Restaurant operators have a number of things to look forward to in 2021: vaccine distribution offers hope for a decrease in COVID cases and dine-in to reopen fully; restaurants are projected to see an 11% increase in sales this year; and ServiceChannel’s 2021 Facilities Benchmark Report shows there’s room for operators to develop their cost-cutting strategies in the months ahead.
Solving the service puzzle
Reducing restaurant costs always requires a balance between keeping costs (of food, labor and more) low and keeping quality high—and service providers are no exception to this challenge.
The process of selecting an affordable service provider—including landscapers, electricians, plumber, etc.—involves more than merely comparing hourly rates. In fact, labor time is five times (5X) more predictive of total costs than labor rate is. A provider who must return again and again to fix continuing issues is, in the end, more expensive than a high-quality provider that does the job right the first time. This is further supported when we look at ServiceChannel platform data on plumbers, illustrated in the graph below.
Invoice vs Labor Rate for Plumbers with Over $250K in Work Orders
Minimizing dollars spent to avoidable technical issues is a must for restaurateurs looking to keep their net income high, especially during the pandemic. Budgets are tighter than ever due to dining room closures and shutdowns across cities, and minimizing equipment downtime is even more crucial as restaurateurs continue to accommodate operating between dine-ins, takeouts, and delivery.
Solutions that simplify
Factoring in all the metrics—like efficiency, punctuality and quality of work—to find excellent, trustworthy service providers is often time-consuming for a restaurant’s already-busy leadership.
That’s where ServiceChannel comes in. As the No. 1 facilities-management platform, ServiceChannel offers a network of 70,000 providers and more than four billion performance data points on which providers are doing relevant work(trades) in your industry, how much they charge, and what their metrics are. Prime examples of metrics include first-time completion rates, measure of compliance, on-time arrival, and average invoices.
ServiceChannel helps with each step of the process: Scout service, a new software launching this month through provider search, tells operators how good their network of providers actually is compared to ServiceChannel’s network of 70k+. Then, its experts offer recommendations for the best-fit provider for each restaurant’s needs and enable continuous monitoring to ensure onboarded providers maintain their high standard of performance.
In short, ServiceChannel takes the guesswork out of finding the best service providers in the market. To learn more, visit their website and sign up for a free provider network assessment.
This post is sponsored by ServiceChannel