It’s well established that the pandemic thrust an infusion of technology into the restaurant industry. Customer-facing solutions like online ordering and third-party delivery went from fringe items to must-haves almost overnight.
The pandemic also led to a web of challenges for each brand to untangle behind the scenes—from labor shortages, to inflation, to supply-chain snarls and beyond. These hurdles made it harder than ever before for brands to be consistent across a large footprint of storefronts. Understaffed and unsure of which ingredients would be arriving on the back dock, it was hard to blame them.
Perhaps as a result of these challenges, operators believe they’ll need more tech solutions in the back-of-house in order to execute consistently. According to the National Restaurant Association, 58 percent of quick-service operators believe tech and automation will become more common in 2023.
This comes as no surprise to Bart Shuldman, CEO of TransAct Tech, owner of BOHA! One of the leaders in the back-of-house technology space, BOHA! has been helping brands modernize their back-of-house operations for years.
“The restaurant industry has been through a rough time,” says Bart Shuldman, CEO of TransAct Tech. “We’ve seen friends struggle through all of the challenges they’ve faced over the past few years. Our ability to help them as they start to try and grow their business again is where we really shine. We can help make their business more consistent and more profitable.”
BOHA! has a host of capabilities that help brands improve efficiencies and boost profits. The cloud-based solution focuses on areas that are error-prone. For example, temperature taking, which can be logged digitally, or food labeling, which prints legible, accurate date code labels for ingredients that have been prepped, and when they are good till.
“BOHA! helps ensure that every restaurant is performing the right way,” Shuldman says. “Think about if you’re a chicken chain looking to break into a new market. You need to make sure each employee is cooking chicken the exact same way as it’s cooked at every other location you have open. With BOHA! you have no doubt that it’s being done correctly.”
BOHA! also offers digitally-driven food prep lists, pre-programmed cooking timers that are enacted with the press of a button, and advanced sensors that can detect if a refrigerator temperature is out of range that can save thousands of dollars in potential food spoilage.
Each functionality offered by BOHA! illustrates why brands are moving toward tech and automation in the first place. With kitchens having trouble finding employees—especially experienced ones—any task that can be automated equates to that much more time an employee can spend doing a separate task. For example, one brand who added BOHA! experienced a 62 percent decrease in the time its employees spent labeling foods. Those employees were freed up to spend more time prepping, cooking, or cleaning—whatever the operators needed from them.
“One of the things that a lot of brands love about us is that you can pick and choose which apps you need or want,” Shuldman says. “So you might start with food labeling, which is the low-hanging fruit—it’s so efficient, it helps cut labor overnight. Then you may start exploring some other functionalities and realize all of them work for you.”
As medium and large-sized brands move toward automating more tasks, there’s a reason so many of them are turning to BOHA! The solution has been ahead of the curve for years, Shuldman says, and is notable in that it helps brands automate a bevy of tasks rather than just one.
“If you want to do it all, you can get it all through us,” Shuldman says. “I always say that when you work with us, there’s just one call to make when you need support. It’s all a single platform—you don’t have to have multiple contracts, and contacts, and worry about who is going to be accountable if something happens.”
For more on BOHA! visit the TransAct Tech website.
