Forking out on the right tech solutions could make your restaurant more efficient and more successful. Below are just a few different bits of technology that can be useful for modern restaurant businesses. 

POS systems and card readers no-longer need to be fixed in one place. Using tablets, waiters can take customer orders and relay them to the kitchen from the customer’s table. Portable card readers meanwhile allow payments to be made at the table so that customers can settle the bill without having to get up from their seat. The likes of the new North American Bancard website offers a few different wireless card readers to choose from. Work out which one is best for your business.

Are you still handing kitchen staff paper tickets? Automatically sending customer orders to a kitchen display system reduces the need to go back and forth to the kitchen. Orders on a kitchen display system also can’t get lost, damaged or muddled like paper tickets. This makes it a much more efficient system. There are many KDS solutions to explore. Make sure your KDS is located somewhere in the kitchen where it can be easily viewed by everyone. 

Washing dishes by hand is laborious and time-consuming work. It’s much more efficient to automate the process with an automatic dishwasher machine. There are many different commercial dishwashers to choose from - some of which offer very speedy thorough cleaning. Specialist machines can also be purchased for washing glasses. Consider buying a machine that takes removable trays so that multiple trays of items can be loaded up and queued for washing. Be wary that many items may still need to be rinsed beforehand, so you’ll still need a sink. 

Since the pandemic, more restaurants have been embracing a self-service ordering system in which customers order their food via a website or app. This reduces work for servers and gives customers flexibility to order food as soon as they are ready. Such systems can be used to order food deliveries or order food to a table in the restaurant. Food ordering websites can be opened using a QR code and are usually the cheapest option. Apps cost more to produce, but can have added advantages such as being able to promote offers to customers via push notifications. Restaurant app builders as listed here at Adalo can simplify the process. 

Recording exactly when employees are clocking in and out can help you to track exactly how many hours each employee is working so that employees can be paid accordingly. You cannot always rely on scheduled hours to calculate pay as some employees may work overtime, go home early, call in sick, take up new last minute shifts or turn up late. While timecards are the most traditional way of recording employee hours, digital time clocks are much more useful. Hours can be digitally tracked and pay slips can be automatically calculated. A digital time clock could consist of a wall-mounted device that employees can clock in and out of by using their fingerprint, or it could consist of an app that allows employees to clock in and out on their phone.