Drawing a Parallel Between Restaurants and Robots

As reported by the Wall Street Journal and Wired, restaurants are leveraging technology to supply labor in a state of record-low unemployment characterized by a scarcity of workers.

Restaurant automation allows restaurants to do more with less labor. The idea incorporates everything from self-ordering kiosks to robotic-based burger-flipping to cash automation. The end goal is to shift employees’ efforts to value-added tasks, not to completely replace the human workforce with robotics.

Evention continues to lead the charge to supply restaurants with technology capable of automating cash management – thereby altering the traditional high costs associated with management and manual labor.

By coupling robotic cash management devices with cloud-based intelligence to reinvent how cash is managed, Evention is disposing of the days marked by manual cash counting, cash drawer preparation, auditing against shift tapes, and transferring deposits to the bank.

In a traditional restaurant, a typical day starts with a manager preparing tills. Cashiers use these tills for cash transactions throughout their shifts. To prevent theft, both a manager and the cashier count the till at least once per shift.

Throughout the shift, the cashier must make “safe drops.” He/she must also buy change from managers as denominations run low. At the end of the day, all cash sales need to be counted again, then reconciled against the point of sale (POS) system.

Finally, in order for the cash sales to be credited to the restaurant’s bank account, the net cash deposit has to make its way from the restaurant to the bank.

Costly labor, external and internal theft, and multiple inefficiencies make managing cash expensive and burdensome for restaurants. With labor in restaurants typically averaging close to 30% of expenses, automation is a must in scenarios that humans don’t maximally leverage.

Rising labor costs and a shrinking candidate pool defined by a reported 6% unemployment rate, makes automation essential for restaurants to stay competitive.

To facilitate such automation, Evention has rewritten the cash process with technology. Robotic cash recyclers now issue starting tills to cashiers based on biometrics. As such, during his/her shift, a cashier can “make change” with the recycler and complete deposits to keep the till at optimum level.

At the end of shift, the cashier simply deposits all cash back into the recycler. This is then automatically audited against the POS.

To complete the cash life cycle, each night, all cash deposits collected by the cash recycler can be automatically deposited to the restaurant’s bank account via “provisional credit” even though the cash may still be physically at the restaurant.

By implementing this technology, Evention has completely changed the cash management process and restaurants can focus their scarce employee resources on other tasks. With all auditing and reporting managed in the cloud, the corporate office can have real-time cash visibility across all of their restaurants – something unimaginable in a manual cash process.

Counting, securing, auditing, and depositing cash has been highly labor intensive, tedious, and costly. Yet these are all necessary components of business in restaurants.

Automating the cash management process allows restaurant workers to focus on more value-added tasks that can be hindered by manually counting and reconciling cash.