That will change by the end of the year, said Zack Miller-Murphy, vice president and controller of N.Y.-based Loews Hotels Inc., when Loews finishes rolling out software to better monitor and control the food and beverage operations in its hotel restaurants and bars.

It's not uncommon for some facets of the hospitality industry to be less tech savvy than others, Miller-Murphy said. "[Hotels] should be more computerized, but the industry just hasn't gone [in] that direction."

Loews has monitored sales, inventory, ordering and food portion control with spreadsheets and other reports for years, but it is slow and cumbersome. "A lot of that has to do with the fact that in food and beverage control, there are so many transactions you need to track," he said. "How much steak you buy, how much arrives, how big a serving, if it sold, was it stored properly" and more, for every single food and beverage served. "Every hotel in the world has these systems set up to do that."

What Loews found is that compiling reports is so labor-intensive that workers weren't able to analyze ways to save money. Instead, the reports took hours to complete and were often shelved without even being reviewed. "We felt like we were operating in the 19th century from the systems standpoint," Miller-Murphy said. "We realized that we were woefully behind the times a few years ago."

About three years ago, several Loews executives met to figure out how to update the company's food and beverage management system without hiring more people or adding inventory. "It was from a desire to improve what we felt were lackluster controls on food and beverages," Miller-Murphy said.