Where is a disruption possible in this industry? When we recognize that it is people that run the restaurant equipment. Let us discuss how equipment designed with the user in mind can greatly impact employee retention, costs, and quality which ultimately leads to customer satisfaction and therefore revenue. Any manufacturer in the restaurant equipment industry could become a disrupter with products that consider this critical fact.
Restaurant equipment industry can help retain quality employees
Restaurants are constantly competing for quality employees. The pressure is greater than ever when you consider the other options for perspective employees. We know that tasks in a kitchen can be hard work. As an individual, imagine you are given a choice:
Option 1: Stand over a hot griddle for an 8 hour shift most days of the week, on a schedule defined by your manager.
Option 2: Drive your climate-controlled car to move people or food when it conveniently fits into your schedule for a service such as Uber or Grubhub.
How can the restaurant equipment industry help restaurants retain good employees? Newly developed restaurant equipment can make any job much more comfortable and rewarding. New technology in the kitchen does not mean replacing employees, but rather fulfilling critical tasks that nobody wants to do.
Would you even know if your employee was just one deep fryer cleaning away from quitting? What if the equipment could be easier to clean, required less frequent cleanings, or better yet, it cleaned itself?
Team members who are happier are more likely to remain with the business and exceed the expectations of the job.
The restaurant equipment industry can help with the rising costs of labor
Let us dive a little deeper into how the restaurant equipment industry can help with mechanizing and automating undesirable jobs. Installing machines and firing employees is generally a bad look for businesses. Corporations who focus only on the bottom line often end up with disillusioned employees, and then customers. As the price of everything continues to go up, it will become increasingly challenging to compete on price.
Are a few cents really going to make the difference between you and your competitor on a fifteen-dollar meal?
Is that how you want to be defined anyway?
What if we were to double down on rising costs? Make the investment into technology, and into retaining a higher tier of employees. Consider the tasks that no one wants to do. Often, in these cases the cost of the employee to do the work exceeds the value they create. The restaurant equipment industry can help businesses by offering tools which automate those tasks away, and even produce a higher quality result. The business can reorganize its higher quality of staff, performing tasks that increase the value of the service you provide. Consider the example below in which restaurant A makes an investment into its equipment and employees and restaurant B focuses on keeping costs down.
For a customer, the choice now becomes this:
Restaurant A: Clean well-lit dining area, fresh food, clean bathrooms, and friendly employees.
Restaurant B: Slightly less expensive, dirty tables, inconsistent food, messy bathrooms, and just a few stressed out employees.
The restaurant equipment industry can help a business to compete on quality and value, rather than price. Customers will pay more if they are receiving high quality products and service. Any manufacturer in the restaurant equipment industry who can produce systems which will keep operating costs low but increase quality and customer experience will be an industry game changer.
How the restaurant equipment industry can help keep costs down but quality up
In our experience, quality can mean two different things to the customer and it can often mean both.
1. The degree of excellence of a product such as ingredients, freshness, appearance, and taste.
2. Consistency of a product, such that it is the same every time regardless of date, time, or location.
Large quick serve restaurant organizations have extensive teams of chefs developing recipes for national deployment. How do you get restaurants around the country to reach the same quality standards as the head chef at headquarters?
Historically this has been done with a lot of pre-processing and altering recipes and ingredients to keep items more consistent and easier to store. While the product will be repeatable, this often leads to a lower quality in terms of product excellence, and lower overall value for the customer.
Imagine if the restaurant equipment industry took advantage of technology to not only automate tasks for consistency but also increased the product excellence!
This is not as far fetched as it sounds. In some cases, we are talking about ideas as simple as a machine pulling the fries out of the fryer when the buzzer goes off, not 10 seconds later when the overly busy employee gets to it. The more complex solutions could reduce food holding times and food waste by creating more efficient systems for quickly cooking on actual demand, not planned demand. In either case, we are left higher quality product offerings both from an excellence and consistency standpoint.
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Businesses in the restaurant equipment industry should make an investment into developing new equipment which acknowledges today’s challenges. Any business that can successfully resolve pain points for employees and improve product quality through technology will disrupt the restaurant equipment industry.