While many restauranteurs go into the business to share their passion for food, passion alone won’t keep your business afloat. For that, you need sales – frequent orders from a host of repeat customers and interested newcomers.
This is particularly challenging right now, when so many restaurants and chains are forced to find ways to do more with less. Adopting technology that includes digital, mobile restaurant kitchen checklists will help your locations control costs, navigate an increasingly complex legislative and regulatory environment, and provide the consistent, high-quality service and convenience that today’s patrons expect.
Consistent Quality
While first-time customers are looking to try something new, repeat business happens because customers trust your business to provide delicious food and a safe environment, every time. For your business to be successful long-term, you must ensure that all your restaurants are delivering a consistently enjoyable and fully compliant experience for all your customers.
Restaurant checklists demonstrate what your business prioritizes in terms of safety, compliance, quality, brand consistency, and more. They are your most reliable tool for ensuring safety regulations and operational policies are being followed through every shift in every location. A technological solution like MeazureUp takes all your on-paper, manual checklists and rebuilds them digitally. Then the same version of each process, each checklist, and each set of standards is available on a mobile device to everyone within your organization, in real time. You can:
- Customize and configure all your checklists with ease
- Roll out operational updates across multiple locations at once
- Build standardized quality assessment templates
- Easily add photos and videos that document the operational story, for good or bad. (One picture could really be worth 1,000 words!)
Checklist status is updated online as your employees complete each one. An app dashboard provides an instant and clear summary, along with the ability to easily find any specific data you need, either aggregated or by location. You’re always prepared to identify and take action on any issues before they become serious – in other words, before they’ve affected your customers.
In short, a digital solution like MeazureUp can help ensure tasks are done right the first time and on time, supporting safety and compliance as well as the high-quality, consistent customer experience that develops repeat business. This emphasis on quality and consistency also leads to great reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations, both of which lead to new customers. Then each location can take the steps that develop trust with these new customers and convert them into repeat business.
More Satisfied Employees
To establish this level of quality and consistency at the foundation of your business culture, it’s best to have a well-trained staff and low turnover rates. A digital audit solution like MeazureUp can support and standardize online training while it also keeps every employee informed, in a crystal-clear fashion, about their job responsibilities and the standards they must meet. This shifts their emphasis from having to remember procedures to successfully executing them by fostering a supportive work environment where their input is recorded and welcomed. This a key way to increase employee engagement and retention.
Engagement and retention are also supported by MeazureUp’s accountability features. There is never a question as to what actions any employees is expected to take; documenting their actions is done simply by opening an app on their mobile device and taking a minute for some taps and clicks. Their entries are automatically time-stamped, digitally signed, and geolocated; they never have to input data more than once, which cuts down on the potential for human error. Full accountability becomes just another part of their jobs, and employees who have been used to paper checklists will be thrilled with the ease of use and how much time it saves.
There are times, however, when corrective action must be taken. MeazureUp makes that easy too. Action plans can be created and customized quickly from stored templates. Your managers can assign tasks, due dates, and the employee responsible for completing each task; they can also track the progress of each plan in real time. As the due date for the action plan approaches, the assignee is reminded to complete and close out the action to alert all other stakeholders that the item has been corrected within the allotted time.
The reality is that everyone works better when being held accountable, and sometimes processes need to be implemented to prevent employees from becoming complacent. MeazureUp achieves this by encouraging employees to take responsibility for their own actions – micromanagement not desired or required.
Spreading the Loyalty
Consistent quality as delivered by a well-trained, empowered staff leads to increased loyalty – not just with your customers, but with your employees. Help the loyalty spread by intentionally working to make each location the best it can be. A digital checklist solution like MeazureUp supports this by consolidating all your checklist and audit data – and what you do with this data becomes your business’ greatest opportunity.
As reference above, all reporting for every location is done in real time and is immediately available throughout your organization. This opens an analytical window into each location, making it easier to uncover reasons why certain locations are generating specific outcomes. You and your managers can make changes immediately to address areas of risk, identify and transplant best practices from one successful location to others, or take advantage of previously hidden opportunities. You can also aggregate data from various locations over time to reduce inefficiencies and identify trends that support quality control and brand consistency.
A Direct Route to More Sales
A restaurant kitchen checklist can seem like the most simple, basic part of your business – but as we’ve shown here, digital checklists that are developed, distributed and maintained within an audit app like MeazureUp can mean so much more to all your operations in every location. You have the flexibility to adjust and change checklists, audits and reports based on your business needs; your managers and employees are given the freedom to focus on developing the high-quality, consistent customer experience that encourages repeat business and therefore more sales.
To get more specifics on how MeazureUp can help develop your brand consistency, empower your employees, and spread loyalty to each location, contact us.
