As technology advaces in the food industry, automation in restaurants is no longer a luxury but more of a need.
Part of the reason is associated with the fast paced customer service requirements, while other aspects of this need are associated with restaurant business scalability, whatever your competitors are up to, and vice versa.
It's a matter of staying ahead of the curve.
Incorporating new technology, such as automation, was crucial to the survival of 57% of hospitality operators throughout the globe in recent years.
Customers in restaurants are just as eager to try out the new things that automation has to offer.
The restaurant business has evolved to rely heavily on automation technology, and for good reason.
You can save time and money and increase customer satisfaction by using these systems to expedite processes like managing reservations, monitoring inventory, processing orders, and collecting payments, among many others.
In addition to reaping these advantages, every restaurateur needs to be well-versed in these restaurant automation systems.
Keeping up with the market is essential for any restaurant, so let's take a look at what you need to know, including eight of the best restaurant automation systems that are now booming.
10 Best Restaurant Automation Systems For Businesses
We have selected these restaurant automation tools for you to potentially scale your BOH activities, alongside optimal performance and accountability factor. Give it a thorough read, and then we'll delve into some of the other important aspects of restaurant automations online.
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1. Xenia | Overall Best Restaurant Automation System In 2024
As one of the best restaurant autoamtion systems, Xenia offers a feature centric approach to automating restuarant processes.
That's just the tip of the ice-berg.
The tool has a dedicated suite of different functionalities that add up to the overall accountability factor for restaurants. Ultimately, this sense of optimized operational efficiency adds up to an overall delightful customer experience, business scalability, and a much better way for getting things done.
As far as AI is concerned, this restaurant automation system incorporates an AI SOP Generation module that line managers can use to create SOPs for any number of processes.
What's even better is the fact that these AI generated SOPs can be further customized as per an indivual's or business's use-case requirements.
On top of that, Xenia maintains a non-exhaustive repository of different checklists/ templates that anyone can download and further customize accordingly.
Coming back to the accountability factor, this tool has systems in place for BOH restaurant operations, ranging over staff training, preventive maintenance, emergency maintenance, work orders, equipment and asset management processes and vice versa.
Top it off with the fact that you've got real-time updates in place, where restaurant line managers can collaborate with restaurant staff members to keep tabs on how any task is going.
Similarly, staff members, deployed over any restaurant location can do the same, in case they run into any unforeseen issues.
You've also got on-site photo uploading capabilities, work order time sheets and many other perks that help to improve the accountability checks.
Ultimately, we're looking at a mobile-first solution that ensures accuracy, efficiency, great profitability, return on investment, and client retention for restaurants.
Its robust features and AI continue to optimize processes, keep tabs on employees and their output, and enhance operations as a whole.
Key Features
- Work Order Management: Cut down on processing times by assigning tasks and monitoring them from any device.
- AI SOP Generator: Create unlimited SOPs for any number of use cases with the help of a robust AI powered tool for restaurants. Enter your requirements and hit the Generate button for desired SOP. You can further customize it as per requirements.
- Multi-Location Management: Combine standardization of processes, regular company operations, maintenance, and regulatory compliance on one platform.
- Scheduled Work: Thanks to consolidated work schedules, you'll never miss another opening or closing check. You can spend less time planning tasks and more time expanding your company thanks to automatic alerts that make sure nothing goes unnoticed.
- Checklists & SOP’s: Get up and running in minutes, not days, using Xenia's checklist builder and template library. You can do digital checks in a variety of methods, including using a plethora of step kinds, publicly accessible URLs, media attachments, and conditional logic. Keep SOPs on hand for future reference or use them as a teaching tool to make sure everyone is following the brand's guidelines.
- Real-Time Updates & Collaboration: Get immediate alerts and comments whenever work is done, tasks are due, or assignment outcomes are not up to par. Stay informed with your team, no matter how far away you are.
- Smart Inspection Workflows: At each stage, Xenia's operations template builder incorporates conditional logic. Depending on the form's answer, you can do a lot of cool stuff, like make a fix for an incorrect inspection step, notify management when meter readings are too high or too low, and much more besides.
Pricing
- Free Forever: Free trial for up to 5 users with access to all the basic features
- Starter: $99 / month for 15 users
- Premium: $199 / month for 15 users with unlimited access to all the core features
- Custom: Need something tailored to your organization?
Available for up to 5 users
Premium for $99/month for the first 20 users (with free trial period)
Available on iOS, Android and Web
2. Restaurant365
Restaurant365 is a well-known restaurant automation system that can be used from any location with an internet connection thanks to its cloud-based platform.
From mom-and-pop shops to franchises with several locations, it helps a wide range of people.
