October 2021 - inresto

Here’s the restaurant’s checklist for the festive season

Posted on 26/10/202126/10/2021 by inresto

The festive season is here. Restaurants are gearing up to welcome the customers for a festive treat. Now that the second wave of Covid-19 has receded. Hence, restaurants expect diners to loosen up their purse strings. So are you all set to attract your guests? Here you go, a checklist that will come in handy during your festive season preparations.

Here’s the restaurant’s checklist for the festive season

5 point checklist for festive seasons

1. Invest in good decor

Decorate your restaurant’s entry with dazzling lights. Keep it grand so that food lovers would find it welcoming. Light up your interiors with candles and diyas, sticking to the theme of the festive season. Focus on your outside seating and entry more than the interiors. The reason is simple. It’s the external appearance that attracts your customers.

2. Have a festival-specific food menu

It’s time to add new dishes to your menu. Come up with Diwali special veg thali meals, sweets, and gift hampers. Spice up the menu with Jeera Rice, Dal Makhani, and Punjabi Chole. Make it tempting with sweets such as Shahi Thukda and Rasmalai.

To do something extravagant this festive season, you can arrange exciting food festivals, buffet dinners, card game events, live music, etc.

3. Exciting offers

Great food and a fantastic ambiance are not enough for this extravagant festive season. Your customers seek discounts and special offers. It’s the time when offers are going on everywhere. Your restaurant should jump on the bandwagon. Come up with some hard to resist discount offers. It can be a special 15% flat discount on the total bill. You can also personalise the offers based on the loyalty of the customers.

4. Reach out to your target audience

72% of consumers prefer to engage only with personalized messaging. Pull out the list of those who visited during last year’s Navratri and Diwali. Then, reach them with personalized discount offers via SMS & Emails. With inresto Campaign, India’s leading digital restaurant management platform, it’s pretty easy to engage with your diners. A limited period discount offer can be quite enticing. An example is a 1+1 Diwali buffet lunch offer for a couple of days.

5. Organise events

There is no festival without a party. It’s time to entertain your diners. You can host a Bollywood-themed party. Let your diners come dressed as their favourite Bollywood artist. Announce surprise gifts for the best couple. Live band performance is another fantastic idea. To uplift the festive mood, rope in a celebrity guest.

Host food festivals with special Diwali and Navratri dishes. It’s the best time to launch your new dishes. Publicise the news on your restaurant’s official Facebook and Instagram pages. Also, throw in contests on social media pages. To keep it engaging, invite suggestions from customers to name your Bollywood-themed party. Keep the spirits high with frequent posts on social media.

6. Loyalty programs

Recent studies show that from last January to April, the share of customers who use restaurant loyalty programs has shot up by 12%. To attract your festive crowd, have a customised loyalty program in place. Now, it’s very much possible with inresto Loyalty. For every 5th Diwali buffet dinner, reward your diners with 20 extra loyalty points. Let them spread the news to their friends and relatives.

For your regular customers, reward them with extra loyalty points. Also, offer the option of instant reward redemption. Notify your diners about the expiry of loyalty points and keep coming back for more.

Parting Words

Make the most out of it with incredible food and never-before discount offers. With the help of a modern-day restaurant management system, lure those diners with attractive marketing campaigns and loyalty programs. The above checklist will prove quite helpful in your festival preparations.

Everything you need to know about Food Inventory Management

Posted on 26/10/202126/10/2021 by inresto

Offering delicious food to customers is one of the core activities of every restaurant. But what’s more important is, maintaining stocks for all the necessary ingredients to make those signature meals. A restaurant does this by maintaining a food inventory where all the items are stored for future use yet there are times when things have fallen apart because of not building a proper food inventory management system.

Everything you need to know about Food Inventory Management

To understand better, the following article will talk in detail about what is food inventory management and how to reduce waste in restaurants.

What is food inventory management?

Food inventory management helps you in keeping track of all the food items that you need for the restaurant. It includes both perishable and non-perishable items. You can use the traditional (pen and paper) or modern (spreadsheets) method to jot down the stock you ordered to avoid overbuying.

