As a restaurant owner or member of management, having a good record of accurate orders is incredibly important, for factors like customer retention, operations, and overall sales. If you’re reading this article, we assume that you’re having problems with that.
We at KlikNRoll have more than a decade of experience under our belts as consultants, so we know a thing or two about handling a restaurant’s operations.
Let us take you through some actionable steps as to how you can increase the accuracy of your orders for the better!
How to Improve Order Accuracy in Your Restaurant
Utilize a Robust POS & Online Ordering System
A robust POS system can be a game-changer in terms of automation and minimizing human error.
Sure, a pen and some paper are great, but having a good set of systems in place can massively improve order-processing efficiency as well as minimize mixups.
So instead of taking an order and walking to the back of the restaurant to submit the order, your waiters can just send it straight away with a click of a button.
This eliminates the issue of forgetting details of the order or even bad handwriting that might mess up the order!
On the other hand, you can also invest in an online ordering system, which customers can scan with a QR code that you can put on every table.
Having this removes a layer of communication and customers can input any special requests or allergy information that they might have.
This method allows customers to be clear with their special requests and even the most obscure request won’t be overlooked.
In addition, it’s also easier for your wait staff during peak hours, and overall accuracy will be improved using a good POS!
If you’re interested in a robust online reservation or online menu platform, why not check out our product page using the button below to learn more?
Take Advantage of Food Pre-Orders (Especially for Groups)
Online booking systems are a great tool to have for any restaurant, especially if you’re doing digital advertising.
However, did you know that you can maximize its usefulness in boosting the overall accuracy of your orders?
Let’s take KlikNRoll’s booking system as an example. If you take a look at the image we’ve attached above, you can see that customers can reserve their table while having the added benefit of placing orders beforehand.
This ensures that you’ll have ample time to prep inventory beforehand, as well as fulfilling their order accurately and swiftly.
Doing this removes the friction caused by the chaotic ordering process of a big group.
By utilizing this feature, customers get to order what they want and how they want it (special requests, etc.) and your staff can process the order efficiently and without hassle.
What’s neat about KlikNRoll’s booking system is that you’re able to customize it so that the person who made the reservations can send out links to their friends and family so that they can all order on multiple phones without the need to be physically together. This makes splitting the bill a lot easier too!
On top of that, you also have the flexibility to automatically send orders to the kitchen the moment guests arrive.
Simply click the ‘Guests Arrived’ button and KlikNRoll can automatically send the orders in without the need for extra work!
Train Your Employees in Hard & Soft Skills
Apart from having good software and hardware to automate your day-to-day operations, you should train your employees to make full use of the software. There’s little point in having the best of the best if no one knows how to use it.
Regardless of the software you choose, pretty much all companies will provide training whether in-person or in the form of a document or maybe a video.
It’s worth taking the time to let your employees attend training sessions, to make full use of the software.
Aside from hard skills, it’s also important to teach your employees soft skills. Soft skills are generally skills that are essential skills that a person will have to interact and communicate with another person seamlessly.
Here are the most important soft skills to have in a restaurant:
- Communication
- Attentiveness
- Proactiveness
- Empathy & Care
A member of your wait staff will use all of these soft skills while on the job and having mastery of these skills will improve order accuracy. Attentiveness and proactivity are the most important ones in this regard.
If the server is unsure about a customer’s order and special request, it’s important to clarify with customers and verify their order before it gets passed to the kitchen.
Add Clear Pictures and Descriptions to Your Menu Physically & Digitally
Instead of relying too much on wait staff, you can reduce and smoothen the ordering process by having a detailed menu that is clear and concise.
Clear item names and detailed descriptions can be implemented in both your physical and digital menus.
Pictures, on the other hand, will take more work to pull off on a physical copy of your food menu.
Aside from improving order accuracy, having clear pictures and descriptions actually can help with an increase in overall revenue, by about 30%!
Identify Wrong Order Patterns in Your Restaurant
Finding and fixing patterns and trends of items with the most amount of wrong orders can be a quick fix in reducing the same wrong orders in the future.
You can do this by either looking through your POS system or just from general observation.
If you’re having inaccurate orders with a particular item in every other service, there’s a big chance that that item is causing a headache among your members of staff.
In our experience, if you’re having trouble with a particular menu item, see if it’s wise to remove the item entirely. Here are some general guidelines to see if an item is worth removing from the menu or not:
- Order accuracy is below 85% at any given period.
