What are ways I can reduce wait time for customers in my restaurant?

By understanding the customer experience from start to finish and using latest technologies you can reduce the wait time of your customers. If we go by research of Hospitality Tech it says, loyal diners can bring in 80% of new business recommendations and bring in more new customers by their word-of-mouth marketing. And hence it is important to deliver best kind of service to your customers so that they can bring a huge impact.  

Low Technology Work

Now a days it is very easy to directly jump on machines and technology for any answer. We have tried to list a few tools below that would help you to reduce the waiting time for your customers. Some of the areas where you can reduce the customer waiting times are:

Staff Organization:

It is very important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each employee. We should avoid scheduling and focus on what are they good at. Tasks should be assigned according to their strengths; this will even improve the staff efficiency.

Reservation for seat policy:

There must be a reward for customers who think ahead of them, they must be put as a priority and should be given a fast and great service.

Give proper to your employees:

To create a team culture is very important, to give the employees rewards and to give them proper training to reduce the customer’s waiting time is very important.

Checks not in rush:

Train your employees not to hurry the billing part. Let the customers feel that there is no hurry to pay, whenever they are ready, they can pay. Rushing brings no glory.  

Increase Busing Time:

It is important to clean the vacant tables as soon as possible so that it is ready to use for the next customer. This is going to boost the turnaround in your restaurant.

Technological Tools

There are many technology-based solutions, including the usage of smartphones, you can use that and improve the customer experience and you can also shorten their waiting time. Let us discuss some of these technical solutions:

Point of sale systems:

This technique is widely used by many restaurants all over the world. This system allows the staff to key in the customer order and they can make the payments through a computerized system which reduces the wait time of other customers.  

Wait list tools

These days restaurants use a pager system through which they can keep the waiting customers in a virtual line. There are handheld tools available that vibrate whenever a table is ready. Whereas smartphone-based wait list brings in the whole technology one step further, it is possible to view the wait time and progress of the waiting line.  

Queue Metric System:

This kind of system helps the restaurant to collect the data on busy periods, wait times, the number of customer walkaways and a lot more. By reading this data you can make better decisions of staffing and scheduling preventive maintenance tasks.  

Self-service access:

You can give your customers an access to online menu, QR code on the table by which they can scan and order their food so that they are able to save the time of ordering process. While this they will even make online payments, which will reduce the wait time too.  

Table Management:

Technology helps the customer to know which tables are available for them to occupy. Some technologies also help you to assign meals to seats, this makes the delivery efficient. As soon as the tables get clear, next customer takes it and order the food.  

Conclusion:

Food Service Industry is a competitive one, it is very fast paced. That is the biggest reason that the customers expectations continue to rise. The number of people who wish to go out and eat is also rising, this provides the industry with lot more opportunities. The people who are willing to open a new restaurant chain, all these tips are going to help them establish a good chain.  

You must start with a basic evaluation of your customers experiences and then identify what the problem is or what are the key areas where you have an opportunity to grow. After that you should investigate the technologies which might reduce the waiting time of your customers. These technologies will help you by providing you the wealth of time and data. Analyze the pattern, busy time, employee performance, and make best decisions in the future.