Every restaurant business nowadays is only after one thing: to skyrocket end-to-end operational efficiency.
And who can blame them?
Improving operational efficiency can save plenty of time by eliminating manual tasks, improving accuracy and efficiency in ordering, and simplifying ordering to provide a better experience for guests while also lowering the cost of business.
The branch of the US restaurant industry that posted the largest growth in 2021 is bars and taverns with a 94.8% increase in sales from 2020. Any business owner worth their salt knows that there's always room for improvement when it comes to F&B businesses. But where do you start?
Simply put, through dedicated mobile-first, end-to-end restaurant app(s), owners can easily streamline procedures, save precious labor cost n’ hours, and remove inefficiencies.
Best Restaurant App(s) For End-to-End Operational Efficiency
Running a food business isn't easy.
Staying updated with restaurant stakeholders, being good at managing tasks, and keeping up with trends in the industry are all important. You need an app that consolidates all your to-do lists into one.
All of this and more can be handled by free restaurant apps for managers that are designed for restaurant end-to-end operational efficiency.
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1. Xenia - #1 Restaurant App for End-to-End Operational Efficiency
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If you ever wondered what it means to gain unprecedented operational efficiency, Xenia's comprehensive restaurant app can make your F&B business efficiency dreams come true.
By offering a holistic solution for end-to-end operational efficiency, empowering businesses to streamline restaurant management and optimize multi-unit operations.
Users can centrally manage maintenance tasks across all restaurant locations to ensure optimal performance of facilities, upholding the highest standards of hygiene and functionality.
With our AI-powered SOP generator and checklists feature, users can standardize restaurant operations across all locations to provide consistent service and a positive client experience.
Combine that with smart logic processes developed specifically for the food service business, digital inspections to identify problem areas, and corrective measures to guarantee compliance with health and safety laws.
Moreover, this restaurant app also offers customizable operations templates, robust inspections and audits, and efficient task and work order management to streamline processes and ensure adherence to industry standards.
With Xenia, restaurant owners and operators can achieve unparalleled operational efficiency, delivering exceptional dining experiences and driving business success.
Key Features
- Temperature Monitoring: Allows real-time temperature monitoring of refrigerators, freezers, and other storage units through already installed Bluetooth temperature probes. Managers are notified in real time whenever temperatures go outside of safe limits, assisting in the prevention of food spoiling and the preservation of quality.
- Operations Templates: Access an ever-growing library of templates, customizable form builders for inspections, assessments of restaurant, staff and FOH and BOH operational activities and much more. The possibilities are endless!
- Dedicated Tasks & Work Orders: Engine for enhanced health inspection scheduling and duty assignment! Xenia allows you to access operations and processes at any time and from any location, allowing for constant monitoring and maintenance.
- Dedicated Chats: Using DMs, group communications, and discussion threads, identify issues promptly and ensure transparency and responsibility.
- Reporting & Analytics: Stay deeply connected to your ongoing restaurant operations through a dedicated analytics and report system. Identify lacking areas and create plans for further improvements accordingly.
- Corrective Actions & More!: Implement a system for prompt identification and resolution of food safety violations or deficiencies, ensuring swift and effective measures are taken to address issues such as hygiene lapses, temperature control discrepancies, or storage inadequacies.
Pricing
- Free Forever: Free for up to 5 users with access to task & work orders, parent assets, internal chats, template builder, etc
- Starter: $99 / month for 15 users and comes with a work calendar view, work and template reports, sub-assessments, and sub-locations
- Premium: $199 / month for 15 users and offers unbound access to all the core features
- Multi-Location Pricing: Got a thriving restaurant business with multiple locations? Get in touch with our sales team for special pricing.
- Custom: Need something tailored to your organization?
Available for up to 5 users
Premium for $99/month for the first 20 users (with free trial period)
Available on iOS, Android and Web
2. 7Shifts
Number 2 on our list of the best restaurant apps is 7shifts which handles and manages staff shifts based on availability and needs.
