Customers expect a high standard and fast service from enterprises. In addition, competition among enterprises necessitates that enterprises renew themselves, meet customer expectations at maximum level, and raise the standard of products and services. Traditional restaurant management is inadequate to provide all this. This situation led to search, and restaurant management systems (RMS) have been developed. RMS, which emerged in the 1970s, are now much more developed, facilitating both the operation and management process and offering a professional management opportunity. RMS has made it possible for the restaurants to institutionalize and establish chain enterprises. Moreover, income and expense control can be made more effective via RMS. This chapter explains RMS and the operation of RMS via a sample program.
TopIntroduction
Nutrition, which is the basic need of human beings according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, has led to the emergence of food and beverage businesses. Today, due to the increase in the rate of eating out because of changing lifestyles (Fitzsimmons, & Maurer, 1991; Kant and Graubard, 2004; Lachat et al., 2012; Edwards, 2013) food and beverage enterprises developed, diversified, institutionalized, and has become a big sector with national and international chain enterprises. The businesses that provide services to meet the nutritional needs of people outside the home are called food and beverage enterprises because they have a common mission. However, there are a wide range of organizations that are shaped very differently in terms of purpose, scope, target group, product variety, service format and quality, service time and duration. Considering the food and beverage services offered within the cafes, bars, bakeries, restaurants, nightclubs, transportation vehicles (train, ship, airplane, etc.), public and private institutions (hospitals, factories, government offices, schools, military, elderly nursing homes, child protection agencies, etc.), hotel etc. accommodation companies, the broad scope of the concept of food and beverage enterprises is better understood (Edwards, & Hartwell, 2009). For this reason, the subject is limited to restaurants entering into food and beverage companies and the use of restaurant management systems (RMS) is emphasized in this section.
The restaurants also vary within themselves and it is possible to classify restaurants as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Classification of restaurants
Due to the development of information and communication technologies and software sector in recent years, various products have been developed to suit different areas of business life. These contribute to the success of businesses and to specialize in business planning (Acar, Ömürbek, & Ömürbek, 2003). The operation and management process is very complex because of the production of both products and services in restaurants. This situation increases the workload and stress of managers and restaurant employees as well as possible errors, disruptions and financial losses. Therefore, traditional methods in the management process are inadequate today (Memis Kocaman & Kocaman, 2014). Therefore, in order to minimize human factor based errors, RMS has been developed and these systems have provided significant advantages to business managers in the management process of restaurants. RMS has significant effects in terms of fast and accurate data flow, facilitating the effective execution of management process from planning to evaluation, enabling rapid production and service, increasing profitability, increasing customer satisfaction and competitiveness (Acar, Ömürbek, & Ömürbek, 2003; Memis Kocaman & Kocaman, 2014). In this section, it is aimed to introduce RMS, to give information about its usage in restaurants and to explain the contributions it will provide for both operation and managers.