The COVID-19 pandemic has hit restaurants hard, and the fast food industry is no exception. An increasing number of restaurants continue to close their doors. Approximately 17% of all U.S restaurants closed in the last three months of 2020 alone. While these challenging times no doubt bring difficulties to the fast food industry, they also bring forth opportunities for change.
It’s no surprise, then, that the fast food industry trends for cash management in 2021 all center around increasing efficiency, lowering overheads, and improving cash flow to stay afloat. Cash management technology offers a way to improve how a fast food restaurant does business by improving cash handling procedures.
1. Cash Automation to Reduce Overhead
If there was ever a year to reduce manual cash handling, it’s in 2021. Cash handling is prone to errors, takes a significant amount of time, and is inefficient overall. Automation is already taking over the restaurant industry, and it’s an easy choice to automate cash handling with a cash management solution to improve business.
For example, smart safe technology eliminates the need for manual counts, reconciliation and deposits, while currency recyclers make it easy to automate the acceptance and dispensing of the day’s floats. Customer-facing recyclers also eliminate the need for staff to handle cash.
With many fast food restaurants struggling to bring in the same levels of revenue they saw pre-pandemic, reducing labor costs has become a top priority in the industry. Fortunately, by cutting out much of the manual work required in a day, cash management technology enables restaurants to reduce hours by speeding up cash automation, while also reducing the cost of human error. This streamlined efficiency will help reduce overhead.
2. Multi-Site Solutions
For chains and franchisees, having consistent cash management best practices and operations across all restaurants is key to success. Having real-time visibility into your cash from store to store, even in faraway locations, will help you make more informed decisions at the executive level.
That’s why cash management software that integrates into your smart safes or currency recyclers is rising in popularity in the fast food industry. It’s simpler, easier, and more productive to manage multiple locations if all of your cash data is located in one centralized place. The cloud-based software ensures you have access to this secure information from anywhere, anytime.
3. Cash Flow Management
In the restaurant industry, cash is king. It stands to reason that cash flow management would be critical to the success of your restaurants. Effective cash flow management will help your restaurants become more profitable.
Cash management software is an effective solution here as well. It offers you insights into cash trends to forecast your cash needs and replenishments. You’ll be able to see what cash you have on hand at any time and what you need to operate on a frequent basis. This will help you create a cash flow forecast based on real-time data to keep track of cash that’s coming in and going out. This data informs future cash decisions, such as when it comes to making capital expenditure decisions or when determining whether an expense needs to be cut.
The fast food industry is facing challenging times. Cash automation will help them adapt by reducing overhead costs, improving data-based decision-making, and improving cash flow management.
