The restaurant industry is more competitive than ever, and it can be tough for smaller players to stay ahead. That’s why Otter offers the industry’s best restaurant management and optimization solutions for small and independent businesses. No matter the size, Otter’s features enhance a restaurant’s delivery, in-house dining experience, Direct ordering, and more! We offer resources specialized for your restaurant’s unique needs, and provide the guidance and support to succeed with them.
Today, we’ll look at the many ways Otter’s features give small and independent restaurants a leg up on the competition. From boosting performance to streamlining operations, Otter’s product suite is designed to help small businesses win bigger customer bases – and profits!
Small & independent restaurants choose Otter for success
While our worldwide client base is extremely diverse, we often hear the same requests from smaller restaurateurs. Businesses like Brazilian Bowl, B-Uno’s, and Chulita may cook different cuisines, but they all need a way to optimize their operations. Without a large staff, keeping track of orders across UberEats, DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub, and countless other delivery platforms isn’t easy. These restaurants also demand a quick, impactful way to get value from the customer data that these apps generate. Fortunately, Otter can help.
When our team starts working with a small or independent restaurant, we take care to understand their individual business needs. We identify places where workflows can be improved, determine ways to increase efficiency, and understand owners’ goals for expansion. Using this information, we craft specialized solutions to help restaurants succeed.
Otter enhances small & independent restaurant performance
Every restaurant has different pain points and expectations for success. And we want to make sure we’re meeting them. Otter’s three-tiered solution suite is ideal for small and independent restaurateurs, allowing them to select exactly which tools they need.
The Otter tablet syncs information from across all your delivery partners and POS systems, empowering your staff to manage everything in one place. Our platform also lets you update menus, analyze data, accept direct orders, and so much more! Otter simplifies, streamlines, and speeds up every element of the modern restaurant.
If you’re a small or independent restaurant owner, there’s no better way for you to succeed than with Otter. But don’t take our word for it – see for yourself why an Otter membership is your business’s key to growth and profit. Here are 10 ways that Otter empowers restaurants of all shapes, sizes, and types.
10 Otter Features for Small and Independent Restaurants
1. Order Management
Digital delivery platforms are a vital aspect of modern restaurants, but they can be a major challenge for kitchens and staff. This is especially true for small and independent restaurants, where capacity – and counter size – is limited. By bringing data together from each of your delivery partners, Otter makes receiving, managing, and fulfilling orders easier than ever before. Use Order Management to instantly notify your cooks of new tickets, eliminate errors and delays, and strengthen food quality.
2. Analytics
Delivery apps are goldmines of data on customer tastes and restaurant performance. However, it can all go to waste without a way to effectively analyze this information. Make the most of your business’s data with Analytics, Otter’s information analytics tool for every restaurateur. You don’t have to be a data specialist to succeed with Analytics – the solution presents all information clearly and accessibly. With Analytics, you can get the facts on your restaurant’s sales, menus, and storefronts, and use them to improve.
3. Menu Management
Today’s restaurateurs have a lot of menus to consider. In addition to paper copies, they also have to keep track of delivery menus, direct ordering menus, QR menus… It isn’t easy for a business with limited staff, time, and budget to do. Don’t let your menus get the best of you – use Otter’s Menu Management solution to take control. With Menu Management, you can craft powerful menus in minutes, and update them across all your online platforms. Personalize items, define hours, sync menus across different services, and more!
4. Handoffs
Need a hand with courier interactions? Otter has the solution. Our Handoff resource lets you keep couriers informed, ensuring they’re on time and ready to deliver their meals. This tool also provides features to prevent counter-crowding and order issues – a necessity for small restaurants. You can even track couriers as they’re en route to eaters, giving you complete transparency into the delivery process. Use Handoffs to streamline your prep times, speed up delivery, and get items into customers’ hands ASAP.
5. Virtual Brands
Virtual brands are the 2020s’ hottest new revenue stream for restaurants interested in leveraging their kitchen space to grow sales. These online-only storefronts utilize the power of today’s top delivery platforms to maximize kitchen efficiency, performance, and profit. Our virtual brand solution leads the industry in giving restaurateurs great menus and branding tailored to their capabilities and expertise. This solution is ideal for small or independent restaurants looking to grow rapidly, and can help reduce waste and downtime.
6. Direct Orders
If you’re not a major restaurant chain, high commission fees can be a devastating blow to your profit margins. There’s no need to accept less for your business’s hard work, though! Direct Orders gives you the many benefits of a third-party delivery service with zero commissions. By integrating an online ordering system directly into your restaurant’s website, we’ll help you increase profit and delivery speeds. With Direct Orders, you’ll have complete command over your delivery radius, couriers, and food quality, making every order a success.
7. Promotions
Marketing in the digital restaurant age is anything but simple. Restaurants – especially smaller or independent ones – have legions of competitors on delivery platforms, which can make capturing customers’ attention difficult. To keep your restaurant at the top of eaters’ minds (and delivery apps), use Otter Promotions. Through automated marketing, this solution eliminates the time, energy, and money needed to craft great promos, freeing up your schedule. Promotions also utilizes engagement data, constantly adapting and improving to customer tastes.
8. Financials
When you’re involved in the day-to-day operations of a restaurant, keeping track of your financial data is tough. Gain a deeper understanding of your business’s revenue with Otter Financials – your key to effective restaurant budgeting. Financials offers a variety of features to help you analyze your sales, take action on them, and avoid unnecessary losses. You can use Financials to align your expected profits with real-world revenue data, and make informed decisions on your restaurant’s growth.
9. Live Monitoring
Does the thought of your restaurant going offline during store hours give you the jitters? Us too. That’s why we created Live Monitoring – a 24/7 support system dedicated to keeping your restaurant active. Live Monitoring alerts you the second any of your digital storefronts goes down, and helps you get them back online immediately. Use Live Monitoring to prevent missed revenue, enhance order intake, and strengthen your restaurant’s reputation. No matter what causes a storefront outage, Live Monitoring will ensure your business overcomes it.
10. Auto-Accept
In the bustle of a busy kitchen, accepting orders manually is easier said than done. You don’t need to worry about missing orders with Auto-Accept, though – this solution does it for you! As the name implies, Auto-Accept instantly adds any order you receive, over any platform, to your workflow. This keeps your team moving smoothly, eliminates downtime, and prevents issues with customer satisfaction. Combined with Order Management, Auto-Accept strengthens organization across your entire restaurant, giving your cooks all the time they need.
