Fast food restaurants must focus on data-driven preventive maintenance programs at the back of the house. This is a critical, success-or-failure shift in your operations to ensure that you are one step ahead of failures that can take a lot of time.

An old story: During peak service, the walk-in cooler stops cooling, the fryer fails, or the HVAC fails. Instead of assisting the production line, providing services to customers, or providing support to employees, you must find quick solutions immediately to avoid loss of inventory, unfinished orders, or hotter kitchens.

In fast food restaurants, customers want their experience to be fast and consistent. Now more than ever, safety, speed, and convenience are critical to keeping customers returning.

COVID-19 has caused significant changes in consumer behavior and preferences. Non-contact pickup has become the standard. Driveway is still king. Technology continues to drive innovation.

Before the "restaurant of the future" arrives, it is important to treat the elephant in the room-or rather, in the kitchen. Using technology to optimize the front-end experience—especially in today's highly competitive QSR environment—is the key to maintaining brand loyalty and meeting consumer needs. However, the back office (especially repair and maintenance) is much slower in getting the attention and optimization needed to create the fast and convenient experience customers desire. But it is equally important.

To avoid nightmarish situations during peak service periods, fast food restaurants must focus on data-driven preventive maintenance programs. This is a critical, success-or-failure shift in your operations to ensure that you are one step ahead of failures that can take a lot of time.

The first step in developing a practical preventive maintenance (also active or planned maintenance) plan is to understand which areas of the kitchen require the most attention or benefit the most from simple preventive maintenance.

Although preventive maintenance may seem time-consuming, the cost of emergency repairs is much higher than the time it takes to plan ahead. According to data from the National Hotel Association in 2020, hotel maintenance costs may be as high as 1.5% of sales, while other studies have pointed out that this ratio may be even higher, reaching 2% to 6%.

On the surface, this may not seem like a large cash flow-but a few hours without a fryer means lost revenue, customer dissatisfaction, and huge bills for emergency services.

Planned maintenance reduces the need to dispatch suppliers or impulsive replacement of worn equipment outside of working hours. It is more likely that you will be able to successfully troubleshoot and repair, and then complete preventive maintenance.

Setting a timetable and sticking to it is essential. Many PM strategies can be executed every 30/60/90 days, or once or twice a year. You should consider your restaurant’s unique schedule, support for seasonal menu changes or large promotions that drive sales growth, and subsequent equipment wear and tear.

First of all, the cold end is not only a priority for fast food restaurants, but also their most common source of equipment repairs. According to data on more than 7,000 service accidents in 2020, 35% of accidents are cold-side equipment-the most common are walk-in coolers, hand-held refrigerators and walk-in freezers. The average cost of these events is $668.30. Depending on your model, the average temperature of the walk-in cooler should be between 35 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. When it exceeds this sweet spot, your product is at risk.

To complete preventive maintenance of the walk-in cooler, follow these helpful tips:

These help ensure that you find any problems before they become full failures or need to visit the supplier.

In addition to cold-end maintenance, fast-food restaurants are also facing a large number of service requests surrounding pipeline infrastructure. Although it seems to have nothing to do with QSR compared to a full-service restaurant, plumbing is more than just a public toilet. You have not repaired the leaky sink that your employees pass by every day because it "has always been like this"? Leaking pipes can damage nearby equipment, waste water, hinder normal services and increase water bills. Larger leaks and bursts can cause permanent structural damage and make a location unusable, sometimes for weeks.

Smaller leaks may cost 150 to 300 US dollars to repair, but larger leaks in the pipeline infrastructure can cost you thousands of dollars. If the door is closed for more than a few hours, the cost of losing business will be devastating.

To complete preventive maintenance of pipelines and infrastructure, follow these helpful tips:

Preventive maintenance not only saves you and your employees time (you need this time more than ever), it also saves inventory and revenue. Equipment maintenance is inevitable, but active, data-driven facility management can maximize the use of time, money, and energy to manage last-minute incidents and solve your daily problems.

As technology advances and front-end experience improves, please consider adopting solutions to optimize your back-office processes. It may seem impossible to increase efficiency in the elusive R&M process, but as long as you use the right tools, you can plan, troubleshoot, and develop strategies to improve your business. Most importantly, strategic repairs and maintenance ensure that you and your employees focus on what you do best-serving hungry customers.

Daniel Estrada is the co-founder and CEO of 86 Repairs, an innovative platform that automates the repair and maintenance of restaurant equipment. Daniel started his career as a web developer and has held various technical positions in startups and Fortune 500 companies.

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