Successfully operating a restaurant comes with a high price. With expenses ranging from rent and utilities to food and labor, the costs can quickly add up. In recent years, factors such as inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain disruptions have significantly increased these overhead expenses in the restaurant industry. According to recent findings, 98% of operators view rising labor costs as a major hurdle to their restaurant’s success, while 97% cite higher food costs as a critical barrier. Additionally, 38% of operators reported that their restaurants were unprofitable last year. For restaurant brands to survive in this unforgiving landscape, every dollar counts, and effectively saving costs can make or break operations.
38%
of operators reported that their restaurants were unprofitable last year.
Leveraging tried-and-true better-together solutions, like PAR Data Central, a maintenance-free back-office solution, and PAR Pay, an omnichannel payment gateway, have proven to help restaurants streamline operations, improve efficiency, and drastically reduce costs. These solutions work better together to provide real-time insights, simplify transactions, and ensure smooth back-office management, allowing restaurant operators to focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving profitability in a competitive market.
Address Labor Costs with Effective
Employee Scheduling
Since 2020, labor costs have skyrocketed by 18.3% and are expected to rise further. To combat this significant increase and control costs, operators must implement effective labor management strategies. Both under and over-scheduling will negatively disrupt operations, leading to poor customer service, unnecessary labor costs, and diminished employee satisfaction and engagement. With restaurant margins tighter than ever and rampant employee turnover rates, convenient and precise scheduling is essential to a restaurant’s success.
Data Central provides restaurants with the tools needed to seamlessly manage employees across multiple locations, concepts, and shifts. Operators can tap into features like Suggested Scheduling, Activity Feed, and a Self-Service Employee Mobile App that help maximize employee productivity, incentivize retention, and lower labor costs:
- Suggested Scheduling Tool - Predict demand for your restaurant down to 15-minute intervals throughout the day and empower operators to analyze data like historical labor cost percentages, sales per labor hour trends, average wage rates, employee performance, and labor requirements. Generate an adjustable staffing schedule that ensures the right number of employees are on duty for each interval.
- Activity Feed – A real-time business intelligence hub designed for restaurant operators and staff. This feature delivers immediate alerts about discrepancies disrupting the workflow, enabling rapid response and resolution as these in-the-moment tasks arise.
- Self-Service Employee Mobile App – Employees can easily request shift changes, availability changes, and time off directly on their own devices. Managers can create fair and balanced schedules that consider preferences, availability, and workload distribution, leading to improved work-life balance, heightened job satisfaction, and lower turnover rates.
Cutting Food Costs by Limiting Waste
Food costs and food waste continue to be significant challenges for restaurant operators. Restaurant brands alone produce roughly 11.4 M tons of food waste each year, resulting in about a $25 billion loss for the industry. With 88% of restaurant operators stating their food and beverage costs are higher than 3 years ago, reducing waste is a crucial strategy for cutting costs and boosting profitability.
88%
of restaurant operators reported
higher food and beverage costs.
Data Central is specifically designed to combat and limit food waste by providing operators with essential inventory and food management tools as well as critical reports highlighting sales, stock, and customer behavior. Operators can track inventory levels from delivery through preparation to understand what is left, what is needed, and what the perfect amount of stock for every delivery is. Data Central automatically determines inventory needs as well as maintains optimal inventory levels to ensure proper turn and maximized profitability.
Additionally, Data Central provides restaurants with a powerful forecasting engine, predictive ordering, and recipe management as well as access to reports highlighting forecasts into peak periods of operations. This ultimately enables restaurants to understand how much stock is needed, plan accordingly to prevent over-prepping, and quickly make proactive decisions to limit waste.
Maximize Savings with an Optimized
Transaction Process
Another often-overlooked cost-saving opportunity for restaurants lies in optimizing the transaction process. By leveraging a payment solution like PAR Pay, restaurants can significantly reduce expenses associated with authorization, chargebacks, and fraud. PAR Pay boasts a high authorization rate of 98.4% and a remarkably low chargeback rate of 0.01%. Its machine-learning fraud detection and prevention features further enhance security and minimize losses associated with theft. Additionally, bundling PAR Pay with PAR Payment Services, Brink, and Data Central offers greater pricing flexibility and savings. The Advanced Exchange Program on devices also provides added value, making PAR Pay a comprehensive solution for reducing payment-related costs.
As overhead expenses continue to rise in the restaurant industry, finding effective ways to save costs is crucial to success. Solutions such as Data Central and PAR Pay offer transformative benefits and drastically impact key areas for cost savings such as food management, labor optimization, and payment processes. By leveraging these solutions, restaurant operators can maximize employee productivity, mitigate food waste, and refine their payment strategies, ultimately driving operational efficiency and boosting their bottom line.
