Getting Restaurant Staff Prepared for<span> a Busy Holiday Period</span>

Getting Restaurant Staff Prepared for a Busy Holiday Period

As we reach this time of year, we tick off the things separating us from the frantic holiday season. With Halloween and thanksgiving both over, we’re well and truly on the way and nothing is going to slow the journey down. As you know, more customers walk through the doors in the last month of the year and this can put stress on your staff. Considering most restaurants hire young staff, many can be unprepared for what’s to come.

In the last six weeks, diets are forgotten and people are more likely to treat themselves and their families. Let’s not forget, businesses all around the city also have their Christmas meals too. Therefore, you need to ensure everything is ready and this includes your stock rooms, your menu, and your staff!

Assertiveness is a Valuable Skill – If you have experience in managing a restaurant, you’ll know that walking the line between assertiveness and plain pushy can be dangerous. During the holidays, you need people to come in, enjoy their meals, and then leave again without making them feel as though they were spared an experience…this is easier said than done.

When talking to servers in the lead up to Christmas, start by encouraging a faster pace because nobody wants to be waiting at the front door just to get a table. To get things started, they should also explain the specials as they sit down rather than walking away immediately; this way, they’re already thinking about eating. Sometimes, you might just strike gold and the table will say ‘that sounds great, we’ll all have the ‘enter delicious dish here!’.

If you have room for display dishes around the restaurant, make them visible because it’ll catch the eye of the diner. With any luck, they’ll have that specific dish on their mind and order it without even checking the rest of the menu when the time comes. If your staff can master the art of offering assertiveness with a smile, your guests won’t feel cheated out of their experience.

Consider Different Ordering Options – In other industries, the invention of the mobile device has allowed the ordering process to become more efficient. For most, they believe this doesn’t apply to the restaurant niche but we would be cautious in thinking this. Nowadays, online and mobile food ordering is a possibility and it could pocket you a nice sum of money during the upcoming season.

Do your members of staff currently spend most of their lives on the phone taking orders? If so, this is a huge inefficiency considering the orders have the potential to come through automatically via the internet. In addition to making the process easier, it also severely reduces the number of mistakes made. Of course, we’re only human so the customer could say the wrong dish by accident or your team member could mishear something over the phone. With online ordering, communication improves and there’s proof of the order so blame can be portioned accordingly for mistakes; this could reduce the number of extra dishes you have to give away.

If you’re going to introduce this ordering method, make sure it’s advertised sufficiently on social media, your website, and in your restaurant. Suddenly, your restaurant becomes available without the upheaval of writing everything down and then placing the call. With increased accessibility, there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy an increase in orders too.

Sometimes, the introduction of online ordering can be slow to start so try some online-only special offers; people sometimes just need a gentle push in the right direction. If they have a reason to order online, such as 10% off, they’ll do so to see how good the service is.

Consider Your Stock Carefully – As a restaurant, there are some mistakes you make during the holiday season that are forgivable including bringing the wrong menus or the wrong dish every so often. However, there’s one thing that should be considered a crime against eateries around the world; not ordering sufficient ingredients.

If you have a POS system, or if you track things manually, you should know your most popular dishes and you should be aware of how busy things can get in December. If this is your first year, don’t just assume you’ll need the same weekly order because Christmas is a different beast altogether.

If you need to order extra, go ahead and do it; what’s the worst that can happen? You don’t order quite as much once the season is over. If you end up wildly overestimating stock levels, this isn’t a problem for foodstuffs with a long date. Even if you’re forced to throw fresh food away, at least you’ll learn for next year and at least you didn’t need the embarrassing conversation of telling guests half your menu is unavailable.

As a restaurant, customers are willing to forgive certain errors but your role within the community, at the very minimum, is to provide them with delicious food.

Promote Early Catering Orders – If you don’t provide a catering service, 1) consider it because you can make some great money at this time of year and 2) feel free to skip to our next piece of advice. If you do, we recommend encouraging your customers to make their orders as early as possible. When those last-minute huge orders come in, they’re almost impossible to turn down because it presents a healthy sum of money. Yet, at the same time, it places the whole business under stress.

In the past, we’ve found that discounts work quite well because people always like to save money. For example, a 5% discount per week they order in advance (with a maximum of three weeks; 15%). With an early order, you have time to prepare and it becomes easier to cope with for your team. As long as you spread the message as far and wide as possible via social media, newsletters, emails, your website, and in the restaurant, the more likely people are to take notice.

Your employees will find it much easier to stay motivated when the orders come in early because they feel respected!