- Does the item contribute to more than 2% of total sales revenue?
- The item’s margins – does it cost less than ⅓ of your selling price to make?
If that menu item doesn’t pass any of these criteria, honestly, we’d recommend removing it from your menu.
Investing in Expeditors & Strengthen SOPs
Having one or more expeditors in your restaurant can be a big help in trying to maintain or boost order accuracy and restaurant operations in general.
If you’re not ready to invest in another member of staff, you can always opt to train existing kitchen staff to do so.
Here’s a general idea of what expeditors do in a restaurant:
- Manage the flow of orders from the wait staff to the kitchen.
- Does quality control of the dishes, making sure each order is up to spec.
- Acts as a direct line of communication from the kitchen to the wait staff.
- Assists in the final steps of dish preparation (garnishing, etc.)
Having an expeditor to read out orders and special requests can make life easier for not just restaurant management but for kitchen and wait staff too.
On top of that, the expeditor is also an important player in strengthening the SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) of the kitchen.
Set Realistic KPIs and Reward Staff Accordingly
Employees play a huge role in keeping your restaurant afloat, and it’s important to be fair and reward employees accordingly.
The Harvard Business Review has a fascinating article that shows that rewarding employees will make them more likely to cooperate than punishing them.
Try setting a realistic KPI (key performance index) like to keep incorrect orders below a certain threshold, and reward them accordingly.
It could be something as a small bonus or maybe even a company voucher that can be spent in-house to treat their friends and family.
Either way, a motivated and rewarded employee/staff will be more likely to go above and beyond for restaurants.
On the flipside, a demotivated employee will not put effort into their work, and can even negatively affect the productivity of their colleagues!
Having a good working culture and having employees take accountability is also incredibly important. People make mistakes and punishing your employees is not the way to success.
Setting a Quota in Your Restaurant’s Ordering System
You can prevent over-ordering in your online ordering system by setting a limit as to how many of a particular item can be ordered during a particular time.
In the KlikNRoll system, you’re able to easily find the quota allocation system in your admin dashboard. Simply set the amount of orders you’re able to accept in a given period.
You can also set the default amount every day if you’d like. Not to mention, you can preemptively list the item as ‘out-of-stock’ if you’re having problems with operations.
Bottom Line - Why is Order Accuracy Important for a Restaurant?
Order accuracy is incredibly important for any restaurant because it affects all aspects of the restaurant business, from operations to customer retention.
Having a bad track record in terms of order accuracy contributes to food wastage, which means higher operating and variable costs.
On the other end, this issue can cause a deterioration of customer loyalty, as even the most loyal and dedicated customers would turn cold if their requests aren’t honored and their orders keep coming back wrong.
This in turn will also hurt marketing efforts and online presence, as unhappy customers will post negative reviews of restaurants on review platforms like Facebook and Google.
If you want to learn more about optimizing for search engines on Google, take a look at our complete SEO guide for restaurants.
Bad reviews might discourage customers from ever giving your business a chance and that could account for a big loss in the long run.
If you’re interested in our arsenal of tools and solutions, why not click the button below to take a look at our product page?
Hey there! I’m Jeffrey Hau, and my journey in the digital world started after I wrapped up my psychology degree at UCLA. Imagine coming back to the bustling streets of Hong Kong from the tech haven of Silicon Valley – it was a whirlwind of inspiration! Seeing how social media platforms were evolving at breakneck speed and realizing the limitations of traditional advertising in this digital age, I decided to dive in.
In 2012, I laid the foundation of Prizm Group. From our humble beginnings, we’ve now blossomed into a global powerhouse with a team of over 200 passionate professionals. Our HQ is right here in Hong Kong, and we’ve spread our wings to SG, AU, NZ, JP, and China.
As a digital problem solver, our team found that several industries are in need of reservation systems, especially for F&B, Hotels, Beauty, and Medical sectors. Our digital magicians started crafting reservation systems tailored to cater to these specific needs. We extended our expertise to e-commerce, voucher management systems, and campaign management systems, combining them into KlikNRoll – an all-in-one solution. We deep dive into various industries, understanding their unique challenges and developing innovative solutions.
We’re not just a company; we’re your dedicated partners in transforming how you navigate the digital landscape. Our passion lies in providing businesses with intuitive and tailored solutions using KlikNRoll’s powerful capabilities.
Ready to embark on this exciting digital adventure with us? Let’s make your brand stand out in the digital jungle!
