The post-holiday season. It’s tough enough on an average year to garner attention for your restaurant, but thanks to COVID-19, business is sure to be even less predictable than ever in 2021. The pandemic has made reduced-capacity orders, shutdowns and safety restrictions relatively commonplace and all of that means fewer customers daily.
Even without a deadly virus threatening the industry as we know it, January is a traditionally slow time for restaurants. People are making New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, eat healthier, stop drinking so much or save money on unnecessary expenses. When customers do venture out to their favorite restaurants, their bills are smaller across the board. Now with reduced-capacity restrictions, necessary safety precautions, and increased sanitation measures slowing service and forcing fewer tables served per shift, restaurants need to change up their operational strategy for the new year. If you’ve ever wanted to get creative, now’s a great time to experiment with new trends, invest in cutting-edge technology and try out business models you’ve always been curious about before.
Your New Year’s Resolutions
Integration and Efficiency
Although it can be difficult to consider spending money when finances are so tight, investing in smarter restaurant technology is an avenue to increased revenue. Point of Sale terminals, for example, aren’t just a cash register anymore: Now with third party integrations and seamless connectivity across networks, you can get premier accounting and scheduling software. eatOS is integrated with Gusto and 7Shifts, respectively, so you can start doing payroll and scheduling faster and with less hassle.
When you streamline key aspects of your managements’ priorities, they can focus on improving the customer experience and overall business operations. Use your Point of Sale to automate key aspects of your operations and save money, watching your bottom line naturally grow as a result.
Organized Reservations
When you digitize your reservation software rather than going the old route of manual pen and paper, you can more easily comply with COVID-19 seating restrictions. With a PoS system equipped to take reservations, guests enter their information when they arrive which has a dual purpose: contract tracing and marketing. Building detailed guest profiles with relevant information such as their phone numbers and addresses lets you see where your most loyal customers spend their time and enables you to get in touch with them if there’s a viral outbreak at your restaurant around the time they visited. It also lets you save critical information about their favorite dishes and when they usually come in, so you can create marketing campaigns that are better targeted for your particular audience and offer specials you know they’ll like, even encouraging them to visit off-schedule if you do it right.
A reservation system is more than just a gateway to customer profiles. Tracking your tables also makes it easier to maximize space without going over your state’s limited capacity orders, and you can space bookings accordingly to prevent overcrowding the waiting area. Combined with table management analytics offered as an eatOS feature, you’ll predict when tables will clear so you can give waiting parties a more accurate estimate. Meanwhile our PoS lets you send automated notifications to guests about their reservations, so you can reduce no-shows while reminding them of critical information like your COVID-19 policies in the same message.
Staff Appreciation
With eatOS scheduling and HR software integration, your employees will appreciate that they get paid on time and they can trade shifts or request time off easily. Our PoS also makes communication between front and back of house staff seamless, improves order accuracy for guests, increases the average size of your checks and tips, and has automatic upselling prompts so servers do their best job every time. All of these features have a dual purpose of making employees’ jobs easier, and happy servers are less likely to leave; in an industry plagued by turnover, this is a must-have. Meanwhile our superior workforce management analytics identifies your best workers so you know who to thank when it comes time to recognize your greatest assets.
A New Normal
Times have changed, and they’re not going back anytime soon. It’s time to make some big changes, and January 2021—a traditionally slow month now compounded by the reduction in traffic triggered by this pandemic—is the perfect opportunity to experiment with new restaurant concepts, menu changes that optimize your dishes for delivery and takeout, floor plans and management styles, marketing campaigns and more. With plenty of time and your target audience stuck at home, delving into the online marketplace might be just the revitalization your restaurant needs to get through the next months of this deadly virus, if you haven’t done it yet.
App delivery, for example, is a huge new market that’s simply exploded since everyone went into quarantine. This revenue stream has become massively popularized thanks in no small part to the coronavirus, which is good news for restaurants because mobile ordering also produces higher checks on average and a lot less overhead costs. While third party apps might be your first instinct because they instantly market your brand to a huge new customer base, you might want to consider saving yourself the 30% commission by signing up with eatOS instead. We give every restaurant their own personalized, branded merchant app to run delivery from. The best part? You keep all the profits.
With eatOS, you’ll never have to second-guess how your business is doing. Meet the new year right with an advanced Point of Sale system that handles all of your management needs and make your business more efficient and optimized like never before. Sign up with eatOS today.
