Apps are taking over the world, no matter what industry or location. The hospitality industry is no exception, and whether you’re a hotel owner, café manager, barista, wait staff member or patron, there is an app out there that makes your life easier. Here are a few apps that are examples of innovation in the hospitality industry.
Chef’s Journal
Fancy yourself as a published chef? Create recipes and include photo and voice memos to bring them to life. Share the finished product with friends, family, and fans you’re bound to accumulate along your culinary career. This app also has a handy shopping list creator for ingredients.
OneTab
This app is the future of bar tabs. OneTab allows patrons to set up a tab, track its progress, and pay it off at the end of the night seamlessly. It doesn’t get much easier than that, for both vendors and patrons!
Restaurant Menu Pro
Menus can be expensive to print, especially when there are regular changes being made. This app allows restaurateurs to replace their paper menus with digital menus.
BaristaKit PRO
This app acts as an information and management program for cafes and baristas. Not only can it monitor and analyse daily totals as well as the amount of coffee beans that are being used, but it can also act as a useful tool for baristas with built in timers, a ristretto function, purge warning, and alarms. Perfect for that super busy café!
ShiftPlanning
Staffing roster nightmares are a thing of the past. This app allows managers and staff to set and access their rosters so everybody knows where and when they need to work.
Kashoo
Accounting is one of the things that seems to retract from a hospitality business. With this app, however, it’s simplified. You can keep your books, view them from anywhere, and even share them with your accountant. Reporting is super easy, so any hospitality business now has access to powerful business reporting.
Acclaim POS
Gone are the days of expensive and bulky tills. All you need now is an iPad. This point of sale system is wireless and mobile, and offers a complete solution from small cafes to large restaurants.
FoodOps Restaurant Management
This comprehensive app allows restaurant managers to better manage multiple locations and can provide insights and management of financials, operations, customer promotions, and even labour schedules.
Performance Appraisals
This useful application allows managers and supervisors to conduct and manage staff performance reviews. It focuses on constant feedback and employees can even set up and manage their own goals.
MindMeister
When planning a new venue, brainstorming a new menu, or simply involving employees in running of the restaurant, this app provides seamless collaboration for mind mapping and presents it visually.
CanGrade
Hiring in the hospitality industry can be extremely difficult as it seems harder and harder to separate the good staff from the outstanding. This app is a full service hiring platform, allowing you to identify suitable candidates, test their skills, and eventually hire them if they are a good fit for the business.
Memonic
Collaborate with your managers, whether it be venue expansion or menu or recipe changes. This app allows you to take notes seamlessly and share them.
Restaurant Order Tracking
This app allows orders to be taken on a mobile device and instantly relayed to the kitchen, reducing the time taken to serve customers, and improving the accuracy of orders and bills. It can integrate with existing restaurant software systems.
Yelp
The Yelp app allows patrons to browse and write reviews about the hospitality establishments that they have or want to visit. It provides a way for customers to determine where they should visit next, and provides business owners with a way to advertise and increase their reach and appeal. A true example of the democratisation of the hospitality industry.
LoungeUp
The LoungeUp app provides a way for hotels to engage with their guests during and after their stays via their mobile devices. For guests, it provides an opportunity to gain local specific information, hotel specific information, and even book tables within their hotels. LoungeUp acts as a guest portal. The digital age has arrived inside hotels.
Conrad Concierge
The Conrad Concierge app allows guests of the Hilton Hotel chain the opportunity to experience personalised service through their mobile device. From reserving a room to specifying preferences during your stay, this app aims to deliver a personal experience and introduce an element of luxury to a stay.
ShiftNote
Another application designed to solve the age old problem of staff rosters, ShiftNote allows managers to create staff schedules and allows staff to view their rosters. Perfect for the hospitality industry where shifts can often become complex to manage, and communication is key to keep the team running.
Innovations in the digital space are starting to see some useful apps being released for the hospitality industry. These apps and further developments are no doubt contributing to the greater ease and efficiency with which hospitality businesses can operate, and this can only be good for patrons too!
About the author
Michael Nguyen is the Founder of Texo Design and has been in the software development industry for nearly 20 years. Michael’s principle is about delivering on what he promises, on time and on budget.
What apps do you use at work? Share with us in the Comments section below!
