PelicanWhat going digital actually means in a restaurant
Digitalisation sounds like a big project, consultants and a budget no family business has. In everyday kitchen life it is much more down to earth. It is not about robots at the stove or artificial intelligence on the menu. It is about replacing paper, shouting and Excel exactly where they cause mistakes and searching every single day.
The order note on the walk-in door that falls off and disappears. The reservation written on a notepad that nobody can find at shift change. The rota the boss sends round on WhatsApp on Sunday evening and corrects three times. Those are the places where digitalisation makes a difference. Not as a prestige project, but as a tool that removes one specific daily friction. Understand that and you can approach the subject calmly: one area at a time, always starting where it hurts most.
The areas at a glance
A restaurant consists of several processes that can be digitalised independently of each other. You don't have to commit to all of them, and certainly not at the same time. Here is the overview, so you know where you can start.
Till and payments
In most businesses the till went digital long ago, often the most advanced area. Modern EPOS systems record sales, split bills and produce reports. Tills and sales records come with legal and tax requirements that differ from country to country and change regularly. Check the current position with your accountant or EPOS provider rather than relying on general statements.
Reservations and guests
Reservation tools take bookings around the clock, even when nobody answers the phone. They show table occupancy, reduce double bookings and automatically remind guests of their booking, which cuts no-shows. Guest communication belongs here too: keeping an eye on reviews, responding to enquiries, looking after your online presence. For many businesses, this is the most visible lever towards the outside world.
Staff planning
Digital rotas replace the spreadsheet and the Sunday evening message. The team sees their shifts on their phones, swap requests are handled in an orderly way, and time tracking runs alongside. Especially in hospitality, with its changing shifts and casual staff, this saves a lot of questions and misunderstandings.
Purchasing and ordering
This is where needs arise every day, and where information gets lost every day. Whoever notices that something is missing writes it on a scrap of paper, shouts it across the kitchen or forgets it. Digitalised, it means the team collects needs together on one list, sorted by category, with a history of who ordered what and when. That is what the rest of this guide is about. What a digital purchasing tool looks like is covered in the guide to the restaurant ordering app.
Internal communication
Handovers, arrangements, quick updates between shifts: much of it happens by shouting or in private chat groups and gets lost along the way. Digital tools bring it together in one place that is still there at shift change. In mixed-language brigades this matters twice as much, because the language barrier swallows extra information. More on that in the guide to multilingual kitchen teams.
Bookkeeping and receipts
Delivery notes, invoices, till receipts: digital receipt capture saves you the shoebox and the paperwork at the end of the month. Receipts are photographed or imported digitally and arrive at your accountant in order. In the UK, Making Tax Digital for VAT already requires VAT-registered businesses to keep digital records, so many are moving this way anyway. It is less visible than a smart booking page, but it saves a lot of quiet work in the background.
Why digital projects in hospitality fail
Not every digitalisation project succeeds. And it is almost never the technology's fault, but the approach. These four patterns come up most often.
- Too much at once. Switch over the till, reservations, rota and purchasing at the same time and you overload yourself and the team. Everything wobbles at once, nobody finds their way around, and in the end half of it goes back to paper. One area at a time is almost always the better route.
- Tools that need maintenance nobody provides. A system is only as good as the data in it. If a tool constantly needs feeding and maintaining, but nobody has time for it in the middle of service, the data goes stale and the tool becomes useless. Tools that fill up as a by-product of the normal routine are the ones that last.
- The team is not brought along. If the boss decides alone and pushes a solution through, resistance follows. Language barriers are especially tricky: a tool that only works in English shuts out part of the brigade. Whoever does not understand how it works will not use it.
- Bought without regard to daily reality. A solution that impresses in the sales pitch but does not fit how the kitchen really works will be abandoned after two weeks. Test every tool against your actual day, not against the demo.
Our recommendation: start with the ordering process
If you want to digitalise one area first, choose ordering. It is the quick win of restaurant digitalisation, for four reasons:
- No new device. It runs on the smartphones your team already has in their pockets. No till, no terminal, no installation on site.
- No data maintenance. The list fills up as the team reports needs. Nobody has to enter figures in the evening.
- A benefit from day one. The very first shared list saves hunting for notes and retyping. The effect is immediate, not weeks after setup.
- The team is included rather than excluded. Everyone reports their needs in their own language, by voice or by typing. The language barrier that sinks other projects becomes a solved problem here.
That is exactly what Pelican is built for. The whole kitchen team captures the daily stock needs together, each in their own language. The app recognises the product and brings everything together on one list sorted by category. The head chef approves it before the supplier's visit, and the order history shows what was ordered, when and from whom. Pelican deliberately focuses on this one process. It does not replace a till or an inventory system, and that is precisely what makes getting started so low-risk.
Day 1: Create your business and invite the team. As head chef you set up your business, on iPhone first via the website, on Android directly in the app. Then you invite your members, who complete their sign-up via the invitation link.
Days 2 to 5: Run it alongside the paper. The team reports needs as usual, but in the app as well. That way everyone gets used to it without anything breaking.
From day 6: Drop the paper. Once the list runs reliably and everyone uses it, the paper route goes. The free 30-day trial gives you plenty of buffer to do this calmly.
Start with the area that annoys you every day.
Pelican digitalises your kitchen's ordering process without new hardware and without data maintenance. Runs on the phones you already have. Try it free for 30 days.
Create business and try 30 days freeFunding for going digital
Many businesses wonder whether there is public money available. The short answer: sometimes, but the details change all the time. In the UK and Ireland, small and micro businesses have at times been able to get support for digital projects through local and national schemes, often covering part of the cost of advice or software.
We deliberately don't name specific schemes, rates or deadlines here, because they change too quickly and vary a lot by region. Wrong figures are the last thing that would help you. The reliable route: ask your local growth hub or your council's business support team in the UK, your Local Enterprise Office in Ireland, or your hospitality trade association what is currently on offer. They will know which scheme is open right now and whether your business meets the conditions.
Restaurant digitalisation FAQs
Where should a restaurant start with digitalisation?
Where the day-to-day pain is greatest and the risk smallest. For most kitchens that is the ordering process or the staff rota. Both run on phones you already have, need no expensive hardware and deliver a noticeable benefit from day one. Start with one area, not all of them at once.
How much does it cost to digitalise a restaurant?
Anything from a few euros or pounds a month to five figures. A single tool for one area often starts at around 20 a month. A complete EPOS system with hardware or a connected inventory management system, on the other hand, can cost several thousand. The cheapest strategy is to start small and digitalise one area after another instead of switching everything over at once.
Is there funding for going digital in hospitality?
Sometimes, yes. In the UK and Ireland, support for small businesses' digital projects has been offered through local and national schemes, often towards the cost of advice or software. Conditions, amounts and deadlines change constantly and vary by region. Ask your local growth hub or council business support team, or your Local Enterprise Office in Ireland, what is currently available.
How do I get my team on board with going digital?
The tool has to be simpler than what it replaces, otherwise the team goes back to paper. Take the languages in your kitchen into account so nobody is left out. And don't switch over on a fixed date: let the new tool run alongside the old way for a few days. That way everyone sees for themselves that it is faster, and nobody feels steamrollered.
Which areas of a restaurant can be digitalised?
The usual areas are the till and payments, reservations and guest communication, staff planning with rota and time tracking, purchasing and ordering, internal team communication and bookkeeping with digital receipts. You don't have to tackle everything at once. It makes sense to digitalise first the area that causes the most mistakes and the most searching in everyday work.