When looking for a unified platform to handle their restaurant's finances, operations, and reporting, this product is a frontrunner.
Where it really excels, however, is in analytics.
After integrating with inventory, Restaurant365 becomes even better at sales analysis, allowing for more accurate reporting.
Its capabilities extend well beyond simple sales monitoring; the technology can also examine client behavior, spot patterns, and improve pricing, among other things.
Also, the software does a fantastic job of visualizing data, so you can see your whole company picture in the reports and dashboards it brings you.
Time and attendance monitoring, scheduling, and analytics for performance are all part of Restaurant365's labor management system.
Key Features
- R365 Accounting: Get complete labor and sales data from your point-of-sale system and use it to automatically produce journal entries for your general ledger every day. Maximize efficiency and accuracy while doing more in less time.
- R365 Store Operations: Use robust monitoring tools to keep tabs on your restaurant's inventory, employees, and schedule. Operators can track performance in real-time using features like intraday polling.
- R365 Workforce: Efforts to manage employees can be made easier with solutions that include onboarding, scheduling, payroll, and benefits.
Pricing
- Essential at $435 per month per location
- Professional at $635 per month per location
3. Crunchtime
Up next on our best restaurant automation systems list, we've got Crunchtime.
It's a dedicated go to soluition for famous brands, such as; Five Guys, Domino's, Chipotle, and many more rely on.
For enterprises in the food service industry, Crunchtime provides a full-featured platform for managing their restaurants.
With an emphasis on food cost management, anticipating inventory control, and labor management, it mainly aims to effectively manage different restaurant operations.
Meanwhile, as a restaurant manager, you can track activity at many sites and use that information to fine-tune your decision-making.
The ability to manage food expenses is a key component of Crunchtime. The software provides restaurants with features that help them manage their inventory, recipes, and waste.
Using this information, Crunchtime can determine the difference between your real and theoretical food expenses. This will allow you to make more informed choices and boost your profits.
Key Features
- Inventory Management: A complete inventory system that includes automated sales forecasting and vendor buying, quicker inventory counts, recipe management, reconciliation, and other features.
- Labor & Scheduling: Use unique forecasting algorithms to automatically generate schedules, assuring the appropriate staffing and skill levels based on predicted sales for the day.
- Operations Execution: Whether it's a daily opening checklist, a monthly quality assessment, or a one-time product release, assign regular and irregular activities that need to be completed.
Pricing
- Request vendor for a quote
4. Lineup.ai
Lineup.ai is a restaurant scheduling and forecasting app driven by artificial intelligence.
With Lineup.ai, restaurant managers can use predictive algorithms to make better predictions and improve shift plans in response to the ever-changing demand from customers.
In order to provide highly accurate sales predictions, the software incorporates weather predictions, past sales data, and details about local events.
Daily, weekly, and hourly predictions are all within its capabilities.
With these projections in hand, you can develop the most efficient shift plans possible, cutting down on labor expenses by avoiding overstaffing and understaffing.
Using the iOS and Android applications developed by Lineup.ai, workers can check their schedules, indicate when they are available, request time off, and even switch shifts with one another.
Key Features
- Better Restaurant Labor Planning: Knowing what to anticipate at each location and shift is made easier with these strong insights. Get the right people on the job at the correct times to avoid under- or overstaffed shifts and provide the best possible service to your customers.
- Built-in Restaurant Shift Scheduling: Use balanced shift scheduling to keep your top employees satisfied. Utilizing restaurant scheduling software driven by restaurant AI may assist in preventing employee burnout, optimizing shifts, and minimizing the likelihood of overworking workers.
- Employee Communication: Eliminate the need for employees to come to work on their day off just to check the schedule.
Pricing
- FORECASTS ONLY: $79/loc/month
- FORECASTS + SCHEDULING: $149/loc/month
5. Jalebi
Waiting for food is the ultimate test of a customer's patience, and getting a meal that you didn't order, or getting something that's partly right adds up to the overall frustration factor.
Customers who aren't happy with the service can choose not to return.
That's not all.
Frustrated customers also induce a bad rep to a food business, by leaving negative reviews that remain as a stain that doesn't wash away easily.
These issues can be avoided with the help of implementing restaurant automation systems that keep everything under a strict check and balance situation.
Avoiding these problems and maintaining satisfied clients is possible with the help of Jalebi, an automation technology that is ideal for kitchen operations.
Say goodbye to inefficient IMS, chaotic order processing, and lengthy wait times with jalebi.
Key Features
- Real-Time Inventory Tracking: By providing real-time data on stock levels, ingredient consumption, and waste, jalebi's automated restaurant inventory management system helps restaurants improve their ordering and eliminate waste.
