The restaurant industry continues to face pressure after a tough pandemic. This is regardless of the nature of the restaurant – be it casual dining, fast food chains, pubs, bars, and coffee shops – they are all affected. Additionally, across the UK, leasing commercial restaurant space is not cheap – and neither is the cost for utilities, like energy; and nor is the cost of human resources either. Alongside this, despite the fact that the UK has come slowly out of a recession, and that inflation and interest rates are dropping ever so slightly, the sector continues to battle on against these challenges. Within this economy a Mastercard study points out that it is an organisation’s menu that drives success: as 70% of restaurant leaders say that optimising their restaurant’s menu is fundamental to achieving organisational goals.
While it stands to reason that producing and refining one’s product offering is key to success, within the restaurant business there are other factors at play too. Stuart Colverd, Head of POS Sales for Northern Europe at BIXOLON Europe GmbH argues that it’s one thing to have a strong, optimised menu, and proposition to offer customers; but if the front of house (FOH) and back of house (BOH) are not aligned on taking orders and executing them effectively and accurately for customers, then it also stands to reason that any restaurant business faces the potential for failure.
An organised BOH supports sales and keeps customers happy
In many restaurants this is where a great menu falls short. Regardless of how pleasant front of house staff are, if a customer’s order is taken into a point of sale system (POS), and is lost in translation during various stages of preparation, and the wrong order is produced, it will result in an unhappy customer experience, with the customer not getting what they ordered. This could potentially result in lost customers to competitors and brand damage on social media. To solve this operational problem, it is essential that restaurants implement a kitchen order system that enables the BOH and kitchen to know exactly what to prepare for each customer. The POS system typically provides the mechanism for orders to be taken and charged to customers, and for receipts to be issued and printed, showing proof of purchase – either immediately in the case of fast food, or at the end of the meal in a sit-down experience.
In either situation an order is placed via a POS system and is then passed into the kitchen order management system. At this point it’s up to the kitchen order management system to provide the BOH the information needed to prepare a customer’s order. Depending on the organisation, they might choose to adopt one of two general approaches for their kitchen order management system: 1) use of a cost-effective label-based system to indicate the status of food production, along with any preferences and allergen alerts, or 2) use a kitchen display system that is linked up to complementary label printers. The decision to use either is often down to resource availability, the type, size and style of restaurant, and their growth lifecycle. There is a place for both and in either situation label printers are vital.
Generally there are two kinds of approaches to using receipt and label printers. Some labels are printed on receipts and stuck to food orders with additional sticky tape. However, some of these receipt labels can go missing, because they accidentally tear off after being stuck to food orders, or they just haven’t been stuck down correctly. When this happens, it can cause momentary chaos and operational failures behind the scenes leaving kitchens in an operational mess. Therefore, restaurant organisations ought to consider linerless labels. They reduce the need for additional sticky tape usage, and printers used often have the capability to print all the key information needed by BOH staff legibly and accurately for all to read on one variable length label. Assuming that FOH teams have taken down orders correctly and accurately, then it means that information conveyed to the kitchen and BOH staff will be accurately shared.
Building customer loyalty and keeping customers safe
Receipt printing is a fundamental part of the value exchange during fast-food or restaurant dining experiences. In the case of fine dining, it usually signals that the customer’s experience at that restaurant is about to end. When paying for their meal, they’ll often receive a receipt, and that receipt has an array of information on it including what was ordered, the cost, whether a tip is included and increasingly today, additional marketing information. This could take the form of on-receipt advertising, encouragement to join loyalty schemes, promotions and competitions – all of which are used by marketing teams help brands to communicate something additional to customers, that allows them to build a better customer relationship that extends beyond the transactional nature of the meal itself.
When it comes to fast food and casual dining scenarios, however, things can be a little different. In these scenarios, receipts can also be used to communicate allergens in writing to customers, for example. Or, allergen information can be represented in the form of QR codes that take customers to a website or mobile app, where there is often more scope to share additional information and detail about allergens than is possible on a receipt (or label). This representation of valuable information is used to help brands protect their customers and their own reputations. In some takeaway fast food situations the receipt is also stuck to the packaging – and conveys proof of purchase along with allergen information. Again, in these situations it’s advisable that linerless, variable length labels are used.
This is because they are more cost effective for the business and because they optimise the use of the label for printing. In comparison, if a traditional sticky label is used, it is often the case that several labels need to be used to convey all the necessary information required to communicate with the customer, because not all the necessary information can fit onto just one label. So, more than one label might be needed, and while this doesn’t seem problematic it can be because information might need to be spread correctly in a good format for customers to read across two or three or maybe even four labels. In these situations the space on the label is generally not well used or optimised, causing a waste of label printing. A better approach is to use variable length linerless label printing. This means the order is printed onto the precise amount of label length required to convey the key information to each customer. So, if the length of the receipt label only needs to be 5cm to convey the necessary information, then that’s how long it will be, if it needs to be longer or shorter, it will be. Why use three labels when one correctly sized and formatted one will be sufficient?
Conclusion
According to data acquired by Price Baily around 500 restaurants shut down at the end of last year. While a strong menu and proposition enables restaurants to compete, a lot of their success is additionally underpinned by the performance of the economy and the back office systems that they have put in place that enables them to accurately and effectively produce their customer’s orders. Without these supporting systems in place – including appropriate kitchen order management systems, receipt and label printers – they will be unable to take and execute orders accurately to the high standards that customers expect these days. This could therefore ultimately impact their bottom line, and affect brand reputation too.