Outsourcing in Action: Unlocking Restaurant Success

Whether you’re running a quick service restaurant, a full service restaurant, or a fast casual restaurant, maintaining high standards across multiple locations is essential to ensure your business thrives. But managing the increasing complexity of a growing fleet of assets like refrigeration, HVAC, and kitchen equipment can make it difficult to maintain consistency, quality, and a positive diner experience.

The challenges you’ll likely face are:

• Asset downtime due to equipment failure or facilities issues affecting revenue generating assets. That could lead to potential loss of food product, repairs and fixes outside of the budget, needing emergency service during restaurant hours, or dealing with slow response times for urgent repairs.
• Inconsistent and/or negative guest experience across multiple locations. This can be due to the inability to stick to brands standards of service, food quality, or environment, which will ultimately lead to a loss of business.
• Maintaining high standards of cleanliness to comply with health standards. Your restaurant’s health rating can have an enormous impact on revenue, not to mention serious health issue concerns if food is not stored or prepared properly.

That’s why restaurants of all types are more commonly looking to modern outsourcing partnerships—or outsourcing 2.0— as a solution to streamline operations, improve guest experience, and control costs.

How Restaurants Are Harnessing Outsourcing

Restaurants have to juggle competing demands, which creates operational challenges. That’s where outsourcing comes in. Here are five key areas where restaurants are leveraging outsourcing partnerships:

1. Accounting and financial services

As integral parts of any restaurant business, it’s essential that bookkeeping, payroll, and tax preparation are done correctly and in line with regulatory compliance. Outsourcing to experts provides accurate accounting and peace of mind.

2. IT and technology support

Point-of-sale (POS) systems are the lifeblood of restaurants, so it’s essential that this critical piece of technology, along with other parts of the tech system, are up and running and working correctly. Systems also house sensitive personal information, so cybersecurity is another important requirement outsourcing partners can ensure.

3. Staffing and recruitment

There are many specialized employees needed to keep a restaurant running smoothly, from qualified chefs to efficient servers and savvy managers. Hiring can be a large, ongoing commitment, especially when bolstering staff numbers for seasonal peaks.

4. Supply chain management

Outsourcing inventory management, procurement, and distribution allows restaurants to keep a steady flow of high-quality ingredients without having to handle all the logistics.

5. Repair and maintenance services

Restaurants’ need for timely and highly-skilled repair and maintenance services is critical. An outsourcing partnership supports the upkeep of well-maintained assets for peak performance and minimal downtime. There are several areas they focus on specifically:

• HVAC: Ensuring the comfort of diners is key to maintaining a positive guest experience, a properly maintained HVAC keeps restaurants’ environment pleasant and consistent.
• Refrigeration: Maintenance of refrigeration systems is essential for food safety, preventing spoilage, and even compliance issues.
• Plumbing: If dishwashers are down, so is the restaurant. Plumbing failures can disrupt service and affect health requirements.
• Kitchen equipment: From grills to fryers and ovens, regular maintenance reduces breakdowns and ensures restaurants can optimize cooking efficiency to meet guest demand.
• Electrical and lighting: Electrical keeps the delicate ecosystem of a restaurant up and running, from POS systems to lighting to asset power. Maintenance is essential for uninterrupted service.

Repair and Maintenance Outsourcing Helps Control and Reduce Operating Expenses

Restaurants face ongoing pressure to deliver world-class dining experiences while controlling costs and minimizing operational disruptions. As such, repair and maintenance outsourcing is no longer a nice-to-have, but a strategic necessity for growing restaurant brands.

1. Expand without operational disruptions

Cutting the ribbon on new locations is exciting, but trying to build a new roster of service providers and asset maintenance schedules can take the focus away from your existing restaurants. Scale with a reliable network of service providers, everywhere you are, to ensure consistent, high-quality maintenance.

2. Lower costs and increase profit margins

It’s a business problem when assets break down, especially if they’re revenue-generating like stoves or POS systems. Getting the emergency service you need can get expensive fast. Data-driven maintenance reduces expensive emergency repairs and optimizes asset longevity to control costs and improve margins across locations.

3. Maximize asset uptime

Instead of being one step behind breakdowns that affect your ability to serve your guests, keep your assets at peak performance with preventive servicing. Proactive maintenance ensures that key equipment like refrigeration and kitchen assets are always operational, maximizing uptime and minimizing service interruptions.

4. Enhance the guest experience

People don’t dine out for the food alone—the ambiance and environment can have just as big an impact on the diner experience as the meal. Well-maintained facilities and dining rooms lead to better guest experiences, driving repeat business and boosting overall revenue.

Leveraging Repair and Maintenance Outsourcing 2.0 

Outsourcing 2.0 is a modern approach to outsourcing that integrates advanced technology, expert trade knowledge, and exceptional service provider management to optimize repair and maintenance for restaurants. Modern outsourcing partners take a holistic approach to facilities management, helping restaurants save time, reduce costs, and increase efficiency even as you grow your number of locations.

1. Flexibility and customization 

Choose when, where, and how you work with your outsourcing partner depending on your needs. Whether you need part-time or full-time facilities help, only a few trades outsourced or all of them, or any other requirement as your business evolves, a modern outsourcing partner can offer customized support.  

2. Optimized service provider networks

Don’t risk disruptions to service by relying on often biased reviews to choose your service providers, especially as you grow your footprint. Streamline service provider sourcing and management with pre-vetted, top-performing service providers across trades and assets for robust, preventive maintenance and efficient repairs.

3. Transparent and optimized workflows

With a central source of truth for equipment and service provider performance insights, automated maintenance scheduling, and other transparent operational workflows, outsourcing 2.0 leverages a cloud-based software platform that offers you visibility over everything happening across multiple locations.

Streamline Operations and Improve Guest Satisfaction

Outsourcing 2.0 makes it easier for restaurants to tackle the everyday challenges of complex facilities management. By partnering with an outsourcing partner that can manage key areas of repair and maintenance, you can ensure smooth, consistent service across all locations. With less time spent on putting out fires (sometimes literally!), you can focus on delivering the best possible guest experience for diners.