Challenges faced by casual dining chains

The casual dining sector is in a re-growth period – last year there was a 1.7% rise in the number of casual restaurants, with an average of three new sites per week. As competition increases, it’s an important time for you to think about how you can improve your restaurant management so that you can stay competitive.

To make things simple, we thought we would identify some of the common casual dining problems that restaurants are facing, how they may affect you and what you can do to help resolve these challenges so you can keep your restaurant running smoothly.

The challenges

Slow table turnover

Many restaurants find that taking orders and payments is a pain point that causes issues with table turnover times. Misread orders or frozen card machines can cause enough delays to affect your table turnover times.

For casual dining restaurants, quick table turnover is what guests expect, with tables typically turned over every 1 hour and 15 minutes. With slow table turnover, not only do you miss out on potential customers and revenue, but you also risk damaging your reputation with service that doesn’t meet your customers’ expectations.

High staff turnover 

High staff turnover results in the need for new employees to be onboarded and trained. Training new staff on various complicated systems and processes can be difficult. This can make your service disjointed and exposed to errors, making it hard for you to maintain consistent customer service and keep your customers happy. With the hospitality industry having one the highest employee turnover rates, this is an unavoidable challenge your restaurant needs to plan for. 

Lack of real-time data 

A lack of real-time data can make it difficult to get a full picture of the performance. Live data helps to see how every venue is performing and enables chains to cross analyse data to make informed business-wide decisions. On an individual level, data also helps teams to make reactive decisions in day-to-day activity, contributing to the success of each restaurant.  

Without real-time data for all your venues, many decisions will rely on guesswork, making it difficult to ensure every location is performing at the same standard, making the most of individual opportunities and maximising their revenue.

Disconnected order systems

With the influx in demand for the likes of Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat in recent years, many restaurants opted for the most convenient delivery order systems option they could find. Now, further down the line, this is becoming an issue as these systems are disconnected from their main restaurant order systems. 

Disconnected order systems make it difficult to manage these orders in one process, damaging the flow of the whole restaurant. Staff are forced to move information from the delivery systems to your POS in order to be able to take, manage and report on deliveries effectively. Being exposed to human error, this causes orders to slip through the cracks, wait times to increase, and customers to lose faith in your staff, reducing customer satisfaction and leaving your team frustrated.

Downtime disrupting service

More systems can often equal more problems. When your system goes down, it can create a domino effect across your restaurant. As a result, you’ll need help from multiple support teams. This can increase the time taken to resolve issues and that downtime can be detrimental to your service. This can cause cases where service is slowed down or even brought to a complete stop, negatively impacting revenue and customer satisfaction.

How can you solve these casual dining problems?

We know that this might sound like a lot but don’t worry there’s a simple solution to all of your problems! A comprehensive restaurant management system. 

With all-in-one EPOS software that manages everything from orders to payments, you can elevate service, keep customers happy and boost your casual dining chain’s success.

Our new e-book dives into how exactly a centralised system can address these specific challenges and make restaurant management easy. Download it here.