Is Your Current Team Capable? – Of course, we aren’t questioning the ability of your employees. Instead, we’re asking whether they can handle the expected demand alone or whether you’re going to need more people. When the workload spreads between fewer people, the customers don’t get the attention they deserve and the staff themselves feel mistreated.

For your restaurant to run smoothly this season, we advise looking at your staffing requirements carefully. These days, plenty of people want seasonal work and it prevents your customers from waiting for 30 minutes just to get a table. Instead, they’ll be in and out enjoying a superb experience and you can take more tables over the course of an evening.

Summary – Ultimately, this time of year requires some consideration; if you go into it without really thinking, you WILL come unstuck like many ex restaurant owners before you. After thinking about staff, stock, online ordering, scheduling, your menu, and every other factor, you can keep the restaurant running like clockwork even with more people sitting down than ever before.

For your employees, they need strong leadership at this time of year. If you remain strong at the top, they’ll keep working away even when they feel like giving up!

How to Keep Your Best Team Members at a Restaurant

Within the hourly worker world, turnover is high and this has been the case for many years. With the current rate over 100%, this means each role is turned over once a year. While this might seem part and parcel of working in the restaurant industry, you should know that it costs close to $5,000 to replace somebody on $30,000 because you need to pay out to advertise the role, hire the right person, and then train them up to standard. For us, this is pure inefficiency so we have four tips to prevent a high turnover in your own establishment.

Hire Carefully – While keeping an eye on the skills of the individual and their ability to perform in the role, you should also be looking out for those who will stay for the longest time when hiring. If you don’t advertise the role correctly or you don’t spend enough time with candidates, the two parties are more likely to come across something they don’t like later down the line. If you hire carefully and ensure you’re both on the same wavelength, you enter a long-term agreement and partnership.

In addition to an extensive hiring process, we also recommend avoiding candidates who have had ten jobs within the last three years. Instead, look for those who have shown loyalty or at least ask the candidate why their employment has been so short in the past. In some circumstances, they’ll have a valid reason such as going back to school or looking after a sick family member. During the interview process, if you do it correctly, you can learn a significant amount about an individual.

Schedule Carefully – If your employees ask for certain days off, do your best to accommodate this or at least sit them down and explain why it isn’t possible rather than ignoring them completely. With your staff being the ones that decide your customers’ experience, you need them to want to be at work as opposed to hating it. Nowadays, you can take advantage of technological advancements to get your scheduling right. After collecting information regarding availability, platforms can now create a schedule from a template.

Handle Requests Carefully – Leading on from the previous point, everybody needs some time away sometimes otherwise they get sick of the same four walls. As well as allowing vacation time each year, pro-actively make arrangements to allow staff extra time off after a long period without a holiday. Of course, this includes yourself so stop thinking you’re immune from needing time away. If we get too much of anything, we grow tired so have a break and come back fully refreshed and motivated.

To prevent staff becoming annoyed when they can’t get the weekend off on a Friday, have some rules in place so the system is fair for everyone. For example, ‘all staff members should inform of requested time off at least weeks in advance’. With a digital system as shown previously, everything can be done automatically and you don’t have to remember the days each member of staff has asked to avoid.

Communicate Carefully – If you want to avoid a high staff turnover, communicate with all employees and avoid lying to them because this can be detrimental for your relationship with all staff. If you communicate and have a positive relationship, they’ll know you aren’t refusing time off for no good reason and you can build from here.

Fantastic Twitter Features to Include in Your Marketing Strategy

Over the past decade, Twitter has gone from strength to strength and it now stands as a superb marketing platform for all types of businesses. For restaurants especially, the site is fantastic because you can upload your menu, advertise special offers, communicate with customers, advertise your food with colorful images, and more. Today, we are going to discuss the main features that you should be looking to use in 2017!

Profile – Before we go any further, you need your bio and profile picture to be as good as can be. Remember, the picture is often the first thing people see so use your logo. In terms of your bio, this should contain a brief introduction of what you offer, business hours, items on the menu, and your tagline and logo once again.

Follow Carefully – As well as your profile, you also need to be cautious with who you follow because people will keep an eye on this list. Rather than clogging up your feed and affiliating your business with nonsense accounts, follow only those necessary and treat it like the business account it is. If you need advice in this area, Twitter Analytics gives great recommendations for who to follow in your niche.

Lists – On Twitter, ‘Lists’ is actually a severely underused feature but we are looking to change this fact. On your account, you are allowed around 1,000 lists with 5,000 accounts in each and they can be great for interacting with bloggers and various vendors to create a buzz around your restaurant. In addition to this, they will help you to keep abreast of all latest products and services.