- Reporting: The reporting component of jalebi gives restaurant managers access to up-to-the-minute data about their company, letting them make better choices and spot opportunities for growth.
- Automated Ordering: Customers can place their orders effortlessly using jalebi, cutting down on wait times and mistakes caused with manual order taking.
Pricing
- Request vendor for a quote
6. Milagro All-in-One Restaurant Operating System
Any restaurant can benefit from the all-inclusive management features offered by Milagro's All-In-One Restaurant Operating System. Floor planning, seating options, personnel management, staffing, and sales management are among of the features included.
Other features include contactless ordering and payment, administration of both front-and back-of-house operations, integration of online, in-house, and delivery orders, and more. Powerful analytics encompass all aspects of a restaurant's operations, as well as data and analytics to help with decision-making, loyalty programs, and marketing to boost consumer involvement.
Key Features
- Schedules: Make schedules online, post them anywhere, and send out reminders to workers automatically.
- Drag and Drop Functionality: Use the convenient drag-and-drop feature to quickly update schedules by dragging them to future weeks.
- AI Powered Voice Ordering: Using AI powered Voice ordering system can maximize sales while reducing human expenses, and time altogether.
Pricing
- Request vendor for a quote
7. Crunchtime
Crunchtime provides a holistic restaurant management platform tailored to restaurant chains and food service organizations.
Its core objective is to streamline restaurant operations, particularly in areas such as food cost management, inventory control, and labor management.
Essentially, restaurant managers can monitor activities across multiple locations and enhance decision-making processes to effectively run their operations.
Key Features
- Inventory Management: Get a comprehensive solution for inventory needs, including automated sales forecasting and vendor purchasing, streamlined inventory counting, recipe management, reconciliation, and additional features.
- Labor & Scheduling: Utilizing proprietary forecasting algorithms, schedules are automatically generated to ensure optimal staffing and skill levels align with projected sales for the day.
Pricing
- Request vendor for a quote
8. MarketMan
In addition to automating reservations management, automating inventory management can significantly ease the burden on your staff.
This is where the MarketMan inventory management system stands out as a valuable solution. Operating on the cloud, this system provides real-time tracking of inventory, granting restaurants immediate access to stock levels and ingredient usage.
MarketMan also sends timely alerts when supplies are running low. A standout feature is the ability for you, your chefs, and your staff to generate purchase orders directly from the system, ensuring your restaurant maintains optimal ingredient stock levels at all times.
Key Features
- Integration with POS Systems and Accounting Software: MarketMan offers effortless integration with various point-of-sale (POS) systems and accounting software, ensuring smooth data flow and eliminating the need for manual data entry.
- On-the-go Inventory Management: With a user-friendly mobile app, users can easily track inventory, create purchase orders, receive alerts, and make adjustments on the fly, enhancing flexibility and productivity in inventory management tasks.
9. MarginEdge
MarginEdge, a restaurant management software, provides in-depth insights into food costs, aiding restaurants in automating their back-office operations.
It simplifies and improves administrative tasks related to menu management, recipe costing, and pricing strategies.
By linking to your POS system and restaurant accounting system, MarginEdge allows you to upload images of all restaurant invoices to the platform. The software then automatically processes the invoices, handling tasks such as order management, sales reporting, recipe displays, and generating food usage reports, among others.
Key Features
- Recipes and Menu Analysis: With detailed insights into ingredient costs, sales performance, and customer preferences, restaurant owners can make informed decisions about menu optimization, pricing strategies, and menu diversification.
- Back Office Efficiencies: With features such as automated invoice processing, order management, and sales reporting, MarginEdge enables restaurants to maintain accurate records, track expenses, and optimize inventory management.
Pricing
- Request vendor for a quote
Key Features to Look Out For in Restaurant Automation Systems
Ideally, restaurant automation solutions would simplify tasks for your staff. When selecting an automation system for your restaurant, it is essential to keep a few things in mind to ensure this.
- Integration: If your existing procedures are incompatible with the new automation, it will serve no use. Your point-of-sale system, intercom, and other systems should be able to communicate with this new automation.
- Ease of use: All that mechanization might be scary. Because everyone on your team will be using it, the tool you choose should be intuitive and easy to learn and use.
- Reputation: You must have faith that the new system will function well and not cause any problems for your business in order to implement it. Make an informed decision based on reviews and comments from previous customers.
- Pricing: Choose between a one-time purchase and a tool that requires a monthly payment.
Benefits of Using Restaurant Automation Tools
Using automation in restaurants has several advantages. The following are a few of the most important benefits that customers may get from restaurants that have used technological solutions.
