Can Christmas party stress be avoided?

Christmas is just a few days away and for many restaurants and bars the pressure to seat Christmas party after party has been intense. Customers looking to celebrate the holiday season are intent on enjoying their evenings and for that to happen, they expect every element of the evening to flow smoothly, without fault. That includes their orders being known in advance and placed on their tables, in the right place, without delay and without fuss.

WorldPay predicted that this year, as much as £100 million would be spent on company cards in the run-up to Christmas. That would be a rise of 40% compared to the past average. It’s hard for customers to appreciate the sheer volume of admin and effort going on behind the scenes to make that £100 million, money well spent.

Say an office group of 30 books for the 19th December. In order to take their booking there will be an initial booking call, numbers must be confirmed and a deposit paid. Next menus need to be agreed (potentially from a choice of price bands) and they have to be sent to the office for circulation among the team. That menu will be emailed back as a long list with orders plus food intolerances listed. That list then needs to be transcribed to a spreadsheet for the kitchen and serving team. Then, inevitably, there will be two or three calls phoning to amend numbers or orders.  On the day the meal must be served without a hitch and then pay collected from the happy, yet drunken, group. Finally that money needs to be matched against orders in the till.

It’s a long – tiring- operation and it’s so easy for mistakes to be made at any stage. Anyone that has worked with spreadsheets knows how easy it is to put an x alongside the wrong box when faced with square after square in a table. What’s more, these actions are being repeated multiple times throughout the season and numerous times each day.

With the stress of the season, any restaurant or bar worker might be forgiven for diving under their duvet and hiding until every Christmas party has finished and New Year has rolled around. What they may not know yet is that a huge amount of this stress can be removed simply by using an automated pre-ordering app to manage the process.

Here’s a much shortened scenario to mull over:

• A group books its table and downloads the venue’s ordering app.
• The app contains all of the menus and prices. In a few, quick clicks, they enter the orders themselves, making note, again, of any allergies or unique requests.
• The app facilitates payment and syncs with the venue’s EPoS to reconcile the order.
• The order is automatically in the system and can be printed out for use.

Done.

Should the venue need to communicate with the booked group, it can use push notifications, thereby negating the need to place telephone calls. Similarly, if there are changes to the booking, the group can amend details within the app so that the information is automatically collected at the other end.

It’s such a simple change and yet the time and energy using an ordering app saves, might be amongst the best Christmas party presents a restaurant / bar owner could ever get their staff.

If you’re interested in Preoday’s stress-saving Christmas solution, get in touch now.