So, what happens if you fail to maintain your restaurants’ inventory? There can only be either of the two consequences, the inventory takes over the demand causing a lot of wastage and another might lead to customers walking out because of the unavailability of their favourite meal.

And, there are plenty of examples for both the situations in the market. On average a restaurant wastes around 14,325 pounds of food every year. It’s like throwing money in the trash.

An efficient food inventory management system helps you determine the items your restaurant needs, the next order date, and the cost of each item in your stock. This will help you manage your restaurant and apply cost-effective strategies to boost profits.

How to reduce food waste in restaurants?

1. Take suggestions from your staff

You must engage with your staff before implementing any of the waste minimizing strategies because they are the ones always present in the restaurant. The food managing team knows the daily requirement of stock and the exact bifurcation of the quantity that is used every day.

After culminating all the advice, you need to create a structured workflow of how your team will bring down the waste percentage. Train your staff to follow all the waste-reducing policies and make them realize the change they can make for the restaurant.

2. Invest in good inventory management software

Humans make mistakes, they can never be error-free. So, to avoid any inventory calculation mistakes you can switch to an advanced inventory management software that will take care of your stock and send alerts when food items are running out. It can store all kinds of inventory data which will help you in making effective restaurant strategies.

inresto’s SCM model is one of the most efficient solutions that helps reduce food wastage in restaurants. They can minimize inventory wastages by 25% and improve the bottom line by over 40%.

inresto’s inventory management platform i.e SCM allows you to generate purchase orders from the kitchen itself. The orders are directly sent to the vendors through inresto. The inventory is regularly checked depending on the recipes cooked on a particular day. The application automatically updates the inventory when orders are received. It offers a detailed report on the inventory status of the restaurant, making it easy for you to understand its waste management capability.

3. Practice stock rotation method to save food for a longer time

To avoid your food from rotting, you must adopt two of the very famous methods FIFO and LIFO. FIFO (First In-First Out) can be used for non-perishable items that can be stored within a specific time period. These items need to be used first, before buying any of its extra stock which will eventually reduce overbuying.

The second method is LIFO (Last In-First Out), this can be applied to perishable food items like fruits, vegetables, milk, bread, etc. These items can only be stored for a very short period of time, so they need to be bought at the last but used at the very first.

4. Make an integrated inventory management team

A restaurant is divided into multiple departments that handle specific tasks. Like all other activities, it is essential to create a team that dedicatedly works towards reducing food wastage in the restaurant. These people need to be finely observant in making decisions and must be well versed with the inventory software of the restaurant.

You need to set up certainly viable targets for the team so that they can strategize and work towards them. All members should be well trained and suggest steps that can be taken to reach the goals.

5. Avoid overbuying

Your staff must keep an eye on the food inventory and order only when it’s needed. Overstocking is very common in the food industry but it’s important to understand the long-term impact it will cause on your restaurant.

Restock food items only after finishing the prior stock or purchase edibles which can be stored for a longer time frame. Do not overbuy perishable items, they will serve no purpose to your restaurant and will mostly end up in the trash.

Conclusion

If you follow all the steps mentioned above, your restaurant will be able to reduce its food wastage by a significant amount. An inventory management system is essential for both small and large restaurants to be head-to-head with its demand.

In case you are unable to do it by yourself, the market holds some excellent inventory management software like inresto which will help you in maintaining your restaurants’ inventory. A systematic inventory management software can reduce overstocking and inventory mistakes by 17% which will eventually boost your restaurant profits.

Cloud Kitchen Promotions: Elements towards effective marketing

Posted on 19/10/202126/10/2021 by inresto

If you are crazy about food but lack funds to open a fully-functional restaurant, then opening a cloud kitchen can be your best option. Cloud kitchens are virtual restaurants that do not offer any dining facility but deliver food at your diner’s doorsteps. After the pandemic, the demand for cloud kitchens has skyrocketed as people are becoming more inclined to take away or home delivery services.

The following article will help you understand more about cloud kitchen and discuss some of the promotional techniques that will help your kitchen reach a wider audience.

What is a Cloud Kitchen?

