Opening a restaurant isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a complicated, daunting undertaking that’s made even more difficult by the volatile nature of the F&B industry.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of budding restauranteurs are put off by the challenges and hurdles that await. But establishing a profitable eatery is entirely achievable with the right preparation and planning.
To give yourself the best chance of succeeding, there are a number of key operational elements to consider, all of which form the bedrock of any successful F&B enterprise. These include the following 5 areas:
- Operational management
- Analytics
- Team Management
- Menu Development
- Customer Convenience and Personalisation
Traditionally, operators have struggled to incorporate all of these elements at once, often focusing on specific areas to the exclusion of others. As a result, processes become fragmented leading to inefficiency, higher operational costs and reduced revenue.
But the introduction of advanced restaurant management platforms such as Syrve are helping to solve this long-standing problem by integrating all of these processes into one unified system. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at these five areas and how Syrve can help with each.
1. Operational Management
The operational side of things tends to be centred round three, maybe four core areas depending on the restaurant: POS, inventory control, kitchen management and delivery.
POS System
An efficient, easy-to-use POS system is an absolute must for ensuring an efficient front-of-house operation. As a bare minimum requirement, the hardware should be easy to use, fast and reliable. Ideally, staff should also be able to easily promote menu items and take into account specific customer preferences such as dietary requirements.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve’s POS system provides an advanced solution that meets all of these requirements. It features an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that simplifies order taking, also prompting staff with upselling suggestions, while providing instant access to allergen information for each dish. The result is reduced waiting times, happier customers and a front-of-house team that’s able to focus on other important tasks.
Inventory Control
Overstocking, stockouts and food waste are very common in the F&B industry and are the direct result of poor inventory management. And the consequences are often ruinous. This is why it’s so important to get this right from the very beginning.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve streamlines the entire inventory management process. Utilising AI forecasting, the system automatically generates purchase orders to avoid over or understocking. It’s also possible to perform mobile inventory checks. This saves valuable time, eliminates human error and provides an accurate picture of your stock levels.
Kitchen Management
The kitchen is effectively the beating heart of a restaurant. So it obviously needs to be well managed and friction free. Food preparation should be efficient, consistent and of a high standard. Clear communication with the front-of-house team is also paramount. And to avoid bottlenecks, a kitchen should have in place an intelligent system for handling orders.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve has the potential to transform kitchen operations. To begin with, the system connects the kitchen with the FOH team by way of kitchen display screens, providing status updates and cooking countdowns. In turn, orders from multiple sources (website, in house, delivery aggregator) are combined into a single pipeline for kitchen staff. Prep and batch plans can also be prepared automatically thanks to AI-driven forecasting.
Delivery
Although not suitable for every type of restaurants, a delivery service can be an absolute game-changer for many establishments. The food delivery market is now huge, offering operators the perfect opportunity to increase their market share by targeting a larger customer base. Capitalising requires, among other things, an efficient ordering process, an integrated POS system and a robust logistical framework to ensure timely deliveries.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve allows restaurants to exploit the delivery market with ease. It’s possible to set up your own in-house delivery service and/or rely on third-party delivery services such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Orders are injected directly into your production pipeline and can be managed on one system - there’s no need to rely on multiple tablets for different ordering services. Driver management is also made easier thanks to a suite of tools for plotting routes and tracking drivers via GPS.
2. Data Analysis
Without accurate forecasting and reporting, you’ll be running your restaurant blindfolded. To operate successfully, you need meaningful, actionable insights to help measure performance and predict future demand.
Forecasting
Proper forecasting eliminates guesswork, allowing you to optimise inventory levels, minimise waste and prepare for those spikes in demand. With a deeper understanding of sales fluctuations, you’ll be better placed to create staff schedules that align with your cost of labour. Additionally, accurate forecasting means that your kitchen staff can work to optimised food prep plans, ensuring that dishes are ready and waste is reduced.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve's AI restaurant forecasting engine analyses historical sales data, to accurately predict future income and likely top sellers. External events such as holidays and the weather can also be factored in. Based on these forecasts, Syrve creates prep and batch plans as while optimising your inventory, so that you don’t overstock your store room or run out of ingredients.
Reporting
To gauge the performance of your restaurant and to improve day-to-day productivity, you’ll need a high-res picture of the data that matters most to your business, preferable in real-time. Revenue and costs are obviously the most important KPIs here. But you’ll also need to know about the granular details such as ingredient costs, delivery prices and service/kitchen performance.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve provides a 360-degree view of your data that includes more than 200 business metrics that are accessible via a single dashboard. It’s possible to track operational profit and loss, monitor inventory levels, access sales data and keep tabs of labour costs - all of this is available in real time. In addition to a broad-picture analysis, you can also focus on specific areas with the use of deep analytics relating to menu engineering, supplier management and back-of-house efficiency.
3. Staff Management
It’s one thing getting staff onboard. Managing them is another thing altogether. Given the high staff turnover rates in the F&B sector, getting this right has become absolutely essential. Restaurant team management encompasses a number of elements including rota planning, goal setting, performance monitoring and attendance management. Team morale is another critically important area.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve includes a suite of hospitality staff management tools that covers all of the above areas. It’s possible to build precise staff schedules with a planner. And with the help of AI forecasting, you can determine how many staff you need on a shift, which helps to ensure that you’re never shorthanded. To improve team morale, Syrve allows you to set performance targets and create incentive programs.
4. Menu Management
Your menu will determine the success or failure of your restaurant. In addition to being well designed and suitably priced, it should align with the kitchen’s capacity. To meet these requirements, you’ll need to understand the overall profitability of each dish – this is extremely important in an industry where labour costs and ingredient prices are in a constant state of flux. You’ll also want to know your best sellers and be fully prepared for spikes in demand.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve’s menu management module allows you to see the overall cost of each dish based on ingredients and labour time. With this data, the system then ranks the dishes according to profitability. An ABC/XYZ analysis engine is included as well which reveals top earning dishes and poor sellers. As a result, you can easily strike off dishes that aren’t selling and promote those that are.
5. Customer Convenience and Personalisation
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, customer satisfaction is key to success. In the F&B sector, a quality end product if of course important, as is building lasting customer relationships and personalisation. We’re also in an era where convenience reigns supreme.
How Syrve Can Help
Syrve includes an assortment of tools that can assist in this area. In terms of relationship building, the platform lets you add the details of guests to a database whenever they make a reservation. If they use your establishment for a birthday celebration, the system will remember this, so you can offer a more personalised experience next time.
Subscription tools are also included that allow you to stay connected. In addition, you can provide click and collect, mobile and online ordering for restaurants and delivery services. Not only does this broaden the appeal of your restaurant, it also means that you’ll be offering convenience.
Learn more about Syrve’s advanced restaurant management platform: https://www.syrve.com
