managing food and labor expenditures, but you may want to engage an accountant or bookkeeper to assist with the financial side of things. They will be in charge of managing the restaurant’s budget and payroll, as well as tracking costs, sales, and performing profitability studies. 

With an employee time clock, you can document all transactions and keep precise records of everyone’s hours. Employees are responsible for logging in and out of their shifts via their phones, and all hours are immediately documented on timesheets. 

4. Customer Service:

Service refers to aspects of restaurant operations that require dealing with clients. It is a “front-of-house” activity, which means that consumers can see and feel it. Meanwhile, “back of the house” activities, such as food preparation and administrative work, are not visible to consumers. Restaurants strive to give high-quality services to customers, resulting in a favorable experience that motivates them to return.

5. Health and Safety Compliance:

Day-to-day restaurant operations must involve cleaning, sanitation, and safety procedures. Both the kitchen and dining area must be cleaned on a regular basis to ensure compliance with your local government, which may additionally mandate that some employees carry city-issued.

To ensure that cleaning is completed, include it in staff side work and closing protocols. Use an app to generate easy, customizable checklists to help kitchen and front-of-house personnel remember what and how to clean at the end of their shifts. 

6. Marketing and Promotion:

Marketing and promotion are important aspects of the restaurant industry for a variety of reasons. Effective marketing allows a restaurant to grow its brand and get visibility in a competitive market. Restaurants may attract new consumers while also reminding existing ones of their offers by utilizing multiple channels such as social media, email marketing, and local advertising.

Marketing and marketing are critical to the success and expansion of any restaurant. They not only assist to attract and retain customers, but they also play an important role in generating sales and keeping the restaurant competitive in a changing market. By investing in smart marketing techniques, restaurants may improve their operations and achieve long-term success.

What is the Goal of Restaurant Operations Management? 

Restaurant operations management is extremely similar to organizational strategy; both are complicated and extensive programs that regulate vast portions of your business activity.

They are also made up of smaller, more precise goals that guide the decisions you make for your restaurant.

Organizational strategy has three particular goals: corporation level strategy, business level strategy, and functional level strategy.

Specific objectives for restaurant operations management might include:

• Sustaining the financial health of the restaurant
• Streamlining inventory usage
• Perfecting the prep process
• Managing staff efficiently
• Maintaining optimal inventory levels
• Keeping a high standard of food quality
• Improving the restaurant’s profit margin
• Improving the onboarding program
• Implementing cost savings
• Focusing on customer satisfaction
• Ensuring food safety
• Controlling inventory costs

Tips for efficient and smooth restaurant operations

Even the finest restaurants can continually enhance their operations. Consider how optimizing procedures, lowering expenses, and elevating your customers’ eating experiences might boost business development.

1. Practice efficient waste management

Restaurants tend to generate a lot of garbage. The National Restaurant Association reports that “commercial kitchens typically waste 4% to 10% of purchased food before it reaches the customer’s plate.” 

This waste equates to good money pouring down the toilet, thus proper waste management is essential for cost reduction. Additionally, it promotes environmental sustainability.

To prevent food waste, practice portion control, follow good storage procedures, and donate excess food to local homeless or animal shelters. Creative reuse of leftover food might also help.

Implementing inventory management also helps to maintain ideal stock levels and reducing food waste.

2. Use tech for operational efficiency

Using restaurant operations management technology, you may simplify many elements of restaurant operations.

KNOW can help you optimize most of your restaurant’s processes, such as shift scheduling and employee communications. KNOW enables frontline personnel at restaurants to complete regular tasks quickly and effortlessly, while also tracking daily income via mobile devices. Furthermore, it allows restaurant managers to easily schedule shifts and assess labor expenditures in one spot.

The more restaurant management automates these operations, the more time they can devote to customer service and business expansion.

3. Invest in employee training and development

Unskilled employees, such as an uneducated cashier, can disrupt restaurant operations, thus investing in employee training pays dividends.

For example, regular training sessions on customer service, food safety, and operational efficiency can help to enhance service quality. As a bonus, they can boost staff morale and retention. Take the effort to videotape your training sessions and make them available online so that everyone may view them.

4. Focus on customer experience

Another important aspect of running a successful restaurant is always enhancing the client experience.

Use questionnaires or comment cards to solicit customer input on topics such as the restaurant’s food quality, customer service, and general atmosphere. Then, take action on the comments, whether it is positive or critical. Your clients will appreciate that you took their feedback seriously.

5. Practice effective inventory management

Proper food inventory reduces overstocking and food waste. Using a first-in, first-out (FIFO) system ensures that older stock is always used first.

Regular inventory audits using inventory management software can help you track stock levels, decrease losses, and guarantee that fresh materials are always accessible.

6. Evaluate and innovate your menu regularly

Regular customers come to your restaurant to eat their favorite meals, but they may also be interested in trying new ones. To keep the restaurant new, engaging, and current, the menu should be updated on a frequent basis.

Consider seasonal upgrades and providing unique cuisine on occasion to entice new clients.

Latest Trends in Restaurant Operations

As we look to the future of restaurant operations, it’s clear that significant changes are on the way. These next shifts will be mostly driven by technology breakthroughs.

Let’s take a look at how these developments will affect the restaurant sector in the future.

1. Technological trends

AI is poised to alter restaurant operations in a variety of ways. It may be used to do predictive analytics in inventory management, estimate customer preferences, and optimize menu design using data-driven insights.

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants might improve customer service by taking reservations and answering queries.

2. Owners invest in new, dynamic technological alternatives

It’s no surprise that eateries have already adopted digital solutions. Technology enables essential restaurant operations, such as shift scheduling and staff communication, as well as taking orders table-side, at the counter, or via a kiosk, and processing online or in-person orders.

Customers have welcomed restaurant technology adoption. Consumers’ preferences for contactless payment methods, digital reservation systems, and mobile wallet applications have all grown over the previous year.

Restaurant owners, in particular, want technologies that give greater insights, allowing them to engage with their customers, link with other solutions, and receive real-time information on the health of their business. This implies that owners will be lured to more sophisticated and dynamic solutions that will assist them in not just running their firm but also improving its operations. 

3. Customer feedback informs menu and marketing selections

Many restaurant operators are eager to use data insights to better understand what their customers want in order to stay competitive. Having a deeper understanding of guest preferences is crucial for restaurants to guarantee that they offer menu items and supplementary goods that drive sales.  

Conclusion 

As with many sectors, technology is set to transform the next few years. From AI integration and self-service kiosks to the influence of delivery apps and the possibility for automation, these developments will transform the way restaurants operate.

As the restaurant industry shifts toward a more tech-centric strategy, the demand for effective project management solutions will grow.

With its extensive business management tools and services, KNOW provides an excellent option for restaurants wishing to effectively navigate these changes while continuing to expand and thrive.

The KNOW app provides a complete solution for restaurant scheduling, featuring capabilities such as managing shift handovers, creating and managing schedules, and tracking attendance with mobile check-in/out options. It empowers restaurant managers to efficiently plan and notify staff about their shifts, manage last-minute changes seamlessly, and ensure real-time updates for all staff. This functionality not only simplifies the scheduling process but also enhances communication and compliance across multiple locations. By integrating these features into a single platform, KNOW transforms restaurant operations into a more efficient and manageable task.

Experience the benefits of streamlined scheduling and improved operations—join KNOW today.