A restaurant owner is the bookkeeper of the restaurant. He must be in tune and have a stronghold over all the restaurant operations. If you neglect your restaurant, be assured that your restaurant will run into a loss. Hence, depending entirely on your restaurant manager and staff will not be a brilliant idea. They will not take care of your restaurant the way you would, in turn, they might even try to fill in their own pockets which will bleed your restaurant cash register dry. To avoid all such situations, you as a restaurant owner must have a vigilant watch over all your restaurant operations, and here comes the importance of restaurant management.
While going about your restaurant management, you must continuously try and innovate new things that will help you to enhance your restaurant operations. National Restaurant Association in its latest research found out that customer loyalty programs can help restaurants weather economy and gain a competitive edge in the market. This shows that you need not confine yourself to the age-old restaurant management tips, instead try and bring forth new trends. This restaurant management tips will help you efficiently manage restaurant operations. Here are some restaurant management tips that will help your restaurant business bolster.
10 Essential Restaurant Management Tips
Opening the restaurant is only the beginning. Making it a success can take a toll on you. You need to focus on multiple factors, that will ultimately make your restaurant a success. Restaurant management is not an easy task, and you got to do it right. Hence, we are here to provide you with a guide on how you should go about with your restaurant management, that will bolster your profit, help you garner high-profit margins, and make your restaurant a blooming success.
1. Have a Positive Approach To Work
Your first step to restaurant management is keeping a very positive approach towards your restaurant operations. There may be times, when you get completely fed up and feel like quitting, in such situations, remember what has brought to into the business in the first place. A negative approach on your part, can be passed on to your employees and finally to your customers. A positive attitude helps to manage restaurant operations more effectively. And such a negative attitude amongst all your staff will have the ability to drown your entire restaurant. Can you afford that? Of course not!
2. Include The Employees In The Decision Making
Your restaurant employees must feel the sense of belongingness, only then will they work for your restaurant as if it is there own business. Whenever you take any decision related to the restaurant adequately communicate it to all your employees. It will be even better if they are involved in decision making. For example, if you are planning to review your menu, how can you possibly understand how the customers are behaving to certain dishes if you are not considering the servers experience? Since it is the servers who are taking the orders and are in direct touch with the customers, they will be able to provide you information as to which dishes are most liked and the ones which are least desired by your customers. On the other hand, if you are bringing in changes in the menu, and if your servers are not adequately informed about the new insertions, then how can you expect them to upsell? Hence, transparency is something that will increase the efficiency of your employees. It is fundamentally important that you as a restaurant owner have to maintain which will sustain our efforts in restaurant management.
3. Delegation Is A Very Important Part Of Restaurant Management
As a restaurant owner, you will have various things to look at, to run the restaurant seamlessly. Hence, you cannot work efficiently, unless you have a band of competent and dedicated employees. Here comes the importance of proper delegation of work. The delegation of work is one of the essential prerequisites of restaurant management. Start by delegating the less critical chores to trusted employees, who you know can get the job done. This makes you available to focus on the more significant, more important issues that your restaurant might face. On the other hand, the delegation of work helps to get your employees involved in the day-to-day operations, thus reduces the scope of turnover and trains them to take up more responsible tasks in the future.
4. Managing Restaurant Finances Is Essentially Important
The proper ratio, sales to investment, is 3:1 meaning that Rs 300 of sales are generated for every Rs 100 spent on construction, FF&E (Furniture, Fixture, Equipment) and opening costs. Most operators have a ratio of about 1:1 and with a projected 10% or less profit per year the operator will not return the investment until well into the maturity of the business. This is a very wrong way of handling the finance of the restaurant. Hence, you must always keep in mind, that you need to spend in a way which will keep the ratio in line. The key to managing restaurant finances is knowing how to spend and where to spend. It is also important to know what to do when problems arise, to keep them from escalating further. Keeping a check on the restaurant finances is a great way to manage restaurant operations.