1. Increased Efficiency And Productivity
Restaurant workers can dedicate more time to serving customers and preparing meals when mundane but necessary processes like taking orders and processing payments are automated. Faster and more accurate service with less room for human mistakes is another benefit of restaurant automation.
2. Cost savings
By cutting down on human intervention and the number of workers needed for certain jobs, restaurant automation can assist in keeping labor expenses down.
Furthermore, automation in restaurants can help in waste reduction by giving precise data on inventory optimization and utilization, which in turn leads to better ordering and less food going to waste.
3. Improved Accuracy
Automating restaurant processes like ordering, payment processing, and inventory management may cut down on human error, which in turn boosts customer satisfaction and decreases loss.
Also, restaurants may get real-time inventory data from their software, which lets them change their pricing and ordering methods based on what's in stock.
4. Enhanced Customer Experience
A more streamlined eating experience with decreased wait periods is possible with the use of automation solutions that speed up and increase the accuracy of the ordering and payment processes.
They have the ability to enhance the eating experience by offering tailored promos and suggestions based on client data.
FAQs: Best Resturant Automation Systems
What are Restaurant Automation Tools?
Automation in restaurants, often hosted in the cloud, allows for more streamlined operations and significant time savings.
Automating mundane jobs and improving overall operations are two goals of these restaurant task management solutions, which use technologies like data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.
They make it possible for eateries to save time and money while improving customer service and streamlining many other aspects of their daily operations.
How are Restaurant AI and Automation Shaping the Industry?
The restaurant industry has long been fraught with difficulty. However, the food industry has been hit considerably harder in the last few years.
Among diners in the 18–38 age bracket, 58% think they are more inclined to dine at automated restaurants again. Therefore, you risk slipping behind the competition if your company isn't automating its processes now.
About 72,000 fewer eateries are operating in the United States now than in 2019. As the effects of COVID-19 persist, it's possible that this figure will keep going up.
A lot of people have had to rush their digital transformations because of the epidemic. Predictions indicate that by 2025, as much as 51% of restaurant operations will be automated.
Get the Right System For You
These six restaurant automation systems that we have discussed today are essential tools that every restaurateur has to know how to use.
From streamlining inventory control to automating scheduling management, these technologies cover it all.
Not only that, but there are systems developed with a clear goal of automating restaurant services and, most importantly, the essential back-of-house tasks, such as kitchen management.
Now is the perfect moment to automate any part of your restaurant's operations you have in mind if you want to make it more efficient and competitive.
Streamline Food Safety, Maintenance and Daily Operations with Xenia
Xenia unifies food and beverage operations with tools to standardize, track and measure work across every team, asset and facility.
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Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
Food Safety Management
🌡️ Automatic Temperature Monitoring
Xenia leverages temperature sensors that utilize both Bluetooth and LoRaWAN technology to transmit data reliably to your Xenia account. The monitors work continuously in a range of 40°C to 125°C and an accuracy of +/- 0.4°C. When an temperature deviates from a pre-set acceptable range, management is notified to investigate and resolve.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step. This allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
✨ Corrective Actions
Operationalize inspections with fast work order assignment arising from a failed inspection step. All corrective data is stored in the checklist submission for auditing and accountability.
📋 Compliance Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
Maintenance Management
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
🧰 Preventive Maintenance
Create a preventive maintenance calendar to ensure asset uptime is not compromised. Attach images, templates, videos and notes to every task and assign to a team or individual for completion.
📲 QR Codes
Generate and attach QR codes to equipment and facility locations to enable fast and accurate inspections and data logs.
📁 Equipment Work History
View work history for every asset and sub asset in Xenia. Review performance data and enable corrective actions to improve your operation.
Daily Operations
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
💪 Team Accountability
Defeat pencil whipping and disorganized responsibility assessments by standardizing operations with Xenia. Track time, collect photos, send messages and ensure high quality work.
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
Streamline Your Operations With The Best Restaurant Automation System
Xenia unifies BOH and front-ended food and beverage operations with tools to standardize, track and measure work across restaurants.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
🌡️ Automatic Temperature Monitoring
Xenia leverages temperature sensors that utilize both Bluetooth and LoRaWAN technology to transmit data reliably to your Xenia account. The monitors work continuously in a range of 40°C to 125°C and an accuracy of +/- 0.4°C. When an temperature deviates from a pre-set acceptable range, management is notified to investigate and resolve.
✔️ Restaurant Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step.
Doing so allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
✨ Corrective Actions
Operationalize inspections with fast work order assignment arising from a failed inspection step. All corrective data is stored in the checklist submission for auditing and accountability.
📋 Compliance Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
💪 Team Accountability
Defeat pencil whipping and disorganized responsibility assessments by standardizing operations with Xenia. Track time, collect photos, send messages and ensure high quality work.
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