Restaurant Management Software With Mobile Ordering System

Simple issuing of invoices through the software certainly increases the speed of the service and gives a possibility for conforming to the prescribed regulations. Is such way, the productivity of the service is increased up to 50%.

Investments into computer equipment are one-off, but taking into account the ratio of expenses for procurement of equipment and accelerating the work process, investments into equipment are really negligible. Also, it is relevant that the training of new staff on the software is simple, so you would not lose time on training of new employees.

Tip: Each waiter should be authorized to collect payment by card or payment order, but pay special attention on which waiter is authorized to reverse invoices.

The principle is really simple. Waiter takes one or more orders from guests, enters them into the POS Sector cash register and such complete orders are automatically sent to the printer or monitor in the kitchen or the bar separated by the type of ordered item.

Due to the “rush hour” and stress in order to serve food and drinks in a timely manner, the bartender or the kitchen staff have a huge problem of adding up the total quantities of certain items from five or more orders, thus the total quantities from all entered orders are optimal for reducing errors in serving of food or drinks.

The expense for inclusion of this option is an additional printer for orders in the bar or kitchen or a monitor for taking of orders on locations for preparation.

Each manager of a catering facility has a goal to enable the reception of as many guests as possible in the “Rush time”, realize turnover per table as many times as possible within those few hours, but without affecting the guests themselves, meaning that they should not be rushed in order for someone else to take their place. The only increase of productivity that can be affected in this interval of several hours is the time from the moment of reception of order to the serving of food to guests on a table.

With a fast and efficient kitchen, it is necessary to reduce the waiters’ time needed to come to the cash register, entering of orders and taking of notes to the kitchen, as well as prevent the situation where waiters collect 4-5 orders and then take them to the kitchen in the same time although the orders were taken in a period of around ten minutes.

A solution for this problem is that waiters use tablets for mobile sending of orders, while the kitchen and/or the bar have a monitor with received orders through which they inform waiters when their orders are ready. This option increases the speed of changing of tables for up to 20%, which means more guests and higher profit.

There are two solutions, the first one being the work with printers, which is realized with the installation of a printer in the kitchen and in the bar, meaning where it is necessary; after waiters make an order, the software separates it to the kitchen and the bar and sends it to corresponding printers. This method has numerous advantages over taking of notes and speeds up the business operation, however it is one-way communication, since waiters do not have information when their orders are ready so they have to go to the kitchen to check whether their orders are ready.

A solution for this problem is operation with a kitchen monitor. A tablet is installed in the kitchen showing the orders made by waiter; in addition there is information when the order was made so you can have information which orders are “late”, etc.. Another advantage of working with kitchen monitor is also that cook has a possibility, after the order is prepared, to inform waiter that the order is ready, which accelerates and optimizes working hours.

For me personally, one of the most important items in catering business are the correctly defined standard serving sizes. Standard serving sizes are a recipe for making of a certain food or drink. With correctly entered sizes of a food or drink, I can monitor my entire business operation through consumption and current status of stocks. Without correctly entered standard serving sizes there are no correct information about business operation, thus this is a precondition for monitoring and optimization of consumption and profit.

A huge problem that I faced when entering standard serving sizes in software I had been using as a caterer was that this important process was too complicated. Simply, I could hardly manage this without support. That is the reason why the current process of entering of standard serving sizes into POS Sector has been optimized so everyone can independently and simply add a new article and enter the standard serving sizes without redundant and complicated actions, and without support.

In order to more easily understand working with standard serving sizes, we will give an example of standard serving sizes for two items:

Example of standard serving size for coffee with milk would be as follows:

• Coffee  0.007 kg
• Sugar    2 pieces
• Milk       1 piece

Example of standard serving size for hamburger would be as follows:

• Bun for hamburger        1 piece
• Minced meat    0.15 kg
• Green salad       0.020 kg
• Tomato                               0.050 kg
• Salt        0.002 kg
• Mayonnaise      0.002 kg
• Ketchup              0.002 kg
• Onion   0.005 kg

The standard serving sizes adjusted in such way for coffee with milk will result that with every sale of coffee with milk the stocks will be reduced for 7 grams of coffee, 2 small bags of sugar and 1 small package of milk; the same works for hamburgers, each sale will reduce the amount of relevant ingredients in stocks in the previously defined quantities.

Management of standard serving sizes gives you a possibility to monitor the quantities and financial values of sold goods; the standard serving sizes are a precondition for you to know whether you are selling certain items at prices where you do not have any or have a very little profit, etc.

 Note: Be sure to check whether you have entered the correct quantities of certain ingredients, since that is a precondition for correct reducing of quantities of ingredients from stocks.

Guests often change the proposed side dishes from the menu or they ask for a specific preparation of a meal. Without this option in the software, waiters have to go to the bar or kitchen and explain what a guest wants. For me as a caterer, that means loss of time for my staff and my profit. With the option of direct message to the bar or kitchen on modification of side dishes or type of preparation, this problem is resolved and there are no more unnecessary losses.

However, this option will not be fully optimized and will create chaos in the stocks if, when side dishes are changed, correct ingredients are not reduced in the stocks and the defined basic ingredients in standard serving sizes for food and drinks are not cancelled.