By employing clever AI technology to create the optimal timetable for all workers, 7Shifts ensures that users can keep up compliance with labor standards.
You can view all of your staff members' communications in one central location. You won't need to stress about things like forgetting to ask for time off or exchange shifts.
The software has additional smart management capabilities besides the scheduling function, which increases staff engagement. You can use tools like the labor cost savings calculator to ensure that your scheduling selections are in line with a healthy profit margin. With this software, you can connect your point-of-sale system as well.
Businesses can achieve their objectives by providing enough assistance to both front- and back-of-house employees, in addition to using the system's many other management features.
Key Features
- Scheduling & Task Management: Generate employee schedules, delegate tasks, and monitor their completion status.
- Communication: Enable seamless communication between managers and staff members via a dedicated messaging platform.
- Compliance & Training: Oversee employee training resources, and certifications, and maintain regulatory compliance standards.
Pricing
- Comp: Free
- Entrée: $29.99 Per Month/Location
- The Works: $69.99 Per Month/Location
- Gourmet: $135.00 Per Month/Location
3. Orderly
Moving on our restaurant app list, we have Orderly.
If you’re struggling to keep your restaurant's food expenses and inventory organized, consider trying out Orderly, a comprehensive solution designed to streamline your operations, especially beneficial if you're launching a new restaurant.
With Orderly, bid farewell to the hassle of manually tracking vendors and ensuring you have the correct ingredients for your menu offerings.
This intuitive software simplifies bookkeeping, inventory management, and invoicing processes. Stay on top of price fluctuations and supplier costs effortlessly, allowing you to make informed decisions to maintain your restaurant's profitability.
Moreover, Orderly offers seamless integration, enabling you to export expenditure data directly to your accounting software and other programs, saving you time and ensuring accuracy across all financial records. Take the stress out of managing your restaurant's finances and focus on delivering exceptional dining experiences to your customers with Orderly.
Key Features
- Sync Invoices: Link your vendors to Simplify and streamline the process of importing line item data from your invoices..
- Supplier Support: Just link your provider or take a photo of your meal or drink bills, and we'll do the rest.
- POS Connection: For a more powerful option for managing food costs, you can connect your point-of-sale system or input your daily sales.
Pricing
- Orderly Base Price: $195 /Month
4. FoodDocs
No matter how long you've been in the business, as a restaurant owner you're well aware of how critical it is to ensure the safety of your customers' food.
FoodDocs makes it easy for restaurants to set up a critical food safety system in a few easy steps.
To ensure the safety of both you and your customers, the app notifies owners of important concerns and assesses potential dangers. If you run a restaurant, this software is essential for keeping your customers and staff healthy.
The tool streamlines these tasks, allowing you to centralize team training, track course completions, and manage food safety training seminars efficiently. Additionally, FoodDocs integration can enhance awareness about food safety and hygiene requirements.
Key Features
- Traceability System: Rapidly access specific product-related information through their Advanced Search features, facilitating swift document retrieval.
- Integrations: Seamlessly connect with smart devices and IoT temperature sensors using their technology, enabling faster monitoring and enhancing overall food safety measures.
- Knowledge Base: Access comprehensive resources for implementing and utilizing FoodDocs effectively.
Pricing
- Free Trial
- Basic: €84/mo/ Billed at €999/yr
- Standard: €167/mo/ Billed at €2388 €1999/yr
- Professional: €250/mo/ Billed at €3588 €2999/yr
- Enterprise: Get a Custom Quote
5. Crunchtime
Restaurants with more than one location utilize Crunchtime, an operations management tool, to keep track of their profits and provide excellent service to their customers.
Multinational chains, such as those in the cruise line, retail, golf, and fast food industries, use its inventory management features and operational data management components.
If you own a hospitality business, Crunchtime is a must-have for inventory management, labor scheduling, employee onboarding and training, auditing and compliance, and more.
