Keeping service industry employees engaged and committed to their roles can decrease turnover, increase profits and positively affect customer satisfaction. When employees feel like they’re a part of a team, they are more likely to take pride in their work and display interest in aligning with company goals. Here are four ways to jumpstart your efforts:
Simplify employee scheduling. Creating work-life balance can be challenging. Employees appreciate the opportunity to provide shift preferences and availability. Although you might not be able to grant all requests, exercise understanding. To centralize and provide structure for this process, think about updating your tech to automate scheduling from both your end and your employees’. Those programs allow for streamlined communication among managers and employees, as well as other administrative benefits.
Assign roles and positions. Service-related businesses offer many different types of jobs. Establishing scope for roles and providing ongoing cross-training shows employees you value their contributions and want to see them advance.
Encourage growth. Many employees strive to move up the industry ladder. When managers promote from within, they design a rewarding, positive atmosphere to which employees gravitate.
Seek feedback. Ask employees to share compelling customer responses. When management institutes an open-door communication standard, employees feel more comfortable relaying positive and negative guest comments, as well as their own observations. When you receive enough feedback to identify trends, thank the employees that helped you get to that point.
With more than 250 food allergens identified, and 15 million Americans diagnosed with food allergies, it’s no small task ensuring your restaurant’s food safety protocols are up to par, a must if the hope is to continue serving this large market.
To help those dealing with food allergies feel confident about their safety while dining in your restaurant, here are the key takeaways from an educational session at the 2015 National Restaurant Association Hotel-Motel show during which a panel of food safety experts shared their food allergen acumen :
Train your staff how to handle food allergens. “Incorporate your employees into your process. They start buying into it and feel more confident in what they’re doing,”says William Weichelt, ServSafe director.
A certified manager should be present during everyshift and directly involved in all instances in which food allergies are a known concern. He or she acts as a knowledge center for customers as well as a resource for employees.
Never guess. Speaking of certified managers, if employees are asked a food allergy question that they can’t answer, ensure that they reach out to a manager who can. If your restaurant cannot confidently satisfy a guest’s request, expressly communicate this. This outcome, although not ideal, is much safer for all involved rather than the risky alternative.
Make ingredient lists available to guests. They know their allergy better than you do, and thus will likely know the names of ingredients or sub-ingredients that may be red flags for them.
Sub-out widely used allergens. If possible, isolate ingredients or recipes that could trigger a common allergy. For example, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro now uses wheat-free soy in lieu of regular soy in all of its marinades.
Create a back-of-house system for allergen-specific equipment. Consider using color-coded, allergen-specific plateware, prepware and other equipment.
Invest in allergy-specific technology. Natalie Krusemeier, director of training for the 7-unit, Chicago-based Colonial Café, says the company’s POS system has an allergen key. When pressed by a front-of-house staffer, the back of the house knows of the allergy, and a manager then becomes involved.
For additional information regarding food allergens, reference FARE, Food Allergy and Research and Education group, and CHART, the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers.
This article originally appeared on www.restaurant.org and can be found here.
Restaurants are often targets for online critics, so if you’ve gotten zinged by an unfavorable post or two on Yelp or another review site, you’re not alone. Some things can’t be helped, but how you handle the negativity isn’t one of them.
Here’s a game plan for dealing with online critics:
Call a full staff meeting.
Come prepared with a few negative (and positive) Yelp posts that are credible and can offer teachable moments to your staff.
Constructively review the feedback as a group and talk about strategies for improvement.
Solicit comments from both the front and back of the house to get the whole story.
Reinforce the mantra that either “we all succeed together, or we all fail together.” Invested employees are more likely to be committed to the success of the business.
Make sure everyone on staff understands the protocol for handling a customer service issue and has the autonomy to correct a problem in the moment.
Be sure to address positive reviews, too. It’s important to keep morale up by talking about what’s being done well and giving praise.
Claim your restaurant’s Yelp listing so that you can manage your profile and make posts on behalf of your business.
