Ah, the ubiquitous iPhone. Whether they’re used by a guest or by your staff, there’s no denying that smartphones are a double-edged kitchen knife for the restaurant industry. On one hand, they serve as an astounding marketing device with an unrivaled ability to capture and share the excitement and energy of a moment in your restaurants.
On the other hand, there’s something incredibly maddening about being surrounded by people using their smartphones during a meal. And, if your staff is using their smartphone in front of customers…well, that’s just a complete turn-off.
Now, the industry is turning its attention to a powerful new technology device: the Apple Watch. Although the watch is wearable technology, and although the wearable technology market hasn’t quite delivered upon previous expectations of revenues, mass-market acceptance has long been expected by most industry experts.
In fact, the analysts at Visiongain have assessed that the value of the global wearable-technology market will reach over $16 billion in 2015. Most expect the Apple Watch to be the big winner in this market with an estimated 22.6 million units to be sold this year.
How does the Apple Watch help the restaurant industry?
Experts agree that the best Apple Watch apps are those that are used as a complement to their deeper, more feature-rich iPhone mobile apps. The greatest Watch apps are those that are glanceable and deliver quick nuggets of information that alert or notify the user of an important event.
Here are five great reasons why the Apple Watch can be a big success in your restaurants:
- Monitor KPIs. Track sales metrics, food and labor costs, guest counts and more. The metrics you can monitor with your back office-powered iPhone app can also be delivered via the watch—and in a glanceable format, too.
- Forecast variance. Quickly understand how your restaurants are performing against forecasts.
- Task alerts and notifications. Get gently notified when it’s time to receive and count inventory, when an employee has a break violation, when it’s time clean restrooms and so on.
- Stay in front of guests. With a wearable device such as the Apple Watch, there’s less reliance on going to the back office for information gathering on a desktop PC.
- Change Culture. Get your staff to stop looking at their phones. The watch is discreet and less disruptive to your patrons.
Even if your restaurant chain doesn’t already offer free Wi-Fi (gasp!) and hasn’t catered to guests using their smartphones before, during, and after a meal, you can still get excited about the Apple Watch (even an Android watch, too) in your restaurants. Tethered to an iPhone that’s been safely tucked away into a manager’s back pocket, the Watch is one wearable technology that promises to be an incredible mobile productivity tool for the restaurant industry.
For more information about apps for mobile and wearable devices for your restaurants, please reach out to CrunchTime.
This post is sponsored by CrunchTime! Information Systems