Time is money, and in the current restaurant economy shrewd managers know that every penny counts. Ever since the recession, restaurants have taken a hit, and maintaining a steady profit means employing the utmost scrutiny when examining your restaurant or bar’s operations.
Implementing a system to your flow is crucial, but even with speedy and disciplined staff members certain tasks or shortcuts can fall through the cracks. Follow along to help improve efficiency at your restaurant or bar and boost profits.
Develop a Restaurant “Bible”
If you enforce a strict procedure for all of your employees day in and day out, everyone will know where to start no matter when they come into work. An employee manual is a great place to start, but also post key regulations and procedure guidelines in the kitchen and other populated areas.
This can get as specific as the conversation your wait staff will have with customers. How much money are you losing with preliminary chatter before the waiter or waitress asks for a table’s order? Streamline questions and processes for each step of the customer’s journey so you don’t lose valuable time.
Keep Responsibilities Segmented
Who is in charge of cleaning up spills? Should the kitchen staff bring food out in case the front-of-house team is understaffed? When the customer complains, who comes out to talk to them? When answering these questions, it’s easy to see that the chain of command and the flow of responsibility can sometimes get blurred in a fast-paced restaurant environment.
Make it very clear to your staff what their responsibilities are, and reinforce this separation of duties whenever possible. With this approach you can avoid scrambling (and the less desirable alternative, sluggishness). There’s nothing worse than a customer waiting twenty minutes to receive their check due to confusion among the staff.
Rely on Feedback
As a manager, it’s important to keep your restaurant functioning at maximum efficiency. Many leaders believe that their team members should always follow orders and not ask questions. But in a restaurant you must rely on questions and critical feedback from your kitchen and wait staff to improve operations.
Always allow certain forums for employees to discuss issues or shortcomings they witness. Without a proper way to address these concerns you’ll see small efficiency setbacks grow into patterns of improper procedure that will continually cause customer dissatisfaction or significant losses.
Incorporate Technology
Restaurant technology has improved by leaps and bounds over the last decade. Investing in an automated restaurant system like a tablet-based ordering and checkout interface allows you to focus exclusively on the customer experience. By reducing the amount of work your staff members must do to serve each table you drastically improve efficiency.
With Buzztime’s digital dining tablet, customers can order as soon as they’re ready, and they can check out as soon as they’re finished with their meal. This immediacy increases table turnover rate and leads to happy, satisfied customers. Incorporating modern restaurant technology into your restaurant or bar will always improve the dining experience.
Your bottom line depends on an efficient, well-oiled operation – take these tips and improve your flow of work to rise above the competition and keep customers coming back.
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