The more you know about your business, the better you can plan and budget for the future. Given an understanding of the full scope of the restaurant, you can see which KPIs matter most for your professional goals, necessary adjustments to inventory, and whether you should prioritize takeout or delivery channels. The more data you collect, the better you’ll see the ins and outs of what makes your restaurant work.
COVID-19 has significantly influenced industry opinion and practices. This demonstrates just how important data analytics becomes in times of upheaval and stress.
Why Data Matters
Knowing about marketplace trends informs which promotions will work to recruit new customers, what’s most likely to bring in money, how much staff to schedule and so much more.
Consider the winter holidays. You know you’re going to get busier, but just how many servers do you need working the floor? How much specialty dessert should you create for the prix fixe menu? Would you get more attention if you switched to digital ads? Advanced Point of Sale systems collect sales data from every order to help answer all these questions.
Make Off-Premise Channels Better
Accurate data begets more effective reporting and analysis. If you process a high volume of delivery orders every day, don’t wait until closing time to input that information. Assessing wait times, high and low traffic, and order volume all matter when making decisions down the line.
Maybe at the end of a tough quarter, you check your POS data to find that customers actually tended to choose takeout far more often than delivery. This gives you the chance to finally try distancing yourself from those ubiquitous but expensive third party apps by shifting your priorities to takeout. If you’re no longer limited to food that travels, you can expand your menu horizons. Get all these advantages just from being able to track your sales data more acutely.
How to Analyze Restaurant Data
To understand the full scope of your data, you need software that checks performance over a period of time. Take eatOS for example: Our technology comes capable of reporting down to the fine details of a venue, with filtered results that guide you directly to the information you seek. Restrict access to keep data secure by, say, only letting management view or print the analytical reports.
Your Point of Sale should also encourage continued growth. Let’s say you’ve held off on upgrading your restaurant technology until you open that second location you’ve been dreaming about. eatOS scales with you; overview multiple locations at once to see how business is faring comparatively. Remote access capabilities let you exercise complete control at your convenience.
What does that do for business? Knowing where you’re pulling in the most revenue, what you’re spending a lot on without sufficient ROI, and where your customers flock tells you which sales channels to optimize for every location you run. Make sure you’re always generating the most profit by keeping a closer eye on the numbers.
Optimizing Food Delivery
While restaurant data gives crucial insights about what to change, that’s only the beginning. You also need to understand how to effectively evolve. Maybe you continually struggle with excessive food waste; you’ll need to streamline your current menu so it’s optimized for travel. Nobody wants to order something that doesn’t sit well for thirty minutes in the back of the car, so why let those ingredients continually expire? Repurpose them for dishes designed specifically for off-premise enjoyment and recoup those lost sales and customer satisfaction.
