You’ve finally done it—secured and opened your very own restaurant. It has been a lifelong dream of yours and everything looks just the way you imagined it would. Your menu is impecable, you have found a fabulous location that you are sure will help promote your business, you have hired the best staff you could find and you have a robust marketing plan in place for both online and traditional methods to solicit customers not just once but repeatedly. What else could you need? A set of clear processes to manage all of the moving parts of your business. What moving parts, you ask? Inventory of food and ingredients, supplies including everything from napkins to pots and pans to light bulbs to toilet paper and more are just some of the items that you will need to track. Restaurant management software can help you do all of this—and more. It is not viable for you to think that you can simply walk into your restaurant each day and eyeball what you need to purchase for that day. Do this and you are guaranteed to run out of something at a critical moment. Today’s robust restaurant management software programs allow you to track not only usage of necessary items but will connect that to peaks and valleys in your business, helping to identify times of heavier or lighter usage. Such programs will even suggest or alert you when it is time to restock on needed items, quantity and all. One of the biggest reasons for the incredibly high rate of failure in the restaurant industry is that because most restaurants are run by chefs who are simply chefs and who refuse to admit and realize that a restaurant is actually a business and should be operated as such. Simply having the best food or décor is not sufficient to ensure your success. You can guarantee that many of your competitors utilize restaurant management software and if you want to compete in their marketplace, you must do the same as well. Another area of your business that a management program can assist with is in staffing. You can utlize the program to help develop your schedule and set it to adjust for changes such as someone calling in sick or times when you are overstaffed and you can then see these trends so that you can cut back as appropriate. You will be able to see the net amount of revenue compared to the amount of your overhead, including staffing, so that you can make the right business decisions. Remember that your restaurant is a business and look for a good restaurant management software program to help make yours a success. Today’s technology provides great resources for restaurant management software. Restaurant owners and managers should get in touch with Rendezvous.
