How to Increase Restaurant Efficiency Online: 10 Must-Know Tips

Your restaurant’s success is directly proportional to its efficiency. Put in the effort to increase the restaurant's efficiency and you won’t be disappointed. You will have multiple benefits such as bigger profit, better visibility on the market, and more new and repeat customers.

In this article, you will find several easy-to-follow tips that will improve your restaurant's online efficiency in no time:

How to Increase Restaurant Efficiency Online

If you want to see your profit skyrocket and increase customer satisfaction, you need to implement these restaurant efficiency tips right now:

1.Transform your website into a money-making machine

The best thing you could do for your restaurant’s efficiency is to get a website that converts. Simply put, you need a sales-optimized website that is user-friendly, SEO-optimized, and, most importantly, allows clients to order directly from your homepage.

Are you taking orders through phone calls or social media messages? How high is your error rate? It's normal for human errors to occur occasionally, but they will severely affect your restaurant's efficiency. You need a better way to receive orders!

If you already have a website, install the free online ordering system from GloriaFood, set up your account and menu, add the order button to your homepage (customize it if you want), download the free order-taking app, and you are ready to take orders directly through your website.

Read more: How to Customize the Online Ordering Button on Your Restaurant Website

If you don’t have a website, no worries, you can get a personalized one from the online ordering system’s admin. You will receive a website with its own domain, with the following advantages:

• Fast-loading, responsive and intuitive website: easy to navigate, so your customers can find their way around your website and order with great ease;
• SEO-optimized: you don't need to hire an SEO agency. You will receive a perfectly optimized website, including relevant keywords for your type of cuisine, so your restaurant will be on the first page of Google;
• Easy restaurant website builder: you only have to fill in your restaurant profile and generate your own custom website within seconds.
• Online ordering built-in: clients can order from your website with just a simple click of a button. This service is free of charge, with no hidden commissions.

To request a money-making website, go to GloriaFood’s admin -> Setup -> Publishing -> Sales Optimized Website.

2. Streamline your online ordering

A restaurant’s online efficiency depends on how you receive and process orders. Gone are the days when you could only take orders by phone and had to deal with negative reviews all the time because of the many human errors.

You now have access to a top-of-the-line online ordering system that can turn your restaurant into a successful business in no time. Become an Oracle GloriaFood member and discover how streamlined your online ordering can be.

All you have to do to increase restaurant efficiency is set up your profile inside the Oracle GloriaFood admin panel, configure your menu, and publish the See Menu & Order button on your website and Facebook page. Download the online order-taking app on your smartphone and you are now ready to confirm an order in seconds.

3. Allow clients to make table bookings online

If you use the online ordering system from GloriaFood, you also get access to features that help you say goodbye to open tables and bring more customers through the door, such as table reservations and ordering ahead. This will help you increase the table turnover and serve more clients. To activate this feature, go to admin -> Setup -> Services & Opening hours -> Table reservation.

To further increase restaurant efficiency, enable table reservations with order ahead. The customer can pre-order his favorite food while booking a table, so he can enjoy piping hot food just a few moments after walking in.

Check out this demo to see how easy it is for clients to reserve a table:

By clicking next, they can choose if they want to order online or at the restaurant. If they want to order online, they will automatically access the menu.

Read more: How to Promote Your Restaurant Website and Online Ordering Service

4. Optimize your menu

The menu is the first thing everybody will use to judge your restaurant. Everything will be considered, from design and photos to how food descriptions are written.

Therefore, a good menu that is easy to navigate will encourage people to order, and a lousy menu with blurry pictures and short captions will determine customers to click the exit button.

Here are some tips on how to optimize your menu for restaurant efficiency:

• Use simple, clear pictures: the menu pictures shouldn't resemble food images for social media. The food should always be the star, and the photo must be well lit. Use the same background for every photo to create consistency;

  When it comes to selecting a background for your menu pictures, it's important to keep it simple and consistent. A cluttered or busy background can detract from the main focus of the image - the food. One way to achieve this is by using a simple background, such as a solid color or a subtle texture. Another option is to use a background that is relevant to your restaurant's theme or style.

• Create longer descriptions: short descriptions are easy to glide over, but longer ones will force customers to read them. Try describing the ingredient’s origin or using a funny tone, for example pizza margherita – rested dough leavened with natural yeast, fresh cherries with a drop of basil, the smoothest olive oil and home-made mozzarella or funky olive pizza – 8 types of olives having a raving dance party on the softest dough;
• Add the best dishes first: clients tend to order the first dishes that appear on the menu, so make sure you place your best or most expensive ones there;
• Add desserts at the top: hungry clients tend to order more and who doesn’t crave a delicious dessert;
• Provide plenty of toppings: allow clients to customize their dishes with toppings as they have a higher profit margin – the cost of ingredients and production is way less than the price you sell them for;
• Offer intuitive navigation: you need an online menu that will encourage people to order, like the one included in GloriaFood's online ordering system. It is both easy to configure and navigate and will convert visitors to clients. Check out a preview on our demo website and set up your own by accessing admin -> Setup -> Menu Setup & receive orders -> Menu setup.

