Owners and managers of restaurant chains, especially franchises, face many challenges including monitoring the many branches. This is time consuming and requires much travel. Furthermore, ensuring productivity of staff is in line with the establishment’s standards, which impacts service and customer satisfaction is difficult as it is impossible to be in more than one place at the same time.
Another challenge is the ever-present issue of petty theft in the form of shrinkage, where stock such as food and drink seems to disappear. Monitoring multiple establishments as well as the different areas of a restaurant to ensure staff are doing their jobs and that they are not committing theft or consuming stock, requires many pairs of eyes on site
The presence of the owner and the manager is often a deterrent to this behaviour. However, it is simply not possible to watch all areas at all times even when on the premises and be present at various outlets all the time.
For example, customer service is critical to any restaurant, as the bulk of the brand’s reputation relies on the staff’s ability to serve customers well. These core functions, if not monitored, can negatively impact the business and result in customer erosion.
Another factor affecting the restaurant industry is shrinkage. Food and drink items are often difficult to monitor and if stock is not well controlled, profits could be walking out of the door.
It is extremely difficult to constantly monitor whether staff are actually working, attending to customers promptly and delivering efficient service. It is also a challenge to monitor theft of stock. Having the owner or the manager on site can help to deter this behaviour, but it may not be possible to watch all your staff all the time.
However, CCTV solutions have typically been used as part of security, but also have applications beyond this that can cater to the restaurant industry. By incorporating remote monitoring into a CCTV solution, restaurant and franchise owners or managers can view multiple areas of the restaurant at once, providing them with an almost 360 degree view of the restaurant, even when they are not physically present.
They can also view multiple restaurants or outlets simultaneously. This assists to not only monitor and address undesirable behaviour, but also creates a change in employee behaviour that improves productivity and profits.
While many restaurants use CCTV to monitor specific areas such as entrances, kitchens and fridges, they can also be easily used to monitor people. However, many CCTV solutions can only be viewed on site, which negates this benefit.
In the past, remote monitoring was possible, however, the available solutions used extreme amounts of bandwidth to stream the footage, resulting in poor quality video and high data costs. In order to leverage the benefits of surveillance, it is necessary to utilise an advanced, bandwidth-friendly solution that enables owners and managers to view feeds from multiple cameras on premise from mobile devices including laptops and smartphones.
These solutions can even be linked into other security solutions such as alarms, alerting owners when an alarm is triggered, further ensuring prompt action can be taken.
Using CCTV remote monitoring that is able to stream footage at low bandwidth levels allows restaurant and franchise owners to monitor multiple areas of their premises or multiple franchise outlets as well as their staff with any mobile device, including laptops, tablets and smartphones.
These solutions stream real-time video and deliver sufficient quality for clear viewing even in low bandwidth areas, while the full resolution footage can be accessed at any time should this be necessary.
Utilising CCTV not only as a security tool, but also for performance management, can have multiple benefits. The ability to view CCTV surveillance at any time creates a ‘big brother’ effect.
For example, if staff know they are being watched at all times, or may possibly be watched at any time even if the owner or manager is not on the premises, the likelihood to steal, provide poor service and not adhere to health and safety requirements is less likely to occur. Furthermore, problem employees can quickly be identified and dealt with.
By harnessing CCTV solutions with remote monitoring, it is possible to have ‘eyes on the ground’ in multiple locations and view these at any given time. Owners and managers can easily ‘check in’ whenever they need to, without the need to always be on site, further monitoring and controlling every aspect of the restaurant, including the comings and goings of staff and the service levels they deliver.
