Restaurant management is a complex undertaking, especially when you’re responsible for multiple locations. Efficiency, compliance, and food safety are always top of mind. The stakes are high, with leadership expecting you to streamline operations while simultaneously adhering to stringent brand and safety standards. You’ve probably created employee checklists to guide the day from opening through meal service and close, but checklists alone are no longer enough.
Traditional paper and pen systems have fallen behind the evolving demands of modern restaurants and become obsolete. They don’t hold employees accountable for timely completion of tasks or appropriate remediation of failures. Worst of all, even when those old-fashioned clipboards are properly utilized, the data they contain ends up hanging on the back of a door or filed away in a dusty binder. Your checklists don’t contribute to ongoing improvement. Innovative solutions have become more than a preference for restaurant owners and managers. They are a vital requirement for success, driving efficiency and compliance with food safety guidelines.
Today’s restaurant industry is more competitive than ever. Diner preferences have changed. In-house dining is down; take-out is up. A 2022 Washington Post article reported that restaurants were still seeing 16 percent fewer people dining on-premises compared to before the pandemic but that off-site dining was up by the same amount. Even as drive-thru lines continue to grow, success requires more than speed of service. Current best practices encompass an integrated approach that supports operational efficiency, compliance, and food safety with real-time monitoring and data-driven insights, fostering a culture of excellence at every location.
As in-house dining rates have gone down, compliance challenges have increased and grown more complex, moving beyond mere adherence to government rules. Month after month, the news is filled with horror stories of diners who fall ill after eating at restaurants. Patrons are aware of these reports and consider them when choosing where to eat. In one survey, 70% reported that they would avoid a restaurant with a recent health department warning. Brands are responding to these consumer habits, which affect profits. Preventative measures and continuous improvements have become the norm. Best practices now embody a proactive stance toward both regulatory requirements and brand consistency guidelines. Establishments are expected to not only meet industry standards, but to exceed them.
Digital checklist solutions like DailyChex by MeazureUp alleviate the pressures of multi-unit management, providing a centralized platform that facilitates operations, creates a culture of consistency and accountability around brand standards, and ensures adherence to standards.
Revolutionizing Restaurant Management with Digital Checklists
Digital checklists are powerful yet easy enough for any employee to use. Portable and convenient, these platforms are accessible through any internet-enabled device, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops. They maintain constant contact between central management and wide-ranging locations, establishing a central hub where tasks can be delegated, supervised, and modified in real time and cultivating a work environment that thrives on accountability and efficiency.
A Comprehensive Suite of Checklists
Digital platforms host numerous checklists catering to various aspects of restaurant operation and management. Imagine the convenience of seamlessly managing some – or even all – of these checklists with your new digital platform:
- Opening
- Closing
- Health and Safety Compliance
- Temperature Logs
- Quality Assurance
- Cleaning
- Maintenance
- Inventory
- New Employee Onboarding and Training
- Emergency Procedures
Platform Features that Maximize Success
The best digital checklist solutions offer a range of features designed to support efficiency, compliance, and food safety. They also increase engagement and satisfaction among restaurant workers, who skew toward the young and tech-savvy. As you investigate your options, be sure to choose software that offers as many of the following as possible.
- Accessibility: Digital checklists should be accessible on any device so that it’s easy for you to monitor and evaluate operations from wherever you are. This portability is a significant upgrade from traditional methods and allows for real-time updates and quick resolution of issues.
- Comprehensive Task Management: You’re going to want to create a “list of lists” that caters to various operational needs of your restaurants. These lists can range from store opening and closing protocols to bathroom checks or logs related to compliance and food safety procedures. You should be able to set the frequency for these tasks, assign them to employees, and monitor their completion in just a few clicks.
- Built-In Automation: Completed checklists should be automatically moved to the next person in the hierarchy, making it easier for you to supervise employees effectively, allowing for detailed and constructive feedback, and helping to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
- Customizable Checklists and Dashboards: Checklists and dashboards should be personalized to suit the specific needs of your brand. Think through the details that enhance efficiency, compliance, and customer experience then add them to your lists, ensuring that every operational aspect is covered.
- Photo and Video Integration: The ability to integrate photos and videos within the checklist is a standout feature that is particularly useful for tasks requiring visual verification, enhancing accuracy and reliability.
- Real-Time Data and Insights: Be sure to select a platform with an analytics engine that helps you track performance and identify areas for improvement. You can gather and analyze data, run reports, and spot trends, enabling you to make informed decisions that enhance operational efficiency and guarantee compliance.
- Easy Sharing of Reports: When you spot a trend, you want to be able to share it within your team and across the organization. Choose an app that lets you do that within the platform, eliminating the need to populate and export spreadsheets or sift through long email chains to uncover important information.
Leverage Data to Generate and Share Strategic Insights
The customized dashboards in a digital checklist app are so much more than to-do lists or records of boxes that have been ticked. They are like a picture window for managers, providing a panoramic view of what’s happening in and across your restaurants at any moment. The best dashboards reveal patterns and trends based on the latest information, including critical data from temperature logs that ensure food safety and quality. With them, you can identify and resolve emerging problems before they impact customer experience, or even notice inconsistencies in food safety or health and safety logs to maintain a pristine and compliant environment. But good management isn’t just about spotting issues; it’s also about discovering what your restaurant is doing really well. Using your dashboard, you might find out that certain practices are encouraging customers to order more or come back more often. Recognizing these strengths allows you to focus on them and use them to grow your business. Quick thinking and the ability to change based on what the data is telling you are critical. Informed, flexible, responsible management will vault your brand ahead of the competition, increasing earnings over time.
Whether your observations are positive or negative, you’ll want to share them with the team so that all brand locations can benefit from what you’ve learned. Digital checklist apps include features that quickly create reports and share insights with just a click, making it simple to keep everyone in the loop. This transparency fosters a more collaborative organization. It’s a way of working together that encourages everyone to contribute their ideas and insights, building pride and team spirit, and creating a more successful and profitable company.
Conclusion
In an industry where profit margins average only 3-5%, it is imperative for restaurant managers to embrace every possible advantage. Digital checklists serve as a gateway to a more efficient and compliant future, offering features that cater to the demands of modern restaurant management.
Learn more about how incorporating a digital checklist solution can boost efficiency and compliance across locations for your brand. Schedule a demo of MeazureUp today.
