You don’t have to be wary of technology.
If you use the right technology, and use it well, it has the ability to save you tons and tons of time. This saved time can be used to optimize your process, acquire more customers, start a new restaurant or even finally take a break from your own hectic schedules.
Of course, unless you are going to create an app, the problem is:
Which is the right restaurant management app to use?
That’s why in this article, I have chosen 13 of the most popular restaurant management apps used by thousands of restaurants worldwide. These apps are already widely used, and you can be sure they can help you save time, cost or even generate you more profits.
1. 7Shifts
The average manager at a restaurant spends 6.61% of his/her work week just on employee scheduling alone. This is valuable time a manager or owner can use to optimize processes, run the restaurant better or do more to acquire customers.
This is why it is important that managers look out for apps or software that helps make this process faster. 7Shifts is a restaurant scheduling software that allows you to build out schedules in minutes. You can see staff availability and shift information in just one dashboard, and all the employees can keep up-to-date with any changes using 7Shifts’ group chats and instant messaging functions.
2. Toast POS
Toast is an all-in-one cloud-based restaurant POS system. As a POS, Toast allows restaurants to take payments easily, while also providing an easy-to-view dashboard for sales analytics. Toast also combines menu management, labour management, tableside ordering, customer reports, gift cards and online ordering into one system.
3. CandyBar
It costs 25X more to acquire a new customer than it does to sell to an existing one. A digital loyalty program like CandyBar rewards your customers and turns them into regulars.
As a result:
- You increase your revenue because your existing customers buy more, more often
- Your customers love you for rewarding them, which generates 5-star reviews for your store
- You get more customers, because your existing customers tell their friends about you.
In short, it’s a win-win-win. Don’t believe us? You can try Candybar today!
4. Eat App
If you’re looking for a powerful and affordable restaurant reservation and table management system, or you haven’t much luck with dealing with OpenTable or Resy take a look at Eat App as an alternative. Eat App provides the full suite of online reservation tools as well as access to Google Reserve button to help you get more customers at a much lower price than others.
5. Buffer
Social media is one of the most powerful channels driving new customers to restaurants today. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter – no matter the channel, social media has the ability to place the restaurant brand top-of-mind, and remind customers to visit more often.
Buffer is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule posts on these platforms in advance. This saves you a lot of time as you need not be on social media all day just to post fresh content. Buffer is also a dashboard that allows you to view across your different channels, so you can engage customers across them easily.
6. BlueCart
BlueCart is an all-in-one CRM and order management application. Restaurants can browse their featured network of suppliers and order product, manage inventory or process payments.
7. CrunchTime
CrunchTime is enterprise restaurant management software that helps restaurants control food cost, manage and control inventory, manage labour (for e.g creating staff schedules, etc.) and create custom dashboards to observe and analyze the health of the restaurant.
CrunchTime is your back office platform – helping you optimize your operations so that you can spend time doing the most important thing – generating profits!
8. ReviewTrackers
You can’t deny it anymore. Customers WILL search for online reviews even before they step one foot into your restaurant. Before they even decide to head to your location, they want to know:
- Is your staff friendly? Is your service good?
- Is the food delicious?
- How’s the ambience like?
- Do other people like your restaurant?
And so on and so forth. It is therefore, important to manage your reviews on the different restaurant review sites so that customers have a great impression on what your restaurant is like. ReviewTrackers is the software that allows you to manage reviews across the most important review sites, get new alerts from new reviews and helps you request for more customer feedback so that you can improve your service.
9. Zenefits
10. Freshbooks
No matter whether you like it or not, accounting is necessary. Not only is it required, it is also important to keep track of your balance sheet so you know your financial health is stable. Use Freshbooks to make the accounting process easy so you spend less time doing it.
11. OpenTable
Having trouble keeping track of reservations? OpenTable is the software that makes this easy. OpenTable can also help you acquire more customers as they can discover your location or restaurant via OpenTable’s platform.
12. Oddle
Online ordering is the future of restaurants. Make it easier for your customers to order (and also acquire more of them) by using a software like Oddle.
13. Bonusly
High employee turnover sucks. Not only must you spend time recruiting and hiring, you have to train and re-train new employees over and over again. Instead, enrich your company culture and motivate your current employees to stay longer by rewarding them using Bonusly.
14. WaitList Me
Too popular and your customers have to wait? As its name suggests, WaitList Me helps you to manage your wait list – and sends text and phone messages to your customers’ phones so that they know when is their turn.
Bonus! ZoomShift
ZoomShift is an employee scheduling software designed for hourly employees that enables restaurant managers and owners to track employee time, swap shifts with ease, and run payroll in minutes.
Zoomshift helps you to keep your team on the same page by allowing you to invite your team to check their schedule and manage their availability. The drag and drop schedule builder makes it extremely easy for you to create your schedule. ZoomShift is best for small to medium businesses that want an easy way to schedule and communicate with their employees.