One of the biggest challenges in the food and beverage industry is hiring qualified and capable employees and keeping them around for the long run. The average day in the life of a food and beverage worker can be stressful, and using motivational techniques to inspire and support your staff will not only improve the quality of work but also increase the liklihood that they’ll stick with you.
Use these tips to incorporate a dose motivation into the daily management of your staff and watch them succeed!
Focus on the positive
Have you ever had a manager who put a spotlight on everything that was going wrong during the pre-shift meeting? Nothing beats people down more than only hearing about the things they have done wrong. The things that your staff needs to improve upon do need to be addressed, but addressing them in a constructive way is more likely to have a positive effect.
Try the “sandwich” technique. Begin by talking about some positive things you have seen in your employees. Maybe celebrate the successes of each individual employee. Then discuss things that need improvement. Then, conclude by thanking your staff for their hard work. By sandwiching the negative between two positives, your staff will feel encouraged, instead of discouraged.
Keep the acknowledgement coming
Have ongoing acknowledgement programs, like “Employee of the Month”. Designate an area in the back of the house where the successes of your staff members can be posted. If a customer writes a good review of your restaurant or the staff, post it there. Regularly update the postings, making sure to rotate through the whole staff.
Have daily goals
Create daily goals for your staff to work towards. Do you manage a steakhouse? Offer a reward to the server who sells the most of a certain type of steak. Does your restaurant specialize in fine wine? Set a wine sales goal for the server who has the highest wine sales.
The reward can be anything from a free meal to a gift card. Make it interesting by creating teams, and having your employees work together to achieve a goal.
Set monthly goals as well
If your daily goals are for a small reward, create a larger goal for the entire month. For example, set a goal for the staff member with the highest monthly sales, with nothing under a certain amount. The reward could be something like a $500 bonus or a paid day off.
Set up a continuing education program
If your employees feel like you care about them, it will show in the quality of their work. Investing in their future by offering further job training and education shows them you care, and it will increase the likelihood that they will stick with you long-term.
Provide opportunities to cross train within your restaurant, and if promotion is possible, try to do it from within.
Get your hands dirty
In a restaurant’s busiest moments, it’s easy for a manager to shout out for someone to cut lemons or roll silverware, but that may send the wrong message to your staff. Show them that you aren’t above tasks like these.
When it’s obvious a staff member could use an extra pair of hands, roll up your sleeves and help out. One of the characteristics of a good leader is to lead by doing not by telling.
Feed your staff
If you have ever worked as a server or cook, you know often it is that you go an entire shift without getting the opportunity to sit and eat. Provide these short breaks for employees to grab a bite if possible.
For shifts that are really busy, bring in breakfast, lunch, or dinner every now and then. This is another way to show your employees that you care, and they won’t have to try to get through a shift on empty stomachs!
The food and beverage industry is a stressful, but rewarding one. By following these tips, you’ll motivate your staff and encourage them to work towards being a valuable part of the team!
It’s not uncommon for there to be tensions between restaurants’ front and back of house staff. From opposing personality types to the contentious fact that only the FOH gets tipped, animosities can run high and ultimately cause the quality of service to suffer. However, it doesn’t have to. Although the BOH and FOH may never be besties, the two can work as a team so that service is at its best. Here are a few ways the BOH can help to make it so.
“The BOH needs to know the reality—a team effort between FOH and BOH determines the quality of service.” Adam Weiner, Culinary Arts Instructor
Have tastings of menu items and daily specials available for the waitstaff before service, so they can answer customer questions with first-hand knowledge.
Along the same lines, use a dedicated board to list the ingredients in the specials so the servers are informed in the case the case of questions and allergies. This way, the kitchen staff does not have to be bothered in these situations.
Instruct the servers on the focal points of each dish so they can place the plate slightly off the focal point and turn it to the proper position. Customers will notice the extra gesture and tips will go up.
When that happens, the servers will think the BOH staff are heroes.
Train FOH staff on how to proceed if a customer is unhappy with the food, whether that is notifying a manager or going straight to the chef. In this situation, Adam Weiner suggests having the chef personally talk with the customer as “doing this fosters loyal customers who bring in more new customers.”
This one is specifically for Kitchen Managers and Executive Chefs – be in the kitchen so that you’re seen by the FOH. Everyone seems to work harder, faster, better and more effectively when the KM or chef is in the kitchen—even if he or she isn’t doing anything.
