Take Your Metrics on The-Go: Introducing ConnectSmart® Vision 

Powered by ConnectSmart® Kitchen and ConnectSmart®Host (Formerly DineTime), Vision – a mobile insights app – allows better visibility into restaurant performance with remote access to real-time data from both the front of house and back of house. Regardless of where a manager or restaurant owner is, they can oversee their restaurant performance on the-go. With ConnectSmart® Vision, management can harness this data at their fingertips to monitor performance, optimize operations and solve problems remotely.  

Metrics that operators can monitor and take action on include: daily checks, number of courses, open menu counts, number of active visits, and wait list counts like paged parties, seated parties and many other FOH and BOH metrics. 

ConnectSmart® Vision is extremely useful for both single site restaurants and multi-site chains. For single site managers and operators, ConnectSmart® Vision provides them the ability to be in more places at once. Being a restaurant owner or operator requires wearing multiple hats. ConnectSmart® Vision provides them the ability to do this – while keeping up with how the kitchen and FOH are running based on real-time restaurant data. 

For operations managers of multiple site concepts, ConnectSmart® Vision is a travel-friendly companion. Having this app on a mobile device allows for improved visibility across each restaurant operations, regardless of where the manager is. Not only can they see a quick snapshot of all sites at once, but they can drill down to individual sites to get a pulse of the operations.  

Let’s dig into some of the challenges where ConnectSmart® Vision can help operators.  

Challenge #1

Labor

MJ, the Director of Operations for a local multi-site chain, uses ConnectSmart® Vision to check each individual unit to see how their Sunday brunch is going. He notices that most sites are running smoothly, but for his east-end site, it’s storming outside. This makes sense to him, as that locations daily number of checks is super low and that is normally a busy site. This makes MJ think wonder if the team lead has adjusted staffing levels due to lower volume caused by weather. He shoots the team lead a text and sure enough, they’ve already cut two servers and shut down those sections on the floor. MJ is happy!  

Challenge #2

Kitchen

Gina, the manager of a small, local restaurant is off on a Friday night (finally!). She’s spending her evening relaxing with friends. Just because she is off for the night, though, doesn’t mean that she can’t keep tabs on her restaurant’s performance. Periodically, Gina grabs her iPhone and launches ConnectSmart® Vision. The scorecard on the home screen provides her with a high-level overview of data and metrics for both her front-of-house and back-of-house. She notices that the kitchen has 21% of items in rush status. This is alarming to her, as it means the kitchen is backed up. She knows the guest experience will suffer if things continue like this. 

She makes a call to the restaurant manager on duty (MOD) and decides she needs to drive in to help out. It’s not a big deal – she arrives, helps gets orders out the expo, checks in with her guest in the dining room – then heads back out to meet her friends. But without ConnectSmart® Vision, this may have been overlooked. 

Challenge #3

Wait List

On a normal Friday evening for a local pizza joint, Tatum, the manager of the restaurant, is off. She launches ConnectSmart® Vision on her phone and sees the waiting parties count is astronomically high for a Friday night. She texts her team lead at the restaurant to see what’s going on and learns that one of their hosts called in sick earlier in the day. Thanks to the metrics within the app, she was able to call in an extra hostess for the night and get those parties seated and served. 

Challenge #4

Operations

Julia is the manager for a local sushi restaurant. She’s off on a normal Tuesday evening, but decides to check in on how things are going up at the restaurant. Because she has ConnectSmart® Vision on her phone, she can get a peek into BOH and FOH performance from anywhere. She launches the app and realizes the open menu count (seated parties but have yet to order) is fairly high for a Tuesday evening. She calls into her floor manager and learns two things – first, a server called in sick that night and secondly, that because it’s a Tuesday evening and Tuesdays are typically slower dine-in days, they’re training a new waitress. Julia decides she needs to run in to help the servers get orders into the kitchen.  

Challenge #5

Staff

Terry, the owner of Terry’s Steak House, is out of town, but doesn’t stress about restaurant operations because he has ConnectSmart® Kitchen and ConnectSmart®Host’s mobile insights app ConnectSmart® Vision on his phone. It’s getting late in the evening and Terry wants to see how the night shift went, so he checks out the data dashboard. He notices something strange. The daily voided items count is oddly high. He remembers they just made some tweaks to their menu and wonders if that might be the problem. He decides to setup a meeting with the manager on duty (MOD) from that shift to troubleshoot why those daily voided items count was so high. Once he got back into town, Terry met with the manager and sure enough – they determined the wait staff needed more training on the new menu, as well as the POS.   

In closing, restaurant data is a gold mine for helping operators make smarter business decisions. Why not take those metrics on the-go and be prepared to take action from anywhere? With ConnectSmart® Vision – you can.  

Want to read more about how ConnectSmart® Vision can help save time, reduce errors and waste, and enhance the guest experience?

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About the Author

Amber Mullaney led all things marketing for QSR. A proud Texan native, she graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in Public Relations and spent her career in the healthcare industry before making the switch to QSR and beyond, saying she loves a good challenge. Amber has a long list of things she loves, including tacos (especially tacos), sweet tea, Texas, the outdoors, and traveling with her husband and two daughters.