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YooHoo
Digitalises Your Front Of House

Digitalisation of orders and reservations has already changed the world of service. Sitting alongside your current systems, YooHoo has taken the next giant leap by digitalising your service team’s workflow. This digitalisation prevents mistakes, makes efficiencies and reduces staff stress.

How Does YooHoo Work?

This video will give you an overview of what YooHoo is and how it will make your restaurant better for your staff, your customers and more importantly for you!! Before we go any further lets take a second to question a couple of basics…

Why do you need YooHoo?

Service Consistency

Hopefully we can all agree that consistency is integral to restaurant success. The real question here though is how you know if you are getting this. A good answer might be to rely on reviews or proactively ask for feedback, but only by digitalising your workflows can you really know and analyse what is going on across your whole restaurant/estate at all times.

Hospitality relies on many humans making many decisions and no matter how good your staff are, mistakes do happen, and they do cost money, especially when you consider the cost of lost future sales. Humans are human and this is what makes our industry great, but with the help of a simple and discreet system directing your staff, why not choose to have the best of both worlds.

Service Efficiency

Managing your labour resource has never been so important. Rising staff wages and reduced availability mean that in order to be successful, today restaurants need to empower their staff to be more efficient. Trials have shown that by digitalising your service decisions you can reduce your staff requirement by a huge 10-20%.

In addition by using an organised and directed system you will be looking after your team’s mental wellbeing. This will not only help to retain staff but prevents loss of resources through sick days.

I want to...

Reduce Costs
Increase Sales

Increase Front of House Productivity per hour

Problem – Staff not aware when there is a task to be done.

Solution - Our time-based system uses prompts to direct staff as to which job to do next. These are simply colour coded in red, yellow and green so staff know which is most urgent. If there is any job to do staff and managers will be aware, meaning time which could be wasted is recovered.

Lower staff turnover

Problem – A high staff-turnover rate is often driven by a lack of organisation, high stress levels and lone working which lead to poor morale.

Solution – YooHoo keeps things organised, reducing stress levels and making it easier to work as a team.

Handle busy periods with less staff

Problem – Despite even the best reservation systems and rota planning, most establishments will have peaks of trade at popular times and it is not always possible to perfectly match labour with customer demand meaning either customers risk getting poor service or you have to constantly over staff just to be able to deal with these peaks.

Solution – One of YooHoo’s strongest assets is its user interface with easy to follow job prioritisation. This means that your team will always be as in-front of the workload as is possible when a wave hits. This itself might mean you don’t fall behind when previously you might have. If the wave is big enough that your team does fall behind, the most urgent jobs will be done first. This means all customers may wait slightly longer, but nobody will wait an excessively long time, meaning your service standards are upheld. YooHoo also keeps things calm at this time, reducing unforced errors that would have previously increased during times of stress.

Organise your team with assigned roles to utilise individual strengths

Problem – Not all team members are perfect at everything especially in an industry where a high percentage of staff are employed at or around minimum wage.

Solution - YooHoo makes it easier to work as a team, therefore individuals only need training in certain roles to be a useful and integral part of the team. Managers can choose which roles/tables are shown on which screen so inexperienced staff can easily see what is required of them without being exposed to the whole operation. At the higher trained end of the scale, this teamwork approach allows your more friendly and knowledgeable staff to spend their time taking orders and interacting with guests and their skills aren’t wasted wiping down and relaying tables for example.

Reduce staff stress levels

Problem - Keeping track of multiple jobs/requests on the restaurant floor can be stressful, especially at busy times. This leads to mistakes and even those who make few mistakes may still have high stress levels which can create physical and mental health issues.

Solution – The whole operation is managed by YooHoo which keeps track of all the little tasks and timings. This allows staff to concentrate on one job at a time while everything runs smoothly.

Significantly reduce training requirements

Problem – Training an inexperienced employee to competently handle a busy front of house shift takes many years and resources.

Solution – 1) YooHoo is a user-friendly interface which informs staff of what job to do next, reducing the need to train and practice in the time-management aspect of the role.

Solution - 2) YooHoo also makes it easier to work as a team, therefore individuals only need training in certain roles to be a useful and integral part of the team. Managers can choose which roles/tables are shown on which screen so inexperienced staff can easily see what is required of them without being exposed to the whole operation.

Predict staffing requirements with comprehensive reporting

Problem – Matching your labour with customer demand is essential to any healthy restaurant business. Current integrations with labour management software use till data to predict future labour requirements. Although a good start, this data lacks the accuracy of our data because till data is often recorded at the tax point, ie when the customer pays at the end of the night. It also doesn’t take into account that items of different value may still require the same labour requirement. Eg it takes the same time to deliver an expensive fillet steak to the table as it does a sandwich or starter which may cost a fraction of the price.

Solution – YooHoo monitors all the jobs on the restaurant floor and therefore is a much more accurate data feed (recorded in 15 min intervals) for your labour management software.

Increase repeat business by improving service consistency

Problem – It is very hard for even the best, most experienced front of house staff to perfectly time every aspect of a customer’s meal. And this is assuming you can attract the best, most experienced staff. Generally, many staff will naturally focus on tables closest to the waitress station and may innocently miss things or leave tables waiting longer than necessary. Some inexperienced staff may also be too keen and approach tables too quickly, rushing the guest. Both these circumstances devalue the guests experience.

