The restaurant industry can be an environment of great learning and growth, but it can also become a nightmare of danger and yelling (i.e. Hell’s Kitchen with Gordan Ramsey). With so many people working together, it doesn’t work unless there is cohesion and agreement when making choices about guests’ food preparation. The kitchen can be a chaos when dealing with restaurant food, and this sense of rush is only increased when dealing with a restaurant full of customers. In this post, we will be going over some ways to effectively manage a restaurant while keeping the consumers and the staff safe.

Nutri-Rific LLC is a hospitality and food system solution that aims to promote effective business systems and education services. We offer food safety classes, inspections, and consulting at competitive prices. We want all of our clients to be prepared to properly run an effective and safe environment for all guests and staff. Be sure to read on to learn a few tips surrounding the management of a busy restaurant, and be sure to contact us for any services we may provide to you or your restaurant!

Know Your Restaurant’s Limits

Not all restaurants are built the same. Some may be mom and pop sized cafes, some may seat up to 50, and some may be large chain restaurants that can accommodate over 100 guests. Because all restaurants are not built the same, it is impossible to try and run every single restaurant the same way. Whether you are in a small or large environment, it is important to know how many guests you can max out at while still maintaining an enjoyable and healthy environment for your guests and workers.

If you push the limit and cram people into your restaurant in order to sell as much food as possible, you may experience numerous issues. For one, you may take a long time to complete each table’s order. This will lead your consumers to have a negative experience and reduce their tipping amounts, damaging the relationships of your restaurant, the consumer, and the staff that needs tips to provide adequate wages. When cramming a restaurant, your kitchen staff will also feel rushed when making each order. This can lead to subpar food leaving the window. This brings about issues with consumers because if they send it back then you delay the process and negate the experience for the consumer. Also, rushing food out of the kitchen can lead to issues with the quality of the food or cooking, which can get consumers sick. This can lead to very poor reviews and even closure of the entire restaurant for failing to provide a safe dining experience.

To make sure that your restaurant stays in business and keeps your customers and staff happy, do some pre-planning on how your restaurant can accommodate various times, holidays, and events.

Establish Priorities For the Workday

One thing that restaurant managers often forget is that planning and prioritizing will alleviate some of the headaches that come from the “what-ifs.” Because the restaurant industry is always changing and never remaining static, everything can change in a second. Setting priorities will help keep things on track even if the entire operation needs to shift in a hurried fashion.

Pro-Tip: When establishing priorities, make sure to plan ahead and leave a little bit of buffer space to correct changes that may pop up and consume a lot of unexpected time. This will help the business continue to run smoothly, even if you are away performing a newly found task.

Delegate

As a restaurant manager, you might feel guilty and overloaded from your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. You can find yourself with too many responsibilities, and may not know how to cope with them. One effective strategy to make your life easier and allow you to focus on the duties that actually matter in the day to day operations is delegation. Delegation is assigning tasks to trusted coworkers for routine completion and check-in. By delegating tasks to coworkers, you empower them to demonstrate their leadership capabilities, as well as lighten the impact of duties on your workload so you can get to the key activities of management. Delegating tasks to the team shows your trust and confidence in their abilities as workers and leaders, and will allow them to know that you trust them and view them as reliable assets to the operation.

Pro-Tip: If you have a coworker or coworkers that are coming up on a potential promotion, you can delegate certain responsibilities to one or more of them to test out their leadership capabilities. Alternating the same task between the two coworkers can spark healthy competition between the two, as they are trying to outdo one another to claim that promotion spot. This will also benefit your business, knowing that they are giving their all (with incentives) to claim this promotional opportunity.

Maintain Transparency With Your Employees

Now that we are in the 21st century, technology and accessibility have altered the way industries look at transparency with employees. There is no benefit to hiding anything from your staff members, and often times it is impossible to be opaque with them because they will find out one way or the other.

Within the restaurant industry, many employees will be a part of this need-to-know standard that is becoming our future. This is especially apparent in the millennial employee base that always feels the need to be connected with the world around them, as they want to be a part of something larger.

Maintaining transparency with your employees is as simple as letting them know when things are going good or bad, rather than trying to hide it away. You do not have to keep them up to date with everything as the events are occurring, but keeping them in the loop shortly after will increase camaraderie and make them feel like a part of the team. This can increase engagement and motivation for them to perform at their very best.

One way to maintain good transparency with employees is to conduct regular staff meetings to keep everyone up to date on what’s happening. Keeping in constant contact during a shift can sometimes be hard because you will all be performing different tasks and might not find a proper time to meet. So, pre-planning these types of meetings will allow you to practice your transparency while holding the full attention of a staff who isn’t trying to rush back to the daily duties that they are accustomed to completing. The whole team will feel like one big unit and will run operations of your restaurant more effectively and efficiently.

Learning Effective Restaurant Skills With Nutri-Rific

Whether you have been in the hospitality industry for years, or are looking to get into the business, Nutri-Rific offers services to accommodate your needs. We offer classes on various subjects including food preparation and safety and aim to give you all of the skills needed to be an effective worker, manager, and leader in your respected field. We encourage you to contact us with any questions you may have regarding our courses or the process, and hope to see you enrolled in our upcoming courses!