The restaurant industry isn’t exactly known for its work-life balance. All the long hours, weekends, and holidays make it an ongoing struggle for restaurant owners and workers to take care of their personal needs. And when restaurant staff are overworked, burned out, or simply dissatisfied with their work conditions, the entire business suffers.
Fortunately, tools and technologies are available to help improve work-life balance for you and everyone in your restaurant — freeing up precious hours, letting you focus on the bigger picture, and creating a more efficient work environment that reduces the burden on your employees. And of course a better work-life balance makes for a happier and healthier staff, improving employee retention.
Scheduling snafus are among the restaurant industry’s worst nightmares. They can lead to short-staffing, over-staffing, and disgruntled employees — all of which can eat up your time, damage the customer experience, and snowball into high staff turnover.
A purpose-built tool can make an instant impact in terms of schedule communication and coordination — improving flexibility, efficiency, and accountability. No more missed emails or texts; no more “I told X I couldn’t work Saturday, but X didn’t tell Y.”
Scheduling platforms for restaurants are designed to save time and headaches while communicating important information such as changes in hours, menus, or specials. The best ones integrate with your POS (point of sale) system, make it simple for staff to swap shifts, and allow you to manage multiple locations as needed. Some even include HR functionality so you can use them to post jobs and onboard new hires.
A robust scheduling tool can relieve restaurant managers of administrative burdens while giving staff the clarity to schedule their personal lives — a work-life balance win for everyone. And when your staff feels supported, they’re more likely to stick around.
A well-operated restaurant runs on a rhythm, with staff smoothly handling customer needs while keeping the space tidy, pushing orders out, and turning tables over. But a phone that’s constantly ringing can disrupt that rhythm, pulling people off important tasks to answer questions, book reservations, take pickup orders, and recite specials.
With the latest AI restaurant tech, those disruptions can become a thing of the past. Platforms like Loman AI and Kea can perform all those tasks and more, freeing you and your staff to serve the customers who are already there. And since AI runs 24/7, it can deal with calls outside of business hours, limiting the number of messages you need to return when you start your day.
The accuracy and realism of today’s AI agents leads to a seamless customer experience. Because they can handle multiple calls simultaneously, no one ever needs to be put on hold (and risk having the call dropped) when making a reservation or placing a takeout order. For callers who require a more personal touch, an AI system can route calls to the manager or event coordinator as needed.
Inventory management is traditionally an unpleasant, time-consuming, and error-prone task. By its very nature, it disrupts your restaurant work-life balance by keeping you and your staff on site long after closing.
Yet it’s one of the most crucial tasks in restaurant operations, because a properly planned and maintained inventory can reduce waste, save money, and make sure you’re always ready to meet customer demand. You don’t want to run out of your most popular dish on a busy Saturday night!
The right food inventory management technology can make a profound difference for your restaurant. The leaders in this category — such as MarginEdge, Market Man, and Piecemeal — will not only streamline your inventory process, but also give you deeper insights that can have a real impact on your bottom line.
After all, keeping inventory isn’t just about knowing what you have — it also lets you predict future demand accurately and understand exactly what your actual food costs are.
Since the best restaurant tech integrates ordering, invoicing, and bill payment with your inventory management, that tech can simplify your vendor relationships.
Inventory management also benefits your customer relationships. By staying on top of spoilage, you can be sure that you’re offering fresh ingredients, improving the customer experience. And when you’re spending less time on paperwork, you can give your diners more individual attention.
Though it may take some time to integrate a new inventory management tool into your business, replacing your old manual processes (or that Excel spreadsheet) will save valuable hours of your life.
Even if you’re already using some tech in your restaurant, you can benefit from learning about the latest advancements. There are always new ways for savvy owners and managers to create a more tech-forward workplace that can improve things for you, your employees, and your customers.
Looking for clarity on how technology can help foster better work-life balance at your restaurant? Book a free discovery call with a Back of House expert to find the right solution for your needs.