Continuing with the tip above, take it a step further by dropping in unannounced. According to Weiner, “even when servers don’t report to the chef, they are better servers (and treat the kitchen staff better) when the chef is there or might come in at any moment.”
Don’t let servers hang out in the kitchen as they will inevitably slow down the BOH and potentially get hurt or cause someone else to get hurt due to lack of training.
FOH should only be present in the kitchens their jobs require. No more, no less.
Develop a discreet restaurant-wide hand signal or verbal cue for gathering staff to use in the event of conflict. This helps shield guests from embarrassing situations that might affect how they perceive your business.
The bottom line is that there needs to be an understanding between the front and back of house that personal differences come second to service, and that working as a team will only prove to help this cause.
Mentorship not only opens the door to opportunities that would have never before been accessible, it can also propagate change on a broader scale at the industry level. One such mentorship program is the James Beard Foundation’s Women in Culinary Leadership Program, awarded to women who are aspiring to careers in the culinary industry.
Cindy Pawlcyn, chef and owner of three restaurants in California, is one of the established restaurateurs providing mentorship and leadership training to grantees through the 2016 program. Cindy, along with Minneapolis restaurateur Kim Bartmann — of Barbette, The Third Bird, Pat’s Tap, and many more concepts — explains how they see the role of women evolving in this industry and how mentorship can help.
“There’s not that many women who stick with this business. The more mentoring they get, the more helpful it will be for them to be successful and stay with it long-term.”– Cindy Pawlcyn
Create a supportive kitchen culture
Kim started her career as a line cook in restaurants in Minneapolis. “I had a couple of bad experiences, especially being a woman in the kitchen in the ’80s,” she says. “I quit and vowed I would never work in a restaurant again.”
Eventually, Kim found her way back to the industry when she opened a coffee shop with a friend, and now she has eight restaurants. But early on she struggled to be taken seriously by some of her male colleagues, especially when she became an expeditor and had to tell everyone else what to do. She points to “the usual butt pinching” and the fact that at that time, there were almost no women in the kitchen at all.
Cindy knew she wanted to be a chef when she was as young as 13. She took cooking classes, catered, attended trade school at night throughout high school, and eventually graduated college with a hotel and restaurant management degree. When she was 28 she opened her own restaurant, Mustards Grill, in Napa. “Everybody told me I couldn’t do it because I was a woman,” she recalls. Having to endure name calling and other discriminatory behavior, Cindy says, “some wouldn’t believe it now, what happened in those days.”
When she applied to the Culinary Institute of America, she was told they had filled their quota of women for the next three years and advised to reapply then.
Now, Cindy says the door is opening for women, but she’s still eager to see more women finding success in this business — and that’s where mentorship can help affect change.“I think it’s good for our restaurant community if everybody could have someone that they’re bringing up. When you start being more in a teaching and nurturing and developing mindset to this one person, it spreads to all the rest of them. It’s a good culture.”
Reward people who work hard and want to learn
When asked how they managed to achieve success in the environment of those early days, Cindy and Kim have similar answers: they put their heads down, worked hard, and learned as much as they possibly could.
For Kim, that meant becoming familiar with new ingredients and learning to execute the same dishes and techniques perfectly every time. “The only way you can get that skill set in a kitchen is by having a mentor, a chef, or a teacher teach you how to do it – on-the-job training,” she says. “And to be able to utilize a mentor, you have to be willing to accept the help and learn from other people’s mistakes and successes. Those are rare people in the world.”
Cindy advises not to leave a job before you’ve learned everything you can from that place. “People come in with a pre-determined, ‘I’m going to work here six months or a year and a half,’ but it doesn’t really matter how long it is. It matters how much you get out of that experience.”
Offer real-life training for a broad range of skills
Grantees under Kim will have a program tailored to their goals, but she hopes to mentor someone who wants to learn about multi-unit management, her area of expertise. As manager of eight sets of chefs and front-of-house managers, she offers a unique perspective into the business and operations of a restaurant group.
Similarly, Cindy looks forward to teaching someone how to grow food for a restaurant in Mustards’ garden. They will learn how to harvest, order and plan ahead, work all stations in the front and back of house, work with all of the managers, and build their wine experience by working with local wineries. “I think you have to take the time out of your day to put somebody under your wing, versus just having them work a station,” Cindy explains.
