Panama City Beach – News & Blog

Fast Food Isn’t the Only Food That’s Fast

If you’re a busy professional on the go, eating right often takes a backseat to meeting the demands of your day. Maybe you skip meals completely. Or you grab processed and pre-packaged foods. Once in a while you run out for fast food, and at least it gets you away from work for a bit, but it’s not exactly health food.

You probably also don’t give much thought to how important it is to take a mental break from the demands of your day. How many times in the past month did you eat lunch while sitting at your desk? How many times did you eat in your car? Sitting down for 20 minutes, away from work, with a good meal, in a relaxing atmosphere. . .well, this is kind of lunch break that’s good for the stomach AND the soul.

Don’t think you’re alone if you’ve been neglecting yourself when it comes to your midday nutrition. One study of working professionals revealed some not-so-surprising statistics and underscored just how many of us suffer a huge disconnect between what want for ourselves versus what we feel like we can squeeze in during a busy day. According to the study, 80% say regular meals are important to them. That’s great, because eating regularly throughout the day is smart, and it’s good for the body and the brain. But in practice, 35% say it’s hard to find time to sit down and eat a meal and 55% admit they tend to “eat on the run.” When you consider that fully half of them say they’re too rushed in the morning to eat a healthy breakfast, it’s easy to wonder when they’re able to get any meaningful nutrition into their bodies.

And then consider this alarming statistic shared by the CDC: on any given day in the United States, 40% of us have fast food for lunch, and 40% of us have fast food for dinner!

Obviously, Americans are pressed for time. We grab food to go, we eat on the go, and sometimes we even go without. But what are losing by failing to feed our machines properly?

We know that poor nutrition leads is the precursor to countless health problems in the long run. But in the short run, it’s a problem too: difficulty concentrating, lack of energy, lower productivity, irritability, disrupted sleep. . .the list goes on and on.

If time is the biggest factor holding you back from refueling your body properly, then you need to do some self-assessment and create a plan for getting more out of mealtimes.

One thing that you may never have considered is that there are probably lots of independent restaurants in your area with healthy options. Maybe you haven’t even noticed them, or maybe you think it’s too much of a hassle to go there during the lunch rush. They probably aren’t included in that phone app you’ve been using for meal delivery either (if you wonder why, ask them about the outrageous fees restaurants have to pay. . .it’s a wonder they make any profit at all when they use those services).

But supporting a small local business and letting them give you a healthy meal and a break from the office is a total win-win. One way to make sure you can get in and out with a minimum amount of wait time is order from them using aBitNow. You can then pick up your food at whatever time you specify you want it to be ready, or they’ll have it ready for you when you arrive—you don’t have to wait in line when you’ve pre-ordered your meal. You go right to a table, enjoy your lunch, and pay with the app (you can even prepay for more time savings).

Treat yourself to a healthy lunch away from the office once a week. Even if you work from a home office—in fact, maybe especially if you do—that occasional midday break where someone else serves you can be a real boost to your mood, your productivity, and your health.

That’s a lot of healthy, fresh meals that you don’t have to prepare!

Business As Usual…Or Not

Business as usual used to mean that the day-to-day operations were unaffected by outside factors, and that all was well.

Maybe in the past, but not now.

In the “New Normal” situation that exists today and for the foreseeable future, you want to be anything but usual.

The “New Normal” is defined by the many challenges put before the business owner:

Distancing and Limited Capacities – Businesses are forced to rethink and redesign how they serve their customers. Restaurants are removing tables, adding dividers, making efficient use of outdoor space, and in some cases limiting how much time a party can sit at a table. Retail stores are creating one-way thoroughfares and placing 6-foot markers at checkout lines.
Emphasis on Take-out and Delivery – Many establishments are shifting towards takeout and delivery. Some restaurants have become pickup or delivery only. Other restaurants have created pickup stations for Grubhub and the like. Retail stores and even service providers have facilitated contactless pickup and delivery.
Health and Safety Guidelines – The CDC has mandated that workers wear masks when interfacing with the public, wash hands regularly, and use a number of other safety measures that cost money and take time. Businesses have to make logistical and structural changes to comply and to make potential customers feel and be safe.

