The apps a restaurant actually needs

Do not pick an app, pick a job

Search for the best restaurant apps and you get thirteen names, most of them American. Software does not solve a restaurant. It solves one job, and you are the only person who knows which job that is.

Pull up last week. Not the rush in the dining room, but the work around it. The rota you rewrote three times. The wholesaler order you typed in at half eleven at night. The temperature sheet on the fridge door, half filled in. That is your list.

1. Taking bookings and filling your tables.
2. Taking orders, through a platform and through your own page.
3. Payments, card terminals and keeping the VAT split clean.
4. Rotas, hours worked and keeping your team informed.
5. Counting stock and ordering from your suppliers.
6. Recording food safety: temperatures, deliveries, cleaning.
7. Getting guests to come back: reviews, email, loyalty.

Seven jobs, not thirteen apps. In most places three or four already hide inside the till you pay for. Solve one per quarter, and start with the one that hurt most this month.

Bookings: who pays for that table?

A booking system does three things. It takes reservations while you work, keeps your floor plan straight, and remembers who has been in before. That third one is worth the most and is given away most often.

There are two flavours. A marketplace puts your restaurant among hundreds of others and sends guests who did not know you, but charges per cover. A booking module on your own site sends nobody, costs a fixed amount and leaves the guest details with you. What you do not want is to pay per cover for the regular who rings you anyway.

• Does it charge per cover, per month, or both?
• Can you ask for a deposit or a card guarantee on large groups?
• Can you get your guest list back out as a file?
• Can your front of house enter a phone booking in ten seconds?
• Does the kitchen see the allergies the guest typed in?

Count your no-shows for two weeks before you buy anything. If you do not know that number, you will not know later whether the system paid for itself.

Ordering: the platform tablet and your own page

On most counters a tablet from Thuisbezorgd or Uber Eats sits beeping. That is an app too, and probably the one that makes your revenue swing hardest.

The difference with your own ordering page is not convenience. It is what is left of that receipt and who can reach the guest afterwards. A platform charges commission on every order, including the regular. On your own page nothing comes off and the email address sits in your system.

You do not have to choose, and most places run both. But only one of the two keeps the margin and the email address with you.

Your till is the power strip

The till is the app everything else plugs into. Pick it on the screen alone and six months later you find it does not talk to your ordering page or your bookkeeping. Then you pay twice: once for the package, and after that every week in retyping.

What you want to see in the Netherlands regardless: a daily close that keeps the 9 per cent on food apart from the 21 per cent on most drinks, card payments without a second device, and an export your bookkeeper can read straight in.

Judge every demo on your busiest hour, not on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. Every system is pleasant at three orders an hour.

Rotas, hours and the app your team actually opens

The rota in a group chat and the hours on paper behind the bar works right up until somebody calls in sick. After that it costs you an evening every week.

A rota app does the boring part. Your team sees the schedule on their phone, swaps run through your approval, and the hours worked land as a file with your payroll. Recording how much was worked is not optional either: you have to be able to show working hours and rest periods.

• Does a new part-timer understand it without training?
• Can you export hours into whatever you run payroll with?
• Is there a language in it that your whole team reads?
• Do you see labour cost adding up while you build the rota?

This week, publish the rota one week further ahead than you do now. It is the cheapest improvement on this entire list.

Stock and buying

Stock is the category most owners leave longest. What you do not count you cannot buy properly, and what you over-order you throw out on Thursday.

A stock app is essentially a list with photos, quantities and a scanner. You count faster, you see what walks out of the door, and you get a nudge before the mozzarella runs out. Only when your stock and your menu live in the same system do you know what a dish really costs you.

Buying is a separate habit. Sligro, Hanos and Bidfood each have their own ordering portal, plus the message you send your small supplier. The gain is in fewer places where you type the same thing.

• Can you scan with a phone camera, or do you count everything by hand?
• Does it remember your standing order per supplier?
• Can you see buying prices across the weeks, so you notice a rise?
• Does a sale on the till take the item off stock automatically?

Food safety on a phone

The temperature sheet on the fridge door is the most forgotten form in hospitality. Half filled in, one handwriting, always updated on a Friday.

A food safety app replaces that sheet with a checklist per shift, carrying a timestamp nobody can invent afterwards. Some use sensors in the fridges that measure on their own and raise an alarm. You do not need an expensive package, but a trail that shows you measure and what you did when a reading was off.

A dull category that pays for itself in a single inspection. Put it on the phone of the chef on shift, not on your laptop.

Guests who come back

This is where most owners start, and where most apps disappoint. A scheduler gets your posts out on time. It does not work out why anybody would come back.

Three things do the real work. Your Google Business Profile, because for most guests that is your actual homepage. A place where you answer reviews rather than read them. And a list of email addresses that belongs to you, so you can fill a quiet Tuesday without asking a platform for permission.

• Does the system collect guest details on every order, or only on a sign-up?
• Can you select the guests who have not been in for six weeks?
• Can you see what a campaign returned, in orders rather than likes?
• Do you take the list with you if you ever leave?

This week, answer every review from the past month. It costs an hour, and it is the only marketing whose result you see straight away.

How to judge an app before you sign

The question is not whether a package has clever features. It is whether it saves time, prevents mistakes and earns money without making your week more complicated.

Never trial a system on a quiet afternoon. Switch it on for a Saturday night, or make the supplier replay your busiest hour. And let your staff do the clicking, not the account manager.

On Monday: write down the seven jobs, note which app does each one today, and cross out whatever does nothing. Usually exactly one gap is left. That gap is your next subscription, and the rest you can cancel.