As we approach April 1st, 2024, operators across various sectors are gearing up for the implementation of the National Living Wage (NLW) and other wage rate increases. This move, following the acceptance of the Low Pay Commission’s (LPC) recommendations, aims to fulfil a Conservative manifesto pledge to abolish low pay, defined as below 66% of median earnings. While this is a significant step towards ensuring fair compensation for workers, it also poses challenges for businesses, particularly those in sectors where labour costs constitute a substantial proportion of turnover.
Throughout the year, industry representatives have been actively engaging with the LPC and government officials, highlighting the potential adverse effects of such significant wage increases on businesses within the sector. It’s essential to recognise that these increases do not merely impact entry-level staff but have broader ramifications throughout the management structure.
Let’s delve into the new rates set to come into effect:
National Living Wage (21-years-old and over)
Rate from 1 April 2024: £11.44
Increase in pence: £1.02
Percentage increase: 9.8%
18- to 20-year-old rate
Rate from 1 April 2024: £8.60
Increase in pence: £1.11
Percentage increase: 14.8%
16- to 17-year-old rate
Rate from 1 April 2024: £6.40
Increase in pence: £1.12
Percentage increase: 21.2%
Apprentice rate
Rate from 1 April 2024: £6.40
Increase in pence: £1.12
Percentage increase: 21.2%
Accommodation offset
Rate from April 1, 2024: £9.99
Increase in pence: £0.89
Percentage increase: 9.8%
The LPC’s aim was to ensure that the NLW reached 66% of median earnings, a target they believe has been achieved. However, the forecasted level to reach this, as of March 2022, was £11.16 per hour. The significant rise in average earnings has pushed this target level higher. Additionally, other wage bands have also increased to prevent too great a discrepancy between them.
Strategies for Operators to Navigate the Wage Increase:
Better Align Staffing Needs to Optimise Labour Costs: It may sound obvious, but it’s often overlooked, cutting staff isn’t the solution. The key is to manage the value equation in the eyes of customers and avoid raising prices while cutting service levels. Operators should align staffing needs with consideration given to peak versus off-peak staffing rotas.
Take a Demand-Based Approach to Pricing: Reviewing item-level data across the estate will reveal which restaurants could be organised into different price bands based on customer reactions to previous price moves. Understanding customer willingness to spend ensures they see value for money without crossing price barriers.
Leverage Technology: In today’s hospitality landscape, technology plays a pivotal role. From kitchen automation to online ordering, technology can enhance the customer experience while allowing staff to focus on delivering exceptional service.
Have a Long-Term Game Plan: Unlike food inflation, labour costs can be planned for. Operators need a long-term plan to address these costs, making price changes in smaller increments spread over time. This approach allows for testing and assessment before full implementation.
Streamline Your Menu: Reduce labour costs and improve execution by streamlining the menu. Evaluate menu items for operational impact and consider whether profitable items may be slowing down service. Identify bottlenecks and adjust menu offerings accordingly.
While the upcoming wage increases present challenges for operators, proactive planning and strategic decision-making can help navigate these changes effectively. By prioritising employee well-being, investing in development, and leveraging technology, businesses can adapt to the new landscape and continue to thrive in the ever-evolving market. Let’s embrace these changes as opportunities for growth and progress.
Investing in a new EPOS software solution is a significant undertaking both in terms of time and money. It is easy to make mistakes when choosing a restaurant EPOS software.
When considering the implementation of a restaurant EPOS software system to streamline your restaurant’s operations, selecting the right one is obviously crucial. The POS system you opt for will serve as the engine of your operation ensuring efficiency and streamlining operations.
Given its significance, it’s imperative to avoid errors during the purchase process, as a poor choice could result in being saddled with an ineffective system that offers no benefit and will leave you out of pocket. Below are the five most common mistakes made by purchasers of POS systems.
1. Buying the cheapest EPOS
The saying is “buy cheap, buy twice”. You certainly don’t want to be buying a restaurant EPOS twice – it needs to be a carefully thought-out and balanced decision. Unlike the worst restaurant pos systems, a great EPOS for restaurant will generate a return on investment from day one.