At jIT Solutions, an innovation company, we have developed a very UnUsual approach that enables businesses to significantly increase their potential for profit and thrive during a time of change and new challenges.

In a nutshell, our aBitNow platform and patent-pending processes increase your throughput, decrease your overhead, bring in more customers and promote your brand, products and services regardless of whether you offer takeout, delivery, or dine-in.

For example, restaurant margins are very tight. Typically, profit in a restaurant is around 3% or monthly profit is equal to one day’s revenues. They need to maintain their old-normal throughput in order to stay profitable.

So, the question for you as a business owner is this:

How can I increase revenue in the new normal?

A customer books a reservation and orders their food ahead of time. The restaurant receives the order and starts to process it prior to the customer’s arrival. The customer shows up, is seated at their table, and almost immediately their drinks and appetizers are brought to them– no wait. After a short period of time, their pre-ordered and freshly made meals are served, and they enjoy their dining experience, focused on the food instead of the wait. Perhaps the customer has even paid ahead of time, so when they are done, they can leave without waiting for a server to bring the bill and process their payment. The customer leaves satisfied with the experience and the restaurant is able to serve a new customer at that table right away. It’s a win for the business, the employees, and the customers!Our innovative solutions are designed to help businesses like yours achieve several valuable benefits like the ones enjoyed by the restaurant in the example above. You’ll get:

Increased Exposure – You’ll have a fully customizable website where you can feature all your menu items, products, and services, giving you a major advantage over small businesses who think it’s good enough to post screen shots of their entire menus or product catalogs. Your items will look appealing, be easy to read, and be easy to order.
Online Ordering – Customers can order online, and they’ll want to! They can see all their options and make all their choices at their leisure (no asking the server to repeat the salad dressing choices). They can specify substitutions to meet dietary needs, and even save preferences in their account.
Increased Seating Turnover – Customers can order their drinks, appetizers and meals ahead of time, eliminating the time it takes to order and serve. If they pay when they order, the don’t even have to wait for the bill or for their payment to be processed. When they’re done eating, they leave, and you serve a new customer at that table.
Increased Customer Satisfaction – When customers spend more time enjoying their meal and less time waiting, they have a truly enhanced dining experience, which means they’ll more likely be return and more likely to talk you up with their friends.
Business Self-Service Portal – You’ll have total control of the platform so you can quickly and easily make changes to what the customer sees: add specials and sale items in a timely manner, change your hours, publicize special events, etc.
Payment Platform – Full integration with Stripe for seamless credit card payments.
Kitchen Management – Orders can be managed by the kitchen using a streamlined Heads-Up-Display, helping to eliminate errors, wait time, and frustration for your staff and the customer.
Increase Staff Satisfaction – Your staff will love serving customers who have a great experience, who get in and get out, and are happy to tip to say thank you. And because of increased seating turnover, they’ll serve more guests—more happy and satisfied customers!

In this “New Normal” business environment, traditional approaches and common practices just aren’t good enough. They certainly won’t help you grow. While your competitors may struggle in the current business climate, seeing everything as a challenge while trying to make their old “Business as Usual” approaches work, YOU can leverage new opportunities…not simply to survive, but to thrive. . .through an innovative approach to business made possible by jIT Solutions and aBitNow.

To learn more about how your company can be more empowered and enjoy new growth with jIT Solutions and the aBitNow platform and patent-pending processes, schedule a call with us today – 774-469-2248

How Florida Restaurants Are Bouncing Back With Innovative Technology (like robots!)

The 2020 pandemic brought new challenges to restaurant, hospitality, and retail businesses, but Florida is bouncing back! The challenges aren’t gone, but they’re being faced with commitment, resourcefulness, and innovation…so things are moving in the right direction, and they’re moving quickly!

