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How to reduce the waiting time of your restaurant with tablets
I ask you to put aside your role as a restaurant owner for a moment, and be just a customer and remember how many times you have spent time waiting for a table in a restaurant, and you have left, or wanted to go, due to the slowness of the business. .
For restaurants and bars, it is key not to keep customers waiting, especially during the week, when those who come have to return to work soon.
Here we present a very simple strategy to drastically reduce the wait in your restaurant and practically without investing more money than you already invested in your Tablets and their software. It only implies a change in the way of working.
The ordering software of your Tablet must be intuitive and can be handled quickly, if not, it will not work for you.
Decreasing the wait is key: reducing the waiting time in your restaurant by 7 seconds will give you a 1% increase in your market share in your niche. Imagine if you reduce it to zero.
Skip the queue order to decrease the wait time
“Flour Bakery” is a Boston bakery, very awarded there, reduced waiting time in its restaurants by seven minutes with the use of Tablets and taking its staff behind the order bar.
They did it like this: while customers are queuing at the counter, a worker “skips the line” and places orders there, without the person reaching the counter. When the diner arrives at the counter, he only has to pay and / or pick up the food, because the order on the Tablet is automatically synchronized with the kitchen and the cashier.
Thus, “skipping the line”, they do not wait for the customer to arrive at the checkout, but rather take the checkout and the order to where the customer is.
Keys to successfully skipping the line at your restaurant
It is a very simple strategy, and perhaps at first glance you think that it is not related to technology in a restaurant, but it is that, without a Tablet or good software, it will be impossible for you to implement this strategy in your business.
The keys for this strategy to be successful are:
- It is not just about obtaining the customer’s order: when your employee goes directly to the customer, he must be kind, affable and nice, because it is your brand that is representing in a you-to-you directly to the customer
- Eliminate dependency on the main checkout: your software should sync well with the kitchen and the checkout, without your employee having to take the order, then go to the checkout and come back with the next one, but instead take the order, and go to the next right there
- Establish policies for when to implement this practice: break the line when there is a line of 10, 15 or 20 people? So your employees can know when to leave certain tasks to speed up the queue
- Take advantage of the personal treatment so that your staff offers a loyalty program or an offer or special dish of the day, since, when you skip the line, the attitude is different: you have gone to the person when in theory, it was not their turn
- Break the line like fast food companies do: line up for online orders, reservations, and more.