December 2018 - inresto

Is Your Social Media Strategy Helping Your Restaurant?

Posted on 31/12/2018 by inrestoblog

The thing about social media is that everyone is there, either on one or all. From our family to friends to millennials, everyone is there and so is your Target Audience. Research shows that nearly 72% customers use Facebook to make restaurant decisions, based on comments and images shared on their page.

You might be thinking that your restaurant’s social media is already in place. You post 2 times a day which is enough. Why I need to relook at my social media strategy. The answer is simple – to make sure that it does not get boring. Effective social media marketing for your restaurant not only help in engaging your guests (both new and loyal) but it also holds the power to increase your business revenue. But what does it include? And how to make sure that your social media strategy is not boring? Let’s find out!

Before You Start, Question Yourself
Before you build an effective social media strategy, find answers to these questions:

Who is your target audience?
How will you manage your social media pages with limited time?
What your competition/industry is doing and can you mimic those strategies?

Once you find answers to these questions, it will become extremely easy to create social media strategy and actually execute it to its full potential.

Tip To Make Your Social Media Page Stand Out!

While everyone is on social media posting beautiful pictures, spending a lot of money. But how you can make sure that you stand out? Read on to find out!

1. Know Your Target Audience
The game of social media is won by that brand who understands their customers and what they want from your restaurant. Ensure that you have meaningful and locally relevant social posts and campaigns. Take time to listen to what your guests are saying, know the food trends that are loved by your customers, etc. The idea is to turn your guests into loyal customers and not just any other follower.

2. Figure Out The Best Suited Social Channel
Restauranteurs can find their diners in 4 major social channels – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & Snapchat. You must understand which social media is ideal for what target audience. Like Instagram is the best platform if you wish to target the 18-30 age group, especially women. While Facebook is more suited if you are targeting families or large groups. Based on your target audience, identify the most effective channel for your restaurant and create an appropriate strategy for social media promotions

3. Your Social Media Page is Not About You
You might be wondering if your social media is not about you, then how will it help your business? Well, the idea is to make your social media pages purely customer-forward. Brands like Starbucks don’t focus on selling themselves on social media. Rather they focus on telling the guests’ story and how Starbucks became a part of it.

4. Adapt To Changes
Social Media is one channel that evolves every day and so does your guests. Don’t shy away from exploring new strategies and tactics while keeping your brand language consistent. Don’t limit your social media with images. Experiment with the type of posts, run unique contests, organize events and promote the same on social media.

5. Respond To Your Customers…Quick!
As mentioned earlier, 72% customers will visit your Facebook page before they visit your restaurant. That means you can get queries on your social media pages. Keep a tab on such messages/comments, address their concerns and acknowledge what your customers are telling you.

6. Make Your Restaurant Social Media Friendly
At the end, your restaurant business is about food. Use beautiful (read: filter-free) pictures and videos. Since your customer can’t smell or taste your food, a sensory description can do the trick.

At the end of the day, social media is a free (or low cost) medium to engage customers, get new customers, stay relevant and increase guest loyalty. The good news is that if you have a blended strategy of all social media channels, focussing on your menu, business, staff, and guests, you might stand out among the crowd. What’s bad is that no many of us don’t have a well-informed understanding of social media channels. Without this, you can’t create a “viral” strategy and your marketing budget will suffer.

Therefore, build a strategy that works for you, test it, measure it and repeat! Also, don’t forget to experiment.

How Customer Loyalty Programs Help You to Increase Your Restaurant Sales

Posted on 25/12/201809/11/2020 by inresto

In the sea of restaurants, with a new one opening almost every day, it is essential to make your restaurant stand out. Although the food you serve is irresistible, what makes you stand out is the way how you make the patrons feel, i.e., the overall dining experience. It not only helps you retain your regular customers but also attracts new ones, thereby increasing your restaurant sales.

Creating a customer loyalty program is an excellent way to increase footfall at your restaurant. A successful one depends on the restaurant’s ability to enrol patrons. If executed properly, this can be a powerful tool to increase diner frequency and their average spend, both of which can result in increased revenue making your restaurant a profitable business.

Though the restaurant loyalty program is not new to the hospitality business, designing one suited to your restaurant and patrons is essential. You can use a restaurant POS to create an efficient customer loyalty system and convert your diners into loyal ones to drive sales.

