Hiring staff is difficult for many restaurant owners these days. There are just not enough people to go around. Rising labour costs coupled with uncertainty in the restaurant industry created a lot of hesitancy on both restaurant owners and former employees who lost their jobs to the pandemic.
In this article, we’re going to deal with the issue of staff shortage in the restaurant industry and how restaurants can cope up using technology and automation.
Here are some of the reasons why you should consider having a complete restaurant solution like DeliveryBizConnect over hiring additional staff.
Hiring Additional Staff is Time-consuming & Expensive
Getting the right people to work for you isn’t something you can do overnight. It’s a whole process. You need to advertise, conduct interviews, do background checks, and then come up with a short list of potential candidates. All of these while trying to run your restaurant short-handed.
For new hires with no experience, you’ll have to put up with low productivity for the first few weeks and have them working closely with your senior employees. The goal is to get them up to speed thereby increasing your restaurant’s productivity over the long haul. In a survey by Harvard Business School, it takes around 12 weeks before a new hire reaches full productivity.
Each new hire will put a dent on your restaurant’s margins. Hopefully with restaurants gearing up to fully reopen this won’t be much of a problem and getting additional staff might actually help increase restaurant sales. But it can also go the other way in which case you’d be forced to run your restaurant at a loss. Unless you’re willing to take the risk, you need a safer, inexpensive solution.
Automation is Cheaper than Hiring Additional Staff
Rising labor costs has led many companies to invest in AI and automation to replace their human counterparts – for good reasons. Machines rarely need downtime, they perform consistently with very few errors, and can be serviced/fixed with minimal effort. They don’t require employee benefits, and they don’t go on strike.
McDonald’s has already started using self-service ordering kiosks and automated drive-thru ordering. Fast-casual brands like Panera and casual-dining brands like Chili followed suit. Amazon Go went as far as using computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion. No lines, no checkout. Customers “just grab and go.”
We’re not doing any of that. We want something we can easily implement without spending a ton of money in the process.
The solution can be as simple as having your own restaurant website with online menu and online ordering capability. Besides, why hire additional staff for things like getting orders, handing out the bill, etc. when it can all be done on your customers’ mobile devices?
With online ordering, customers won’t have to compete for your waiter’s attention or wait forever to have their orders picked up and processed. They take a seat, scan the QR code, and place the order within a minute or two.
Here’s one of our videos explaining the benefits of QR code menu for touch-less online ordering for dine-in customers:
So how much will it cost? We’ve done our research and came up with some numbers. According to velvetech.com, the lowest cost with an offshore team is around $5,000. A full North American team can go as high as $50,000, while a blended team (North American & offshore) is around $12,000.
If you do it all by yourself, it’ll actually cost you nothing. However, you’re going to spend countless hours stringing together different solutions and making them all work. In most cases you’ll hit a paywall if you want to use the full service (also known as “freemium” apps).
Here’s what it would take to implement online ordering, as well as having your own delivery and driver app. Towards the end we offer a complete solution at just a fraction of the cost.
You Can Take Orders without Needing Additional Staff
Like we said earlier, having an online ordering capability can go a long way when dealing with issues of staff shortage. Say you have 10 customers all waiting to have their orders taken and you only have 1 available waiter or waitress. That means 9 other customers will have to wait for their turn. By the time he or she gets to customer 8, 9, and 10, they would have already left.
With online ordering, they simply scan the QR menu and start ordering. Orders go straight to your POS which you can then print and send to the kitchen to be processed.
Here’s a quick demo of different orders in our Small Business Dream back office (the technology that powers DeliveryBizConnect):
Online Order for Delivery
Walk Up Orders
Telephone Order for Delivery
Telephone Order for Pickup or Takeout
You Can Take Dine-in Preorders
What if you don’t have a kitchen staff big enough to handle a surge of orders during peak hours? One solution would be to implement dine-in pre-orders. Think of it like taking online order for pick up, but instead of putting them in a bag, you place them in the warmer so they’re ready to serve when your customer arrives.
This cuts down waiting time significantly. Customers will love the fact they can eat right away when they get there while at the same time you free up some time for your kitchen staff during peak hours.
However, you can only do so much on your dine-in preorders and soon you’re going to run out of tables. Of course, you don’t want to turn away your customers, so you need to be able to serve them without needing to come to your restaurant.
Enable Food Delivery Service
DeliveryBizConnect is a complete restaurant solution which includes food ordering/delivery app and driving matching service much like Uber Eats, but without the 30% commission fees. So next time your customers crave a delicious meal from your restaurant, you can just tell them to use your food delivery service.
DeliveryBizConnect helps your restaurant cope with labor shortages and rising labor costs at just 3.33% delivery cost which includes:
- POS
- Online ordering
- Food delivery app with your own logo
- Driver app/driver matching service
- Push notifications
- Full restaurant CRM
- Sales and marketing automation
- Loyalty program
- Referral Program
Here’s how DeliveryBizconnect handles food delivery from the point of view of the restaurant owner and the delivery driver:
Increase Your Restaurant Sales NOW!
It’s never too late to start your own food delivery service. Book an appointment with us for a 30-minute Complimentary Restaurant Sales Expert Call. At DeliveryBizConnect we’re committed to help restaurant owners stay on top of things and increase sales like never before.
