11 Best Restaurant Task Management Software For F&B Businesses In 2024

Best Restaurant Task Management Software For Businesses in 2024

Here's a detailed overview of the best restaurant task management software. Later on, we'll delve into some other important aspects of restaurant task management that you need to know as a new business owner, or a manager in charge of a multi-unit operation.

1. Xenia - Overall No. 1 Best & Free Restaurant Task Management App

Xenia fully integrates food and beverage operations in any restaurant facility, offering tools to standardize, track, and evaluate work across teams & assets -  and that too, over a multi- location setup. 

So, if you have a single restaurant or multiple branches spread across different locations, areas, or cities, you can control and monitor all kinds of end-to-end operations, effectively, through a centralized dashboard.

Top it off with a user-friendly interface that not only makes it easy to use platform encompassing tasks and checklists, temperature logs, labeling, kitchen audits, employee scheduling, forms and inspections, template library, chat, and more.

Our goal is to create products that facilitate your business's entire activities - and not just a handful of aspects.

Feature Highlights

• Smart Food Temperature Monitoring: Ensure worry-free compliance by employing wireless sensors for collecting temperature data from freezers, refrigerators, and handheld probes. Any food temperature that goes above the threshold sends off real-time notification to avoid any possible near misses!
• Operations Template Builder: Use fully customizable pre-built templates and a powerful builder to streamline work processes, inspections, and maintain compliance on the go. Alternatively, if these templates suit your restaurant use-case requirements, you can use them as is!
• Scheduled Work: Enhance productivity by providing clear task schedules and implementing mobile team notifications to anyone; anywhere across your single or multi-location restaurant setup.
• Digital Checklists: Download checklists for restaurant operations, maintenance actitivities, asset & equipment management or just about any activity in an instant through our digital checklist library. These checklists can also be customized to suit your particular requirements.
• Team Communication: Facilitate improved teamwork through swift chats, group updates, company-wide announcements, and task mentions.
• Analytics Reports: Achieve superior decision-making capabilities by leveraging in-depth work analytics, advanced filters, and the flexibility of exporting data.
• Inspections & Audits: Run any number of inspection operations, or detailed audits concerning food safety, restaurant's overall management activities, asset & equipment management, all through one app. The choice is yours!

Pricing

• Free Plan Forever: Up to five users, with unlimited access to all the basic features!
• Starter: $99 per month (for up to 15 users) with access to core features
• Premium: $199 per month (up to 15 users) with unlimited access to core and advanced features
• Custom: Request a Quote.

For pricing: Book a Demo

2. Jolt

Jolt’s restaurant management platform allows for automatic and streamlined task management.

This restaurant task management software is cloud-based and widely used in the hospitality sector.It offers a variety of sophisticated features that are perfect for corporate operations and staff management.

Jolt's capabilities can assist with staff training, team communication, attendance monitoring, employee scheduling, and job automation. 

You also get additional choices for compliance management. Jolt employs photo proof, time stamps, and name stamps to ensure that your restaurant's workforce is completely accountable.With Jolt, employees can easily manage their work schedules. 

Feature Highlights

• Jolt Lists: Jolt Lists transform your entire team's actions into a seamless execution of tasks at the right time and in the right manner. The transition from uncertainty to excellence in your work is what really makes the difference with this program.
• Jolt Employee Scheduling: Jolt's drag-and-drop interface makes scheduling your entire crew simpler than ever before.
• Automation: Task assignments, corrective actions, and notifications for overdue or incomplete tasks can be automated seamlessly.

Pricing

• Jolt customizes its offering depending on your exact needs

3. Trail

Integrate all facets of restaurant work management effortlessly with Trail's user-friendly restaurant task management software, leaving no room for oversights. 

Trail streamlines paperwork, schedules, inventory, and ensures the safety and hygiene of food, maintaining comprehensive order.

Accessible to every team member requiring information, the checklist and data are readily available, facilitating the effective assignment and completion of daily tasks. By preventing the overwhelm of paperwork, you can concentrate on the smooth operation of your business.

Feature Highlights

• Record Logs: Reduce the need for manual data input by keeping a comprehensive digital record. The most dependable and fast alternative to paper.
• Alerts & Notifications: Get reports when anything goes wrong or when tasks are finished.
• Checklists: The checklists are fast - really fast - so teams can get back to serving customers.

Pricing

• Free Trial
• Solo Plan: £14 per month
• Team Plan: £38 per month/site
• Standard Plan: £75 per month/site

4. MaintainIQ

Owning a restaurant necessitates an all-encompassing platform like MaintainIQ, catering to everything from food safety and equipment maintenance to operations monitoring across multiple locations.

