By ERIC RUTH
The News Journal
01/22/2006
Before long, you’ll probably be able to browse a restaurant’s menu, order your dinner and pay the check – all through your cell phone. One day, diners may be able to assess a restaurant’s wine selection through a tablet PC at each table.
In reality, inside an increasing number of Delaware restaurants, that world of tomorrow isn’t far from the world of today.
Information technology is finding its way out of the manager’s office, and heading inside the kitchen and into the hands of waitstaff. Systems that simply track sales and handle finances have been available for years, but a growing level of high-tech sophistication is bringing restaurants the chance to electronically monitor customer preferences, orchestrate the cooking process second by second, and even digitally monitor how much booze a bartender is pouring.
Experts say such technological advances will be increasingly crucial to restaurants’ survival, and increasingly beneficial to customers’ satisfaction.
“Everybody needs an edge over their competitors at this point,” said
Bill Fultz, operations manager for Delaware Business Systems, a New
Castle seller of restaurant technology systems and a host of Tuesday’s
Mid-Atlantic Hospitality Forum, where restaurateurs can check out new
products.
For those owners, technology has proven a powerful way to boost profits,
increase efficiency, refine menus – and hopefully please customers. Some
are reporting 30 percent savings in waitstaff payroll, 20 percent
increases in service speed and notable decline in frustration.
It solved one headache for Scott Godfrey, owner of Premium’s Original
Sub and Steak Delicatessen.
“We were losing anywhere from 20 to 50 dollars a day with the old cash
register”' due to suspected employee theft at the Milltown eatery, he
said. The solution was a system that requires orders to go through the
register before being sent to a display in the kitchen, along with
biometric equipment that requires employees to log on with a thumbprint.
Such systems are not cheap, especially for a recent startup – Godfrey
paid $11,000. But Godfrey has been persuaded it will pay for itself.
Switching to the tech solution seems a wise move now, he said, but came
first with its complications.
“The first week was sort of like Pearl Harbor,” he said. “You didn't
know what direction you were running.”
Once the staff mastered the system, Godfrey said, it allowed the
business to cut errors in customer orders and appraise menu items’
popularity.
In time, more restaurants will use computers to tailor menus and other
features more closely to customers’ preferences, said Frederick J.
DeMicco, professor at the University of Delaware’s College of Hotel,
Restaurant and Institutional Management. The latest products can
estimate how long it will take a party to finish a meal, producing more
accurate wait times for hosts.
For now, though, some restaurants aren’t using the technology to its
fullest potential, according to a recent study by Hospitality Technology
magazine. Most recognize its advantages in productivity, efficiency and
costs, but lag in bringing technology solutions to the kitchen and other
areas – only 4 percent use customer data for analyzing trends, and 2
percent for marketing.
A diner’s capacity to appraise and review restaurants online has
“leveled the playing field for all,” and will increasingly compel
restaurants to respond to those higher expectations with their own
technological solutions, DeMicco said. In time, customers will come to
expect more, he added.
“Guests are demanding the technology – for example, Wi-Fi, online
ordering, easy-to-navigate Web sites for reservations, booking,
ordering,” he said. “For companies, they have to use technology to drive
their profit strategy, to customize the guest experience.”
Contact Eric Ruth at 324-2428 or eruth@delawareonline.com.