Read more: Menu Marketing Tips: How to Promote New Menu Items Online & Offline

5. Discover the benefits of an online ordering app

Most people use their smartphones to browse the internet and place food orders, so it makes sense to offer people the possibility to order food from their mobile devices. Therefore, using a Sales Optimized Website that is mobile responsive is essential.

You could join a third party food ordering platform, but the commission they charge will bite into your profit.

Check out the benefits of your own restaurant-branded app:

• No more errors: without an online ordering system, many errors can occur and deter customers from ever ordering again. A white label app will offer easy and fast navigation and will ensure that you receive the order correctly every time;
• Better experience for customers: all clients need to do is download your app and enjoy the smooth navigation experience with no further human interactions. With just a few taps, they get exactly what they ordered;
• Promote your business: the white label app is branded with your restaurant's logo, slogan, and pictures, and because it is a native app, clients will see your logo every day. This subconsciously encourages them to order from your restaurant when they crave food. You can also implement promotions in the app to drive up sales.

If you want to get your own restaurant branded app, go to admin -> Setup -> Publishing -> Branded mobile app and enjoy the benefits.

6. Build a social media image

Let your audience know you by creating and maintaining a social media presence. To become a brand, you must find the channels your public uses and constantly deliver quality content.

The use of strong Calls to Action is important for engagement. Check out these tricks that will help you up your marketing game on social media:

• Add a smart link to Facebook: allow people to order directly from Facebook by adding a smart link to your menu to the “Start Order” button. To do so, go to GloriaFood’s admin -> Setup -> Publishing -> Facebook.
• Create a content plan: you should ideally post every day on social media, but if you don't have enough relevant content, three days a week will suffice. Try to plan for at least two weeks so you can focus your attention on interacting with your fans - foodies;
• Use mouth-watering pictures: no matter the platform, the pictures will be the main attraction. Hire a professional photographer or consider learning how to take better pictures so your images can make people instantly hungry;
• Create a profile on review platforms: get organic visibility by creating a profile on as many review platforms as possible such as TripAdvisor and Yelp, and encourage clients to leave a positive review;
• Invest in paid posts: gain visibility at the start by using sponsored posts. It may be expensive, but your restaurant will get more exposure.

7. Try email marketing

This type of marketing is especially efficient for getting return customers, the key to any successful restaurant.

If you are using our online ordering system, you don't have to take time out of your busy day to develop exciting marketing campaigns, you can just use the Autopilot module.

This smart feature allows you to create your campaign once, and afterward, the program sends emails to your customers to convince them to order again or come back to their abandoned cart, all on autopilot.

See how you can enable Autopilot:

Get this feature by going to admin -> Autopilot Selling -> Autopilot.

Read more: 5 Simple & Effective Customer Retention Strategies for Restaurants

8. Implement relevant promotions

Who can say no to a good promotion? People are more tempted to order your food if they can also save money. Promotions are a good trick to use, especially if you are promoting a new menu item or want to increase sales of a specific dish.

Do you know the simple and efficient way to implement a promotion? Using restaurant promotion templates! Go to admin -> Marketing -> Promotions and use as many promotion templates as you need. The key is to have 3-4 different promotions that can apply to customers with different buying behaviors, like big families, or singles, etc. to encourage them to order more.

9. Promote online payment

Online payments is a feature many clients look for when ordering their food. Nowadays, many people don't even carry cash for commodity or safety concerns, so they might not even order if online payments aren’t available.

This type of payment is also beneficial for you, the restaurant owner:

• It saves time: the driver can just deliver the food without waiting for payment and can quickly move on to the following order;
• It is secure and reliable: the payment is easy to manage with online tools and is transferred directly from the client to you.

As people prefer different types of online payments (Visa card, PayPal, ApplePay), offering as many payment methods as possible is a good idea. You can do this easily with GloriaFood's online ordering system by going to admin -> Setup -> Payments -> Online Payment.

10. Use data analyzing tools

To guarantee a restaurant’s efficiency, you must constantly monitor and improve all processes. But don't rely on others to tell you what could be improved. Try to be proactive. Preventing a problem rather than reading a negative review online is better.

The right data analyzing tool will help you identify and combat issues, discover new opportunities, and monitor popular menu items and items that need more marketing to get noticed.

GloriaFood has an excellent reporting module integrated that comes with a series of useful analyzing tools, such as:

• Reporting overview: offers data on your website rank on Google, the number of website visitors, number of new vs. returning customers, the value of orders, and much more;
• Website funnel: you can find out how many people accessed your menu by clicking on the menu button on your website, how many clients added items to the cart, how many orders were placed, and how many were accepted by you;
• Website visits: you can learn what channels people use to reach your website, so you know where your audience is active;
• Delivery heatmaps: it shows you the order density in your delivery zones, so you know where your high-paying orders come from. Use this information to encourage more orders in areas with low order density with promotions or flyers and implement targeted promotions to increase profit in the high-paying zones.

To access the Reporting module, go to admin -> Reports and start monitoring your business.

Read more: How to grow your food business with Restaurant Data Analytics

Conclusion

Online restaurant efficiency is highly dependent on the tools you use to market and receive online orders.

With an online ordering system, you not only ensure you will not have any order errors but also offer a smooth experience for your customers that will encourage them to keep coming back.

You also get access to a reporting module to monitor your sales, fix important problems and find new ways to promote your business.