For restaurant businesses spanning numerous locations, dealing with intricate restaurant task management software should not be a burden.

MaintainIQ offers a user-friendly platform, enabling seamless consolidation of operations for restaurants and convenience shops.MaintainIQ ensures that every team member, from entry-level employees to upper-level managers, can effortlessly stay on top of their daily tasks.

The program guarantees timely and accurate recording of tasks, providing concrete evidence of procedure adherence. Additionally, it sends alerts for unchecked tasks, facilitating swift issue resolution.

Feature Highlights

• Task Management: MaintainIQ empowers you to generate and delegate tasks, checklists, and reminders to staff across all your locations, seamlessly managed from a centralized platform.
• Enhanced Visibility: Gain real-time visibility into the completion status of tasks—whether they are fulfilled, missed, or delayed—across all your restaurants with the restaurant task management software .
• Improved Accountability: Increase accountability among staff by utilizing digital checklists and notifications that guarantee timely task completion and adherence to proper protocols.

Pricing

• Monthly Plan: $49/mo Per Location
• Annual Plan (Save 15%): $499/yr Per Location
• Custom Plan for Specific Businesses

5. FIELDKO

FieldKo ensures that all front-line employees across your restaurants adhere to quality, safety, and business requirements, ensuring a consistently exceptional customer experience.Initiate preventative measures by assigning tasks to your team members.

Utilize inspections to proactively identify issues in both front and back-of-house operations, allowing your team to address potential risks before they escalate.Audit kitchens, monitor food inventory flow, and ensure compliance effortlessly with FieldKo to meet stringent food safety requirements.

Stay ahead of issues, allowing you to resolve them before customers ever notice.

Feature Highlights

• Perform Inspections: Simplify inspections for everyone by configuring questions, tasks, and workflows. Create comprehensive Customer 360 views to ensure your inspectors consistently complete the job accurately the first time, every time.
• Resolve Issues: Empower stakeholders to take effective action by utilizing features such as workflows, corrective action plans, and time-of-inspection flagging. Ensure accurate and efficient resolution of issues.
• Manage Forms: Streamline data sharing across workflows by utilizing prebuilt digital forms. Create a secure and scalable data-gathering structure for your business.

Pricing

• Ask the vendor for a quote

6. Fourth

Using Fourth's restaurant task management software, you can effortlessly monitor store efficiency, delegate jobs, and enhance food and safety compliance—from any device, anywhere.

Fourth's digital logbook is a great tool for improving operations and expanding your business. Insight into your company and clear channels of communication with your staff are both provided by our user-friendly task management software.

Food safety records are also included, so you can be prepared to pass any future health inspections.With Fourth's task management, you and your team will always know who did what and when. Having self-assurance and mastery is the key to achieving your goals.

Feature Highlights

• Mobile-First: Roll out Standard Operating Procedures and ​Task Lists in minutes
• Store Logs and Staff Journals: Facilitate streamlined and monitored manager communication from shift to shift. Effortlessly retrieve shift notes through easy search functionality later on.
• Library and Contacts: Document store-vendor contact details and warranty information. Centralize store training, food safety documents, and other essential staff resources.

Pricing

• Ask the vendor for a quote

7. Blanket

Blanket, a digital task management software, plays a pivotal role in steering corporate success.

Ensure top-notch compliance, brand representation, and customer experiences across all locations.Operators managing multiple units leverage Blanket to verify that all initiatives, including those related to food safety, align with operational guidelines.

Thanks to automation, staff members save hours daily, providing executives with real-time, comprehensive visibility into front-line operations.Utilize Blanket's "Smart Forms" to seamlessly convert static store evaluations into dynamic data gathering tools for your field personnel, eliminating the need for paper checklists and Excel spreadsheets.

Feature Highlights

• Task Management: Define explicit directives for on-site managers and team members concerning safety, cleanliness, and brand standards. Introduce scheduled tasks and task lists on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to maintain strict compliance.
• Reports: See the big picture by reviewing trends or drill down to view single responses.
• Communication: Facilitate instantaneous communication with your front-line team through one-to-one messaging or by creating group chats. Enhance teamwork, effective communication, and collaboration seamlessly.

Pricing

• Ask the vendor for a quote

8. 7Shifts

Syncing your restaurant team is as important as getting the recipe right, this is where 7shifts helps in achieving efficient and smooth operations and reaching the peak of your success.

It also provides critical insights that empower you to make informed decisions regarding your team and your day-to-day operations. With features like schedule enforcement, optimal labor tracking and real-time reporting hitting labor targets becomes easy ultimately impacting your bottom line.