Customers Are Coming Back

In places like Panama City Beach (PCB), where the visitor and tourism industry are key, savvy businesses employ every solution possible to take advantage of the influx of customers that come to attend events, enjoy the beaches, and soak in everything the area has to offer.

Customers are coming back in droves, excited to be out and about, and happy to do their part to support small biz. Walking around PCB on a Saturday night, you’d never know things had ever slowed down. Crowds of both tourists and locals wait in long lines outside some of the most popular bars and restaurants.

Staffing Is a Challenge for the Hospitality Industry

So, while business is booming, according to some reports, it’s been difficult for some businesses to find people to fill open positions, and that means some restaurants are operating at less than 100% capacity—not because of a lack of customers, but because of a lack of adequate staff to serve them. Some folks receiving stimulus money and unemployment benefits are choosing not to return to their previous jobs or even to pursue any work at all.

Robots to the Rescue?

One restaurant in Hollywood, FL, frustrated by the lack of staff but unwilling to turn away customers, went super high-tech and brought in three robots that take customers to open tables. It sounds pretty cool, and customers might enjoy the novelty of following a robot to an open seat, instead of a human host or hostess…but is it enough to make up for a serious shortage of servers?

What can you do if your restaurant has plenty of customers but not enough staff to serve them?

Do you keep tables out of the rotation?

Do you make people tolerate longer wait times and hope they’ll be patient?

Do you cut the hours you’re open?

Do you hire expensive robot hosts?

Technology Is Bridging the Staffing Gap

One innovative technology platform is providing a solution to the staffing shortage problem. The aBitNow platform from jIT Solutions has a surprisingly simple yet powerful way to address the challenge of serving more customers with fewer staff members (and it’s cheaper than a robot!).

With aBitNow, you showcase your entire menu online and give customers an easy way to place their order and pay for it—before they even arrive. Customers then specify what time they want to either pick up their food or come in to dine at your restaurant.

Slash Customer Wait Time and Turn More Tables

When the customer arrives, they pick up and go, or they are seated at a table you’ve designated for aBitNow customers. These folks ONLY use the table while they’re eating, and then they’re gone. When you consider that typically only about 30% of a customer’s time during a restaurant visit is spent eating, and the other 70% is spent waiting, it makes perfect sense to get the customer in and out as quickly as possible. If you can turn even SOME of your tables 70% faster, what kind of impact would that have on your bottom line?

More Positive Interactions Make Happier Customers and Happier Staff

If you worry that turning tables so quickly might not provide enough of a personal touch and friendly interaction between your staff and aBitNow customers, don’t be. When customers place their order, they can include their name and photo, so your hosts and servers can greet them the very first time as if they’re loyal regulars. You bring them their drinks right away, and tell them how many minutes they’ll wait for their food. The personal interaction between your well-trained staff and the hungry customer is efficient and positive. The only thing that’s gone is all that time a customer usually spends waiting…to be seated, to order drinks, to get a menu, to get their food, to get the check, and to get their credit card slip to sign.

When you cut the wait time, you increase the percentage of time a customer spends ENJOYING the dining experience, and while that means fewer touches by your staff, it means more of those touches are positive. Happier customers pay bigger tips, and bigger tips make happier staff. It’s a win-win all the way around.

Tech That’s Easy to Use

Reluctant to add yet another technology component to your business? That’s understandable! The great news is that aBitNow is NOT another clunky tech system for you to manage. It’s a streamlined platform that’s easy to learn and easy to use on a simple tablet. Or, implement aBitNow as part of an all-in-one solution, where once an order is placed, there is seamless integration with point-of-sale, kitchen tickets, and server interface. You don’t have learn multiple systems or stress about compatibility, and you don’t have to add yet another tech cost to your monthly expenses. The whole system is easy to learn, easy to implement, cost-effective, and designed specifically to save you time, money, and headaches.