Key Features
- Inventory Management: Utilize a comprehensive inventory system encompassing automated sales forecasting and vendor purchasing, streamlined inventory counts, recipe management, reconciliation, and additional functionalities.
- Labor & Scheduling: Employ innovative forecasting algorithms to automatically generate schedules, ensuring optimal staffing and skill levels aligned with projected daily sales.
- Operations Execution: Assign both routine and ad-hoc tasks such as daily opening checklists, monthly quality assessments, or one-time product releases, facilitating efficient completion of operational activities.
Pricing
- Request vendor for a quote
6. Restaurant365
Restaurant365 revolutionizes restaurant management by seamlessly integrating accounting and operational processes through centralized data management.
With a primary focus on accounting, it offers tailored software to meet the specific needs of restaurants, including comprehensive tools for labor and inventory management. Additionally, its advanced business analytics provide valuable insights into back-end operations.
This platform not only enhances back-office processes but also transforms front-of-house, dining, and kitchen operations, making it a versatile solution for food and beverage companies. Whether you opt for standalone modules or all-inclusive plans, Restaurant365 caters to your requirements with flexibility and efficiency.
Renowned global brands like Blaze Pizza, Taco Bell, and Dave's Hot Chicken trust Restaurant365 for its effectiveness in optimizing restaurant management processes, solidifying its reputation as a top choice in the industry.
Key Features
- R365 Accounting: Utilize your point-of-sale system to gather comprehensive labor and sales data, automatically generating daily journal entries for your general ledger. Enhance efficiency and precision, accomplishing more tasks in less time.
- R365 Store Operations: Employ powerful monitoring tools to oversee your restaurant's inventory, staff, and scheduling effectively. Operators can track performance in real-time through features like intraday polling.
- R365 Workforce: Simplify employee management with solutions encompassing onboarding, scheduling, payroll, and benefits administration.
Pricing
- Essential: $435 Per Month Per Location
- Professional: $635 Per Month Per Location
7. SafetyCulture
With its many features that automate inspections and compliance checks to guarantee quality and safety in food handling, SafetyCulture's food service management software is a treat to businesses of all sizes in the food and beverage industry.
With the use of sensors, analytics, and centralized dashboards for communication, this platform can monitor inventory, staff operations, and client orders in real time, which is what makes it one of the finest in the market.
Key Features
- Work Orders: Maintain order in the kitchen and dining area by keeping an eye on customers and employees via the use of surveillance cameras; in the warehouse or factory, use automated sensors to keep an eye on goods and machinery.
- Checklists: Use one of the food quality inspection checklists, customer feedback questionnaires, or staff performance scorecards that you make yourself, or borrow one from the library.
- Detailed Reports: Quickly address workplace problems using Issues and Actions and create automatic reports for further assessment.
Pricing
- Free: $0/User (Up To 10 Users)
- Premium: $24/Seat/Month (When Billed Annually)
- Enterprise: Custom Pricing
8. BevSpot
BevSpot offers a comprehensive food and beverage management solution encompassing inventory management, ordering, invoicing, and sales data analysis.
Its standout feature is the flexibility it provides, allowing restaurants to conduct inventory checks anytime and anywhere.
For multi-location businesses, BevSpot streamlines inventory management by centralizing data, enabling staff at each restaurant to contribute to the same database. This ensures consistency and efficiency across all locations.
Through dedicated streamlining of inventory processes, BevSpot helps restaurants minimize the time spent on inventory tasks and reduce excess inventory levels. Additionally, its recipe editor feature empowers users to understand and track cost percentages, aiding in cost control and profitability analysis.
With BevSpot, restaurants can optimize their operations, enhance inventory management practices, and make informed decisions to drive business success.
Key Features
- Detailed Analytics: Access detailed insights into various aspects of your restaurant's performance, including sales trends, operational efficiencies, and customer behaviors.
