QSR July 2023

SPONSORED BY TRANSACT TECHNOLOGIES—BOHA!

Battling Labor Shortages and Rising Food Costs with Technology

How technology is revolutionizing the back-of-house.

Kitchens across the U.S. have experienced heightened food costs, labor shortages, and labor costs during 2022. So, what does this all mean for the back-of-house? Increased operational costs, lower customer satisfaction, and new challenges to be solved with by technology. Food Cost Inflation In a recent study conducted by the USDA, researchers found that the cost of food in April 2022 was 9.4 percent higher than the pre vious year. It’s predicted that the cost of food will increase at a higher rate than previous years. One way to combat this is by mitigating food waste. Over 85 percent of food loss and food waste issues are caused by temperature and time. By using remote temperature sensors, operators can be notified of real-time temperature changes before any food spoils or becomes unusable. This is especially important with cold storage products, such as meat or dairy, where you have a maximum of two hours to remedy an “out-of-range” tempera ture before that food must be disposed of.

Kitchen staff can also digitize food temp taking by utiliz ing Bluetooth probes that automatically populate HACCP logs. Solutions like BOHA! Temp connect your iOS devices to industry trusted temp probes for process that eliminates pencil-whipping and illegible handwriting all in one step. Labor Shortages Labor shortages were an industry concern long before the pan demic. However, a whopping seven out of 10 food service opera tors reported difficulty meeting labor demands in a 2022 report released by the National Restaurant Association. Not only is it dif ficult for operators to find and hire new staff, it’s also difficult to train them efficiently and retain them indefinitely. One of the ways that operators have had newfound success in training employees is by digitizing recipe cards, instructional vid eos, how-to sheets, and other important resources. By using cloud based solutions like BOHA! Media, employees across the globe can instantly access important resources right in the kitchen when they need them most. And another bonus, this also elimi

nates pricey reprints of recipe cards any time they get damaged or a rec ipe changes. All changes can be made from the cloud and pushed to dozens of locations in a matter of minutes. By using back-of-house technol ogy, operators in the foodservice industry have seen a significant reduction in the time it takes for employees to complete necessary tasks. For example, in a case study by BOHA!, implementing back-of-house technology saved retailers three hours a week on task management by digitizing checklists. In addition, when using BOHA! Labeling to auto mate date code processes, operators saw an average of 4.8 hours saved per week per location. When employees are so hard to come by, every minute counts. RET

To learn more, visit bohasolutions.com .

TRANSACT TECHNOLOGIES—BOHA!

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JULY 2023 | RESTAURANT EQUIPMENT & TECHNOLOGY