1. Create an easy sign-up

One of the most crucial aspects of a customer loyalty program is an easy sign-up. Simplify the entire process by making it appealing and user-friendly so that customers don’t encounter any hassles and participate easily. Active guest engagement with your brand not only speaks volumes about the success of your business but also boosts restaurant sales.

2. Customise your Loyalty Program Based on your Target Audience

For a successful restaurant, it’s all about a diner’s satisfaction at the end of the day. Discounts or gifts can be one of the ways to reward guests. Create a customized and value-focused rewards program as per your diners’ choices. You can implement customer loyalty software integrated with your POS system to help you evaluate the preferences of your audience.

3. Communicate the Offers, Events & New Happenings via Campaigns

Constant communication is one of the keys to help you increase your restaurant sales. Notify your loyal diners about any new addition to the menu or a new speciality and any events that may be happening. Staying in touch and providing the latest updates helps engage customers with your brand. You can do with the help of Email or SMS through the inresto campaign module.

4. Pay Attention to the Feedback Received

Pay attention to feedback, both good and bad, and learn about the likes or dislikes of your diners. Customer loyalty programs play a major role in redressing any grievances instantly. For e.g., One of your diners expresses his dissatisfaction about the location of the table they got, inresto feedback instantly notifies you about the same, and you can elevate their dining experience by sending a free dessert at their table 🙂

Analysing collective feedback received on the internet and otherwise can help you curate a loyalty program that is best suited for your target audience. Understanding your patrons and building a customer loyalty program around their interest will help you garner major footfall of not only regulars but also new diners.

Inresto’s restaurant POS has been designed with advanced modules like data analysis, customer feedback, customer loyalty, and much more to take care of your entire restaurant’s front and back end operations.

Get a free demo here.

4 Small Yet Effective Changes Your Loyal Customers Want In Your Restaurant

Posted on 24/12/2018 by inrestoblog

Being in the restaurant industry, you must be well aware of the fact that how even a small change in a way your restaurant functions can impact your business in a big way. But what are these changes and how can a restaurant execute them with minimum efforts. Read on to find out:

1) Personalized Recommendations

Each of your customers has their own taste, which might be different from other customer’s needs or even your restaurant’s special dish. For example, if your customer is a fan of spicy food, then recommending a less spicy dish does not make sense, even if it’s a popular dish at your restaurant. Your customer would love if you recommend dishes based on their taste.

Solution – Keep Your Customer’s Timeline Handy

Keep a track of your diner’s timeline which includes details like last visit date, number of covers, frequently ordered dishes, billing history and much more. Before serving your customer, you can quickly have a look at his/her timeline and recommend dishes accordingly. Today, a restaurant management platform can not only help you collect this information but also help to analyze it so that you can offer a better dining experience.

2) Surprise Your Guest

Who doesn’t love surprises? Make your customer feel like a ‘celebrity’ by giving them something complimentary, especially on special occasions like birthday and/or anniversary. We are sure that your guest will love this gesture and your restaurant’s customer experience will surely stand out.

Solution – Offer Occasion Based Discounts

Keep customer information like birthday and anniversary handy with the help of a restaurant management app. Offer special discounts and communicate the same to your customers. Keep a small cake or dessert handy for such guests to give exceptional service.

3) Frequent Emails & SMS – A Big No-No

Stay in touch with your customers without spamming them. Not all your customers need to know everything that’s happening in your restaurant.

Solution – Go for Targeted Marketing Campaigns

Instead of sending every communication to each customer, divide your customers into various segments. Run targeted and personalized campaigns, informing them about exclusive offers and events in which they would be actually interested in.

4) Take Feedback Seriously

While bad customer experience is surely a deal breaker for your customer, not taking any action on that feedback is worse. Like mentioned above, your customer love to feel special. Another way of doing this is by taking your customer’s feedback (both positive & negative) very seriously.

Solution – Act Immediately On Negative Feedback

If your customer has appreciated your service, thank them, In case of negative feedback, apologize and act upon it as soon as possible. How to do that? With the help of a feedback management software, you can not only collect feedback but also analyze against each department (Food vs Ambience vs Service). Also, negative feedbacks are escalated to restaurant managers and other concerned authorities in real time so that you can do damage control before unhappy guest walks out of your restaurant.

Want to know more? Ask your customers directly!

The best way to understand what your customer wants is by asking them directly. Successful restaurants understand the importance of customer feedback. They depend upon well-designed cloud-based feedback system that collects data in one place, crunch it and make easy to understand reports to help restaurants address their concerns.