Direct Messaging – If you have a Twitter account already, we can almost guarantee that you disabled Direct Messaging and you wouldn’t be alone because this is something many businesses do. However, leaving it open will allow angry customers to send you a message directly rather than leaving a tweet on your profile for the whole world to see so it is definitely something to consider!

Moments – If you are looking to boost engagement on your page, the new Moments feature is a great starting point. As a tool for content curation, you can share numerous tweets regarding an event, product launch, trend, or whatever you want to bring to your follower’s attention.

Twitter Ads – In recent years, Twitter advertising has improved somewhat and it now allows for targeted campaigns so you can reach out to the people who are most likely to visit your restaurant. In addition to searching for the right Twitter users, you can also search using hashtags so look out for the hashtags being used by current customers. Over time, you could use these to find new customers!

Coupon Marketing – When you choose to go with coupon-based marketing, you know that there are going to be various benefits to experience. As well as offering customers personalized rewards, you will obtain vital information about customers moving forward and the system almost feeds on itself. Using Twitter, you can offer exclusivity to customers to improve the visibility of your brand and boost the loyalty in your customer base. Eventually, the likes and shares will lead to success.

Trending – On the homepage of Twitter, you have probably seen the trending topics section but have you ever used these for your business? As well as breaking news, trending topics can also be planned events through one or multiple channels. If you have enough followers (you can team up with another company, if not), you can try to get a particular hashtag into the trending topics and the awareness of your brand will skyrocket in a matter of hours.

Engagement – With Twitter engagement, many businesses make the mistake of constantly advertising a product or a service but this soon gets frustrating to watch. According to the 80/20 rule, 80% of all your conversations should be simple interaction with followers whereas 20% contribute to the programs and goals of the brand. Essentially, this ensures that customers feel as though their opinions are being taken into account and their kind words are appreciated.

Customer Service – In years gone by, customers would have to talk to you in person or send a letter when they have praise or an issue. With Twitter, it has given them a new platform because they see a response much quicker. Therefore, allow your brand to get a great reputation for responding to customer service issues and all watching will respect your efforts.

Pictures – Ever wondered why Instagram is so popular? As a species, humans react well to photos and they instantly grab our attention. As a business, you need to utilize this information and add images to your posts. According to a recent study, tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than those that don’t. Furthermore, interaction is also stronger with images so upload these along with videos even if it is something taken quickly on a smartphone; these can be just as effective as professional shots.

Influencers – On Twitter, you will find ‘influencers’ who are people with a significant following. Along with celebrities, the list has grown to include bloggers, vloggers, and many others in recent years. Once you have found the ones in your niche, reach out to them every once in a while to see if they want to visit your restaurant and get involved with helping your brand. Considering they have potentially hundreds of thousands of followers all trusting their word, this could be a good strategy this year.

Twitter Analytics – How are you supposed to progress if you don’t analyze the success of previous posts? With Twitter Analytics, you can see how many impressions and clicks your posts receive which allows you to learn the most successful posts as well as posting times throughout the day.

As you can see, Twitter is pivotal in a marketing strategy and these thirteen tips will have you progressing this year. As long as you pay attention to this advice, there is no reason why your brand can’t increase in popularity in the months ahead.

Long Lines – Is It Impossible to Keep Customers Happy?

We recently read a review that went as follows;

‘Normally, I hate waiting in line and would steer friends and family clear of restaurants that get especially busy. However, the servers were so friendly and welcoming that I didn’t even get a chance to get upset. They took our belongings, were honest with expected waiting times, and we sat there happily with drinks while we waited.’

Lines for a restaurant serve two main purposes;

They allow the waiting team some time to clear a table
They create a sense of intrigue for all who walk by

However, getting this process wrong can have catastrophic consequences. When customers are left waiting too long, or are perhaps continually told ‘five minutes’, it won’t be long before they walk away (and tell friends to avoid the establishment too!).

With this in mind, how do you make sure that your restaurant is worth the wait? Sometimes, forming lines is essential, so we’ve compiled some advice here today!

1. Always Remain Honest

There’s nothing worse than receiving lies from any company; if you don’t think there’s going to be a free table for 45 minutes, don’t suggest 15. Why? Because they will start to get frustrated. As you continually lie about how long a table will be, they eventually get to the point where they don’t even feel respected as customers.

As well as remaining honest, remember to encourage them to make a reservation so they don’t have the same issue in the future.

2. Optimize Your Reservations Systems

We know that it can be scary to open your restaurant up to reservations; one cancellation and your expected income drops. Yet, by not allowing reservations, you may just turn away even more custom.