Cloud kitchen or a Ghost kitchen is a well known concept in the form of mobile canteens. Prior to the pandemic, it was only meant for people who had compact spaces where they would cook food and sell it at the most affordable rates. But as the economy is evolving, people have been inclining towards ordering food online.

Many giant restaurants have now started to follow the cloud kitchen model. The market for cloud kitchens has reached a remarkable height of $43.1 Billion and is expected to touch $71.4 Billion by 2027. You can take inspiration from some of the top cloud kitchen restaurants like the Reef Kitchen Miami, Amped Kitchens, Fulton Kitchen, or Kitopi, who have been getting amplified revenue every year.

A cloud kitchen can be set up easily by leasing any commercial area which can solely be used for cooking. You don’t need any dining facility, shifting a major portion of your fund towards building an online presence in the market.

It can be done by integrating your restaurant with your own food ordering app or building a sleek looking website for your kitchen through inresto’s White Label module. Both of these methods will allow people to order from your restaurant and give their valuable reviews.

7 Cloud Kitchen promotional tactics to boost your sales

1. Hop on Social Media Platforms

More than 50% of the people worldwide use social media apps, which amounts to approximately 3 Billion users. And if your Cloud kitchen is not leveraging this, you are losing a large chunk of the audience. Your restaurant must have an account on all relevant social media platforms with the motive to make people aware of your brand presence.

Through inresto’s diverse marketing offerings, you can easily delegate this task to experts who can aid you to reach more people in less time.

2. An SEO Optimized Website

The world is shifting online, these days the customers first research on multiple platforms before placing an order. So, your restaurant needs a website that is Search Engine optimized to be able to reach a larger audience and get discovered. You should also register it on Google my business, so whenever a customer searches for a specific term your establishment will pop up on the first page of Google search results.

As per stats, 77% of people depend on online platforms to analyze if they want to order from a restaurant or not. And, most people make up their mind after reading the reviews. Make sure your cloud kitchen is providing quality food otherwise it will lose more customers than gaining.

3. Build your own food ordering app/website

Third-party apps like Zomato, Swiggy, UberEATS have set a strong momentum in the market. People extensively depend on them to order food online. However, this can lead to a very high dependency on third party platforms for a majority of your customers and sky high commission rate for your business..

But using the inresto Online Order module, you can build your own digital presence via website or app and can continuously offer coupons or discounts using the loyalty program by inresto. Millennials are more tech-savvy, they keep searching for the perfect restaurant until they get the best deal.

4. Mention all the Hygienic Measures

66% of people will not order from a restaurant that operates in unhygienic conditions. Due to the pandemic, people are obsessed with hygiene so it’s important that your restaurant talks about all the measures it takes from cooking to delivering the order.

People usually believe what they see over what they hear. Train your delivery person to maintain social distancing and perform proper sanitization whenever required.

5. Make use of Influencer Marketing-

It is one of the most cost-effective methods to promote your cloud kitchen. Social media is filled with influencers who have a large following and can make your establishment reach a very wide audience. You can engage with them and offer them a deal to promote your cloud kitchen.

These people have a huge impact on their followings which will eventually help your cloud kitchen get a lot of orders. Your target influencers can be chefs or food bloggers, whose niche fits into your business requirement.

6. Integrate Cloud Kitchen Management Software

inresto offers one of the most popular cloud kitchen management software that will manage your restaurants’ requirements and help in creating a loyal customer base. It will take care of the inventory and send alerts when it’s time to restock items.

You can also launch marketing campaigns via SMS & Emails to drive more orders through inresto Campaigns. inresto can help you build personalized apps and websites for your cloud kitchen, enabling customers to directly order from them without depending on other online food ordering apps.

7. Leverage Paid Ads

All online platforms like Google, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, offer paid ads. You have to niche down to select specific keywords and the target audience to which your restaurants’ ad will be displayed.

The advertisement can talk about all the offers and discounts your cloud kitchen will be offering within that specified period. The main idea of an ad should be to create urgency in the mind of people, pushing them to avail the offer.

Conclusion

Starting a cloud kitchen can be very fruitful at this point. If your menu has some delicious meals and you just need customers that recognize your brand. Then, all these techniques can help your cloud kitchen reach a vast audience ultimately fetching you some excellent orders.

