When we talk about F&B businesses, the first thing that comes to mind is intense competition. A lot of thought and effort goes into developing the business plan of a restaurant or food service company, including choosing a perfect location, designing the perfect menu, recruiting the most qualified employees, and doing tons of marketing of course.
In the highly competitive food and beverage industry, estimated to reach $4.4 trillion by 2028, the intensification of competition is inevitable.
Despite the promising outlook for prospective restaurateurs due to significant growth potential, there is another facet to consider. Before reaching their fifth year, approximately 80% of restaurants shut their doors.
Effective task management for restaurants is sometimes the deciding factor between a successful business and one that is battling to stay afloat. The foundation of every well-run restaurant is restaurant task management software, the significance of which cannot be emphasized enough.
7 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.
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1. Xenia - Overall No. 1 Best & Free Restaurant Task Management App
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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
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. Jolt
Jolt’s restuarant 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
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.
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.
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 Task Management Software
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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