DineOut + inResto + Torqus – A Complete Restaurant Management Solution

Posted on 14/12/2018 by inrestoblog

Recently, we had announced that Dineout acquired Torqus, a Pune based SaaS platform for the restaurant business. Today, we are here to tell you how Torqus along with inResto and Dineout can actually help in better management of your restaurant.

Used in more than 3500 outlets across 70+ cities in five countries, Torqus is an all-inclusive cloud-based restaurant software system which helps restaurateurs to easily manage their various day to day activities, ranging from procurement and billing to taking feedbacks from end customers. Torqus boasts a client list that includes Fresh Menu, Theobroma, The Bowl Company, Cure.fit, Coffee by Di Bella, Swensen’s, Barshala, Baker’s Basket, Malaka Spice, InnerChef and many more.

How Torqus Can Help Your Restaurant?

The key value proposition of Torqus is to simplify restaurant management with is its highly efficient and easy to use suite of products, which includes Point of Sale (POS), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Inventory Management system.

Here’s how Torqus can help you:

Easily manage end to end process for all types of restaurants from the procurement of raw materials, central manufacturing to distribution and sales to the end customer.
Enable outlets to receive orders directly on the POS from various aggregators such as Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats. Foodpanda will be added to the list soon.
Seamless management of the restaurant chains. Most ‘internet first’ business chains in India such as Swiggy Kitchens, Freshmenu, Cure.fit, etc. have opted for Torqus as their preferred software partner.
Its Supply Chain Management (SCM) software enables you to strategically co-ordinate with all your business functions, ranging from procurement and manufacturing to sale estimation and invoices.
It also helps you leverage dynamic information and analysis, making a possible meeting with heightened expectations for responsiveness, and facilitate cohesion across all the departments and companies.
It is not only responsible for managing all the internal processes but also keeps a tab on wastage and the yield of products.
The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ensures that the restaurant is able to retain customers at the lowest Customer Retention Cost (CRC) by effectively leveraging the loyalty programs, campaign management, and the dynamic feedback program.

Dineout + inResto + Torqus = Complete Restaurant Management Platform

With Dineout, inResto & Torqus, we are offering a full stack restaurant operation and management solution where we help in the complete journey of a running and managing a restaurant – from getting diners via Dineout app to managing reservations, managing backend operations, supply chain management, to taking and organizing feedback. On an average, restaurants seat 5 million diners and collect 450k feedbacks from their guests every month using our software. Every month around 400 campaigns are launched via inResto campaign management system which helps restaurants reach out to 6 million diners.

Along with this, you can get customer details like mode of reservation, their spending capacity, dining/ordering frequency and more. With this information, you can understand your customers which will not only result in improved customer experience but also you can run marketing campaigns to attract m0re diners.

If you wish to see how our suite of products can simply restaurant management for you, feel free to get in touch with us.

Why Your Loyalty Program is Not Creating Loyal Customers?

Posted on 13/12/2018 by inrestoblog

There is no doubt that customer retention is not just important but a necessity to sustain your restaurant business. According to a study, retaining customers can actually increase your profits by 25% or even more. Ofcourse, it makes sense to put in more efforts to nurture existing customers. Not to forget loyalty programs are one of the best ways to make your customers come back to your restaurant.

However, there have been cases where the loyalty program failed miserably. To ensure that your customers love your loyalty program, check out the do’s and don’ts of creating and executing a loyalty program for your restaurant:

Identify The Right Program

Firstly, you need to understand that loyalty program means that you will give freebies that means cash burn. Before you roll out your loyalty program, understand your business’s financial profile and then decide the basics of your loyalty program. For example, decide that offering discounts on the customer’s visit would be more beneficial or whether you can offer discounts based on spends.

Make The Best Use of Data

What differentiates a good loyalty program with the best one is the effective use of customer data. After you create the program model, understand your customer. For example, if you are creating a loyalty program based on spends, you need to check the average bill of your customers. Accordingly, decide the limit of the spends on which you will give discounts or cashback or any other freebies. You can also create multiple loyalty programs for your customers. For this, we would suggest you to go for a loyalty program platform that lets you create and manage multiple programs easily.