Implement a policy of responding to both negative and positive reviews. Keep replies sincere and gracious: “Your feedback is important to us. We hope you’ll consider giving us another try.”
Depending on the nature and legitimacy of the review, you could invite the guest to continue the conversation offline, and discuss options for correcting the situation.
While none of these steps can undo a negative customer experience, they can be used constructively to fix a problem area and reduce the likelihood of a repeat occurrence. More importantly, addressing customer feedback and learning from mistakes sets you and your business on the path to long-term success.
Americans may not have the most pristine reputation when it comes to eating healthily, but that may soon change as consumers are increasingly basing what to eat on healthfulness. As the demand for healthy food rises in and out of the home, the restaurant industry must adapt to fit the times.
Healthy Habits on the Rise
According to the 2014 Food & Health Survey published by the International Food Information Council (IFIC), healthfullness is the third leading driver of food and beverage selection, influencing 71 percent of consumers. And this shift towards better nutrition is not passive at all as the same survey concluded that at least three out of five Americans spend some time planning each of their meals.This healthfulness movement does not only apply to what is being eaten within the household, but extends to what people are looking for when choosing where to eat out. Research conducted by the National Restaurant Association (NRA) shows that nearly 75 percent of consumers are more likely to dine at restaurants offering healthful items, and when ordering, half of Americans at least sometimes use nutrition information to decide what to have.
A Few Changes
So what does this mean for the restaurant industry? It means boosting nutrition while maintaining taste. To help, Deanne Brandstetter, vice president of nutrition and wellness for the Compass Group North America, offers a few easy ways to improve the nutrition content of your menu items:
Increase produce on the plate. Fruit and vegetables have a huge water content, are low in calories, lower in sodium, and have no saturated fat in their natural state. The more produce you place on a plate, the less you need of other items. The challenge: making produce as interesting and craveable as your proteins.
Add umami with mushrooms. Mix ground mushrooms into ground animal protein to decrease calories, sodium and fat and increase fiber, selenium and Vitamin D. Let customers know about it. They’re no longer into “stealth health,” Brandstetter says. They want to know that you’re making your menu items more nutritious – and how you’re doing it.
Reduce sodium. Use salt as a “finisher,” rather than in every step of the preparation. Or, explore new salt replacements. In response to restaurant and consumer demand, food manufacturers are developing innovative, new products to reduce sodium. One example: diamond-shaped salt crystals, which are hollow inside and have more surface area than traditional salt crystals.
Improve carbohydrate quality. Use whole grains in pasta, pilaf, risotto and other dishes. Experiment with grains other than whole wheat, such as millet, quinoa and spelt. Get ideas and resources from the Whole Grains Council.
Create interesting, lower-calorie beverages. Offer house-made, healthful beverages, such as ginger water, sparkling water with fruit or tea infused with fruit or herbs. Serve juice made with fruit and vegetable purees.
Consider strategic calorie design. Create plates with a limited number of calories. For example, if you are designing a plate with no more than 600 calories, make sure every element builds flavor, satisfaction and craveability.
Rethink desserts. Instead of serving a large slice of cheesecake with a strawberry garnish, create a miniature cheesecake surrounded by strawberries. “The CIA calls it the ‘dessert flip,” Brandstetter says. Customers appreciate tiny dessert portions rather than low-calorie versions, she says.
Allow for indulgence. But on a small scale. Instead of a platter of all fried seafood, serve a few fried shrimp and many, many more grilled shrimp on skewers. “It balances it out a little bit,” she says.
How are you making strides to improve the nutrient content of your menus? Let us know here, or @gosirvo.
What drives behavior? Daniel Pink, authoritative career analyst, explores this question in his bestselling book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, on which he based his illuminating Ted talk “The Puzzle of Motivation”. The highlights are…
“There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.”