Restaurant Menu Forecasting

Posted on 12/10/202112/10/2021 by inresto

It’s the challenging new normal. As a restaurateur, how do you plan to bring down costs? Unlike in earlier times, you just cannot afford wastage of food. In the current scenario, your restaurant menu can make a lot of difference in bringing down wastage. The survey by Technomic shows that 36% of restaurant operators plan to go for smaller menus that focus on core dishes. The menu items on the wall are visible. Now you need to emphasize more than ever on restaurant menu forecasting.

What is restaurant menu forecasting?

Restaurant menu forecasting is all about analyzing the demand of your customers, planning and developing your menu based on the customer demand. With accurate menu forecasting, now take decisions about the amount of each dish to be prepared and allocate employees and raw materials efficiently. Also, reducing wastage has its own perks. By forecasting the exact raw materials and other resources required for each dish, you can experience a significant reduction in wastage.

Restaurant menu forecasting techniques

Let’s delve deep into some of the popular techniques used in restaurant menu forecasting.

1. Popularity Index

A popularity index comes in handy while forecasting the items on your menu. It helps you find out the food items that are most popular among your diners.

The term popularity index stands for the percentage of total customers ordering a particular food item from a list of options. First, let’s see how you can calculate the popularity index.

Popularity Index = Total number of specific items sold / Total number of all items sold.

Wondering how to pull out the sales figure for each food item? All this and more is now possible with inresto POS, India’s leading digital, cloud-based restaurant management POS system. Just analyze the reports and view details on the sales volume of a particular dish, the total number of all the dishes sold at your restaurant, etc. As per your wish, retrieve these reports on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Due to the amazing benefits, nowadays, many restaurants are making use of the restaurant POS systems. As per the report by Grandviewresearch, in 2020, the size of the global restaurant POS terminal market was USD 15.46 billion. However, from 2021 to 2028, the market is expected to witness a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.4%.

2. Pre-costing

How about controlling your food costs before the preparation of food items? Doesn’t it sound effective? That’s the advantage that pre-costing brings to you.

Pre-costing is a technique where you control your food items while forecasting the items on your menu. With this method, now you will be able to make better profits. As per pre-costing, you forecast the selling price of the items on your menu in advance. The major advantage is that it will help you cover the preparation cost.

As the first step, you need to calculate the food cost percentage. It’s simple. The term food cost percentage stands for the percentage of sales you spend on your food. With this technique, find out the base price well before pricing the dishes. Hence, the base price acts as a standard while pricing the various items on your menu.

Food Cost = Cost Of Goods Sold / Food Sales.

Now, quickly find out the amount of money you make while investing a certain amount in preparing a dish. It is recommended to keep your food cost within 28-30% of your selling price.

3. Volume forecasting

Assume that for the last Valentine’s Day in 2020, chocolate dessert was the most ordered item. Around 200 diners ordered that dish. The data will help you better forecast your menu for Valentine’s Day in 2021. The same concept works in volume forecasting. Based on the previous order volumes, you will be forecasting your menu. As part of this method, you will be making a note of the most requested food item. In the case of upcoming events, it will help you be better prepared.

The main objective of volume forecasting is to forecast the number of meals to be sold to avoid shortage and wastage. It will also help predict the choice of menu items by your diners. Now, purchasing of raw materials is made much smoother. It will also ensure that the food materials are readily available.

4. Applying technology for restaurant menu forecasting

Assume that you introduced a new Goan chicken curry to your restaurant menu. While launching, you might have had huge expectations. However, the item did not find favour among your diners. Similarly, on some days of the week, you might experience a huge rush at your restaurant. However, there are other days when the crowd is pretty low. Overstocking may lead to wastage which you cannot afford in the present scenario. At the same time, if you run short of food items, it may lead to customer disappointment. Hence the billion-dollar question is how to forecast your restaurant menu?

The answer is a digital restaurant management system. Apart from the reports mentioned earlier, the system offers you valuable insights. It ranges from the days of the week when the rush will be higher, the eating preferences of your diners, etc. Now, with the help of inresto Feedback, collect valuable feedback from your diners on their favourite dishes, items they didn’t like, etc. Based on their feedback, you can make changes to your menu accordingly. Focus more on the most selling dishes. Remove the ones that are not performing. Hence, no more hassles of inventory wastage and running out of stock.

