5 must-have apps for restaurant managers and owners

New Delhi : The Food and Beverage industry in India has witnessed a period of unprecedented growth in the recent past, driven by the country's growing youth demography, rising disposable incomes, and new technology-driven systems that enable restaurants and their owners to cater to their customers better.

The job of a restaurant owner or manager has always been complicated, since it involves the balancing of various different functions - managing inventory, marketing, promotion, orders, and logistics, while simultaneously dealing with overheads and employee management.

Presently, this sector is a disorganized USD 50 billion industry which spends only 5 percent of its top-line revenue on technology. As restaurants more competitively vie for a greater slice of India's lucrative food retail market - slated to grow to a colossal Rs. 61 trillion by 2020 - technology can be the difference between successful growth and stagnation.

Apps in the market that facilitate orders for customers have become very commonplace; but what of the apps that help restaurant owners?

Given below are 5 useful apps that restaurant owners and managers can utilize to help them grow and be more competitive:

Zomato for Business

Zomato is India's largest food discovery platform and is used by millions across the country to find great restaurants to eat in or order food from. The company provides restaurant owners a Zomato for Business app that allows them to manage their Zomato listing directly from their smartphones.

Restaurant owners can use the app to answer reviews, update their restaurant information, and communicate with customers about new offers, deals, and events. The app also providers owners with comprehensive analytics and informations about their Zomato page, which has become a very important source of business for restaurant owners.

Uplodefoodie

Uplodefoodie is a SaaS-based solutions provider that offers restaurant owners a white labeled B2B2C restaurant management application and system. The company's B2B2C service looks to provide a simple way for owners to facilitate order management, track customer satisfaction, automate HR operations (attendance, monitoring, and payroll), and optimize inventory and backend processes.

The app also uses advanced analytics to give owners a deeper insight into how they might increase footfall and revenues at their outlets. It also provides an automated loyalty program which uses the consumer-facing app to provide offers to frequent customers to enhance retention. The USPs of this platform are its ability to provide a comprehensive outlet management system, as well as the ability to increase revenue and footfalls.

Swiggy Partner App

Swiggy provides a Partner App to restaurant owners to help them track and monitor orders placed at their outlet through the consumer-facing side of the company's platform. The application, in addition to providing restaurants with added reach and delivery support, also streamlines the entire order curation and fulfillment process. It basically serves as a bridge between Swiggy and its partners for ordering. This ensures that operations get simplified as the restaurants get enabled to track business metrics. Furthermore, restaurant owners can also keep tabs on the number of orders placed and maintain a record of all orders placed at the restaurant through the platform.

FoodEngine App

This application takes the restaurant to the customer. Users can browse through digital menus, share their experiences through social media, and manage and pay for their orders from their smartphones. The app provides restaurant owners with an order management service, as well as billing, inventory management, and social media marketing support.

These different functions tie-in together to ease the burden of outlet management for restaurant owners. This application looks to cover ever conceivable restaurant use-case and optimize it through technology. One can manage billing, customers, stock, production, recipes, delivery, and analytics all from this one powerful app.

Nibblematrix

Nibblematrix helps restaurant owners take their business online through websites, applications, or both. The software allows owners and managers to make their menus and offers available and accessible for today's tech-savvy customers that are accustomed to digital interaction before purchases.

Nibblematrix providers owners with a comprehensive order management system, app support, inventory management, billing functionality, and CRM solutions. The company is gaining market share as a result of its initial customer's increased revenue following the deployment of its solutions. The application looks to bring efficient process deployed by national chains to small and medium sized businesses through technology.