F&B Restaurant Operations and Franchise management software are digital solutions that help F&B operators and franchisors seamlessly combine ALL aspects of Restaurant management and growth.
Amongst restaurant owners, managing the front-of-house activities, tracking purchases, managing inventory, and monitoring the kitchen’s performance in real-time are common challenges. If the Restaurant owner is also a franchisor with a network of Franchisees endeavouring to replicate the same standards of success, maintaining overall quality standards becomes a significant challenge. Despite the apparent need for a centralised Digital Operations platform that can immediately simplify and improve restaurant operations management, many restaurant business owners are not yet aware that streamlined digitalisation is the essential solution for these issues.
A Restaurant Operations Management Software includes everything concerning the front-of-house like online self-service ordering, E-menu systems, table reservations, POS system, digital payment gateways, and everything that involves the back-of-house management, including kitchen order display, recipe management, inventory management, procurement, and accounting. Holistic Restaurant Operations Management software helps the operator track operational statistics to access real-time data on Sales Performance, Cost of Goods management, customer service, and staff management. It also links front-of-house performance details with back-end operational statistics. For example, suppose an F&B business wishes to have pertinent data that connects operational data from procurement to the purchase price, recipe management to actual cost of goods, inventory management verse warehousing, and expenses versus profitability. In that case, a Complete Digital Restaurant Operations platform is the most efficient solution. Having this seamless operations platform means there is no longer any need for manual entry of purchases, receipts, and heavy-duty reconciliation on the back end. Instead, purchase receipts are reconciled, and the accurate cost of goods is recognised from the beginning. As a result, the team can focus on more value-added activities to help the team perform better. When leveraging a Restaurant Operations management software, the Restaurant Operator can significantly reduce the workforce required to execute repetitive manual work. They also get real-time access to data that helps them focus on strategic decisions that can help the business perform even better. In fact, according to research produced by Chef at work, through streamlined digitalisation, restaurant operators can experience up to 50% less administrative work, a 20% increase in profit margin, and a 20% reduction in food costs.
Given the entire restaurant operations have already been digitalised on a seamless platform, replicating the process for franchisees to plug into the front and back-end support features becomes a simple extension of what the franchisor is doing at the HQ level. When franchising, F&B Operators only need to plug and play with what is already the standard protocol. Franchisees immediately get access to a tried and tested restaurant unit operating system. Franchisors also need access to quality operations statistics beyond restaurant operations performance when managing a franchise. Franchisors also need to closely monitor the Quality Operations Performance matrix, like customer service, food hygiene, brand management, environment management, food quality, and general SOP Compliance, to ensure the qualitative aspects of the brand are maintained by their franchisees. A lapse in these areas can easily lead to a slippery slope where brand consistency and quality come under fire.
Combining Digital Restaurant Operations and F&B franchise management software offers data on intelligent dashboards that track not only operational data but also pertinent qualitative data like SOP, Training & Assessment, as well as Audit outcomes to complete the loop in terms of building sustainable brand growth through franchising. In addition, assigning various onboarding programs to new franchisees and their employees also helps regulate the knowledge transfer from the franchisor to the franchisee, leaving only aspects that require high touch points for direct face-to-face or On Job Training. These increased capabilities’ impact on franchisors is increased profitability, better operations, and increased ability to scale their businesses.
For F&B Operators that are still on the fence about leveraging both the Digital Restaurant Operations platform and Franchise Management Software, consider these reasons below:
Centralised control
When the Restaurant business operations and franchise quality operations management software are synchronised together, Franchisors can manage their outlets and Franchise network from anywhere. Unit Excellence performance, Franchisee Onboarding, training, audit, marketing implementation, and even operational items like menus, inventory, User rights, etc. can be controlled directly by Head Quarters. This reduces the expense of deploying a franchise management team to visit each franchise personally to implement every local operation. Additionally, much of the day-to-day operational tracking and compliance can be facilitated by local teams, leaving the franchise management team with more time to focus on specific areas that help the franchisees become more successful.