You may find a cheap restaurant EPOS system that does the basics, but you need to carefully weigh up whether it will give you the functionality you need – not just today but in the future.
Also, look into the hidden costs – the basic EPOS for restaurant software may be “cheap’ but if you need to pay extra to unlock features then it is a false economy and it can quickly start to add up and even surpass the more expensive solution.
With a fully-fledged EPOS software for restaurant, you will get more than just order processing and you will get additional features such as stock control, multi-site reporting, guest management and handheld ordering.
2. Choosing the wrong supplier
A trustworthy supplier ensures a dependable EPOS system for restaurant. Therefore, investigate potential EPOS system for restaurant suppliers before deciding.
Key questions to pose to your prospective EPOS supplier might encompass:
What is the duration of the company’s operation in the industry?
What is the scale of the company? How many staff members are dedicated to support the EPOS systems for restaurants?
What does the after-care service consist of? Is it phone based? Is there an actual human you can speak to?
What can they provide in terms of client references? Are they successful businesses and can you speak to them for an unbiased view?
Do they offer any value addition? Can they offer unbiased consultancy, and do they offer the full solution such as hardware and integrated software?
What do their support contracts cover? Are there any hidden charges?
Do they offer any training sessions or guidance materials for the product?
3. Overlooking future needs
An EPOS system becomes a repository for a vast array of your business information, making it crucial to choose a solution that won’t require replacement in just a few short years.
Therefore, it’s advisable to seek a solution that not only resolves your current challenges but also aligns with your future needs. Begin with a forward-looking strategy, outlining your objectives for the next five years (or more!), prioritizing your requirements, and ensuring that your plan is in harmony with your financial resources.
A cloud-based solution offers scalability as and when you need it – simply increase user licenses as your business grows and you open more sites. With a monthly licensing model, you can keep track of your investment while also ensuring that your software is fully up to date with all the latest features. New functionality is updated automatically – you never get left behind. With minimal implementation required and working on iPad/Android tablets the initial investment of time and money is very affordable.
4. Expecting a one-size-fits-all system
Every sector comes with its distinct demands, and each enterprise has its specific needs as well.
Discovering an EPOS that fulfills all your criteria right off the bat can be challenging. Therefore, aiming for a system that meets roughly 95% of your needs, with the option for customisation to cover the remaining aspects, is a practical approach.
Look for a solution which integrates online ordering, mobile payment apps, kitchen automation and loyalty programmes to manage all the key aspects of your operation.
5. Insufficient Training and Support
You may be tempted to cut costs on training and support. Resist this temptation at all costs.
It is a vital investment in your business to ensure that your staff get the most and best training they can. Learning from product experts means they will get exposure to the best practices that will ensure you get the best from your investment and will increase your staff’s efficiency in using the system.
Great after-care is vitally important. Look for a solution that covers all your opening shifts – having to pay per call outside covered hours can prove much more costly than investing in an annual support contract!
What NFS Technology offers
As a leading supplier NFS Technology offers:
Award-winning training and support – available 24/7, 365 days a year. Your support calls will be answered by a real human – not a chat bot. With their extensive IT expertise and hospitality experience you can rely on them to answer any questions promptly and knowledgeably.
Our helpdesk team is comprised of industry experts. Our training plans are designed so that you and your teams get the maximum return on your investment.
You will also be assigned a dedicated account manager to support you and guide you post-installation. We are supplier agnostic so we will only give advice and recommend solutions that align with your long-term business goals.
A long-term partnership – we have been supplying solutions for nearly thirty years and we work with many leading bar and restaurant operators from award-winning independents to large international chains. Our client references speak for themselves.
Check out this success story to discover how our solution is driving growth at the leading bar operator BrewDog.
Best of breed solutions – we provide best of breed solutions managing all aspects of our clients’ operation encompassing order processing, kitchen automation, enterprise management reporting, guest management, handheld ordering, stock control and labour management. And much more!
