Working In Hospitality: Harnessing The Efficiency Of Tech

This article was written by Tom Saxon. Tom is the co-founder of Batch Coffee. He has been working in the speciality coffee industry for over 10 years throughout the world and in many parts of the supply chain.

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I personally love working in the hospitality industry and can’t encourage people enough to consider a career. The workforce is typically young and energetic which coupled with constantly making customers happy is why working in hospitality is a fulfilling and rewarding career. 

Working In Hospitality – The Coffee Shop Industry

My day does start early as you’d expect in the coffee industry. The 6 am alarm is always met shortly afterwards with a delicious coffee though – one of the many perks of working with speciality coffee beans.

Opening up the roastery and cafe takes about 30 minutes. It involves dialling in coffee machines and preparing for customers. As they arrive each one is met with a small conversation – especially the regulars whom I would now class as friends. 

The morning rush comes and goes quickly and I always feel pumped afterwards. The coffee industry is great as people are so thankful for their morning coffee and especially customers who dine in, their energy after they are fully caffeinated is contagious.

My responsibilities; first and foremost customer service. It’s so important that our customers leave happy and hopefully in a better mood than when they entered. Making coffee and ensuring the place is clean and tidy, stock control and various small jobs like checking the toilets every hour or so make up the rest of the day. 

The days are quick and finishing at 4 pm means that I still have an evening to do whatever I’d like. 

How Tech Makes Working In Hospitality Easier 

Working in a busy coffee shop can be occasionally stressful, especially behind the coffee machine where there is a finite number of coffees one can make per minute contrary to the odd customer’s opinion. 

Add to this the fact that you are customer-facing, so while the orders stack up and you’re frantically trying to pull 18 shots of espresso and split a litre of steamed milk into 6 different milk-based espresso drinks you have to keep a smile on your face and appear unphased. 

1. Ordering App

A really useful tool that has helped many baristas all over the world is an app where coffee can be ordered before a customer arrives in the coffee shop. 

This means that the transaction takes place on the customer’s phone so there is no waiting in line and there is no time wasted serving the customer. This completely streamlines the process of ordering the coffee for the customer and the barista can immediately add the order to the queue.

2. Customer Loyalty App

Another useful app that we use that involves the customer’s experience is a loyalty app. Stamp cards are now becoming a thing of the past, although they do work as a physical representation of how many coffees you have left before you receive a free one, the practicality of them from a barista’s point of view is a bit wasteful. 

Today when customers place an order through their app they receive an e-stamp that can be visualised as a loyalty card on their phone. If the customer orders in the coffee shop they are able to scan a QR code that appears after the purchase on a screen facing outwards from the register which again adds another e-stamp to their virtual loyalty card. 

This again streamlines a process that in reality saves only a matter of seconds per customer, but when looked at on a larger scale saves not only hours of staff time but crucially frees up a staff member during peak hours so the wait time is reduced which keeps current customers happy and entices new customers into the cafe. 

3. Staff Scheduling App

Technology is now used in all areas of hospitality and one of the most efficient pieces of technology from a manager’s point of view is a roster application. 

Back in the day, weekly rosters would be stuck to the wall in the form of a piece of A4 paper with an excel style table where employees could read their shifts and see when their colleagues were also working. 

Albeit a physical representation, it was also messy as by the end of the first day the roster was published it had already been annotated with shift swaps. 

Today, all of the shift organisation is completed via an app where managers can publish weekly rosters months in advance if they wish. 

Colleagues can liaise directly through the app and request shift swaps with the authorisation of a manager needed and the new roster is then automatically updated. Staff can add holidays up to a year in advance so when the manager sits down to plan the roster they know exactly who is available for the forthcoming week. 

The app usually has a singing-in system too, so gone are the days of more A4 prints on the wall or punch cards. Just tap start and finish at either end of the shift on the app which then records each staff member’s weekly hours.