Introduction

So, let’s be honest here. Who doesn’t love dining out and having a good time whether that be elegant fine dining at that fancy restaurant that just opened up in town or the good ol’ mom and pop diner? Irrespective of what your personal tastes and preferences might be, everyone loves to eat good quality food! But it's not just the food quality that they focus on, these folks are also looking to receive exceptional customer service that makes them want to keep coming back for more! To ensure that you retain your valuable customers, we’ll give you the inside scoop as to why checklists are the way to go so that your restaurant keeps on booming.

What are digital checklists and why are they important?

Digital restaurant checklists driven by AI-powered solutions enable you to streamline daily tasks and processes, reduce labor costs and drive better compliance using real-time data. Digital checklists boost restaurant standards. Having digital checklists will reduce the chances of human error and forgetfulness and will also lessen the time it takes to complete a task all while elevating the quality of execution.

Jolt is the leading digital checklist software provider. Jolt provides digital operations management solutions that help restaurants and businesses build better team accountability, digital food safety compliance and boost employee performance. With Jolt’s digital tools, your business can better detect bottlenecks, augment training modules and facilitate corrective actions that will help streamline operations effectively.

What is video intelligence and how is it relevant to the F&B industry?

By adopting video intelligence, businesses can expect to receive the highest level of returns and in the case of restaurants, there would be better optimization of operations and more simplified automation. AI-enabled solutions help restaurant owners make more informed decisions and allow for a more customer-centric approach due to integrated data analysis. When you have smart security cameras that integrate both Internet of Things (IoT) and AI–driven video analytics, this means that operators can keep track of and analyze visitor and employee behavioral patterns. With valuable insights from video intelligence, the day-to-day restaurant operations can be better optimized and the customer experience will improve.

Overcome operational challenges with a combination of video intelligence and checklists

Restaurants have always used checklists to assign roles and responsibilities and track their completion, ranging from food safety processes to cleaning sessions of the restaurant and more. However, the digitalization of checklists using AI has brought about positive strides in restaurant operating procedures. When armed with a well–rounded checklist and video intelligence solutions, your restaurant is sure to churn out the best quality products, customer dining experience the restaurant operating procedures. When armed with a well–rounded checklist and video intelligence solutions, your restaurant is sure to churn out the best quality products, customer dining experience, and operating results.

Here is a list of some of the problems you can solve with a combination of technologies:

Food safety compliance

Food safety is a critical factor in the food industry to protect customers from consuming food that is possibly contaminated with allergens and other such impurities. For the customers, consuming such contaminated food might become a health and safety hazard and can lead to foodborne diseases, if the proper precautions aren’t put into place. For the restaurant business in question, such incidences might result in hefty penalties from regulatory bodies and legal consequences. Then, there are chances that the reputation and brand image of the restaurant could also be negatively affected as bad news travels fast and negative reviews posted on various online platforms will most likely discourage other customers from visiting your restaurant.

There are several factors that go into the production of safe food and these factors range from acquiring the raw materials to preparation and then packaging. Other such aspects include agricultural practices and employee safety practices, incorporating preventive measures while preparing the food, storage methods, and so on. At every stage, hygiene and cleanliness are of utmost importance. For one, the hygiene quality can be compromised if food items have been stored in the wrong places at inappropriate temperatures. Additionally, restaurants should also maintain other safety practices with their personnel such as regular handwashing with soap, changing their uniform regularly, avoiding wearing jewelry, usage of disposable gloves, donning of aprons, covering their hair with hairnets, etc. 

Team accountability

Setting the right work culture for your restaurant personnel is crucial for providing structure, systematic functioning of work, and ensuring team accountability. Such aspects are required in restaurant settings to ensure that your employees take responsibility for the tasks that have been allocated to them as well as for their mistakes. This in turn helps to build trust, confidence, and reliability in them.

When you clearly define expectations and responsibilities for each team member, it will reduce the chances of confusion and they will be in a better position to perform their responsibilities efficiently. You should also clearly communicate to them what you expect of them so that the employees can self–evaluate their performance. Employees always wish to feel valued and respected at their workplace and the restaurant space is no different. Hence, you should ensure that you motivate them and make them feel included by boosting employee morale and giving due credit for their performance, which in turn will increase their loyalty to the business.

Employee productivity

Restaurants are heavily dependent on the efficiency and productivity of every staff member to ensure exceptional quality food and service.

Satisfactory customer experience has become the norm and employees who are in direct contact with the customers should reflect a positive image. Therefore, exhibiting a healthy attitude and demeanor towards customers are some of the key aspects of restaurant ethics.

Staff members should always be optimally sized depending on the customer demand. This essentially means that the restaurant establishment should ensure that they have the appropriate number of staff members required, both in the kitchen and the dining areas. Remember that the customers should never be kept waiting for someone to tend to them simply because there aren’t enough employees. As a result, restaurants need to take the necessary steps to ensure that they are adequately staffed.

Customer satisfaction 

Customer satisfaction is derived from the quality of food and service that you provide at your restaurant. Food quality can be greatly hampered if there is a lack of quality control or when there are miscommunications between guests and servers or between the server taking their orders and the kitchen personnel preparing the orders.

Your chefs should consistently evaluate the dishes that they’re preparing to ensure that they have the right flavor profile before the food is served.

How can Wobot.ai and Jolt help you to improve operational efficiency at your restaurant?

Both Wobot.ai and Jolt share a common vision. That is why they have successfully partnered together to help customers across the board namely, QSR, Carwash, TSR, Cloud Kitchens, Retail, Hospitality and Manufacturing to better detect bottlenecks, augment training modules, and facilitate corrective actions. With Wobot’s video intelligence infrastructure, Jolt will be able to gain new insights to generate relevant images and videos from cameras. For Wobot.ai, Jolt offers an automated layer of task validation to its customers. With Jolt and Wobot.ai you can easily:

Enjoy Improved Accountability and Management of Operations

Video intelligence will send real-time alerts to managers if one or more of the tasks designated on a checklist are not being completed or executed very well. As such, managers have greater chances of potentially holding employees accountable for completing tasks and addressing what tasks are being completed and where. As an alternative, you can also use this as an opportunity to reward employees for their dedication.

With the help of AI, raw data gets converted into meaningful information which then leads to actionable insights. If you have more than one restaurant outlet and the system fails to adequately report data on an organizational level, then you may not be able to reap the advantages of AI-powered tools and their checklists. This is where video intelligence comes to the fore as their capabilities will be able to spot anomalies and exceptional cases, generate real-time alerts whenever there is an event, and will also enable you to identify trends and patterns across your entire restaurant establishment.

Automatically Assign Corrective Action

Earlier, the primary issue with checklists was that if the work isn’t completed properly then there was little accountability to rectify it.

By digitalizing your restaurant operations with AI checklists, your system can be set up to trigger follow-up work. In cases where the checklists have failed to meet the standardized threshold or specifications laid out by the restaurants, the system will automatically put forth corrective actions. For example, if the temperature of the dish is too low, this will cause the system to give the option of one or more retries, thereby suggesting that the user stir the pot to balance out the heat and then perform a temperature check.

Conclusion

It goes without saying that having restaurant checklists and smart video intelligence are two components that go hand in hand in order to maintain a successful restaurant. The advantages are multifold as laying out a checklist for each of the various roles and sections will ensure that your restaurant and personnel remain productive, efficient, and up-to-date.