Using Data at Your Restaurant: Tips to Improve the Process

These days, if you’re not using data to improve your restaurant’s operations, you’re missing out on a huge potential opportunity to refine your restaurant’s workflow.

It’s proven that using data correctly can help any business grow, but restaurants can use data in specific ways to bolster their management techniques.

When it comes to data, your restaurant has multiple options at hand that empower you to manage your business in an efficient and thoughtful manner.

At any point in the process of collecting data for your organization, you should follow certain best practices that can ensure you have access to the most useful information at any given time. For example, you should remember to:

1) Use the right restaurant POS system.

2) Collect performance metrics.

3) Know your payment processor.

4) Incorporate data into management.

These tips will help your restaurant use data to the best of its ability, making life easier on your customers, managers, and employees. Let’s dive into greater detail about how data can help you!

1. Use the right restaurant POS system.

A great restaurant POS system can help your restaurant use data in significantly more effective ways.

If you’re using a restaurant POS system like Lavu's, then you’ll have several features that can accommodate data-based management.

When you’re considering how well your POS system meets your restaurant’s data collection needs, you’ll want to ask specific questions about your system, such as:

The right restaurant POS system can do wonders for every element in your restaurant’s operations, but it can be especially helpful in helping you measure the most relevant data over time. Look at these features to make sure that your restaurant is primed for collecting data.

2. Collect performance metrics.

As it’s been said before, running a business with data is all about measuring the right data.

Performance metrics are necessary data points that can tell your restaurant vital information about its management and operations.

Tracking certain performance metrics can help you make your restaurant’s workflow more efficient down the line. The right data can give you the ability to:

Whether you’re a bar using a bar POS or a restaurant using a generalized POS, you can track KPIs that allow for better restaurant management. By adhering to this sort of goal tracking, you’re looking at performance metrics that will assist you in improving your management and operations for the future.

3. Know your payment processor.

Not all the data you collect for your restaurant will be specifically related to your restaurant and employee performance. Your payment processor, for example, collects data more on the back-end of business operations.

A valuable channel for taking in data, your payment processor should be selected so that it can help your restaurant collect payment data as securely and efficiently as possible.

Not all payment processors are created equal. If you’re looking at a payment processor’s data management capabilities for your restaurant, you should ask questions like:

Your payment processor is a vital part of restaurant workflow that needs the proper security measures and features in order to collect and manage the right information for your restaurant.

4. Incorporate data into management.

If you’re using it correctly, data can affect particular strategies of management or marketing by allowing you to make smarter decisions while also understanding every management option available to you.

Allowing the data you’ve collected to influence your management style is an essential step in using your research to improve your operations.

Data can affect the way you manage your restaurant in a variety of ways. For instance, you can try to use data to:

By collecting data that can have an actual, palpable effect on your restaurant’s operations, you’re practicing smart data management that will have long-lasting benefits on your restaurant’s business going forward.

As seen with these suggestions, collecting data is a great technique for keeping up with goals like employee and customer retention. Even better, it can refine your management and marketing techniques so that you can use both your business intuition and your in-depth analysis to make sure your restaurant’s operations are airtight in the future.

About the Author

Saleem Khatri is the Chief Executive Officer of Lavu Saleem has a "founders mentality", with a track record of working with high-growth software companies. He is a rare breed of someone who is both a hands-on leader and a strategic visionary and brings with him a myriad of inspiration, technical acumen, and a passion for our products, services, and customers. Prior to Lavu, Saleem successfully launched software and hardware products at start-ups via Y Combinator and managed a $79 billion investment portfolio on behalf of the United States Department of the Treasury. Saleem earned his MBA from the Harvard Business School and his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan -- Ann Arbor.