Parting Words

Unlike the pre-Covid times, the focus of the restaurants nowadays is on cost-cutting. Hence, restaurant menu forecasting plays an important role in bringing down your costs. With manual efforts, getting insights into customer preferences is quite difficult. That’s where a restaurant POS system comes into the picture. It provides valuable insights, which makes the process of menu forecasting far easier. In addition to cutting down wastage, you can also experience significant cost savings.

A 3D view of Restaurant Industry | Delivery, Data & Digital Marketing

Posted on 12/10/202112/10/2021 by inresto

Congratulations on winning the inresto Superstar, Sept 2021

Posted on 04/10/202119/10/2021 by inresto

We are back again with another round of inresto Superstar where we present to you restaurants like yours, which stood out this month.

Your undying spirit and diner first approach is commendable. We think of you every time we think of top dining services across India. As your long-standing restaurant technology partner, we are here again with the inresto Superstar initiative to acknowledge the efforts & outstanding services you deliver to your beloved diners.

What is ‘inresto Superstar’?

A monthly initiative to identify and recognize the phenomenal dining experience provided by our partner restaurants using inresto’s product suite. It is an effort to celebrate the unrelenting spirit of restaurants across the country! Restaurants spread laughter, moments of joy and create memories for a lifetime for millions of people. And to make that possible, it takes a dedicated staff and the right technology to streamline all the restaurant operations.

Raising a toast for all the winners of Sept 2021!

International Special

Bombay Borough, UAE

This month’s International special mention goes to Bombay Borough, UAE, for their outstanding work with inresto campaigns and for successfully making dining out such a larger-than-life experience for their diners.

Spread across two floors, it is the ideal space for all your moods and moments, from drinks after work, to meals with loved ones, and afternoon chai with friends. Bombay Borough is Indian at its core, the epitome of the modern India of today and tomorrow, and the perfect place to rediscover India through an explosion of flavours.

Check out the superstars from India here:

1. Maini’s Green Leaf, Delhi

The Fine Dining restaurant continues to serve the pure, authentic taste of Indian Delicacies along with varied other cuisines at its finest. It brings you all the best vegetarian dishes to relish and enjoy the original taste.

2. Dara’s Dhaba, Mumbai

The ambiance takes you miles away; on the highways of Punjab with the soothing lights of Lanterns and the aroma of tandoori flavours. It has a Nostalgic Charm of traditional wayside Dhabas that light up the highways of Punjab.

One gets to enjoy a hearty meal on the customary Charpoys with the Aroma of freshly cooked Tandoori delicacies right there in Mumbai.

3. Chilis American Grill & Bar, Chennai

This is one of the best American and Mexican cuisine restaurants in India. Southwestern US-style food is the theme of this local chain restaurant for dine-in & delivery. Famous for its chicken wings and juicy burgers, this place is a hit amongst diners for meetups in India.

4. Jetlag, Bangalore

This multi-cuisine bar and pub is Bengaluru’s first Jet-themed restaurant. They offer an array of Indian, Continental, and Asian delicacies. It offers a lively atmosphere to unwind with its handcrafted cocktails and music playing in the background. The rooftop is the favourite spot among diners.

5. CIBO House, Hyderabad

It is a plush yet casual eatery serving European food, decorated with wall art from around the world.

It takes you through a true culinary sojourn in a modern, elegant and cosy setting, and offers a lavish spread encompassing European and Continental favourites.

6. Absolute Barbecues, Kolkata

AB’s is India’s first wish grill restaurant. It offers a unique ‘do-it-yourself’ dining experience where diners grill on the table with their choice of meat, seafood, and vegetable starters served on skewers to their preference.

A big congratulations to all the superstars! We are happy to have helped you raise your revenue, increase productivity, and improve efficiency. We wish you continued success and happy diners all year long. 🙂

Keep reaching your restaurant business goals and continue to raise the bar for fellow restaurateurs with each passing year.

Check out the previous month’s inresto Superstars here.