How a restaurant management system can give more control over your business

What is a restaurant management system (RMS)

A restaurant management system is a type of software designed for pubs, bars and restaurants. Unlike a point of sales system (POS) which only covers transactions and, a restaurant management system (RMS) encompasses more functionality to help with; Staff Management, Compliance Tracking, Reporting, Health & Safety and more.

Restaurant management software can bring much needed structure to your business that is scalable across multiple venues bringing more diligence and consistency making it easier to uphold standards and remain compliant without any of the paperwork

How does a restaurant management system work?

Restaurant management software is not much different from what you're already used to. It essentially covers the same areas but in a more efficient format that organises everything into simple dashboards, templates and tools which leaves you with a clear structure that is further supported by real time data so you know exactly where your business stands, even across multiple venues.

4 key areas of a restaurant management system

Staff management and operations

The key to running any business is proper staff management but this is even more important in the hospitality industry. It's a people business after all. A restaurant management system can take some of the weight off the shoulders of managers and give staff more clarity on what is expected of them.

Online rotas - structure your shifts and ensure you’re never under or over-staffed.

With a clear weekly calendar, deployment graph and leave request management you can visually see if you have the right amount of chefs, bartenders and waiting staff throughout the day. Then with a click of a button it's delivered to all your employees and updated automatically if you need to make changes.

Learn more about how online rotas work and what it can do for your business

Task management

Knowing what needs to be done at each venue can be a nightmare to keep track of especially from a compliance point of view.

Restaurant management software solves this issue by providing staff with a clear task list to follow which organises all daily and upcoming tasks in one place which can be filtered by category. e.g duties, compliance checks, risk assessments Policies etc. The best part is its role specific and reported back to you so if something is missed you will be the first to know.

Compliance tracking and reporting

Compliance management is the last thing you want to be spending time on that you could be using somewhere else. That's why it's one of the key areas that restaurant management software like Hopsy helps you cover.

Compliance checklists

Using a simple template you can help maintain a good standard of compliance throughout the day, week and month. All compliance checks are set at a company level which applies to all venues within your business so you can easily implement them across your entire organization. The completion of these checklists is then reported back to you in its own dashboard so you can see your overall compliance performance across all of your venues.

Risk assessments tools

Risk assessments are the most important part of compliance but the hardest to track and maintain. You can do everything from creating them to sending them out to all your venues within a restaurant management system like Hopsy. It's simple template gives you a clear structure to follow so once it's set up it's out of the way for good. There's no need to send them out to managers, it automatically gets added to their task list with a delay to complete which is then stored and reported.

What's unique to some systems like Hopsy is scoring which consolidates the various report and venue performance into scores so you know exactly where your venues stand without going into the weeds and analysing all of the data yourself. You can then compare venue performance and see where performance is lacking and why without the need to take out costly audits and regular venue visit

Policies

Every company has policies in place which dictate the guidelines that staff must follow. This usually is the first thing staff need to familiarise themselves with before starting their job which means you need to sit down with new starters and present your policies. Where online policies differ is the ability to update and send them out to all venues for review at any time. This is then tracked so you know if policies have been reviewed. With this additional level of control you can incorporate more detailed guidelines of what is expected of staff to avoid miss conduct and uphold business standards.

Performance reporting

This is the main thing that a restaurant management system brings to the table. With everything being stored in one central hub you can see what's happening in your business in real time which gives you a level of control you couldn't get otherwise.

It can highlight important information that can give you a better understanding of what's being done in your business and if your managers are doing their job correctly. With this data at your fingertips you can make more informed decisions and drive positive change.

Some advantages of performance reporting are;

Compare the performance of your BDMs’/area managers

Give managers more accountability, with everything being reported back to you there is less room for error. BDM reports create competition between the sites because if something is missed or ignored it will affect their score which is reported back to you.

A daily audit of all your venues

With a restaurant management system you can see exactly how your venues are performing on a daily basis. This can help resolve issues faster and maintain smoother operation.

Tickets and incident reporting

If you run multiple venues you're bound to run into some issues at some point. Luckily with a ticket system you can have peace of mind that issues are being addressed. If equipment needs replacing or someone has had an accident it is reported to the right person so it can be resolved.

Shifting the focus to improvement

You can incorporate all of the reporting features you receive within a restaurant management system to make venue visits / audits more effective. Save time and shift the conversation from ‘What has been done?’ ‘What can we do to improve?’

Interested in trying a restaurant management system?

Try Hopsy for free today or learn more about our restaurant management system can bring to the table