There are very few industries where efficiency is as important as in the restaurant world. And while there are myriad ways to be more efficient, one that may drive the biggest impact is in automation – the digital tools and software used to manage your operation.
Automation is crucial for any successful restaurant, but it becomes exponentially more valuable when managing multi-location chains, who face the added challenge of keeping consistent processes in place across their entire operation.
Managing Inventory Across Multiple Locations
One such challenge is inventory and item-level management. While you probably provide detailed training and recipe information, it’s impossible to know the details of how each of your locations operates. How strictly are prep rules followed? Which locations and shifts use the most ingredients? What does a “handful” means to each employee? Over time, these issues can have a huge impact to operating costs.
This is where the area of automation and software becomes so important. Any process that can be implemented to serve all locations reduces time and resources to a fraction of itself. More importantly, it gives management detailed insights into how each store operation runs (or differs).
Simplifying Item Management With Location Groups
To solve this problem, R365 is introducing a new feature called Location Groups, easier to group and manage items by location, region, or concept. Here are a few ways the Location Groups feature may help streamline your operation across multiple locations:
Group Items by Location
Select specific locations and match their corresponding menu items and ingredients. Store operators and managers to see only the ingredients they use and need to order and maintain. This removes the likelihood for errors and gives management the ability to update multiple store managers on changes to vendor costs or recipe changes.
Categorize by Type & GL Codes
The R365 system will automatically map your items to their GL codes. This integration removes the need for manually entering GL codes, allowing for easy data exchange between your operations and accounting module. You can also categorize items by food, beverage, paper, merchandise, and more, giving you and your team greater operational transparency.
Activate or Deactivate Items
As menu items change, so do your ingredients. Easily toggle items to be either active or inactive, simplifying daily management of products for your teams.
Customize Your View
Adjust your view to suit the needs of your restaurant group. Rearrange columns, add or remove details, customize your view to work for you. Build what works best for your team so you can easily, clearly see your data.
Effortless Inventory With Greater Insights
While the goal of Location Groups is to simplify operations, the real value is the insights and data it gives to identify issues like food waste at a specific location. In an environment where food cost has skyrocketed, this can be pivotal to your bottom line. Here are a few additional benefits of implementing the Location Groups feature:
Enhanced Security
Item Locations Groups make item management more secure by restricting the purchasing permissions to the correct users. This gives corporate leaders greater control over costs by choosing what they’ll delegate to store managers, helping to keep expenses in line.
Improved Organization
Once location groups are defined and set, users will only be able to view the items needed for their location. This frees up store-level managers to focus on other, more mission-critical tasks like training and guest services.
More Accurate Food Costs
Gone are the days of purchasing or mapping incorrect items to your store’s recipes. Restricted access eliminates errors and leads to more accurate food costs and allows you to see any outliers to identify the root cause.
Simplified Item Management
Custom Views, active and inactive statuses, and inline editing make managing your inventory items a breeze.
The Big Picture
The future of the restaurant industry depends on seamlessly connecting familiar front of house technologies with back of house systems. Location Groups is one of many restaurant-specific features we’ve built into our system with the knowledge of what restaurants need to operate smoothly and grow efficiently. Like many of our features, it gives clear, accurate data of your restaurant operation and streamlines a manual task. One more thing off your plate so you can focus on more important tasks to manage and grow your business.
