How to calculate your food cost in the Restaurant business?
Your restaurant website has many different purposes in the digital world. You must:
- Provide important information such as working hours, locations, and contact information.
- Share important information, such as promotions and special offers.
- Allow guests to browse your menu.
- Guide visitors to online ordering and delivery options (many of which go down).
- Give the same browsing experience that visitors find on a desktop computer or (most likely) a mobile device.
But by 2021, there is another important consideration for restaurant websites: even if they are easy to use. Today’s Internet users are moving away from desktop computers and looking at mobile devices — more than half (55 percent) of all personal searches are now from smartphones. If your website is difficult to browse or read on small screens, visitors may become frustrated and go elsewhere.
Search Engine optimised Menu for Restaurant
The following key restaurant technologies are part of your website, but most importantly they fit their category: your online menu.
Many restaurants simply download a PDF version of their menu to their website and call it a day. But more than half of all web searches from mobile devices, that’s a big problem. The PDF menu can be difficult (or even impossible) to read on a small screen, leaving guests to press and zoom in to see what dishes you offer. Studies show that 30 percent of consumers are drawn from menus that are hard to read, so the PDF menu may literally banish visitors.
But there is another major problem with PDFs: Google cannot read their text. This means that the content in your menu is not displayed on Google search. An important part of your restaurant’s website (as well as the online menu) is good search engine optimization (SEO), which is how visitors who may be hungry in your area find your website when they search for things like “burgers near me.”
Direct Online Ordering & Delivery for food
The COVID-19 epidemic has caused online orders and restaurant delivery (now the fastest growing segment of the industry) to explode. Now, restaurants that do not offer online orders and delivery are at risk of being abandoned by those who do.
Many restaurants prefer to use third-party delivery platforms, which offer specific advantages (such as built-in marketing and single-site guests can use to browse menus, place orders, and track their delivery). But those venues charge high fees that could cross the important line of a restaurant. The best restaurants today are those that use technology to offer direct online order through their websites, keeping those commissions and payments as their profit.
Digital Waiting Feature
A busy, fully booked restaurant is a dream come true. But owning a large, hand-written book with names on the waiting list can be a nightmare for former employees who have to spend their time focusing on visitors.
That’s why digital waiting lists — many of which have automatic features — are becoming a must-have tool for restaurants. The waiting list applications take on the daunting, personal task of managing your waiting list and communicating with visitors about their waiting times. They also make sure that guests do not fall into the pits, as they can when a busy host is tasked with tracking a booking book by hand.
As an added bonus, the waiting list apps collect important guest data (such as its contact details) that you can use to re-market them later, encouraging more visitors to visit your restaurant more often.
AI Phone Answering
We surveyed restaurant guests and found that when we call a restaurant to make a reservation, 42 percent will transfer to another restaurant if their phone goes to voicemail. Missing calls from guests can directly affect your booking number — and your title — but it is unlikely that a busy restaurant will keep someone close to the phone 24/7. What, then, is the solution? Technology that automatically answers your phones and uses AI to answer common, simple visitor questions.
Having robots to answer your phones may sound like a science fiction movie, but it’s just one of the new, improved parts of the restaurant technology that is easily accessible, thanks to the technological revolution. Which brings us to the last tool on our list — the one that all restaurants need if they want to reap the benefits of all the restaurant technology featured in this article.
Unaffected Food Tools
In the post-epidemic world, security is high for both tourists and restaurant staff. That is why tactile dining tools are available to live in the foreseeable future.
Non-communicable food not only makes restaurants safer by allowing more distance between guests and staff but also allows guests to have more control over all their dining experiences. They can customize their orders, add extra items, split checks, and pay — all using their own equipment, which reduces the number of touchpoints shared between guests. Restaurant technologies such as QR code production, online ordering, and mobile payment platforms Apps are needed to deliver the seamless experience guests are expecting.
Digital Marketing Tools Meet Visitors Where They Are
One of the great benefits of restaurant technology is how it makes it easy to find and reach new customers.
From social media to email newsletters to re-marketing via SMS that transforms first-time visitors into regular and loyal people, restaurants need to get inside digital marketing strategies that have proven to work for their industry. Digital marketing can sound intimidating, as most restaurant retailers are not retailers. But the right tools make it easier — or more automated — to take advantage of guaranteed sales channels without having to invest a lot of time, money, or work.