Improved Productivity:
Digitalised Restaurant Operations platform means increased transparency, and everyone on the team knows what to do. This usually means an increased level of motivation and productivity. This increased productivity applies to corporate-owned stores and to the franchised units working off the same operating systems. The Franchise management systems collate all quality-related data to offer the franchise field managers valuable insights that bring insights that are holistically considered against real-time operational data extracted from the POS, CRM or even from calculations of COGS.
Successful replication:
A digitally optimised F&B Operations Management Platform means franchisees can be assigned parts of the standard operations for their ease of replication. This means the franchisor can focus less on cost-intensive classroom-style physical training and more on improving the training content and practical implementation quality.
Quick decisions:
The outcome-focused reports presented on your management dashboards can help franchisors and their managers make important decisions rapidly based on real-time, accurate business data. Implementation of the findings can also be accessible with franchise management software. In addition, you can apply changes in policies from HQ and the system at all your locations to get real-time Change notification updates.
Quality enhancement:
Quality product and business process precision are the basis of business growth. A holistic Franchise Management System(FMS) can help you with audit reports at the franchise unit level to ensure you are serving the best quality to your customers.
Cost-effective:
The Restaurant Operations Management Software provides data like stock variance, procurement negotiation areas, food wastage details, etc. Data from the POS can also help recognise consumer trends that support up-selling and cross-selling techniques to increase income. A combination of reducing expenditure and increasing income ultimately leads to profitability. This unit-level data can then be automatically reflected at the HQ level without requiring the franchisees to manually assign staff to collate these reports.
Increased demand for quality and compliance:
A recent questionnaire by ichef showed that diners are willing to pay twice as much for restaurants that can guarantee safety and cleanliness. High demand for strict quality control requires restaurants to rely more on technology (food safety precautions, temperature control, hygiene, and cleanliness. In addition, tracking Halal compliance at the unit level efficiently ensures breaches are avoided and reduces lead time towards compliance management.
Increased accountability and collaboration:
Franchise Management systems help franchisors collaborate with franchisees to manage business functions such as sales, customer relationships, and marketing
Increase Brand Value
A business scales rapidly but consistently adds value to the brand. When Brand Value increases, it attracts more interested investors, and more investors also mean businesses can attract more capital to invest into super scaling their brands even further.
All Round Better Management:
By digitalising, restaurant Operators and Franchisors will be able to generate higher revenue as customer insights across outlets and territories keep growing. One dashboard that can present operational and Management data will allow restaurant operators to gain precious illicit understanding, which can be optimised for restaurateurs to tailor their services according to their customer needs. In addition, the digitalisation of Restaurant Operations and Franchise Management across the franchise network can uncover new revenue opportunities for corporate-owned outlets and franchisees.
In conclusion
When a Restaurant Operator has worked so hard to grow and perfect their business and is ready to franchise, it only makes sense that the most systematic and purpose-built system be leveraged to grow the brand consistently. Trying to scale by learning on the fly often costs the franchisor time and more money; most importantly, the failure to launch the brand right at the beginning can cost the brand owner opportunities. Investors who may otherwise have been interested in investing in the franchise may adopt a wait-and-see approach, and when momentum is lost, it is sometimes tough to build it again. On the other hand, when the right solutions are in place, franchisors can leverage their tried and tested know-how and implement technology to replicate their business operations and augment the power of purpose-built franchise management solutions to scale consistently.
Whilst custom-built Restaurant Management Technology may cost a lot to implement, purpose-built platforms for the F&B sector, like Core 360 (Digital Restaurant Operations Management Platform), now make it easy and cost-effective for Restaurant owners to access world-class management systems at a tiny fraction of the price. Furthermore, where franchise management Software used to be a luxury reserved for large brands, software like TreeAMS (Franchise Management Software) is now available to brand owners large and small as a subscription service, eliminating the need to invest heavily in customised development altogether.
Equip your team and your brand digitally to compete with the best and Improve Restaurant operations Management strategy with cloud based platform.