For group operators we offer enterprise solutions custom built to enable them to manage their whole estate from one powerful dashboard enabling them to make impactful decisions even on the fly.
Integration with leading partner solutions – we work with a carefully selected partner network. One size does not fit all so integration is a great way of delivering the solution that will truly meet your needs.
NFS solutions are designed to integrate seamlessly with loyalty programmes, kitchen display systems, mobile ordering apps, digital signage and online ordering to digitally transform your operation and provide an ecosystem that is future proof.
Conclusion
Choosing the right solution for your restaurant needs to be a considered choice – one that cannot be made on cost alone.
As we have shown, there are several factors to consider – from scalability to support to integration capabilities. You need to evaluate whether your supplier is going to be a long-term partner who can offer the best solutions that will help your business grow – today and into the future.
Contact us today to see how we can digitally transform your business.
Customer satisfaction has always reigned supreme in the hospitality business – probably more than in any other consumer-facing industry.
So restaurants constantly seek innovative ways to keep their clientele happy and engaged. These days, technology plays a huge role in achieving this.
Among the tools available, Customer Engagement Platforms (CEPs) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems stand out as powerful instruments for nurturing customer relationships and driving business growth.
So what’s the difference between the two – and which one is for you?
Understanding the distinctions between these differing client engagement software platforms can help you make informed decisions about which solution best suits your needs.
So, let’s dig into the comparison between Customer Engagement Platforms and Customer Relationship Management systems – and explore how each customer engagement tool can elevate your business.
Customer Engagement Platform (CEP)
Comprehensive insight: CEPs offer a comprehensive view of your customer interactions across various touchpoints, including social media, email, website visits and more. This fully rounded perspective gives you a deep understanding of your customers’ behaviour patterns and preferences in depth.
Customised engagement: Through advanced analytics and AI-driven insights, CEPs help you create personalised engagement strategies. With the help of data-driven intelligence, you can tailor your interactions with customers – such are marketing emails and offers – delivering relevant content and offers at the right time and through the preferred channels.
Omnichannel ability: One feature of these customer engagement tools is their ability to integrate seamlessly with multiple communication channels. Whether it’s email, messaging, live chat, or social media, these customer engagement platforms put you right in touch with your customers across diverse platforms, making sure your messaging is consistent and cohesive.
Making predictions: CEPs use predictive analytics to forecast customer behaviours and identify the potential opportunities and risks for your business. By analysing historical data and trends with these customer engagement platforms, you can anticipate your customers’ needs and proactively address issues.
Automated workflows: CEPs streamline your business processes by using workflow automation, eliminating the need for manual tasks while improving the efficiency of your operations. By automating routine processes such as nurturing leads, follow-ups and customer support ticketing, your business can make the most of its resources and focus on the activities that add value.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A centralised database of customers: A CRM is a customer interaction platform that centralises your customer information – everything from contact details to purchase history and communication preferences. By consolidating data from various sources in a single place, CRM systems provide a unified view of customer interactions, so your different departments can collaborate and co-ordinate their efforts.
Sales pipeline management: By tracking leads, opportunities, and deals throughout the sales cycle., your CRM provides a real-time view real-time of sales performance and forecasting.
Enhancing customer service: The CRM streamlines support processes and supports resolutions. By tracking customer inquiries, complaints and feedback, they ensure you can deal with issues promptly, enhancing customer satisfaction and encouraging loyalty.
Managing marketing: With a CRM, you can create targeted marketing campaigns by segmenting customers based on their demographics, behaviour and preferences. Then you can use automation tools to create personalised campaigns that resonate with specific audience segments.
Integration ability: CRMs integrate seamlessly with other business applications, such as marketing automation platforms, ERP systems and epos platforms. This means your company has consistent data., even across a broad group.
Every business is different, but this is exceptionally so when it comes to hospitality, and there are 5 things you should consider when making your decision about your customer experience management platform:
Your business goals: Is your main focus customer engagement and loyalty, or are you more interested in firming up sales processes and driving revenue growth?