- Streamlined Ordering Process: BevSpot simplifies and accelerates the ordering workflow, aligning with the fast-paced dynamics of the food and beverage industry.
- Recipe Organization: Keep your recipes well-organized and easily accessible with BevSpot, ensuring consistency and quality across all dishes.
Pricing
- Free Trial: $0 Per Month
- Standard: $249 Per Month (Billed Annually)
- Pro: $299 Per Month (Billed Annually)
Why is Operational Efficiency So Important?
For businesses to lower expenses, increase revenue, and enhance customer happiness, operational efficiency is non-negotiable.
The fewer bottlenecks you have, the better service you can provide to your customers.
Approximately 29% of restaurants expressed a strong likelihood of expanding their locations in the next 12 months, up from just 17% in 2023.
Restaurants can thrive in a competitive industry by streamlining and improving operations including ordering food, menu creation, kitchen workflow, employee scheduling, eliminating waste, and service protocols.
Increasing productivity in areas that you have control over can better prepare you to deal with unforeseen obstacles and outside influences.
To help you achieve operational excellence in your restaurant, we have created a list of the best restaurant apps that will boost your restaurant's efficiency and improve the customer experience
Take The Next Step To Boost Your Operational Efficiency!
Navigating the maze of restaurant app software options might seem overwhelming at first, but believe us the rewards are significant.
By investing the time to find the right fit, you can transform your business from the ground up, boost productivity, cut costs, and set the stage for long-term success.
It is important to empower your employees with the right kind of tools to achieve end-to-end operational efficiency.
Prioritize key features tailored to your business needs: opt for user-friendly interfaces, reliable support services, seamless integration capabilities, and scalability.
With a strategic focus on these essential elements, you can ensure that your chosen software not only meets your immediate needs but also evolves alongside your business, paving the way for sustained growth and profitability.
Streamline Food Safety, Maintenance and Daily Operations with Xenia
Xenia unifies food and beverage operations with tools to standardize, track and measure work across every team, asset and facility.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
Food Safety Management
🌡️ Automatic Temperature Monitoring
Xenia leverages temperature sensors that utilize both Bluetooth and LoRaWAN technology to transmit data reliably to your Xenia account. The monitors work continuously in a range of 40°C to 125°C and an accuracy of +/- 0.4°C. When an temperature deviates from a pre-set acceptable range, management is notified to investigate and resolve.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step. This allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
✨ Corrective Actions
Operationalize inspections with fast work order assignment arising from a failed inspection step. All corrective data is stored in the checklist submission for auditing and accountability.
📋 Compliance Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
Maintenance Management
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
🧰 Preventive Maintenance
Create a preventive maintenance calendar to ensure asset uptime is not compromised. Attach images, templates, videos and notes to every task and assign to a team or individual for completion.
📲 QR Codes
Generate and attach QR codes to equipment and facility locations to enable fast and accurate inspections and data logs.
📁 Equipment Work History
View work history for every asset and sub asset in Xenia. Review performance data and enable corrective actions to improve your operation.
Daily Operations
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
💪 Team Accountability
Defeat pencil whipping and disorganized responsibility assessments by standardizing operations with Xenia. Track time, collect photos, send messages and ensure high quality work.
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
Streamline End to End Operations With Xenia's Digital Solutions
Xenia unifies BOH and front-ended food and beverage operations with tools to standardize, track and measure work across food business platforms.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
🌡️ Automatic Temperature Monitoring
Xenia leverages temperature sensors that utilize both Bluetooth and LoRaWAN technology to transmit data reliably to your Xenia account.
The monitors work continuously in a range of 40°C to 125°C and an accuracy of +/- 0.4°C. When an temperature deviates from a pre-set acceptable range, management is notified to investigate and resolve.
💪 Team Accountability
Defeat pencil whipping and disorganized responsibility assessments by standardizing operations with Xenia. Track time, collect photos, send messages and ensure high quality work.
✔️ Digital Restaurant Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step.
Doing so allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
📋 Compliance Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
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