One System Instead of 10 Apps: Restaurant Automation

One system for a restaurant means the website, bot, app, QR menu, POS, aggregators, couriers and reports share one catalog and one customer base. When tools are scattered, every change is made in each of them separately, and when something breaks it is hard to tell where.

That is not automation. It is hiring extra staff and adding cost.

Below we look at what scattered tools look like in practice, what they cost and what changes when you move to one system.

Key points:

• Scattered tools don't connect, so data is retyped by hand.
• Two or three employees are usually busy with this, and the chance of errors grows.
• In one system the menu, prices and customer base are changed once.
• The POS stays where it is and connects to the system.

What do scattered tools look like in practice?

In a typical restaurant the website is in one place, the Telegram bot in another, aggregator tablets are separate, the POS is separate and reports live in Excel. Couriers talk in a group chat, and payments sit in several bank cabinets. Everything works, but each part knows nothing about the others.

Such a setup grows over time: a new program is added for every new channel or need. In the end there are about ten tools and none of them sees the others.

What does it cost?

Scattered tools cause three kinds of loss: employee time, mistakes and blindness in management. Typing the same data in three places eats working hours, a mistake turns into a customer complaint, and the owner doesn't see the whole picture.

A concrete example. You raise the price of one dish. In a scattered setup you change it in the POS, website, bot, app and every aggregator cabinet separately. Forget one, and a customer orders at the old price. When something goes wrong, finding the system with the error takes a long time.

Can't I just build my own?

You can, but it is expensive and slow. According to Delever, building your own delivery software takes roughly 30,000–100,000 dollars and 6–12 months, and then needs permanent maintenance. Most restaurants can't afford that. Renting a ready platform is cheaper and faster.

Meanwhile the market moves: a new channel, payment system or aggregator appears. You don't manage to update with developers, and internal processes get abandoned.

What changes in one system?

In one system all channels work with one catalog and one customer base. A menu or price is changed once and updates everywhere, orders land on one screen, and reports come from one source.

In the Delever system the following work together:

• your own website, mobile app, Telegram bot and QR menu;
• connection to the POS (iiko, R-Keeper, Poster, Jowi and others);
• aggregators such as Yandex Eats and Uzum Tezkor on one screen;
• dispatcher, courier app and external courier services;
• CRM, loyalty, SMS and push;
• dashboard and analytics.

The result is simple: data is entered once and a single reliable source appears. The argument about which number is right goes away.

What happens to my POS?

It stays in place. The POS is needed for accounting, inventory and fiscalization. The system connects to it and keeps orders, menu and stop-list in sync. The order reaches the POS with all its contents. So there is no need to retrain accountants or move data. More: how POS integration works.

When should you switch to one system?

Switch if any of these is true: orders come from two or three channels, tablets have piled up next to the register, you collect reports by hand, or you plan to open a new branch. The last point matters most, because in a multi-branch restaurant scattering grows fast.

The switch doesn't happen in one day: a website can launch in a day, a full switch takes from 4 to 30 days depending on readiness. But you don't have to move everything at once: first order channels and POS, then couriers and analytics.

Conclusion

Adding more programs is not automation. The goal is for data to live in one place.

• Write down every program and tablet you use now.
• Mark which ones require the same data to be typed again.
• Start by merging those.

At Delever we show on a free 30-minute demo what bringing everything into one system looks like: delever.io or @delever_bot on Telegram.