Every restaurateur knows that running a successful restaurant business means a lot more than serving delicious food — this ultra competitive industry is all about satisfying the bottom line. The word “efficiency” is sometimes used incorrectly, to mean cost-cutting resulting in a reduction of service or product quality.
A true efficiency means delivering to customers the exact same service for a reduced cost. This is where new technology like employee scheduling software excels. Let’s take a closer look at how this new software helps restaurants.
Faster Schedules
Streamlining processes that take up valuable time and create headaches for staff is an important way to free them up during work hours to concentrate where their labour is most useful, usually cooking food or serving customers. Creating a schedule each week involves solving a complex puzzle with a lot of moving pieces.
For example, a staff member who closes late Saturday night can’t be expected to handle the Sunday brunch rush. This complexity gets compacted further because maybe other staff members have requested time off, and this staffing issue needs to be solved all while the restaurant is filled with customers.
Now, employee scheduling software harnesses the power of automation to reduce the time it takes to create schedules by 80%, which leads directly to a 1-3% reduction in labour costs.
Better Schedules
The automation in the software is guided by the parameters set up through the app by your employees themselves. Staff can request time off and relay their work availability to their manager through a drag-and-drop calendar.
This means that the schedules created by the automation also factor in the specific needs of every employee — it’s the best of both worlds. You can check out this schedule template to see how the work schedules your employees will enjoy are not just produced in less time, they’re actually better.
All the Data at Your Fingertips
Finding efficiencies requires knowing your restaurant from top to bottom. Employee scheduling software’s manager-facing dashboards present every kind of stat decision makers need, plus it can track custom metrics that matter specifically to your restaurant.
Employee scheduling software prompts employees to rate and describe shifts in their own words. The perspective of frontline employees complements the hard data and gives management the complete picture of their business, so important decisions will be made from a place of true and full knowledge.
Effortless Labor Compliance
Restaurants have tight margins that need to be respected and enforced. The time clock on employee scheduling software can prevent early punch-ins, and they also punch-out employees automatically if they haven’t done so after a certain amount of time after their shift has ended.
This keeps payroll predictable. With the ability to effortlessly ensure staff get the breaks they’re legally entitled to, you’ll not only keep employees fresh on the job, but you’ll avoid paying penalties or fines related to labour compliance.
Efficiency means finding costs in your business that can be eliminated without causing any corresponding reduction in the product offered. Automating these efficiencies with sophisticated new tools like employee scheduling software is the secret to how restaurants today make their margins work.
