Faulty deliveries can result in added costs to your foodservice business. The ripple effects of a single late arrival can spread throughout your restaurant, compromising your menu, restricting your staff, and impacting the experience you serve your diners.
You can take control of the delivery process and improve the reliability and accountability of your supplier relationships by going digital.
A restaurant online ordering system places all your purchase orders and procurements into a single, easy-to-manage platform you can access from your own phone anytime you need to be certain the right goods are on their way.
It’s an investment in control over your own business.
Deliveries Nourish Restaurants
Your restaurant can’t function without the nourishment of its daily deliveries. From the catch of the day that arrives iced and ready each morning to the dozens of essentials you need to equip your staff, showcase your meals, and stir your cocktails, your business is in a constant state of replenishment.
The delivery process that drives all this intake and service preparation can be complex. Even the most streamlined, experienced kitchens and front-of-house teams have to deal with a number of different suppliers across a range of different timeframes. There are daily produce deliveries, monthly wine orders, quarterly equipment audits, and the irregular flow of uniforms and safety gear that come with the arrival and departure of staff.
Delays and variations in quality across any of these processes can have a major impact across your business. Late produce deliveries reduce kitchen preparation time; mismanaged purchase orders lead to unexpected shortages; fluctuations in spend negatively impact cash flow.
To maintain a steady, reliable flow of deliveries amid this potential chaos, it helps to get digitally organized.
Digital Control Brings Your Business Together
A restaurant online ordering system uses the intuitive, user-friendly rules of internet purchasing to simplify the procurement process. It brings all your supplier relationships into focus on a single platform and automates much of the process to increase efficiency and reduce waste.
The process usually starts at your point of sale (POS). The digital revolution that began with the iPhone has spread across the restaurant industry to define the way business gets done in the 2020s. POS systems are now thought of as central hubs for everything that goes on in your restaurant. The traditional, active service roles of ordering, taking payments, and communicating across your business have been integrated with behind-the-scenes management software, such as product and staff management programs. The result is a living solution that updates sales, inventory, and service information on the go.
It’s a digital overview that lets you see how every aspect of your restaurant comes together to generate revenue, starting with the procurement process.
From the Supplier to the Diner
A digital POS system can control the flow of every dollar of spend through your restaurant, from the initial purchase order to the final customer invoice.
Systems are made up of mobile devices, usually iPads, that act as communication terminals between the front-of-house, the bar, the kitchen, and the management teams. These devices are linked online through the cloud with common software that handles a produce order from your supplier as easily as it passes on a drink order to your bar staff.
It’s a dual role that helps you prepare for service as well as improve your performance. This is achieved through several key features of leading restaurant online ordering systems:
1. Consolidated Management
Every supplier relationship is managed from the same digital platform, reached through a single password. All your purchase orders and procurements are stored together, and the complete history of order and invoice is available on demand.
2. Automated Tasks
Regular, repeating orders within your procurement process can be automated to make sure nothing is ever forgotten, duplicated, or entered in error. You should also be able to create automated alerts for late deliveries.
3. User-Friendly Ordering
Restaurant online ordering systems follow comprehensive, logical layouts that employ highly visual icons to help you quickly navigate to what you need to order. Just as a customer is guided through a meal order, your staff can readily find a product and place an order to a supplier without any specialized accounting knowledge.
4. Responsive Sales Reports
The leading POS solutions bring together service and management in live sales reports that describe how each procurement contributes to the bottom line. With the entire restaurant capable of being reduced to digital values of spend and sell, you can quickly crunch the numbers to produce reports that detail the most popular dishes and common modifications, and even the impact of staff on profit over weeks, months, or entire seasons.
As with each of the advantages above, this information can guide your spending and service habits to create the most profitable version of your restaurant.
Restaurant Online Ordering Systems for Long-Term Success
The right restaurant online ordering system can improve the reliability and accuracy of the deliveries that supply the lifeblood of your restaurant. By adopting a single platform to create and monitor all the supplier transactions that fuel your kitchen and impress your customers, you can gain greater control over your business and make sure your resources are used to their fullest potential.
The all-in-one POS solutions created by talech can bring your restaurant business to order. Our customized restaurant online ordering systems place all your management needs into an accessible platform that also supplies your service demands and streamlines your entire business.
