Restaurant's New Normal: Lesser service staff

Restaurants and cafes alike are experiencing the labour crunch. Even as we are coming out of the Covid19 pandemic, it is not the end of the challenges faced by restaurants. Now even more than ever F&B owners are feeling the labour crunch. Although restaurants have significantly increased their remuneration packages to improve the chances of recruiting, there are few or no takers. 

Why is there a labour shortage in the restaurant industry?

Now that many countries have relaxed their border restrictions, allowing their citizens to travel for work and leisure, F&B businesses’s manpower woes should come to an end. However, that is not the case. The reality of the situation is that even as border restrictions are relax, restaurants in Singapore are still experiencing a shortage of manpower.

This could be due to the sharp increase in the number of F&B businesses in the recent years.The Ministry of Manpower & Enterprise Singapore has disclosed that Singapore saw a net increase of 1500 new F&B businesses in 2021 which is the highest increase in 30 years. In 2020, a net increase of 1300 new F&B businesses was also recorded.

Also, due to stringent policies for hiring foreign workers, restaurant owners are forced to look toward the local job market. The challenge of hiring from the local job market is that there is a decreasing pool of Singaporeans that are willing to work long term in the F&B industry, mainly due to the increasing affluence and qualification of Singaporeans.

How restaurants can solve their manpower woes?

The answer is through digitalising processes by adopting solutions such as QR ordering systems, self ordering kiosks, robot servers or waiters and even automated kitchen equipment.

With such solutions, restaurants are able to digitalise and automate parts of their operations in order to cope with the shortage in manpower.

QR Ordering system case study at Song Fa Bak Kut Teh

Song Fa Bak Kut Teh for example, adopted and implemented QR Ordering systems at all of its outlets across Singapore. This helped them to reduce reliance on staff to manually take orders from its customers. While critics may feel that self ordering solutions cause the F&B industry to lose its human touch, Song Fa Bak Kut Teh is a great example a restaurant that has managed to digitalise order taking without losing its human touch and compromise customer experience.

Instead of having their service staff constantly pre-occupied with take orders from customers, Song Fa Bak Kut Teh’s service staff boost their customer’s experience by periodically checking in on them to see if their dining needs are fulfilled, and helping to add extra soup.

This provides their customers with better service satisfaction than having staff preoccupied with manual order taking and thus, neglecting customers when attention is needed.

The cost savings of digitalising your restaurant

By digitalising parts of your restaurant’s operations, especially through self ordering, you save operational costs in the long run even if you need to invest in adopting such solutions. That is because the subscription fees of a typical self ordering solution is lower than the monthly wage of service staff.

Self ordering solutions increases revenue

Apart from savings in operating costs, self ordering systems also help to increase your restaurant’s average bill sizes. Self ordering systems have a digital menu that displays your restaurant’s menu items with images attached to each of them. This allows your customers to get a clearer picture of what your restaurant offers. Another way self ordering systems increase your bill size is by automating upselling through add on suggestions. This ensures that your restaurant does not miss out on any upselling opportunities.

Getting digital restaurant solutions

At MEGAPOS, we develop easy to use and intuitive solutions such as POS systems, self ordering kiosks and QR ordering systems to help your restaurant enjoy fuss free digitalisation. Click here to get a free demo of our solutions.