Tech doesn’t just save you time and make admin easier. It can have a direct, beneficial impact on your bottom line. Having a range of ordering channels available to maximise capacity and orders, automating bookings processes and promotions, as well as collecting the right data from customers, are all quick-fire ways to pick up vital additional revenue for your business.

Discover eight ways that Zonal’s technology can ensure you’re not leaving any potential revenue on the table:

1. Generate incremental revenue with mobile order and pay technology

Not only do long waits in a queue or at the table to get a servers’ attention result in customer dissatisfaction or even complaints, but they can also result in lost sales. Enabling customers to order and pay through an app, or online by scanning a QR code, speeds up the process for guests and has also been proven to increase basket size, generating incremental revenue.

2. Tap into additional revenue channels

The appetite for click and collect and delivery food shows no sign of disappearing and operators that include this in their channel mix will be able to drive profit through these additional revenue streams, enabling guests to engage with you from the comfort of their own home, as well as providing supplemental revenue on quieter days in-venue. Zonal technology offers click and collect and can be fully integrated with third party delivery channels, enabling operators to manage them easily from one central location with minimal demand on staff or operational overhead.

3. Create specific order journeys per-product

Analysing data from menu and drinks sales is useful for operations of all sizes. Operators can analyse individual product performance to identify what is selling well and what is not so popular. Using this up-to-date data, operators can then take an informed view on which products to keep and which to remove, in order to minimise waste and maximise profits. The information can also be used to drive more effective upselling journeys, pinpointing opportunities for customer offers based on insights around their genuine preferences and purchasing habits. For example, offering deals on IPAs and your most popular pie dish.

4. Automate and personalise promotions for exact times, days and products

Personalised deals, offers and promotions are highly effective in driving extra revenue and footfall, however operators need data to facilitate them. Having fully integrated technology enables you to get information from all parts of the business and make decisions on which promotions to run based on genuine insight. For example, why not offer a discount on a customer’s favourite meal for their birthday?

With the right tech, the process can also be automated, meaning promotions can go live on specific days, specific times, and on specific products without the need for manual input every time. This will minimise the time needed to create and run deals and promotions and increase the chances of success.

5. Reduce no-shows by sending automated reminders to bookers

We know just how costly no-shows can be. Our research shows that it costs the hospitality industry a combined £17.59bn a year – and the total number of no-shows doubled between September 2022 and September 2023. One of the main reasons people don’t honour their reservations is because they simply forget about the booking. However, automatic reminders sent to customers at predefined intervals leading up to a reservation can help to ensure people don’t forget to turn up when the time comes and enable customers to simply and easily cancel or amend bookings, giving operators advance warning. These reminders can also be used to drive more revenue by offering additional extras via pre-orders such as champagne or nibbles on arrival.

6. Personalise the booking journey and increase upsells

Zonal’s online reservation platform enables operators to set up different bookable areas within their venue, allowing for example, a customer to secure a favoured table. Offering this level of personalisation helps contribute to creating a great customer experience. It also helps operators better manage bookings – ensuring the best tables are always filled.  During the booking process, customers can also be given the option to customise their experience by pre-ordering food and drink or add-ons, encouraging customers to spend when they are in ‘buying mode’.

7. Enable guests to make a reservation directly through your social media accounts and Google business listings

Customers are no longer looking at social media accounts for research purposes only (although this continues to be a factor), these platforms are being increasingly used to facilitate bookings as well. In fact, over a third of consumers use social media to book tables, rising to more than half (53%) of 18 to 24-year-olds. Operators would benefit from ensuring their businesses are listed on Google and that they are active on social media, with their profiles including a link to a digital booking platform to convert more browsers into bookers.

8. Facilitate the redemption and reconciliation of gift cards and vouchers at any point of sale

Gift cards and vouchers can be a fantastic way for loyal customers to introduce friends and family to your brand, or to encourage repeat visits and increase revenue. Zonal’s gift card solution, Toggle, and voucher platform, Voucher Manager, are seamlessly integrated with our EPoS and wider suite of technology, enabling customers to redeem their vouchers and gift cards easily – whether it’s at the bar, on an app, or at the table with your waiting staff – ensuring a smooth, frictionless experience that leaves a great lasting impression once they’ve left the venue.

Click here to take a quick 5-minute self-assessment to see how your current tech stacks up in the above areas!

No one gets into the hospitality business to fill out spreadsheets, but admin is a vital part of running any successful business. And, with staff in short supply and rising costs making every minute more precious than ever, finding ways to reduce time spent on admin has even more benefits.

Zonal technology can help automate admin tasks, which increases overall efficiency, reduces human error, and saves operators, and their teams, valuable time – and here are 10 ways how…

1. Export sales and revenue figures from your EPoS directly into your accounting system

Manually inputting sales figures from an EPoS into a separate accounting system is a laborious task. With Zonal’s smart, integrated EPoS solution, you can import this data directly into your accounting software, eliminating the need for a staff member to manually complete this task. Not only does this save valuable hours that could be better spent elsewhere, but it reduces the risk of human error too.

