Improving Productivity in Food Service
The best restaurants out there offer not only a consistently good food at a reasonable price, but also, great service. With most businesses, you find that there is a similar line of thought- the greatest asset the business has is actually it’s workforce, and for a restaurant, this is everyone from the wait staff to the dishwasher. Improving your staff’s productivity is important and a key element in making sure that you have the best possible experience for your customers. The key to increasing profits happens before the customer steps in the door and begins with your staff. If all staff are not working together in tandem to create a better dining experience, you may find that your patrons go elsewhere.
The best thing that you can do to promote productivity happens well before the staff is actually out on the floor full time. Make sure that your staff is adequately trained. This means being able to have a clear sense of exactly what is expected of them, and encouraging them to follow procedure as they are instructed from the start. Mentoring is a good thing, yes, but more often than not without a good, reliable training up front- having a newer staff member follow or shadow a senior staff member may cause problems as the older staff member has ways of doing things that the new one may not be ready to pick up.
Making sure that your staff is prioritizing customer service is key. If you notice that you have some servers that do not pay attention to their customers while still giving them some space- it may be time for a training refresher course. For newer servers, the key is in not allowing them to get to that level of comfort in service- from the start, make sure that they are well trained, and doing the best that they can.
Insofar as your kitchen staff goes, there needs to be a level of team work and camaraderie between kitchen and wait staff. This needs to be so that the kitchen staff makes sure that orders are correct, but also quick and efficient, and so that the wait staff is doing all they can to be sure that orders are actually brought to the back of the house the proper way. This is another area where a great training program can help, because a uniform way of ordering may enable better communication. In cases where a point of sale terminal is used, this is generally circumvented, but even then, problems can arise.
The key to better customer service may well lie in having a very solid, very uniform means of training. Better service not only makes sure that customers are coming back, but that they are also recommending your restaurant and that word of mouth is very important, especially in food service. This may take time to get all staff on board, but when the economy is uncertain and every little bit of loss is noticed- it may mean all the difference in the world for your restaurant.
