Even for your most loyal customers, a decision to spend is more than a determination of which location will get their dollars. It’s a choice between you and the competition, every time. Smart managers help guide that choice by clearly defining consistency guidelines. Brand standards build trust and drive revenue by ensuring that each customer enjoys the same high-quality experience no matter which of your locations they choose. You know that field audits are the best way to reinforce your brand standards, but those visits can be costly and time-consuming. Streamline site visits and maximize the value of restaurant audits by supporting them with brand consistency checklists.
For decades, checklists have been used to hold employees accountable for upholding brand standards at restaurants, convenience stores, and other companies aiming for consistency across multiple locations. In the past, headquarters would create checklists, then print them off and send them to each site. Employees used a pencil and a clipboard to complete the checklists…or maybe they just said they did, instead checking items off without doing the tasks. Managers picked up the forms when they made their rounds and used them to write reports that were then filed away to collect dust.
Modern technology is changing all that. Today’s savvy managers are saving time and money by using digital brand consistency checklists to bolster restaurant audit results. Checklists can be created to standardize processes and procedures across any area of operations including:
- Opening and closing
- Site appearance
- Cleanliness and hygiene
- Meal preparation
- Food handling, temperature monitoring, label printing, and storage
- Signage and menus
- Product display
- Customer greeting and waiting time
- Dining room appearance
- Seasonal offerings
- Waste management
- Inventory
- Appliance maintenance
- Safety, compliance, and inspection
- Incident reporting and communication
- Training and onboarding
- Employee performance
10 Ways to Improve Restaurant Field Audits with Brand Consistency Checklists
Defining and enforcing brand standards is a smart move that pays off. Consistency boosts profit and drives success. A reliable experience encourages trust that builds relationships with customers, and those relationships are where the money is. Consider some stats:
- Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more on average than new customers.
- Current customers spend 67% more on average than those new to your business.
- Attracting a new customer costs 5X to 25X more than retaining an existing one.
- A 5% increase in customer retention correlates with a profit increase of 25% to 95%.
- The top 10% of a company’s customers spend 3X more per transaction than the lower 90%, and the top 1% spend five times more per order than the 99%.
Field audits play a key role in upholding brand standards. However, traditional auditing methods can be cumbersome and prone to errors. Digital brand consistency checklists offer a modern solution that streamlines restaurant audit processes and improves efficiency.
Here are ten ways that digital checklists optimize field audits, ensuring that every location provides an identical experience that meets customers’ high expectations:
- Standardization: Digital checklists ensure that every auditor and each audit follow the same criteria, regardless of location. This uniformity reduces inconsistencies and helps maintain consistent standards across all units, making it easier to identify and address discrepancies and trending issues.
- Real-Time Data: Auditors can input data instantly during the audit, allowing for immediate feedback, enabling quick corrective actions, and minimizing the time between identifying an issue and resolving it.
- Efficiency: Customized checklists streamline the audit process by outlining specific tasks and standards. This saves time by eliminating the need to consider and create a new checklist for each audit, allowing auditors to focus on thorough inspections.
- Accuracy: The predefined, structured input fields in a digital checklist app reduce the likelihood of human error. Auditors can enter precise information, which ensures more reliable and accurate audit results compared to manual methods.
- Reporting: Brand consistency checklists automatically generate consistent and detailed reports. This simplifies data analysis and allows managers to easily track performance and identify trends across multiple locations.
- Communication: Findings from restaurant audits can be instantly shared with relevant stakeholders, including management and staff. This ensures that everyone is aware of the results and can take appropriate actions quickly.
- Compliance Tracking: Digital checklists help ensure that all health and safety requirements are consistently met or exceeded. Auditors can easily verify compliance and document any deviations, ensuring that corrective measures are taken promptly before a failed inspection can occur, preventing fines and protecting your company’s reputation.
- Training: Serving as effective training tools for new staff, including new auditors, digital checklists provide clear guidelines and procedures, helping new employees understand and adhere to brand standards from the start.
- Record Keeping: Maintaining detailed and accessible records of all audits makes it easy to review past audits, track improvements over time, and provide documentation for regulatory compliance. Digital checklists support data aggregation and analysis by ensuring that analysis begins with a comparison of consistent criteria.
- Continuous Improvement: By enabling the ongoing assessment of processes and procedures, digital checklists help managers identify areas for improvement and implement best practices consistently across all locations.
How to Choose the Right Digital Checklist Platform
A digital platform like DailyChex by MeazureUp is a tool that keeps daily operations running smoothly with brand consistency checklists – and so much more. With the power of digital checklists on their side, managers can streamline and optimize site visits, ensuring standardization, enhancing efficiency, and improving accuracy. Used in combination with a digital field assessment tool like AuditApp, a checklist platform also serves as a brand consistency secret weapon that drives profits across locations.
When seeking a digital checklist platform, look for one that is customizable and includes integrated features such as photo and video, label printing, and temperature monitoring. Select a platform with a user-friendly interface, comprehensive dashboards, and one-touch reporting capability to facilitate communication and maximize the value of data, then watch the effects of improved audits ripple throughout your organization.
See how brand consistency checklists can transform your next restaurant audit. Schedule a demo of DailyChex today.
