Restaurant Management Techniques 2

I would like to talk about another subject relating to restaurant management, training, staffing and placement.  Whether in fast food, or some other food service industry,  you will find that the key to a successful business is placing people in the best positions possible to get the most out of your workers.  Without well trained workers, your production, quaility and performance suffers greatly.   However with the right amount of training, your staff can do the best job they can.

Training;  Training is probably one of the top problems when working in restaurants.  One of the biggest mistakes with training is the person who does the training.  In my experience I have witnessed trainers who really didin’t know what they were doing.  If you have an employee who has been on the job a long time, that does a good job most of the time, but are now doing things their ‘own’ way, don’t have them training new people.  If the trainer is slower than most, and it seems like it takes them a couple of days just to train someone in a certain position, stop having them train new people.  It will be worse simply because now you will have TWO people doing a poor job.  When hiring new people wouldn’t you want them to have the best possible training?  A good idea would be to have the person who is the best at a position training new people.  Not only will they be trained right the first time, but will have a better idea of what to do.

Retrain everyone occasionally;  As new technologies, policies, and up grades are made available, it is important that all your workers are updated regularly.   If you see someone who is not living up to your expectations find out why.  Most of the time, older workers may need to refresh themselves on the standards and procedures once in awhile in case they may have forgotten.  Overall everyone needs to be routinely checked on performance.  Many companies have on the spot lists for checking this, but if they are given a failing mark, make sure you spend the time to refamiliarize them, or retrain them altogether.  If you do it in an encouraging manner, they will not feel like the have been punished.  When there is a new procedure, it is important to make sure that everyone knows the changes that are made, and how it relates to them.  If as a manager it is not possible to tell all of them, explain in detail to one reliable person and have them do it.

Take the time to train;  When you hire new recruits it is important that they are able to trained well, and you can’t do this when you train them at peak hours.  While some people actually do good when thrust into a situation, most people get overwhelmed easily, especially if they are new at something.  Get them started when it is slow, and when it becomes busy, have them go and watch any videos you may have available that they need to watch.  Your trainers will have a better time doing their job if they are able to concentrate entirely on training rather than being distracted by other problems.  If you see a new person struggling when it is in peak hours, help them if you can, and if you can’t, try to encourage them to try harder instead of getting angry at them.

Some of the many concerns when dealing with peak hours is customer satisfaction.  Whether times are high, quality of food or service is poor, or whatever reason, you want the customer happy, and coming back again and again.  Part of the problem is that when some managers come in, they don’t take the time to make sure they not only have enough people, but also have their crew placed in the optimal position.  A good idea may be to have a guide for placing employees during the day. This would make it easier to see if any positions need to be filled as the day goes on.

Make sure you have enough people when you know it is going to be busy;  Saturday, pay days, right before or after a holiday, are just some of the many times you know there will a lot of customers.  Especially during the summer, when many of your crew is out for summer vacation from school, it is a good opportunity to offer them extra hours on these days.  You don’t have to have them work a full shift, but having sufficient staffing during peak hours is critical to make sure things run at optimal efficiency.  While labor costs are a concern, it is just as important that customers are not waiting in line, or waiting for food, or not completely satisfied with the quality they are receiving.  Not only will you not have to spend precious time dealing with customer complaints, you will be able to move them through quicker, generating more revenue.  When things begin to slow down, then you can start sending the extra people home.

Make sure you have the right people for the job;  An important part of a managers job is to know which of your employees are the strongest in terms of their position.  When it is busy it is important that all staff are in positions that they are the most proficient in.  It is also just as important to be flexible.  If you find someone that is just not keeping up, try to reposition them in an area they would be better suited instead of letting them get overwhelmed and discouraged.  If you know ahead of time who will be on in your shift, you can place them in an area that you know best fits their skills.  If there is an area where you aren’t quite sure about, a good  idea would be to call someone you know is really good to come in for a few hours and help out. 

While these techniques may not work for all situations, using these basic guidelines may give you a good start to forming a program that works right for you.