2. Keep track of employee start/finish times

Zonal’s technology can remove the headache of keeping on top of employee start and finish times by tracking exactly when your staff clock in and out directly in the POS. This means no more managing multiple timesheets and reconciling against rotas. Plus, staff hours can be easily accessed from one central location for easy reporting.

3. Manage stock ordering from one central platform

Maintaining stock counts and ordering new stock is a major time commitment for operators. However, having a digital stock management system provides tighter controls, as the entire ordering process can be managed end-to-end from one system and real-time reports mean operators can react quickly to low or surplus stock levels. This eliminates time spent checking discrepancies between systems, speeds up the whole ordering process with managed supplier lists and order templates, and results in less wastage and less cash tied up in stock.

4. Gain access to a comprehensive reporting suite to monitor business performance and metrics

Analysing your business’s performance is vital to maintaining a successful operation but collecting and collating all that data can be time-consuming. Operators that have a fully integrated suite of tech with powerful analytics and a digestible reporting solution can go a long way to making business evaluation a much simpler task. Zonal’s technology has the ability to generate reports on different areas of the business and automatically send these out to key members of staff. Not only can this be done quickly, but the real-time reporting means better and faster decision making, and seamless integration between our entire ecosystem of tech provides 100% data accuracy, meaning you’ll always be working with one version of the truth.

5. Auto-reconcile matching orders and invoices

A powerful stock ordering system like the one included as standard in Zonal’s EPoS, will automatically reconcile matching orders and invoices, helping to cut down time spent on manual checks each week, reducing mistakes and freeing up staff from what would previously have been a time-consuming task. This leaves everyone on the team with more time to focus on delivering great experiences for customers.

In addition, having the right tech in place can simplify managing approved suppliers. Being able to automatically reconcile matching orders and invoices or set up order templates can help to save a significant amount of time each week.

6. Get direct control over digital ordering channels to limit or increase your capacity

With a fully integrated tech stack, you have full control over which channels send orders through to the kitchen from one central location. Technology such as Zonal’s enables operators to turn off online ordering during busy periods to allow your staff to keep up with order fulfilment and focus on providing great customer service to those in-venue. This means less stress on the kitchen team and fewer customer complaints. What’s more, with full integration between our digital ordering channels and EPoS, product availability will automatically be updated as sales are made and stock is depleted, meaning your staff won’t need to spend time updating multiple channels if items go out of stock.

7. Remove the need for staff to re-key orders

Integrated hospitality technology like Zonal’s can help speed up service and save staff time. Integrating ordering and payment channels across the business with the main EPoS means staff don’t need to repeat the same task for each ordering channel. In addition, pushing live product availability from your stock management system to your tills and staff handheld ordering devices, means the team will have up-to-the-minute information on stock availability. This results in no wasted time going to the EPoS with orders only to then find out certain menu items are not available and fewer complaints from customers who tell us that one of their biggest bugbears in hospitality is ordering a dish, only to then find out it isn’t available.

8. Remove the headache of finance auditing (and save money) with clear and concise cash and finance workflows

Finance auditing can be time consuming and laborious, however our tech provides complete oversight of how cash is moving through your business. From being able to define by venue whether floats are being used, allowing you to allocate a value and track it through trade; to approval workflows, allowing senior staff to check all expenses are valid and approved, Zonal technology can provide you with the control and oversight you need to effectively manage your business’s finances.

9. Facilitate bookings easily with EPoS-integrated booking and deposit ledger management

Access all the information you need to manage reservations or orders from other channels in one central location, removing the need for staff to check multiple systems and reducing the potential for mistakes. When it comes to bookings, operators can better manage staff rotas with real-time oversight of reservations. A digital booking system also enables customers to edit, manage or cancel their bookings easily, removing the need for staff to update information manually and reducing the chances of no-shows. We know that no-shows are costly for the industry –  £17.59bn a year, in fact, with figures having doubled between September 2022 and September 2023.

10. Manage products and pricing from one central location

Keeping on top on products and pricing is a key factor for maintaining a successful business especially when margins are tight, but it’s a task that can be time-consuming, and costly if not done properly. Implementing Zonal’s integrated set of tech solutions allows operators to manage and update product and price information in one central location. What’s more, native integration between Zonal’s EPoS and wider suite of technology means all systems are updated in real-time, including across all consumer-facing channels, which saves operators and their teams time from having to replicate this task across multiple systems.

Technology should do the heavy lifting for staff and operators, freeing up their time to focus on delivering great customer experiences, and providing operators with the tools as well as the headspace to think strategically about how to further improve businesses.

Click here to take a quick 5-minute self-assessment to see how your current tech stacks up in the above areas!