Operating efficiency is another strong aspect of 7shifts. It can help you effectively organize your operations, reducing unnecessary mistakes along the way. Be compliant, simplify your payroll process, and facilitate task tracking with digital checklists.

Furthermore, managers can centralize your communication channels, and do automated tip calculations, So they can focus on what’s truly important: enhancing guests' experience.

And it’s not just about improving your operations, it’s also about growing your people. With tools to measure team engagement, sentiment, and satisfaction, you’ll be able to focus on building a strong, cohesive team that feels valued, driven, and ready to take on anything.

Key Features

• ‍Employee scheduling: Create and manage employee schedules with ease, taking into account factors such as availability, skills, and labor targets to optimize staffing levels and minimize labor costs.‍
• Expense Tracking: Track your expenses and review how much you spend to staff and run your business. This way, you’ll be able to tightly control costs and allocate a budget where it has the most impact.‍
• Application management: Streamline the hiring process by managing job applications and candidate information directly within the 7shifts platform to increase the efficiency of your recruitment efforts‍
• Labor Forecasting: 7shifts uses historical sales data, upcoming events, and seasonal trends to anticipate busy periods and helps businesses schedule staff accordingly. This proactive approach lets operators optimize labor scheduling giving good coverage during the busiest periods, but not having too much staff during the slowest.

Pricing 

• Comp: Free
• Entrée: $34.99
• The Works: $76.99
• Gourmets: $150

9. MarketMan

MarketMan is an advanced restaurant inventory management system that focuses on delivering a specialized solution that is catered specifically to all of the various custom inventory and supplier management systems unique in the food and beverage industry. 

The solution streamlines supply chain processes, cost controls, and reporting. MarketMan offers a full suite of features that cover ingredient level tracking, recipe management, and food costing that are necessary to keep restaurants profitable and efficient in their operations. 

Another strong point of the tool is its unique automation features specific to mid and large-scale businesses. Custom, per-supplier automated cost updates, customizable price thresholds as well as order alerts will significantly speed up decision-making for restaurants and optimize the procurement process while keeping your overhead to a minimum.

With MarketMan’s EDI and API connections, send and create purchase orders with just a few clicks, or use your preferred vendor methods. 

While this app is designed to handle the needs of larger restaurants, it also works for smaller establishments looking for automation and efficiency. So, whether you’re looking to have food shipped every day to your multi-location, have food cost updates done automatically.

Key Features

• Inventory Management: inventory management follows up and manages the right level of stock so product often isn’t wasted or going out of stock
• Keep track of costs: Keep tabs on all your ingredients and supplies, which makes price setting and budgeting easy.
• Alerts & Reports: Receive notifications and generate detailed reports on inventory levels, orders, and costs, so you can make data-driven decisions.

Pricing 

• Operator: $239
• Professional: $299
• Ultimate: $429

10. CrunchTime

CrunchTime is another remarkable contender in restaurant task management software exclusively created for the multi-unit marketplace including restaurant chains, franchise groups, and fast-food brands. 

The solution is highly configurable and we interface with most leading food service vendors. Moreover, the tool lets managers produce detailed, actionable, real-time reporting with highly responsive customer support. 

CrunchTime comes with a slew of value-added features and functions, including USDA nutritional data for recipes, as well as processes in place to streamline food preparation for instance, as well as analyses of actual versus theoretical food costing. 

With features like ingredient-level inventory management, recipe costing, and sales analytics built on high-quality restaurant-operating data, CrunchTime is undoubtedly a highly competent restaurant task management provider. 

Key Features 

• Inventory Management: Monitor and control the levels of stock of raw materials such as vegetables, fruit, and meats so you know how many are in stock at your restaurant, have them at their peak level, and order the right quantity as required by your stock control thus avoiding wastage.
• Recipe Management: Organize and administer recipes efficiently and allow accurate food production how to avoid over-production but close down preparation across multiple units the guarantee consistency and quality.
• Demand Forecasting: Predictive future food demand based on historical information, and trends so you can have proactive control over stocks, in big precision food demand calculation forecasting, fresh means food for in aqua taste.
• Kitchen/ Menu Management: Streamline and optimize workflow efficiency within the kitchen while improving customer satisfaction.

Pricing 

• Contact Vendor 

11. Restaurant365

Up next we've got Restaurant365.

It is a cloud-based, all-in-one, restaurant-specific accounting software platform that combines key restaurant modules with an integrated accounting background. 

The platform is designed and developed by a dedicated team of certified restaurant accountants and programmers with specific industry knowledge.

Another unique feature that sets Restaurant365, apart from its competition, is the integrated approach to staff scheduling and labor cost tracking. With built-in staff scheduling, Restaurant365 offers a truly one-stop, scaling solution for managing not only food costs but labor costs as well. This integrated approach is a big time saver for large, multi-location, or franchise restaurants.

