In our previous post, we painted a picture of the chaos that ensues when a restaurant’s internet connection goes down.  Now, let’s get down to brass tacks and talk numbers.

The financial impact of an internet outage isn’t just a minor inconvenience; it’s a full-blown disaster that can leave restaurants reeling for weeks or even months.

The Money Pit of Lost Revenue

• Cash Flow Crunch: Every minute your POS system is offline is like watching dollar bills fly out the window. A one-hour outage for a restaurant with an average order value of $30 and 50 orders per hour translates to $1,500 in lost sales. That’s money you’ll never get back.
• Online Ordering Evaporation: If online ordering makes up a significant chunk of your revenue, an outage is like slamming the brakes on a speeding car. Those orders disappear, leaving a gaping hole in your daily income.

The Unexpected Expenses That Pile Up

• Food Waste Frenzy: When orders can’t be processed or the kitchen gets backed up, perfect ingredients end up in the trash. That’s money going down the drain.
• Labor Overtime Avalanche: Suddenly, your staff is working overtime to deal with the mess – taking manual orders, processing payments by hand, and cleaning up the chaos. Those extra labor costs add up fast.

The Lingering Shadow of Reputation Damage

• Customer Exodus: Long lines, slow service, and the inability to use loyalty rewards – these are the ingredients for a customer nightmare. And you know what they say about unhappy customers? They tell their friends (and leave scathing online reviews).
• Brand Erosion: Negative word-of-mouth and social media posts can tarnish your restaurant’s reputation faster than you can say “Wi-Fi down.” Rebuilding that trust can be a long and costly process.

The 1% Downtime Disaster: A Real-Life Horror Story

Consider this: Even with a 99% uptime guarantee from your internet provider, that still means 58 hours of downtime annually for a restaurant open 16 hours a day.  If your average hourly sales are $430, and even a 50% reduction during downtime occurs, that’s over $12,000 in direct lost sales.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Add in lost profits, increased staff turnover, and the long-term impact on your brand, and the real cost is exponentially higher.

Don’t Become a Statistic

In our next post, we’ll explore how different types of restaurants – from fast-casual joints to upscale dining – face unique challenges during internet outages. Stay tuned to learn how to tailor a mitigation strategy to your specific needs and discover the game-changing solution that guarantees zero downtime for your restaurant.

We’ve explored the effects of connectivity loss in restaurants in our white paper, ‘The Actual Cost of Internet Outages on Restaurant Operations.’ You can download it here.