5. Inculcate Accountability Within Yourself and Your Employees
We are only humans, and making mistakes is just a common thing. While many times your employees can make a mistake, you cannot, however, deny that there may be times when you are at fault as well. In a situation, when you are at fault, instead of ignoring the mistake, try and call for an open house, and confront the issue in front of all your employees. Accept and try and find a solution to fix it. This will spread the word that it is okay to make mistakes, but once it is done, instead of brooding over it, try and find a solution and fix it. This will create a problem-solving attitude among your employees. In a restaurant industry, every day is different; and one day might be smooth, the other day you might be struggling to maintain the huge rush. This versatile nature of the industry makes problem-solving attitude fundamental prerequisite. If such a sense of accountability is inculcated within you and your employees, then you don’t have to worry about your restaurant management.
6. Manage Your Restaurant’s Marketing
Setting up a restaurant is not enough, you need to market it well enough, to reach the maximum people concerned. Restaurant management involves managing advertising and marketing well enough to bolster overall sales.
You must make your restaurant website, which must have an updated menu and it must be linked to the online delivery platforms. Religiously post pictures and videos that will let people know about the happenings at your restaurant. You should try and build a robust social media network through sites like Facebook and Twitter. Periodically run print or radio ads around the holidays and other special occasions, provide special discounts and offers during these seasons, capturing the holiday rush is the best thing that you can do. If you are unable to handle this yourself, you can get an in-house marketing and PR team, who will take care of marketing and advertising for your restaurant.
7. Manage Your Menu Well
Your menu is the face of the restaurant. Hence, while drafting the menu, make sure that you do it right. Menu engineering is a critical aspect of restaurant management, and it is a task that not all can grasp well. Hence, it is recommendable to get in touch with a professional or consult experienced chefs to get your menu in place. Religiously review your menu, and see which items are working the best and which items are not doing well enough. Once you get hold of the least profitable menu items, either you can bring in some changes in that dish, or scrap that item entirely from your menu. Reviewing menu also helps you to update the prices of the dishes, and keep the menu in tune with the food cost.
8. Customer Satisfaction Must Always Be Given the Utmost Importance
Satisfying customers with splendid customer service can be your most important and challenging task, that you must strive to master. You will come across, various types of customers who might like, dislike different things. You might come across the one, who enter fifteen minutes before the closing time and even then you will have to entertain them, the ones who come down with a large group and ask for reservation during the peak hours, the one who isn’t satisfied with the food or service of your restaurant. Handling such varied groups means, that you will have to understand their psychology and doing so isn’t easy.
Hence, you as a restaurant owner must train your staff always to be accommodating to all the customers. Knowing that customer perception can go a long way in building the reputation of your restaurant, you can hardly play with this. If you are wrong, or even if they are wrong, smile and apologize to let go of the situation.
9. Celebrate Your Success
Whatever it may be, you need to celebrate your success with your employees. Be it the target of the total number of footfall that you achieved, or celebrating the birthday of your restaurant, once you do these with your customers it will automatically instill a sense of achievement within them. This will prompt them to work further with greater vigor.
10. Manage Your Employees Well
Managing employees is a significant part of your restaurant management. Install a restaurant management software by which you can analyze the performances of all your employees. You can have regular weekly meetings over lunch when you can talk to your employees. Reward the ones who are performing well, encourage the ones who are not. Try and know if any of your employees are facing any internal restaurant problems and suggest ways to solve them. There might be some personal problems for which they are unable to perform to the desired extent, in such situations try and counsel them. However, you as a restaurant owner must always try and maintain being tough and sensitive at the same time. You should understand that you are not running a charity and hence, you need to be stern in certain places to avoid incompetence on the part of the customers.
We hope you have garnered enough knowledge on how you should go about with your restaurant management. Restaurant management is not an easy task, but you can do it just right if you follow the above mentioned 10 points diligently. It is also highly recommended that you have a daily checklist to ensure that you don’t miss out on anything!
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