Instead of shying away from reservations, introduce a system like OpenTable where diners are rewarded for making the reservation and then turning up as expected. Compared to other systems, the 5% ‘no-show’ rate is actually incredibly strong. When you’re more confident about reservations showing, you don’t have so much drama with walk-in guests.

In fact, some restaurants have even started to take credit card details with the reservation. This way, they’re even less likely to skip the reservation. Even if they do, your cancellation fee will come to the rescue.

3. Assess Their Interest

Are they actually willing to wait for as long as they say? Sadly, many people who walk away from a line actually do so because of their own hunger rather than your poor performance. Before accepting that they’ll wait, double check otherwise they’re artificially keeping the waiting time up for everyone else who comes after.

4. Keep Guests Calm

If your restaurant is known for long lines, it’s probably unfair to expect people to wait in a lobby or even outside in the rain. Instead, make sure they have a proper waiting room. If they are outside, at least provide outdoor heating lamps and a drinking area.

Elsewhere, you can also keep customers calm by simply acknowledging their presence. If you’ve ever felt ignored by a business, you’ll know exactly how frustrating this is. Greet all guests, explain the situation, and take them to the bar (if this is an option!).

Finally, another great way to keep guests smiling is to pass around a few snacks. If you don’t want them to go elsewhere, at least keep their hunger at bay while they wait. This is a cheap solution, they’ll tell their friends of the fantastic service, and their main meal will be worth the wait.

5. Occupy Guests

As well as making guests happy, we also believe in occupying them so the time they spend waiting isn’t just staring at one another. We have some suggestions for this;

Send them Somewhere Nearby – Firstly, you could give them something to do in the neighborhood. Is there a cool store next door or an event nearby?

Buy TVs – Why not install some TVs in the waiting area and give customers something to watch?

Offer Coloring Books – For children (and some adults, if they really want!), you could hand out coloring books. Not only does this keep the younger ones occupied, the parents are less likely to walk out when their kids are happily coloring, and when you’ve accommodated them so nicely.

Take a Number – If the worst comes to worst and they’re ready to walk away, take a number and contact them directly when a table is free.

Conclusion

Some people will never be happy in a line, but you can do your best with these fantastic ideas!

5 Tips to Avoid No-shows at Your Restaurant

Are you all ready? Have you set everything in place? Is the chef ready with the menu? What about the customers? Are all of them coming?

Getting ready and setting everything in place for the event can consume a lot of energy. There is a lot of planning, preparing and organization that goes into it. Additionally, other than pre-planning and preparation before hand, there is a lot that you have to at the spot. Other than monitoring the flow of customers inwards and their demands on orders, you also need to make sure that the number of no-shows at your restaurant is minimal. No-shows are customers who make reservations but neither do they show up nor do they cancel it- before time.

Such customers are customers but at the same time are not customers. Dealing with no-shows is reprehensibly difficult because no-shows are a great deal of loss to your business. It does not matter whether the number of no-shows is high or low, in either case it is a disadvantage for the business. This is why you should come with preventive strategies so that you can deal with no-shows even before they do not show up. Thus, it is important that you establish grounded reservation policies through strong communication and excellent customer relations.

Communicate Openly

Explain your policies to the customers. Give answers to questions like, how they can cancel and when is the right time to get their reservation cancelled? Highlight the significance of timely cancellations. Give your customers space to cancel reservations in advance, on phone, or via text or to consider automatic reservation system.

Detail them on the fees

The best way to eliminate no-shows and save your business is to charge the customers. One way to do this is that you ask your customers for credit cards, in order to hold reservations. Asking for a deposit fees on credit card reservations will help in drastically reducing the number of no-shows at your restaurant. If you do have a fee, then be sure to give details regarding the policies and procedures surrounding any charges.

Time-frame

At times, customers do not show up on the time that they had agreed upon. It is not necessary that they won’t show up, they might be on their way but there is too much traffic and they are struggling their way through to your restaurant. This is why you should set a time-frame for how long you are willing to wait for the customer to arrive. Usually, restaurants wait for 15 minutes but it varies according to the place. So, see to what suits you and set the time-frame accordingly.

No Reservation or Limit Reservations

If you have opened a new restaurant, it is advisable that you do not keep the option of ‘reservation’. This way you will also be at ease and concurrently, the customers will also get away with the trouble of booking in advance.

On the contrary, limiting reservations can work for restaurants that get crowded during certain hours but also have off-peak hours. By limiting reservations to certain time period can be convincing for those who plan ahead of time and also those who prefer spontaneity.

Send Reminders

To avoid reaching the level of uneasiness with your customers, try putting in more. You can do this by sending your customers reminders about their reservations (the date and time) on phone, via mail or text.

Following the above mentioned tips will surely help you avoid no-shows.