Customer insight: How deep do you need to go when capturing and understanding customer insights? Do you need advanced analytics capabilities to draw actionable insights from customer data, or is a centralized database for managing customer interactions enough?
Scalability and flexibility: How scalable and flexible is the platform you are looking at? Will it grow to fit in with your future plans, and is it flexible enough to integrate with other systems you need?
Your users: Who’s going to be using the system in your restaurant, and how user-friendly is it? Will deployment and training be easy?
ROI: Assess the cost carefully and determine what level of return on investment you expect to achieve – don’t forget to factor in implementation costs, maintenance and potential revenue gains or cost savings.
The expert touch
There’s no doubt that both Customer Engagement Platforms and Customer Relationship Management systems are huge assets to any hospitality business, fostering insightful relationships with customers and enabling your business to provide the kind of exceptional customer experience you need to succeed.
Both are an essential part of the digital toolkit now available to restaurateurs to sharpen up their business. They integrate in particular with epos systems that enable operational efficiencies such as tableside ordering and payment, speeding up service, and also online reservations and ordering.
The modern-day diner is highly demanding, and competition remains intense. Providing diners with the convenience, choice and seamless service they now require is essential if your business is to stand out from the rest and foster the loyalty that brings repeat business.
Ultimately, though, the key to success lies in selecting the right solution that best aligns with your business needs and empowers you to cultivate lasting relationships with your customers.
Expert help is, of course, on hand from companies such as NFS Restaurant Technology, and you should seek those who offer a consultative approach that understands your business and guides you through the maze of good decision making.
Platforms that provide you with deep customer insight are an invaluable part of this. By understanding the unique strengths and capabilities of CRMs and CEMs, and aligning them with your business objectives, they will help you elevate your hospitality business and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Restaurant operations are notoriously difficult to organise, because of their immense complexity – not only are there everyday issues of the business to sort out, but there are also the ever-evolving behaviours of customers to satisfy.
It’s not surprising, then, that the integration of restaurant management technology has become the secret of success for many operations.
Restaurant systems are sophisticated solutions designed to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences and elevate profitability. From optimising order processing to facilitating inventory management, it’s fair to say that these systems are revolutionising the way modern restaurants operate.
A restaurant management platform integrates various functionalities, including point of sale, inventory management, and customer relationship management, eliminating the need for multiple disparate systems.
As your restaurants grow and evolve, management systems offer scalability, allowing for seamless expansion and integration of additional features and modules.
In helping you grow your business in what is always an incredibly crowded market, restaurant management software helps give you a competitive edge, whether you run a single independent outlet or a whole group.
7 top benefits of restaurant management systems:
Better relationships with your customers
An end-to-end view of your business
Analysis and forecasting
Employee satisfaction and retention
Better labour and stock control
Enhanced financial management
Targeted marketing for wider reach.
Better relationships with your customers
Restaurant’s relationships with customers have always been intense and important, but since the days of the pandemic they have evolved to cater for new and changed demands.
Customers now have a strong emphasis on convenience and speed as well as on the quality of food and service you provide. Restaurant systems that include EPOS are an immense help in this area, making it quicker for customers to place their order and also to pay.
For instance, serving staff provided with Epos on a tablet or phone can send orders direct from the table to the kitchen so food preparation can begin immediately, and service is faster. There’s no room for human error, either, so fewer dishes get sent back and there’s less waste.
Once the meal is over, your staff can take payment at tableside so the customer can pay and go. It adds up to a satisfying customer experience that encourages loyalty and repeat visits.
Restaurant management systems also make it easy for customers to order online or to make a table reservation, a valuable and convenient service that also cuts down the time your staff have to spend on the phone.
An end-to-end view of your business
The complexity of restaurant operations can mean it’s tricky to keep an overview. A restaurant management system is available online and provides up to date reports on all aspects of your business from automated inventory showing stock levels to sales.
