Enforcing brand standards: a key issue for the restaurant industry

In commercial or collective food services, the reputation of the brand is based on the quality and uniqueness of its products and services. Monitoring its practices is therefore essential to guarantee the expected customer experience. According to The Restaurant Times, "The taste and quality of the food is what keeps customers loyal to a restaurant. A 'customer's favorite restaurant' ensures that quality standards are maintained from the kitchen to the tables, followed by the restaurant's staff. "¹ Already used to ensure food safety, self-check is now also being used to ensure global monitoring of brand standards. It allows to obtain continuous operational data in an inexpensive way, which is the only way to guarantee that all sites comply with standards on a daily basis, whether they are marketing, operational, hygiene, CSR...

What areas are perceived as the most critical?

1. Food Safety and Hygiene: The Top Priority
   The leaders in the restaurant industry have understood this for many years: a restaurant's Revenue is less when it has a poor score in food safety and hygiene. Compliance with local and international food safety regulations is therefore fundamental to protecting your customers and your business' revenue.
2. Quality, a sign of trust
   Your customers expect your products to be of consistent quality. Monitoring the quality of ingredients, preparations and packaging is essential to meeting their expectations. Rigorous quality controls will ensure that your products meet your brand's predefined standards.
3. Consistency: a must
   ‍Consistency in products and services is crucial to building customer loyalty. All aspects of your offering, such as taste, presentation, portion sizes and serving temperatures, must be consistent with your brand standards across all locations.
4. Customer Experience: At the heart of success
   ‍Atmosphere, staff behavior, speed of service and cleanliness all contribute to your customers' overall experience. Regularly evaluating and improving these aspects ensures high customer satisfaction.
5. Train to better serve
   ‍Regular training and evaluation of your staff is essential to ensure they know and follow your brand standards, operating procedures and customer service expectations.
6. Marketing and Branding: The Storefront
   ‍Marketing materials, signage, and promotional activities should be consistent with your brand's image and message. A consistent brand image builds customer confidence and supports your business growth.
7. CSR: Demonstrating Commitment
   ‍Environmental and sustainable practices, such as waste reduction, energy efficiency and responsible ingredient sourcing, are increasingly important to consumers. Engaging in sustainable practices to preserve the environment helps attract an eco-conscious customer base.

Beyond these areas, there are a multitude of other areas that are just as important and varied depending on the company, its sector, its activity, its context, its challenges, etc. For example, the areas of human resources, maintenance and site security are also concerned by the digitalization of procedures.

Let's take the example of the self-check "Equipment Maintenance Declaration". By digitizing this procedure, the maintenance requests on site are traced until the problem is solved, thus improving the management of the equipment and its maintenance, or even anticipating a failure.

Another example could be the "Kitchen Knife Register" for airport catering activities. Digitizing this register ensures that no knife is missing (or that there are not too many), thus guaranteeing site security and compliance with regulations.

The risks of traditional approaches

The traditional methods of self-check and monitoring standards in the food industry present several major challenges and risks that can affect compliance, quality and profitability of companies. Here is a summary of the main issues:

Insufficient centralization and coordination

The lack of centralization of self-checks leads to coordination and communication difficulties between different areas of the company, impacting compliance, strategy and decision making.

Inefficiency and errors related to paper processes

Reliance on paper documents makes the process slow, inefficient and vulnerable to human error, making it difficult to update and share data, and hindering the company's responsiveness to compliance and quality issues.

Limited resources and insufficient investment

Lack of resources and investment in training, equipment and monitoring technologies can lead to a decline in product quality, affecting brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

Financial, reputational and competitive risks

Non-compliance to standards and regulations, ineffective controls and manual data management can lead to additional costs, fines, product recalls, reputational damage and loss of competitiveness in the marketplace.

The challenges of overcoming the risks associated with traditional approaches to self-checks

In an ever-changing industry, the food and beverage industry faces many challenges to ensure a successful future and consumer confidence. Addressing the risks associated with traditional approaches to monitoring brand standards represents a major opportunity for companies in the sector. By overcoming these challenges, they can build customer confidence and position themselves favorably in the marketplace.

1. Challenge of real-time piloting

Companies face the challenge of harmonizing processes and centralizing data collection from self-checks. This will enable them to provide real-time analysis and steering, improve synergy and efficiency, and reduce the risk of non-compliance regulations.

2. Challenge of effective and reliable controls

Organizations face the challenge of improving the efficiency and reliability of their controls while minimizing human error and standardization issues. To achieve this, they must rethink their traditional methods and adopt more modern, automated processes.

3. The challenge of optimizing resources and competitiveness

Finally, companies must find ways to optimize the use of their resources and increase their competitiveness in the marketplace. This means investing in training, equipment and monitoring technologies, while reducing the costs associated with manual data management and improving their agility in the face of market changes.

Global digitalization: self-checks and data science to secure all key areas of the company

Faced with the challenges mentioned above, the implementation of efficient digital tools is the most developed solution at the moment. The digitization of self-checks on all key areas of the company allows to centralize, automate and optimize the control processes, while reducing errors and associated costs. Today, thanks to data science and advanced algorithms that process all the data from a company's sites, whether in its country of origin or worldwide, it is already possible to identify sites at risk.

This digitalization is not only possible, but is already in place at many of the industry's leading brands. This approach improves compliance, efficiency and competitiveness, while enhancing customer satisfaction and brand reputation. By investing in the digitization of control processes across all key areas, companies can better protect their brand and ensure their long-term success. Contact one of our experts to learn more.

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(1) https://www.posist.com/restaurant-times/restro-gyaan/choose-a-restaurant-brand-over-another.html