Keep It Easy

Nobody likes a complicated loyalty program. While strategizing for the loyalty program, ensure that it is not only easy to join but your customer is able to understand it easily. A complicated loyalty program can do worse than good for your brand. One such example was of Starbucks. In 2016, they made a small change in their super successful loyalty program, where the shopper had to spend more to get rewarded. In their older program, the customer had to spend approx $48 to get a free coffee but after the change, the customer had to spend $63.50 to receive the same reward. Due to this, their buzz score dipped by 50% within 8 days. (Source)

Inform Your Staff

Even the most appealing and cost-effective loyalty program might not work if not well executed. Before you roll out your loyalty program, inform your staff about the same. Ask questions and answer them immediately. Don’t forget to ask your customers about your loyalty program through the feedback form to understand its impact instantly.

Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

There are high chances that your customer might have enrolled in other restaurant’s loyalty program along with yours. To ensure that they don’t forget your restaurant, send them reminder messages about the loyalty program. Try to create an urgency to attract more customers. However, don’t bombard them with the same otherwise they will lose interest.

Don’t Make It Boring

Try to introduce new and different benefits that attract your customers at a reasonable cost. What we would suggest is to start small if you are trying something new. This way, you can understand its result as well as its impact on your business while not taking bigger risks. Don’t forget to analyze data that supports your business.

Final Thoughts
The tried and tested a way to drive customer engagement is by gaining your customer’s loyalty. With this, you can seize opportunities to build a long lasting relationship with your customer, build your brand and drive market growth.

Statistics source – Invesp | Bain.com |

Tried & Tested Restaurant Reservation Management Tips

Posted on 11/12/2018 by inrestoblog

The biggest sports event is ongoing! For restaurants, it is the perfect time to capitalize as dining out at their favorite restaurant is their go-to place for the game screenings. Though the holiday rush will surely surge your restaurant’s revenue and profits, it can be extremely disappointing for your customers if they don’t get good service amidst all the hassle. And this disappointed service can affect your restaurant’s reputation not only during the holiday season but after that as well.

While many customers prefer to reserve tables beforehand, the average number of no-shows for a normal restaurant also increases to around 15%. Empty tables mean lost sales. So how to prevent that? The key is to optimize your reservation processes and effectively manage the mix of walk-ins as well reservations. To help you out, we are sharing the tried and tested restaurant reservation tips that will help you capitalize the most during the busiest hours of the season.

Place Time Limit On Reserved Tables

While booking a reservation, communicate clear policies to your customers to avoid any confusion later. Clearly ask your guests to reach on time or risk losing tables after 15 minutes. If possible, send a reminder email or call them to confirm their reservation one hour prior.

Avoid Overbooking Your Tables

During peak hours, avoid overbooking and keep some tables free. In case of a high number of reservations, try to push them to a less popular time slot or add them to waitlist instead. A reservation management software lets you do this with utmost ease. It also helps you know your repeated diners, prevent overbooking, manage guest flow as well as your waitlist. This way, you can impress your regular walk-in customers with instant service.

Never Say ‘No’ To Customers

No customer likes the ‘NO’ word. Instead of declining reservations, create a “Waiting List” with the help of reservation management software. As mentioned earlier, the number of no-show increases during busy hours. For diners looking to book a table during the busiest hours, add them to the waitlist. This way, these diners may have to wait 15-20 mins, even if they arrive at their preferred reservation time, which might be less than the time taken for walk-in customers

Engage Your Walk-In Customers

The average wait time for a restaurant can vary. To avoid losing your customers, you can update them their wait time or queue number in real time. This way, instead of making them wait in a crowded area and making them more impatient, they can roam freely and come back once their table gets free.

Final Thoughts

The majority of restaurants still use handheld paper and pen to make reservations. During busy hours, the pen-paper system makes it difficult to update or organize reservations and wait times. Also, there is a huge risk of missing these sheets. With a digital reservation management software, you can have a versatile, reliable and easy system to manage reservations so you can focus on other operations of your restaurants.

Dineout Acquires Torqus – a SaaS based Restaurant Management Software

Posted on 03/12/2018 by inrestoblog

We are ecstatic to welcome Torqus, a Pune based restaurant management software to our family. Dineout has acquired Torqus, taking a step ahead in strengthening our position as a full stack service provider and making Dineout the largest dining out platform. Following this acquisition and a combined client base of 10,000 restaurants across 70+ cities in India, Dineout will be the largest platform in India to offer B2B and B2C restaurant management services.

