The tech industry is always growing and evolving, and as we see more advancements in AI and more streamlining of tech platforms, dealing with these changes can feel overwhelming for a hospitality-business owner. Restaurants and bars need reliable tech stacks to keep their operations functioning in a seamless way. That’s why it’s essential for restaurateurs and managers to regularly audit their tech stacks and figure out where (and whether) they need to make adjustments.
We asked a group of restaurateurs and hospitality consultants to offer their best advice on how to evaluate your own tech stack, when it’s time to change your approach, and what you should prioritize when switching up your tech systems.
1. Start by Evaluating Your Current Tech Systems and Your Business’s Tech Needs
If you’re considering an upgrade (or even an overhaul) of your tech stack, you should start by thoroughly examining the systems that you currently have in place. “The first question is always ‘Where are we starting?’” said Emma Blecker, owner and founder of Make It Make Sense Consulting, where her hospitality clients have included Union Square Hospitality and the José Andrés Group.
When she reviews her clients’ tech systems, Blecker said that she always tries to find answers to a specific group of questions: “I want to understand what they have today, where they want to go, how quickly they want to get there, and what their non-negotiables are. Are there contractual requirements? Existing vendor commitments? Are there management agreements that require certain systems? What data absolutely has to be available?”
From there, Blecker advises clients to “start weighing the tradeoffs. Of course there's software cost, but there's also the cost of disruption.” She points out that “replacing a CRM might be relatively painless, [but] replacing a labor management system affects managers every single day. It can mean new hardware, new processes, new apps, new logins and retraining an entire operation. That's a very real cost that often gets overlooked.”
For a more pared-down approach to these audits, try this strategy used by Marylise Trepanier, a hospitality consultant with Back of House, a platform designed to help restaurateurs sort through their technology options and choose the best solutions for their business: “The most important step is understanding your operational processes before purchasing technology. Ask yourself: what problem am I trying to solve? How will my team actually use this tool? What information needs to move between systems?”
Trepanier also encourages everyone to look at “time saved versus time spent. Every piece of technology should create measurable value for the business.”
2. Determine Whether It Makes More Sense To Consolidate Your Tech Stack into One Platform or To Diversify
Today’s tech market for restaurants offers a number of one-size-fits-all systems that consolidate all tech-related aspects of the business—from POS to payroll to inventory and beyond—into one centralized platform. But whether that makes sense for your business depends on your goals and your existing tech stack.
“A lot of software companies are trying to become the one platform that does everything. Sometimes that's the right answer, [and] sometimes it absolutely isn't,” Blecker said. She added that “for some businesses, having everything in one ecosystem makes life much simpler and supports the way they work. For others, they have operational complexity that requires a specialized tool.”
Blecker provided a few clear examples of trickier technological functions: “Payroll and tip management. Some restaurants have incredibly complex pay practices across many jurisdictions that an all-in-one platform simply can't handle well. When that happens, I'd much rather recommend multiple tools that support the business than force everything into one platform just for the sake of consolidation.”
Nick Salis, COO of Catalogue—a hospitality platform behind over a dozen restaurant concepts in the Washington, D.C. area—agreed that single-platform systems can’t always provide the nuance and multilayered solutions that restaurants need. “One big system sounds convenient, but in reality, all-in-one software often lacks depth in the features your team actually needs," he said. "For example, a great POS system may include a scheduling component, but it might not be user-friendly for managers or staff to easily swap shifts or communicate through broadcast messages."
He also said that “we've found that the best approach is to select the systems that do each job best and ensure they work well together.”
Lastly, Blecker recommended against “replacing an entire tech stack at once. I've honestly never seen that go well outside of opening a brand new concept from scratch.” Instead, she suggests a “thoughtful, phased evolution, not a complete overhaul.”
3. Complexity Should Increase as Responsibility Increases
Blecker said that, when she advises clients considering a tech stack overhaul, “there are a couple of lenses I use when I'm thinking about this, [and] one is what I refer to as staying ‘tech stack neutral’. Every new tool you bring in should replace at least one existing tool (ideally more),” she said.
These changes may feel minor, but Blecker insists that their impact can still be keenly felt. “Even if that ‘tool’ [being replaced] is three spreadsheets that somebody manually updates every week, that still counts. The goal isn't to keep adding software. It's to simplify the way the business runs,” she explained.
But a bigger goal for any hospitality business should involve a close examination of who needs to interact with these systems and how much of their labor should be dedicated to tech navigation. “I think about it almost like an inverted pyramid. At the bottom are your frontline employees; they're the people who should have the fewest systems to think about,” Blecker said.
