How to Choose the Right Cloud Strategy for Your Restaurant

Scaling a business takes motivation and effort, but it also requires careful planning. To successfully scale, a business cannot simply create a foolproof plan and then expect the business to grow on its own; Nor can it start without a plan and expect to adapt as it grows. A company will only continuously scale if it is prepared for every step in every area of ​​its business operations. These truths will apply to any business, but there is no industry where they are more relevant than industry.

Whether it’s a full-service counter service kitchen or an international grocer, every business in the hospitality industry has a lot of orders to process. Some of these orders come from restaurants or other smaller retailers; many more are coming from customers themselves. As takeout and delivery become the norm in an increasingly remote world, restaurants and other foodservice providers are taking more orders than ever before. In order for these companies to track orders and transactions and maintain a reliable archive of all related information, they need scalable solutions that can handle significant volume. There is no alternative to the cloud for building and hosting solutions like these.

The cloud has more data capacity and more native security infrastructure than many significantly more expensive on-premises architectures. Cloud service providers share security responsibilities, so the burden of maintaining security systems on-premises does not fall on the enterprise. Plus, small and startup businesses that manage the kind of data that foodservice companies collect can’t risk hardware failure if they want to scale. Securing data on a secure and adaptable platform like the cloud will be critical to the growth of these businesses.

The main benefit of cloud adoption for early-stage concepts is the relatively low cost of cloud services. Companies that want to get a product to market quickly can have a much easier time purchasing services by opting for a small technical team rather than paying hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront for a full on-premises architecture. Numbers show that companies are not missing out on this opportunity for big savings: according to a recent report by Forbes Currents, “86 percent of startups and small businesses increased their reliance on cloud services in 2021.”

Once a company has achieved product-market fit, its biggest challenge is how to scale successfully. This is a crucial point for young companies and a point where too many fail. To scale successfully at this stage, a business needs a plan and set of processes that will support its growth as sales and staff increase; This is before money is thrown into sales and marketing initiatives to generate revenue and increase hiring. A growing company needs a dynamic, flexible architecture. By using tools like Google’s CloudSQL to build a microservices architecture on a scalable platform like Google’s Kubernetes Engine or the completely serverless Google Cloud Run, companies can support and maintain their processes as they expand staff and revenue.

There is many resources available on Google Cloud, which companies in the hospitality industry can use to build scalable processes and systems. Restaurants can use Google My Business to create a business profile and partner with third-party delivery services to make their delivery options available on Google Maps and Google Search. Using the Google Maps platform, businesses can partner with independent software vendors like Olo to create a unique online delivery platform. Other providers, such as Route 4 Me Route Planner, offer map options that show delivery drivers the best routes to their destinations.

For businesses that want more control over their own systems, it’s also easy to create an internal delivery solution using Google Maps Platform. Using APIs like Autocomplete API, Geocoding API, Distance Matrix API, and Directions API, in-house development teams can build a platform that can score ETA and distance, position shipping addresses, and reduce delivery errors and checkout friction. On-premises solutions enable customization and full visibility without sacrificing the security or scalability benefits of the cloud.

Commercial kitchens that only prepare takeout or delivery orders are not called “cloud kitchens” for nothing. Hospitality and customer preferences are changing in step with the advancement of digital technology and the new opportunities this advancement offers in a world where the future is always uncertain. As the industry evolves to meet new needs and challenges, small and startup businesses in this space need to develop a suite of solutions that can handle any eventuality, but also maintain processes as these businesses scale to capture more revenue achieve and manage to grow their teams. In the future, every kitchen, whatever its business model, will be operated in the cloud in one way or another.

Josch Berman is President of C2C Global and a community building expert with a proven track record of building connections between technology companies and their audiences. In his role at C2C Global, Josch curates and facilitates timely industry discussions for cloud users—Representatives from partner organizations often attend to provide expert commentary on the successful use of the cloud. It brings thousands of users together every day to collectively solve problems such as cybersecurity, data management, cloud storage and management, and e-commerce problems.