“The food industry is thriving with innovations and we are excited to announce the acquisition of Torqus thus effectively making Dineout a full stack technology service provider to the restaurant industry globally. While most of the innovations have been taking place in aggregation and delivery space, Dineout and Torqus combined with enable us to tap the immense possibilities in the restaurant market. The wide range of SaaS products offered by Torqus and the wide range of Dineout will certainly redefine the restaurant market in India”, said Ankit Mehrotra, co-founder and business head of Dineout.

“Torqus is already the most comprehensive SaaS based restaurant management software platform in the industry. We are excited to join Dineout as together we can deliver the best end to end experience to Restaurateurs – from generating new business to managing back end operations,” said Tanmay Ratnaparkhe, co-founder and CEO – Torqus

About Torqus

Launched in 2013 by Tanmay Ratnaparkhe and Suneet Kulkarni as a POS (Point-Of-Sale) service provider, Torqus today offers a cloud based SaaS platform for restaurant business. This helps restaurants manage all their backend activities, ranging from procurement to billing to taking feedback from end customers post their meal. These services help you have a seamless dine in experience at the restaurant. Currently, it is being used in more than 3500 outlets across 70+ cities in 5 countries.

Torqus’ key strength lies in providing a highly efficient and convenient software to run a restaurant, including Point of Sale (billing system), Head Office and Supply Chain Management.

POS Software takes extensive care of all the functionalities of a restaurant outlet, ranging from steward management to managing a dynamic menu
Head office accumulates customer data, manages and tracks delivery stages, aggressive SMS marketing, as well as managing data from a single access point.
Supply Chain Management enables efficient management of the restaurant chain inventory by strategically coordinating all business functions, ranging from procurement and manufacturing to sale estimation and invoicing.

In September 2015, Times Group-owned, Dineout, acquired inResto, thus furthering their mission to enable thousands of restaurants become smarter and more efficient. Times Internet is World’s No.1 premium digital publisher and the digital venture of Times of India, India’s largest media and entertainment group.

Torqus joining hands with Dineout, is sure to make the platform a prominent force in the restaurant tech space. With this revolutionizing joining of forces, the only way for Dineout is upwards and onwards.

Why Should a Restaurant use an automated KOT System?

Posted on 01/12/201806/11/2020 by inresto

We are living in the age of automation and artificial intelligence. With everything being guided by technology, the restaurant industry, too, is making its move. Gone are the days of manual processing where waiters used to pen down orders on a notepad that gave room to errors and confusion. With technological advancement, restaurant operations are getting streamlined & business growth accelerated.

What is a KOT (Kitchen Order Ticket)?

A Kitchen Order Ticket (KOT) is a document used to transfer a diner’s order to the kitchen. It contains details such as table number, items ordered, and their quantity with any special diner requests for cooking/serving. Three copies are made of which one is sent to the kitchen, second, retained for billing, and third is with the waiter for reference.

An automated KOT system saves time & effort, generates real-time order reports, and it is easy to use. It can be managed on an app on your mobiles via POS software that comes in touchscreen format; hence you don’t have to be tech-savvy to use it.

Listed below are some more benefits of having an automated KOT system-

1. Streamlines the order process

Food orders from different ordering platforms are accepted directly on one POS system, and a ticket (KOT) is generated immediately in the kitchen. This ensures that any orders aren’t missed or delayed and minimizes discrepancies. A token number is generated for easy tracking, with which you can keep a tab on order duplication and also cut down on mistaken deliveries.

2. Cost-effective

A POS is a low investment and a valuable asset for your restaurant. You can now have centralized control over accounting, billing, and other complex tasks with an integrated POS system that also helps you manage franchises or chains of your restaurant.

These systems can be mounted at the service desk for ease of access. Since this software works on different devices, it can be integrated with digital menus, online payment systems, receipt printers & more.

3. Improves Staff Efficiency

Digitizing the process simplifies not only ordering but also improves the efficiency of your restaurant’s staff. Here’s how-

It is quite easy to use, so training your staff is not a challenge you would encounter.
It significantly reduces service time. At the time of taking orders, the waiter just has to punch in the order & a KOT is generated automatically. Since data capture happens in real-time, the chefs in the kitchen are notified instantly about the new orders. Hence it reduces manual work as well as the turnaround time.

If you haven’t yet shifted to an automated KOT system from your traditional process, think again. It will not only reduce expenses but also accelerates revenue at your restaurant. It’s a lifetime investment for your restaurant business that can reap several benefits. It would take off the weight of the extra hard work of your team and help you reach your goals in time!