Technology is helping restaurants, retail, hospitality, and events meet customer demand with fewer staff. Robots is one way to go. But we recommend you check out aBitNow and find out what it can do for you.

Sign your restaurant up today and get our platform FREE for 30 days!

jIT Solutions Brings aBitNow to Bay County, Florida

Technically Speaking With jIT Solutions

By Marta Rose-Thorpe

Dan Stolts, CEO and Chief Innovation Officer of jIT (Just in Time) Solutions (jITSolutionsIT.com), likes to stay behind the scenes for the most part. Dan comes from the technical side and started out as a program engineer. “More of a Bill Gates than a Steve Ballmer kind of guy,” he says, referring to Gates running the technology side and Ballmer running the business.

jIT Solutions, based in Lakeville, Massachusetts, is an innovation company that launched in 1995 and later became incorporated under Bay State Integrated Technology in 2002. A veteran-owned business, Dan served in the U.S. Army for four years, from 1987 to 1991. “I went into military because I wanted to serve my country,” he shares. The experience helped him narrow his focus and his thought process: Creating solutions and applying technology to the challenges businesses face.

“We take a different approach with how we do things,” says Dan. “We understand the challenges of the business and take a holistic approach to creating whatever solutions are needed. Xerox (his past client) needed to get their products out faster, as well as improve employee morale. We showed them how they could use innovation to save time and money while drastically improving employee morale.”

Throughout his career Dan has written in-depth certification books on architecting Microsoft Azure solutions, Cloud migrations, and Security. For the first 25 years of his life, he used his gifts for creating technical solutions for other people, as a consultant, trading dollars for hours. “Three years ago, I realized we needed to do this to scale. Instead of focusing on one problem, we needed to think about problems for the entire industry.”

jIT Solutions, says Dan, is not a products company, it is an innovation company. Enter one of his newest innovations, a time management POS system called aBitNow (aBitNow.com) which has been in development a little over a year and a half. “We’re rolling it out now,” he says. Consider this scenario. A customer goes into a busy, crowded restaurant to have a meal with their dining companion. The hostess lets them know there is a 20-minute wait. In 20 minutes, they are ushered to their table where they wait for the server to greet them. They place drink orders and wait for the drinks. They then place their meal order and then wait for the meal. They then wait for their check, wait for their server to come pick up the credit card, and then wait for their receipt to come back.

“Our technology saves people and businesses time, energy, money and aggravation,” says Dan. With aBitNow technology, customers will view a dynamic menu on their own device (a smart phone, iPad or PC), pre-order their meal, and pre-pay. Once they arrive at the restaurant the hostess gets them seated without waiting in line – the rest of the dining experience flows. This cuts out all the wait for the customer and makes it possible for them to enjoy a nice, sit-down meal even if they have a finite amount of time – like a lunch break. On the restaurant side, the server can take on many more tables because of all the time they are saving.

“Whenever we optimize, we optimate everything around that entire business,” explains Dan. “We think through the whole process. Restaurants and other businesses need dynamic menus and need to be able to change the menu on the fly. Restaurants are being slammed now with large POS fees – sometimes 30% or more. With our product, they’ll only pay a max of 1% for all of our tech and innovation. Restaurants deal with food theft and need to know if a consumer is in good standing or not. We will have the ability to let the server or bartender rate the customer and put notes on the customer so they can develop relationships. This program provides a massive improvement in customer service.”

Another component is JiT Meals, a program for the restaurant’s kitchen staff whereby pre-cooked meals are cooked in advance. “This can be anything,” says Dan. “Baked catfish, shrimp scampi, spaghetti and meatballs. We have all these recipes that the restaurant can adopt and have high quality meals out in two minutes.”

Dan is passionate about teaching and sharing his knowledge – it’s what drives him. “It’s about taking something I’ve been doing my whole life that helps other people, and share” he says, explaining that he developed this thought process from his mother. “I’ve been gifted with being technical-savvy and the ability to innovate and think outside the box,” he says. “I want to use this to help make the world a better place.”