As a knowledgeable restaurateur, you know the industry is innovating fast. Every day, new developments in the global food space are changing the dynamics – and profits – of eateries worldwide. Without the right tech stack, running a modern restaurant and keeping up with competition can be tough. That’s where Otter, your Restaurant Operating System, comes in! Over the past year, the Otter suite has heavily evolved to meet the ever-changing needs of your business. In this countdown, we’ll show you the top 5 Otter apps for restaurants, food trucks, and more in 2024!
We’re always introducing new features and refinements to our restaurant software, keeping your business flexible and productive. Our tools power over 275,000 eateries worldwide, and we understand what today’s restaurateurs demand and expect of kitchen technology. That dedication has made us leaders in the digital restaurant world, helping us forge strong connections with major delivery platforms. Below, you’ll discover the solutions that our clients use to manage orders, expand their customer base, and strengthen their bottomline every day.
Otter Restaurant App #5: Financials
Throughout the early 2020s, economic inflation has been a significant issue for North America’s restaurateurs. While many businesses persevere through knowledgeable decision-making, others are harmed by rising costs and falling margins. This is what makes detailed financial data – and an easy way of collecting it – critical for restaurant owners. The Otter Financials solution retrieves, analyzes, and reports on your restaurant’s finances in seconds, keeping you aware and informed.
Financials gives you a clear understanding of all your restaurant’s sales, and makes managing payouts and taxes simple. By using it, you can dive deep into the impact of every order on your bottom line, and make better decisions about your daily restaurant practices — like how to price your menu and what hours customers are seeking delivery from you. Chains like Texas’s NoRa Asian Fresh use this solution to evaluate revenue across multiple locations from a single dashboard.
“One of my favorite features of Otter is being able to see a financial report for all our locations in one place.”
Leo Chen, Owner
NoRa Asian Fresh
Otter Restaurant App #4: Order Manager
Since launching the Otter suite, Order Manager has been our flagship product, and has processed over one billion restaurant sales. Our users know Order Manager’s benefits well: it brings orders from all their in-house and delivery systems into one dashboard. This platform gives restaurant staff the ability to fulfill orders on time, giving eaters a better meal experience.
In late 2023, Order Manager received its biggest update ever: a complete overhaul of its user interface for complete accessibility. Now, this solution isn’t just an order dashboard – it’s an active ecosystem that fully empowers your front and back-of-house operations. From a single tablet, you can accept and complete orders across each of your real-world and digital storefronts in minutes, maximizing revenue. Using Order Manager, Yemen Cafe remains one of the top ten most popular restaurants on Brooklyn’s DoorDash week-after-week.
"Your technology, especially Order Manager, has been a big part of our success. Companies like Otter have really helped us bring our traditional, authentic Yemeni food to the public. We're making less mistakes on orders."
Ali & Sid Nassir, Co-Owners
Yemen Cafe
Otter Restaurant App #3: Menu Management
Today’s restaurant menus are in constant flux, and must be updated often to maintain profitability. Spread across the various online platforms that modern eateries serve food with, digital menu updating can be a huge time-sink. Fortunately for restaurateurs and their staff, Otter’s Menu Management solution pushes menu updates across all storefronts at once, eliminating redundancy. With Menu Management, adding new items, prices, images, and descriptions to any of your menus takes seconds, not hours.
The speed and convenience that Menu Management grants restaurant owners can’t be overstated. Consumers have high expectations of today’s digital menus, and want a fleshed-out overview of what restaurants serve on delivery apps. Menu Management makes it possible for even independently-owned eateries to enhance their menus with ease, reducing labor costs and workloads. One of these family-owned restaurant businesses, New York City’s La Barca, has seen great success using Otter for their day-to-day restaurant management.
"Otter’s biggest feature for me is Menu Management. It's so amazing. Before, managing menus used to be a daily thing. These are amazing features."
Oswaldo Oliveres, Owner
La Barca
Otter Restaurant App #2: Digital Dine-In
Changes in the restaurant industry aren’t just happening in the digital world. Since the early 2020s, eateries have been adopting QR menus to keep costs low through more efficient service and integration with strong POS systems. Customer reaction to in-person restaurant tech is mixed, and many aren’t willing to sacrifice the traditional dining experience. With Digital Dine-In, you don’t have to compromise on giving your eaters a great atmosphere! Our in-house dining solution is made to enhance tableside service, not replace it, keeping customers and staff happy.
Digital Dine-In streamlines your waitstaff’s typical activities, so they can serve more tables in a timely manner. It also gives your team key information about every order, helping them provide the best service possible (and maximizing tips). This solution boosts front-of-house organization and is ideal for restaurants who are short-staffed. A’dor Kitchen & Cocktail in Texas uses Digital Dine-In to give customers a great time at their busy hookah bar and have found QR codes valuable for this business model:
“It's like what they say: you've got to progress with the times. Digital Dine-in is one of the things that's progressed with the times. I definitely would advocate for it."
Ralph Breda, Manager
A’dor Kitchen & Cocktail
Otter Restaurant App #1: Online Ordering
Of all the solutions we've introduced over the past year, there’s no better tool for your restaurant’s profit than Online Ordering. As the industry continues past pandemic-era financial struggles, eateries are once again eager to build up their bottom lines. Unfortunately, high commission fees introduced by third parties can make turning a profit difficult without turning off customers. Online Ordering lets you serve customers on your own – without a middleman. It also doesn’t take any commission fees, maximizing what you earn on every order.
Those aren’t the only features of Online Ordering that are key for modern restaurateurs, though. When you use this solution, Otter provides your restaurant with a free website for your business, allowing you to take orders directly. You can add your own photos, easily update your digital menus, and sync with your in-house tablet to manage orders. The best part – no third party commission fees. As the owner of Detroit Grill & Smoothie Bar in Michigan discovered, an Online Ordering website can even help a restaurateur succeed single-handedly:
"The Otter team asked me if I wanted a new website, and I said, yeah, go ahead! They took, like, two days to make it, which was really cool. I’m really happy with it.”
Aziz Hussein, Owner
Detroit Grill & Smoothie Bar
Enjoy the right apps for your restaurant’s tech stack with Otter!
You’re a restaurant owner, not a computer scientist, and your business’s technology should reflect that. Don’t settle for clunky, complicated software that slows your on and off premise business down – get great digital solutions that make every order better. Otter’s restaurant tools are reliable and made for the speed and functionality that you and your team expect. With the resources we’ve listed above, Otter secures your restaurant’s tech stack for long-term operational success in 2024 and beyond!