A full suite of operational modules makes it easier to streamline all aspects of restaurant management. From real-time inventory valuation to automatic costing, to recipe creation and analysis, the tool provides the tools necessary to get the most out of your operations and maximize your profits.

Key Features 

• Cost Tracking: Monitor and analyze food and labor costs in real time for better decision-making and cost-saving measures. 
• Automatic Billing: Streamline billing processes with automated invoicing and billing functionalities to reduce administrative overhead. 
• Inventory Management: Keep tabs on inventory movements and transactions, which seamlessly integrate into stock journals for accurate recordkeeping and inventory control. 
• Forecasting: Use predictive data analytics and forecasting tools to anticipate demand and optimize inventory levels, minimizing stockouts and overstocking.

Pricing 

• Essential: $469
• Professional: $689

What is Task Management?

Task management, in its simplest form, allows organizations and operators in the food service industry to standardize and scale the routine activities that need to be accomplished at their locations. 

Given the distributed workforce, the unpredictable nature of the food service industry, and the expectation of consistent, memorable experiences from guests, effective task management for restaurants is of the utmost importance for the smooth running of any F&B business.

Building and implementing a solid system and methods for managing duties allows restaurant managers to have more control over the day-to-day operations of the business and the responsibilities that are specific to each employee's shift.

Furthermore, efficient protocols and processes for managing tasks guarantee that all workers know their specific responsibilities as well as the big picture of what the company is trying to accomplish.

Consistent and efficient communication between employees, locations, regions, and the brand as a whole is a time-consuming process, but it's worth it because customers always get the same high-quality service no matter where they go. 

While the specifics of task management for restaurants may vary from one food service business to the next, it is common practice for establishments to have a daily checklist that covers anything from opening and closing procedures to any extra work that needs to be done by staff members. Typically, these lists are divided into two sections: front-of-house and back-of-house. 

The Importance of Scaling Task Management

It takes a lot of work to run a successful food business. There might be an unprecedented degree of instability in this industry due to the high pace at which service must go throughout the day.

Therefore, it may be quite challenging to make sure that all employees are pulling in the same direction to achieve the same goal. 

Staff alignment and unity are difficult enough without adding the difficulties faced by individual restaurants to those faced by a national (or even global!) chain. 

And, if communication is a problem, as the Deskless Report says it is for many, maintaining consistency across establishments is practically difficult. According to the data, almost all (94% to be exact) of food service managers believe they are communicating with their staff effectively. Despite this, 54% of their employees feel that the communication they get is either very useless or little beneficial.

Organizations can increase employee engagement by improving communications via the creation and use of efficient task management for restaurants. Employee engagement directly correlates to motivation and output in the fast-paced food service business, as any worker familiar with the field will attest. 

To achieve success for their businesses, the food service district and regional managers in charge of store networks can better align their staff's efforts by making sure that the same consistent message is communicated across different locations and groups of employees. This will transform the experience offered to both customers and employees.

Choosing a Restaurant Task Management Tool

Here are some things to bear in mind when you research restaurant task management software to use in your locations:

Comprehensive Checklists

Creating thorough checklists is the first step to effective task management for restaurants. 

Every day, the staff follows these checklists as a guide to make sure everything is noticed and everything runs well. 

Everything in between, including opening and closing duties, falls under this category. Checking inventory levels, arranging the dining area, and making sure the kitchen equipment is in good operating condition are all examples of items that may be on the opening checklist. 

Assigning Responsibilities

Managing tasks effectively at a restaurant requires more than just making detailed checklists; it also requires delegating tasks to the appropriate team members, outlining everyone's duties, and encouraging responsibility.

To effectively manage tasks, one must be able to assign them to the appropriate team members. When it comes to this, knowing your staff's strengths, shortcomings, and skill sets is crucial.

Inventory Tracking

A restaurant's inventory is a never-ending chore. It is more difficult than it seems, as any person who has done it can tell you. Understanding what and how much you have is essential. 

Inventory tracking includes the use of checklists and restaurant task management software to arrange and organize your restaurant's inventory and orders. Making checklists regularly can assist you break down large tasks into more manageable portions, even if you can't eliminate all clutter from your process.

Security and Compliance

Developing a security and compliance assessment is a great technique to use in job management in your business. Consequently, there will always be up-to-date data on workplace safety and compliance. 

Examining fire extinguishers, emergency exits, eyewash stations, regulation signage, and anything else that comes to mind are examples of this. Food businesses are not often thought of as dangerous locations, but there is a rationale for safety regulations and their implementation.