The Definitive 2023 Restaurant Tech Guide to Improve Your Sales and Revenue

These are the accessible and budget-friendly restaurant tech options that will get you more sales and revenue

Let’s face it, installing and getting used to new restaurant tech can be an absolute nightmare. However, there are quick and effective tech solutions that can be implemented simply and won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Better yet, your investment into these technologies will be rewarded greatly as they are almost certain to have a positive impact on your restaurant’s sales, revenue or both!

5 Restaurant Tech Suggestions to Boost Sales and Revenue 

Keep in mind, you DO NOT need to invest in every single restaurant tech recommendation on this list. Find the ones that best match your business and can steer you towards success. 
 

 

1. Online Ordering Platforms

Online ordering platforms allow customers to place orders for pickup or delivery through your website or a third-party online marketplace. Both these technologies can greatly benefit your sales and revenue for a few simple reasons. 

First, you reach a wider audience of people when you take your business online. Be it on your own branded website, or on an external marketplace, you’ll increase your market reach by casting your net wider. Third-party online ordering platforms also do a lot of marketing on your behalf and have a large customer-base that you can tap into directly. 

Secondly, you’ll be able to accept and send out more orders without needing to sacrifice seating area in your front of house. Delivery and pickup customers from online ordering platforms add a great secondary revenue stream that can keep sales and revenue much higher than just owning a physical space. 

Finally, these restaurant technologies can increase sales by making it more convenient for customers to order from your restaurant, especially in today's fast-paced, digital world. Online ordering also helps reduce wait times and errors, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

 

2. POS Systems

Pick the right POS system and you can literally run your entire restaurant business from a single platform. Why does this matter and how does it boost sales and revenue? Well, for starters, having every aspect of your restaurant (from back of house to front of house) under one system, you don’t need to fork out extravagant amounts of money for multiple disjointed tech systems that don’t work together and bleed you dry.

Second, you save loads of time on staff training costs. Allowing your staff to have all the management tools they need through a single system interface reduces training time and lets you get employees started much faster so they can make more sales and increase your bottom line. 

Speaking of employees, the right POS system can help you manage orders, inventory, and employee scheduling, all in one centralized location. By automating these tasks, you can hire fewer staff, boost order-taking efficiency and reduce errors – all of which contribute to higher sales and revenue.

 

3. Digital Menus

What exactly does digitizing your menu entail? Well, depending on the type of restaurant you run, there are many ways to digitize your menu that can get customer attention, let you directly advertise to them and increase their order size. 

For example, if you run a quick-serve (fast food) restaurant, you might want to invest in a Dynamic Digital Menu, which can let customers see a clear, large digital menu board with items you might want to promote, great combos, new items and much more. This allows customers to decide on their meal of choice faster and keeps turnover (and by extension, sales and revenue) flowing faster. 

If your restaurant offers a full-service (dine-in table service) experience, you can utilize tech like PhotoMenus (e-menus), which puts your entire menu onto a digital device like an iPad instead of on paper. The benefits of this is that you can organize your menu far better, you can use clearer images to spark hunger, you can provide detailed descriptions of each dish and what dietary requirements they fulfill and you can even let customers order directly off these menus to speed things up if they don’t need service from wait staff. Another amazing benefit is that if you make changes to your menu, you can update all your PhotoMenus at once rather than have to print out new paper menus all the time. 
 

4. Loyalty Programs

Setting up a loyalty program is a surefire way to encourage repeat business, which is where restaurants often make a huge percentage of their revenue and sales. 

Read more about how, increasing your repeat customer rate by just 5% can boost profits by up to 25%, or even higher!

The right POS system can integrate a loyalty system directly into your business, which makes it even easier to integrate organically into how your staff interact with and treat your customers. Food retail businesses can easily pull up customer loyalty data directly on the POS and can directly let customers claim rewards, top up loyalty cards and much more, for a quick and easy experience. 

Global enterprises and franchises can also have loyalty programs apply across multiple shops and even countries, so your customers always feel at home and can offer up repeat business to boost sales and revenue no matter where they are. 

Additionally, loyalty programs can provide valuable data on customer preferences and spending habits, which can help you tailor your marketing efforts and menu offerings.\

5. Third-party Integrations

Okay, this final restaurant tech suggestion is a bit of a cheat since it covers so many avenues. Essentially, what it boils down to is ensuring that your restaurant tech is compatible with offerings from external third-party systems. For example, your POS could integrate with a third-party loyalty program provider, your favorite accounting software, local payment providers, a table booking company and much more. 

Picking restaurant tech that can integrate with third-party companies is extremely important because restaurant tech is often great at providing tools to manage your restaurant, but may not specialize in the external tools you’ll need to run your business. For example, your POS may have a basic accounting software or customer management feature, but if you want to go further in-depth to manage those things, you’ll need to integrate with a third-party company that specializes in providing those services. This is especially true if you’re trying to localize your business for multiple markets, where local payment technology differs vastly from region-to-region. 

If you’re able to double down on what’s important with third-party integrations, you’ll have a toolset at your fingertips that’s versatile and able to aid you in your quest to increase sales and revenue. 

 

The Right Restaurant Tech Can Have a Huge Impact on Sales and Revenue

Overall, investing in the right types of restaurant technology can provide many benefits for your business, including increased efficiency, improved customer satisfaction, and higher profits. You don’t need to invest in every single type of tech mentioned in this article. Pick the ones that suit your business model after analyzing your most important needs. By picking the right foundational tech (like a POS system), you can connect every aspect of your business in a way that’s highly-conducive to improving sales and revenue.