Is 2020 the Year to Remodel Your Restaurant?
Remodel your restaurant?
You might be thinking, “Why would anyone invest money in redecorating the dining room or swapping out light fixtures when we don’t even know how many guests we can even have in our restaurant?”
But, we’re not talking about renovating your space. There’s no construction, paint swatches, or decor deliberations involved. We’re talking about remodeling your business. This project is focused on making your back of house better than ever.
Read on for tips to remodel your restaurant for all the right reasons.
Build a better back office
In 2019, a National Restaurant Association survey found that 78% of restaurant operators considered off-premise dining to be a strategic priority. If off-premise wasn’t a strategic priority for you last year, it’s likely that the first half of 2020 has changed your mind.
Although most states have started reopening restaurants under social distancing protocols, there’s no better time for restaurant operators to be strategic about off-premise solutions as customers continue to be uneasy about dining in. With less diners eating on-premise, now is a great time to focus on building better back-office business practices.
Now is a great time to evaluate every vendor relationship. Now is a great time to eliminate the excuse of, “But that’s how we’ve always done it.” Now is the time to figure out how to be efficient and how to squeeze margin out of dollar of revenue that you generate, whether the dish is sold to stay, to go, or be delivered.
Save time and reduce touch by uploading documents to a cloud
Comparing a vendor invoice against the delivery you received. Jotting notes about errors or extras in the margins. Digging through musty boxes in the basement to reconcile statements. Working in the back of house at a restaurant, you’re likely all too familiar with all of the problems that paper pose to getting your job done.
Right now, none of your staff will want to touch anything that they don’t need to—especially months of dirty invoices. These paper problems can be solved by converting your back of house operations to run on cloud-based restaurant technology.
xtraCHEF’s business intelligence solutions for restaurants start with best-in-class Accounts Payable (AP) management that allows you to scan, snap, or send invoices from a device of your choice. We also support electronic data interchange (EDI) so invoices never need to physically change hands. Plus, our software utilizes optical character recognition (OCR) to make all documents searchable, making reconciliations and audits a breeze.
All data uploaded to xtraCHEF is synced to our cloud, so there’s no longer a need to store paper invoices (and all of the germs that may linger on them). Even better? The cloud is available anywhere you have an internet connection, so you and your staff can limit possible exposure at the restaurant while staying productive and focusing on other reopening measures.
Manage and source vendors to find the best deal for your business
AP automation for restaurants not only solves paper-related problems with vendors, like accounting for credits, but it also opens up opportunities for greater insight into overall vendor relationships. Implement xtraCHEF’s Vendor Hub for a complete list of your vendors plus quick access to each invoice that has been uploaded from them.
The Vendor Hub allows you to search and sort by the things you look for the most, like dates, locations, and GL codes. See how often you purchase from each vendor, as well as how their prices fluctuate over time. By arming yourself with historical data on paid invoices, you can better position yourself for preferred pricing to squeeze additional profit out of each ingredient sold.
Finding that your current vendors are price gouging or charging way too much for common ingredients? xtraCHEF hosts vendor bid sheets so you can easily compare prices in one place and find the best fit for your business without having to manually enter the information yourself. Time spent researching new vendors is minimized, while off-premise profits are maximized.
Engineer and experiment with menus to improve margins
With paper processes drastically reduced and low vendor prices on lock, it’s time to remodel your menu. Calculating plate cost is an exercise that most restaurants only do once, which can ultimately cost your business money since it only accounts for the price of each ingredient at one point in time.
Instead, use xtraCHEF to make recipe management a habit. Upload all prep and menu recipes into xtraCHEF just once, and we automatically calculate how the price of those recipes change over time. Our Variance Analysis shows you how the cost of each plate changes over time so you can make a change to your menu before your margins suffer.
Recipe management with xtraCHEF also considers packaging, delivery platform, and prime costs to get all-inclusive insight into COGS. In this world, there’s no room for guessing: you need to know these numbers in order to stay profitable and, ultimately, in business!
With proper recipe management and plate costing in place at your restaurant, you can use the data to discover which menu items are creating enough profit to keep on the menu. Anything going beyond your target COGS can be quickly replaced.
Use xtraCHEF to find better, cost-efficient recipes for your menu. Just use our drag-and-drop interface to experiment with different combinations of existing prep recipes—or single ingredients—for a menu that maximizes margin.
Don’t forget to consider how your menu items will travel! Prioritize items that hold up well for reheating, like soups, salads, grain bowls, sandwiches, and tacos, to provide a higher-quality delivery or takeout experience that will encourage future orders from your customers.
Start remodeling today for ROI on your best-ever BOH
You have questions about how to keep your business profitable, and xtraCHEF holds the answers. By remodeling your back of house operations with our cloud-based business intelligence software, your restaurant will be positioned to weather the storm of COVID’s aftermath on the industry.
Ready to take the first step to remodel your back of house? Request a demo with xtraCHEF! Implementing our software is easy and contact-free, so reach out today to see how we can support your operations in the new normal.