Solution – By providing timing prompts (which can be tailored to suit your establishment in the management settings) YooHoo ensures that all your tables receive consistent service every time. When choosing a restaurant, customers want to feel confident they are going to have a good experience and providing consistent service will build this confidence amongst your customer base.

Improve business review ratings, recommendations through word of mouth and therefore new customers

Problem - Reviews are now commonplace and an obvious way for customers to choose where they will eat based on their location. Just a handful of negative reviews can place you below your competition, loosing potential sales.

Solution – Keeping your service consistent no matter who is on duty or how busy it is will prevent negative reviews. In addition, boost positive reviews by knowing when you have the time to spend longer interacting with guests, who will probably also appreciate seeing a happy stress-free workforce!

Integrations with reservation software automatically makes tables available once cleared

Problem – Many tables don’t take up their full allocated time. When they leave it is not checked off the reservation system and the table looks occupied which could result in a walk-in being turned away unnecessarily or if you have a live booking system could result in it showing an inaccurately long wait time which could put the customer off coming, again loosing the sale.

Solution – By integrating with reservation software, we can update your system in real time once the table has been re-laid, or using an extra meal status, can show the table as potentially available on your table plan if the customer has vacated but the table has not yet been re-laid.

Quicker table turn around

Problem – Restaurants have to make as much money as possible with the tables they have in busy prime time spells. Inconsistent service means customers may spend longer on their table than is necessary, or if your staff are mindful of turnaround times then they may be rushed at points in their meal to make up for any ‘non-perfect’ timings throughout the meal process.

Solution – YooHoo takes care of the timings of every table, taking the guesswork out of front of house timings. This means you can give your customers a great experience in a timely manner that allows you to make the most of your tables at these lucrative times.

Increase upsells with timely reminders to check and take orders from customers

Problem - Sales can be missed if staff aren’t checking in with tables in a timely manner. Alternatively, customers may perceive staff to be pushy if they are returning too frequently or different staff check in on the same table.

Solution - YooHoo provides prompts to check tables at certain times, which captures many otherwise missed opportunities. It also provides prompts to take orders in a timely manner. While important for any course, it is especially effective for dessert orders, where a delay in taking an order may easily lead to a customer deciding not to have a dessert.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does YooHoo work?

YooHoo prompts your servers what to do and when to do it. It intuitively displays the information needed to make good management decisions during service, while giving the reporting detail required to make good decisions for upcoming trade.

Central to YooHoo is its user interface. It is through this intuitive interface that communications pass from YooHoo through to your servers and back again. This process has to be quick and simple as servers don’t have more than a split second to check a screen when busy. Similarly, this same interface needs to pass information back. Some of these communications can be automated through integrations with your EPOS or Reservation systems, but many have to come from your server. What if a table aren’t ready to order or be cleared yet for example? YooHoo’s interface allows this message to be passed back with one or two taps.

Behind this simple interface is extensive computing power which analyses and records everything that is happening and passes the necessary information back and forth constantly. YooHoo is designed to work in a real restaurant environment and so all screens show the correct information at all times. Numerous settings allow you to choose who sees what information while other settings allow you to fine tune workflows and processes in order to achieve your goal of consistent and efficient service that represents your restaurant and how you want it to run.

Are the settings complicated?

Yes. After all, a restaurant floor is complicated. But even the settings are intuitive and alongside training videos we will always help you make sure you get the most out of YooHoo, whether you have just joined, are having your annual review to make sure you are getting the most out of the system or at any point in between.

Are my staff going to hate it?

No, Staff of all levels love YooHoo. Servers love YooHoo because it reduces stress and gives them the headspace to pay attention to the job they are doing at that moment in time without worrying about all the other jobs that may or may not require their attention in that instant. YooHoo holds your server’s hand and guides them through even the busiest of services, making cool calm decisions as it goes.

Managers love YooHoo because they can see what is going on at granular detail across the whole restaurant in just one glance at a screen. By displaying jobs in lists and prioritising according to the job’s target time, managers can easily see if the kitchen is about to stack up or if a certain section needs a lift for a couple of mins. In a non-digitalised service world, managers can’t spot these situations until they have happened. These insights empower mangers to really take control of their floor, stopping walk-in at the right time or re-allocating staff to different jobs on the fly.

Finally, general managers/owners love YooHoo because it allows them to see what is going on and what has gone on previously. Nothing brings peace of mind like seeing your restaurant is busy but knowing that every table is being served in a timely manner. This can be seen in real time from anywhere, whether it be your office or the beach!

What hardware do I need?

YooHoo is cloud based and is essentially a website which will therefore run on any device with a supported browser like safari, firefox or chrome. Its interface has been designed to be useful on all screen sizes so it is feasible to run YooHoo on any hardware you may already have in your restaurant or you could even run the system using just your employees own mobile phones if you so wanted.

YooHoo sounds too good to be true...

Will YooHoo allow you to run a busy 100 seater restaurant on a Saturday night with two members of staff? No, of course not. Staff have one pair of hands and cannot perform miracles. What YooHoo does is make sure that those pairs of hands are working on the most important task at every moment in time so we can claim that the staff you do have rotared on could not be working more efficiently. Have you wondered if you could get away with less staff at certain times of the week. With YooHoo you probably can.

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