The restaurant industry is finally in the thick of it when it comes to the technology revolution. Realizing the role tech plays in helping agile pivots and adjustments (thanks pandemic!) brands are embracing, integrating, and innovating left and right. Helping that charge is a suite of new technology platforms that seek to solve stubborn challenges the has faced and continues to face. In this series, we unpack restaurant technologies that we have found to be notable, invaluable, and remarkable. In this installment, we dive into the restaurant gratuity platform, Kickfin.
Tipping out has many challenges no matter what your restaurant’s service model may be. Cash on hand at this scale can create issues with safety and fraud. Gratuity, in general, is problematic as well in that it can directly affect the morale of the team. Who gets what percentage? Did they really earn it? This kind of gray area creates unnecessary tension. On the back end of things, there is the reporting and accounting that go into tracking gratuity. It’s a pain, to say the least. Enter Kickfin, a new fintech company that’s tackling those challenges with fervor.
Kickfin has created “the perfect tip-out solution” where restaurant operators can send tips directly to their employees’ bank accounts, any time, any day. In fact, Kickfin claims you can tip out your entire staff in 30 seconds. Whoa!
The benefits for integrating Kickfin are multi-faceted. In my opinion, the most important benefit is the uplift in employee morale which leads directly to retention. In an era where finding and retaining talent is harder than ever, this may be the only reason a brand needs to implement the Kickfin system. Diving deeper the benefits are pretty obvious. There are savings of time by those charged with calculating and paying out tips. A reduction in physical cash on hand means employees are safer and less prone to threats of robbery or worse. They get paid immediately, so no more waiting for the credit card transactions to post before seeing it on the paystub. Finally, the system reduces the need to hit the bank multiple times a week creating a notable reduction in wasted time and money.
As we look to the future of operations and restaurant service models, QSR is becoming more and more a tipping scenario. For better or worse, the tablet POS systems have made gratuity more frequent. This helps woo talent to the concepts that can help them realize more financial benefits like those found with gratuity.
Overall, Kickfin has marked the issue of tipping out as more than solved. It’s a fantastic product that every restaurant leader should consider.
Learn more at www.kickfin.com and have a listen to my podcast with founder, Brian Hassan.