Said by Daniel Pink, this statement points to the fact that, while scientific research has demonstrated that intrinsic motivators, such as the desire to learn and feel fulfilled in general, are much more powerful than their counterparts, the current business operating system is built around extrinsic motivators, rewarding top performers and ignoring the rest.
So, what does “science know”?
The carrot-and-stick motivation scheme typical in most organizations, in which performance is incentivized with rewards, usually monetary bonuses, leads to increased performance ONLY when the tasks involved require mechanical skills.
When the tasks involved require rudimentary cognitive skills, the carrot-and-stick scheme is not only ineffective, but also DETRIMENTAL, leading to poorer performance.
Humans have an “inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their capabilities,” which comprises the ”third drive”– the joy of the task itself.
The conclusion: extrinsic factors, such as material rewards, do not carry enough motivational weight to increase job performance when critical and creative thinking are required. Instead, intrinsic factors that contribute to how much we enjoy our jobs, are what drives performance in these instances.
A novel approach
Based on the notion of the “third drive”, Pink suggests a revised motivation scheme focused on three intrinsic factors that are vital to feeling fulfilled in the workplace.
They are:
Autonomy: permit employees to direct their own work lives by providing a few freedoms such as how and when a project is completed. Give guidance, but avoid micromanaging, and focus on output rather than schedule.
Mastery: provide employees with opportunities to develop and improve skills in areas that interest them so that boredom is not a possibility. However, include clear goals and feedback in order to support this form of professional growth, and ease anxieties about the learning curve.
Purpose: allow employees to fulfill their natural desires to contribute to a greater cause by emphasizing the organization’s overarching goals, not just profit goals, and ensuring that each and every individual understands his or her role in accomplishing these goals.
And about the $$$: pay employees enough so that the issue of money is off of the table, and work is at the forefront.
At the heart of the issue: the drive to work hard stems from the opportunity for personal growth. Provide this to your employees instead of the proverbial carrot-and-stick, and top-notch job performance will be a given.
How do you or your business provide autonomy, mastery, and purpose, as well as other factors contributing to intrinsic motivation?
For professionals in the business of serving food and drink, trained in the art of creating a successful dining experience, it may be difficult to stomach critiques from customers. After all, what do they know? Well, it turns out they know absolutely everything even if they know nothing.
Who knows best
According to Peter Nolan, chief brand officer for Roti Mediterranean Grill, “the customer who comes in twice a week, or 100 times a year, makes him or her an expert on the brand, and [it] would be foolish not to take his or her opinion into account.” Nolan firmly believes restaurateurs should listen to customers in order to “connect their insights into what the brand is trying to accomplish.”
So, sure, a customer may be commenting on an expertly prepared plate of food, but if it does not satisfy, then does it really matter if it is textbook perfect? The overarching goal of any eating establishment is to provide customers with something that will get them back in the door for a second, third, or hundredth time, so why not take a second to learn what that something may be.
Getting the dirt
Peter Nolan provides a list of tips to obtain valuable customer feedback:
Take the time to actually listen to your customers. Most importantly, hear what they have to say and respect their opinions, even if they are not a food professional.
Engage in casual conversations with customers. Be the most curious person in the room, and talk to anyone, and everyone, about the highs as well as lows of their experience.
Speak like your customers. If you want to understand customers’ insights, then you not only have to speak to them, but they must also speak to you. Using their language goes a long way to ensure this happens.
Know what you want to know. It is possible to obtain valuable information from a conversation initiated with no direction in mind, however asking about specifics will grant you access to much more understanding.
Don’t be afraid to poll. Not all customers will complete a formal survey, but some will, and those are a great way to incorporate customer feedback.
What matters most
Customers are the life force driving every successful business and, as Nolan explains, “integrating customer insights into your company’s innovation efforts can have a huge impact on a brand’s success.” By aligning vision and expertise with the desires of the customers, unforgettable dining experiences can abound.
At the end of the day, as Nolan puts it, “If you love and respect your customers and treat them well, they will come back again and again.”
How does your company find out what the customers are saying? Let us know @gosirvo.
