No more missed orders or billing mistakes! It’s easier to run the restaurant with less burden on staff (Yakitori Okuda)

We serve authentic charcoal-grilled yakitori made with Nagoya Cochin chicken and Kishu Binchotan charcoal, carefully skewered and grilled one by one. Many customers love our cozy, at-home atmosphere; on weekdays we mainly welcome office workers, while on weekends we are often visited by couples and families.

The main reason was that we wanted to improve our complicated way of taking orders. Until now, we would jot orders down, go back to the kitchen, copy them onto the order slip there, and once the dishes were ready, we would check off the corresponding items and serve them. But since we serve an à la carte menu and have many seats, when people handle this process, missed or forgotten orders inevitably occur. We wanted to reduce that kind of human error.

Compared to other companies, the price is reasonable. We previously used another company’s accounting system and wanted to introduce self-ordering as well, but adding that system on top would have been very expensive...

At that time, I saw an ad for AutoReserve’s service on Instagram and thought, “Wow, that’s really cheap!” (laughs). Since it seemed like we could introduce it at such a low cost, I decided to contact them to hear a more detailed explanation.

Because our restaurant has many seats, during busy times the floor staff used to have to go back and forth between the tables and the kitchen many times. After introducing self-ordering, they no longer need to go to the tables to take orders, so the burden on the floor staff has been greatly reduced. They also no longer need to check the dishes served against paper tickets, and since customers place their own orders, there are no missed orders. The issues we had been hoping to solve with self-ordering have been neatly resolved.

And we’ve also eliminated billing mistakes. Actually, we had introduced another online payment system before, but with that one, customers had to manually enter the amount themselves after scanning the QR code. Because of that, there were times when our part-time staff didn’t notice that the customer had entered the wrong amount and processed the payment as-is, which caused us problems.

In that respect, with Respo Self-Order’s online payment, the amount to be paid is reflected automatically, so customers don’t have to enter it themselves. It’s a huge help because there’s no risk of entering the wrong amount, and now we’ve completely switched over to using Respo Self-Order’s online payment only.

I’m not sure if it’s clearly because we introduced self-ordering, but our average spend per customer has increased significantly compared to before. It might simply be related to the fact that accounting errors have disappeared, and it may also be partly because customers can place orders casually at their own pace.

We’ve been in business for 25 years, so there are of course some customers who feel hesitant about the introduction of self-ordering. But once they get used to it, more and more regulars are quickly placing their orders the moment they sit down (laughs). I’m hoping that, little by little, everyone will grow comfortable with this new ordering style.

My wife and I started this restaurant together, and thanks to everyone’s support we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary, and I’ve turned 60. I hope to keep serving delicious yakitori that our customers will continue to love. As for the restaurant’s goals, we were featured in the Hiroshima–Ehime special editions of the Michelin Guide in 2013 and 2018 and received a Bib Gourmand, so next time I’d really like to earn one star.

This is especially recommended for busy restaurants and those with extensive à la carte menus. When a place is busy and has a large number of menu items, the traditional style where staff take orders at the table often keeps customers waiting, and it also makes missed orders and billing mistakes more likely.

A self-ordering system can solve those issues, so wouldn’t it make operations much more efficient?

Address: Precious Chuo 103, 6-6-8 Saijo Chuo, Higashihiroshima-shi, Hiroshima Prefecture
Phone number: 082-422-9489
Store details:https://autoreserve.com/restaurants/zU6SzdWxk5454EvtjPzm