She points out that front-of-house and back-of-house employees “need to clock in, take orders, maybe look at their schedule or pay stubs, or complete a task. That's it. Ideally they're living in one to four tools, depending on the operation.”
For management, tech-related tasks can be more complicated. “As you move up the organization, managers naturally need more. They're counting inventory, approving payroll, editing menus, reviewing reports,” Blecker said.
On the next level of the “pyramid,” Blecker said that “regional leaders need even more visibility across multiple restaurants.”
Finally, “corporate teams have specialized platforms for accounting, marketing, HR, design, analytics, and everything else that keeps the business running.”
Blecker believes that “the complexity should increase as responsibility increases, not the other way around. If your hourly employees are bouncing between eight different apps every day, that's usually a sign something isn't working.”
4. Use Your POS System as the Centerpoint of Your Tech Stack
If you’re not sure where to begin in terms of auditing your tech stack, our experts recommend using the POS system as your jumping-off point and as the focus of your rebuild. “I almost always begin by evaluating the POS system because it's the heart of the operation," Trepanier said. "It holds the business's most valuable operational data and every other technology decision tends to build around it. If the POS can't support integrations or future growth, it quickly becomes a limitation."
Trepanier suggested approaching the POS evaluation from a future-leaning position. “Think about where you want your business to be in three, five or even 10 years. Will your POS allow you to add online ordering, loyalty, inventory management, AI tools, accounting integrations, or additional locations without having to start over?”
Once you’ve determined what you need from your POS and have decided on a POS system that works best for your business, Trepanier urged to “identify the biggest operational challenges you're facing and add technology where it delivers a clear return on investment. For most operators, inventory management is one of the first investments worth making because controlling food costs has such a direct impact on profitability.”
Ultimately, Trepanier reminded that “when you're running a restaurant, your place is with your guests, not tied up in administrative tasks. Invest in technology that streamlines your operations, boosts productivity, and empowers your team to deliver an exceptional guest experience.”
5. Consider Your Future Goals
One of the biggest aspects of “future-proofing” your restaurant or bar’s tech systems calls for some future predictions. “Know where you want to take the business before you start buying software. The decisions you make today should support where you want to be five years from now, not just solve today's problem,” Blecker said.
By looking ahead, you can create a tech stack that works for your current business footprint while also opening the door for expansion. “If your goal is to own one great neighborhood restaurant forever, you'll make very different technology decisions than someone planning to franchise, grow to 20 locations, or manage restaurants on behalf of hotels,” Blecker added.
Blecker finishes her build-for-the-future recommendation with the following: “The technology itself isn't really the strategy. It's there to support the strategy. The clearer you are about where you're headed, the easier it becomes to choose the right tools along the way.”
6. Design the Tech Platforms Themselves
While it’s very possible to create an effective tech stack using platforms that already exist, some digitally-savvy restaurateurs prefer a more personalized approach. Kevin Pedeaux, owner and operator of CR Coffee Shop and St. Roch Market in New Orleans, made the choice to develop his own platform for scheduling and inventory at his NOLA businesses. The result is CoreRail, which Pedeaux developed so effectively for his own properties that he decided to market it as a platform for other hospitality businesses.
“We use Square for our POS system at the Market and at CR. It's a powerful platform that really does a lot, but it doesn't do everything [For] some things it does, it's clunky because it really wasn't built for that,” Pedeaux explained. “I started by building custom dashboards for my various employees to access things they needed to see. Then I built my own inventory applications that make it easy for employees to enter inventory counts and have it all be cross-checked automatically with the sales from Square's API."
That led him to phase out the third-party scheduling platform he’d been using and add a scheduling mechanism to his dashboard.
From there, Pedeaux discovered that “I could build customer-facing websites that automate many tasks. They can tie into all of the operations applications of the managers and baristas and everyone can see exactly what they need at all times.”
If you’re thinking about building a platform for your business, Pedeaux began his advice with “be ready to learn some stuff. AI will always try to take the short cuts and the easy way, and it will do what you prompt. So if you don't know what you're asking, it will do what you asked, but you didn't really know what to ask.” That’s why he urged to use “caution and baby steps until you can read the code and know [that] what it's doing is prudent.”
Catalogue's Salis offered some final suggestions to any restaurant and bar owners hoping to update their tech stacks: “Start simple. Pick fewer tools and learn how to use them to their fullest before buying more software. Most restaurants end up using only a fraction of their systems' capabilities while cluttering their daily operations with unnecessary platforms. Get really good at your essentials first: your point-of-sale system, scheduling, and basic inventory management. Maximize those capabilities before adding anything else. You can always add new tools later as your operation grows and your team is ready for them.”