Apps can help restaurant owners and managers increase productivity. Since smartphones and tablets are fast replacing laptops and computers, apps have become more powerful and much more capable in recent years.
This guide to the top apps for smartphones and tablets for restaurants names the apps and gives a short description of how you can use it to improve restaurant operations.
The management areas that apps fall into are:
Employee Management
This includes planning shifts, tracking labor, what each employee is doing, and tools to track how they are performing and their general response time to customer needs. Employee management involves the division of labor and keeping score of performance.
Operations Management
Keep track of supplies and have enough stock on hand every day. Check your sales data. Watch your KPIs and everything so that promised services can be provided to the predicted number of customers every day.
Communications Management
Monitor social media platforms, reviews from customers, news and industry updates, potential opportunities and sources of new business. Communications management also includes how your team communicates with each other inside and outside the restaurant.
Read More: Choosing a Restaurant Business Structure
Why Use Restaurant Management Apps?
The shift from paper to computer and now from computers to mobile technology has created an easy way to be in touch with the data that drives restaurant operations.
Mobile management apps give you the advantage of working wherever you are. No longer tied to a monitor and keyboard you can get more done without having to be stuck in the office.
Employee Management
It is important for both managers and employees to have easy access to their schedule with updates.
Give your employees the ability to see this week’s schedule without going into the restaurant. Send reminders to make sure they’re coming in.
7shifts has a lot of features for restaurant managers, including auto scheduling and time off requests.
A desktop version is also available for managers. And 7shifts integrates with many point of sale systems including Rezku POS
If you’re like most restaurant managers you’re always looking for the best and the brightest to join your team. LinkedIn is the premier social workplace network.
You can search for members who fit your skills profile and find servers, chefs and managers with just a few taps.
Training new employees and making sure they follow proper procedures is vital. With Connecteam’s training app you can create a training program employees use right from their phone.
Send your new team members away with some homework. Monitor their progress remotely and streamline new employee onboarding.
Read More: Choosing a Restaurant Business Structure
Operations Management
The BlueCart mobile app puts restaurant owners in touch with food suppliers. When you’re looking for that perfect ingredient to complete your menu masterpiece BlueCart makes it easy.
Simply search the directory for the items you want and find new suppliers. You can easily save money by checking with competing vendors. You can also order directly from your existing food vendors right inside the app.
If you want an easy to use, low cost solution that helps you cut wait times and optimize service, start your free trial with Rezku Waitlist. With table management from the host stand you’ll always know what’s going on. Calm the chaos at the host stand.
Quote accurate wait times. See how long seated guests have left to go. Assign servers to sections and load-balance guests. With Rezku Waitlist you get it all out of your head and onto your iPad—so you can focus on what’s most important, guest service.
If you pre-book in your restaurant look at Rezku Reservations. It’s just like Waitlist with added features for in-house and online reservations.
The industry leading online accounting and bookkeeping solution for small businesses, QuickBooks Online, can be accessed through its app or website.
QuickBooks Online helps you organize all your accounts and ledgers for bookkeeping. It integrates with point of sales systems including Rezku POS. With point of sale integration you can automate tracking of costs, and sales.
Key ingredient has approximately 1.5 million recipes divided into different categories. Why it’s good for restaurant owners is as a tool for tracking the latest trends in food.
If you’re looking for new menu items to add to your specials Key Ingredient can help you get ideas. Use the recipes in the app as a base and put your own twist on it.
Rezku POS is an iPad based point of sale system with a focus on reliability and ease of use. Rezku POS gets you taking orders fast. Setup and configuration is also super easy. And you can control it all from anywhere, using your smartphone.
If you’re looking for a restaurant POS system that is incredibly affordable without making any sacrifices, you’ll find all the advanced features you’d expect in a modern point of sale. Like inventory management, labor tracking, online ordering, detailed reporting, tableside service and much more.
Read More: Choosing a Restaurant Business Structure
Communications Management
If you are an absentee owner, or a manager of a big team a communication gap could be a big issue. Slack could be the answer to your problem.
Slack is a free chat app for business that lets you send personal and group messages to your team. It also has the option of screen sharing, file sharing and an integrated call option.
Slack is very popular in businesses that require collaboration and teamwork. It could be the free chat tool your management team needs to stay in communication.
Loomly is a social media campaign management app. As part of your social media marketing plan you may be handling multiple accounts, making posts, checking reviews, and other account activity.
If you want to save time managing your content posts and social media marketing progress Loomly can help. Through Loomly you can pre-schedule your posts to a specific time and they will be posted automatically.
This means you don’t have to manually post everything in real time. You can set up a month of specials ahead of time in one sitting. This is an incredible time saver.
Skitch
If you are looking for an easy way to do basic editing and annotation of images, that’s what Skitch does. Share screenshots and annotated images with your team or upload your promotional photos for social media directly from your phone.
Skitch is great for communicating with team members because it allows you to draw directly on the photos you take. Skitch is a free app for iPhone that is highly rated.
Read More: Choosing a Restaurant Business Structure
Conclusion
These are the top tablet and smartphone apps for restaurants. Using these apps can help your restaurant operations run more efficiently and make life a little easier.
This free guide is part of the Rezku resource library for restaurants. You can find more helpful guides on our library homepage. Rezku is a leading cloud-based restaurant app developer with powerful solutions for point of sale, online ordering, online reservations, food delivery, customer loyalty and much more.
Learn more about Rezku on our homepage. Get a free one-to-one restaurant technology demonstration and start a free trial. Find the answers you’re looking for today.