For groups, this online availability of reports is invaluable when keeping track of the position of the business at any given time.
Analysis and forecasting
Data has become the lifeblood of most organisations these days. Coupled with effective analysis, it gives insight into everything from customer preferences to your busiest times and best-selling dishes. It can even provide forecasts to help you anticipate when extra labour etc is likely to be required.
Employee satisfaction and retention
A real hot potato in the industry, which has seen such labour shortages in recent years that some outlets have decided to curtail their hours or even shut on certain days of the week.
Restaurant management systems can help you provide a healthy and enjoyable working environment that encourages valuable staff to stay and reduces the time you need to spend recruiting and training.
A restaurant order management system reduces the amount of time serving staff need to spend running back and forth to the kitchen with orders, and also minimises admin when it comes to taking reservations – when customers can do it themselves online, staff involvement is minimised.
It all allows more time for your people to engage with customers, building loyalty and creating the friendly impression they will appreciate – and it makes the working day more rewarding for your staff and encourages them to stay.
Managers can also track employee performance metrics, identify training needs, and recognise top performers, fostering a culture of accountability and excellence.
Better labour and stock control
The cost of living crisis has exacerbated problems for the industry as restaurants struggle to cope with increases in the cost of supplies and balance that with keeping customers happy.
A restaurant order management system will give you far better control of your stock, providing real-time information on inventory and also on your supply chain.
The same systems make it easier to control labour, highlighting busy and quiet times and enabling you to have the right staffing levels at the right times.
A further enhancement that keeps things running smoothly is integration with restaurant maintenance software, which helps identify potential equipment issues, enabling proactive maintenance and minimising downtime.
Enhanced financial management
Using the reports generated by your restaurant software on sales, expenses and profits, empowers you and your managers to make data-driven decisions and take measures that optimise financial performance.
By tracking costs and identifying areas of inefficiency, restaurant management platforms enable proactive cost control measures, ultimately boosting your profitability.
Targeted marketing for wider reach
Special offers can make a huge difference to your hospitality business, keeping existing customers happy and enticing those who have never tried your restaurant to give it a to.
When it comes to loyal customers, your restaurant management platform and CRM can give incredible insight into their preferences. By capturing data every time they book or eat, you identify their preferences so you can produce timely and appropriate marketing emails that you know will hit the mark.
For instance, if you know they visited last Valentine’s Day, you can offer them two free glasses of champagne this year; or you can send them a birthday greeting that will put your restaurant top of their mind when they want to celebrate.
Restaurant management software also helps you with your social media presence, alerting you to any adverse reviews so you can put the situation right immediately and put a shine on your reputation.
Conclusion
Deploying carefully-selected restaurant software represents a strategic investment in operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, staff retention and financial performance – and it’s an investment that provides definite ROI.
By leveraging the power of technology, you can optimise your processes, empower their staff, and deliver unparalleled dining experiences. From order management to inventory control, these systems serve as the cornerstone of modern restaurant operations, paving the way for sustained success.
Whether your business is a bustling bistro or a multi-location group, the benefits of a restaurant management system are undeniable. And in a world where customers are increasingly demanding, staff are hard to find and competition is raging, it can give you the edge you need to succeed.
Discover more about how a restaurant management system will benefit you:
Mobile ordering is massive now – but what’s the future? In this video, James Brown of BrewDog, Katy Moses of KAM and Daniel Rodgers of Qikserve share their opinion on what lies ahead in hospitality when it comes to ordering and payment.
Watch this video to hear the leading UK hospitality executives discussing major issues faced by the industry.
Watch this video to discover how Andy uses Aloha restaurant management technology to turn his business round – streamlining operations, improving guest service and increasing revenues
Watch this video to discover how you can improve the guest experience, drive costs down, reduce waste, increase revenues, gain better business insights and streamline operations
Find out how Aloha restaurant management technology offers the complete suite to increase sales, create more efficient service, measure your KPIs, drive improvements in operations and increase revenues