“You have to teach them how your mind thinks and how you make a decision. You have to say how you’re going to do this and why you’re going to do it that way.”
She sees younger team members who come on board and don’t understand what the restaurant business really is — those who just want to be a TV chef. They don’t have management skills or know how to make the business profitable or cost recipes. “You don’t learn that in school, you learn that on the job and facing real day-to-day experiences.”
Make yourself a better, stronger leader
Young chefs aren’t the only ones who benefit from a mentoring relationship; As Cindy and Kim explain, there are massive rewards for the mentors, too. Once you’re explaining your thought processes and nurturing your team, you begin to reexamine and refine your techniques, which is always healthy for the team and the business.
“When they come in and go, ‘why do we do it this way?’ You’ve got to figure out why we do it this way,” says Cindy, because “maybe there is a better way.”
Provide the knowledge and confidence to achieve goals
Kim and Cindy both have benefitted from the support of mentors throughout their careers. Kim opened her coffee shop by maxing out her single mother’s credit card. Later on, she participated in a benefit dinner and was introduced to four female leaders of the Minneapolis food and wine scene: Brenda Langton, Lynne Alpert, Pam Sherman, and Nan Bailey.
“All of the sudden I had somebody to call when I had a really difficult question or a problem that I couldn’t figure out. That can be a really powerful thing, to have that assistance.”
Working with mentors like Rich Melman and Julia Child, Cindy built the skill set and confidence she needed to succeed. Julia taught her to stand her ground, to cook good food, and to use good ingredients. Rich has advised her every time she opened a restaurant; she would call him with questions or challenges (and still does).
She learned to trust herself even when others assured her she wouldn’t succeed. “That’s important, to be able to have confidence in yourself and go out on your own,” she explains, remembering making the decision to walk away from her business partnership of 22 years. “They would mess with me and say, ‘On your own you’re not going to be very good because you don’t know how to do this and that.’ In the end, I knew how to do all that stuff.” And it was because of mentorship.
The James Beard Foundation’s Women in Culinary Leadership Program provides aspiring female chefs and restaurateurs the chance to work with some of the industry’s most influential leaders, building in-depth skills in the front and back of house. Now in its third year, the program aims to break through the glass ceiling of the culinary world. Now accepting applications through February 8th. Learn more and apply here.
As a manager, in a restaurant or otherwise, it is your responsibility to ensure that business is running smoothly. This ranges from how staff is performing to business outcomes. It can be a heavy load. However, there are still many easy and inexpensive things you can do to make sure your establishment is running the way it should and to prevent problems before they occur.
Get involved
No one thinks of the phrase “absentee boss” in a positive context. Being in the establishment is a good start, but you need to get out of your office and on the floor and in the kitchen.
Be seen.
Even if the general manager and/or owner are not, you can be. In fact, putting in the effort to be available to your staff and customers will help you in the end. Employees will respect you all the more, making your job that much easier.
Drop in unexpectedly
When I was working in the industry, my manager would pop in and out all the time. She would tell us that she had an appointment the next morning and was coming in late, then show up early and say that the appointment was rescheduled. After I moved on, she let me in on her little secret and explained that it was her way of keeping everyone on top of their game. And it worked.
The first few times you do this though, it may catch a few off guard. Give them some slack the first few times, but if they don’t shape up, you’ll know and can then do something about it.
Stop by after hours
You know those restaurant ‘spy’ shows where they go undercover to find out who’s behind the business’s shortages? Well, one of the recurring things on those programs is that abuses are happening after hours; bartenders are throwing parties, chefs are using your place for a pop-up restaurant, etc. Well, even though those shows are overdramatized, they’re not off the ball.
To ensure this is not happening at your business, especially if you’ve noticed something suspicious, go in when the place is closed, and do it often. For many restaurants, a drive by will suffice. No lights on and no parked cars are both good signs when the place is supposed to be closed. A similar tactic is to check with your alarm company to see when the alarm was turned on and turned off.
Hire an experienced person for the role of mystery shopper
Again, those ‘spy’ tv shows are on to something here.Using a mystery shopper can help uncover that which you would not discover otherwise. This can be anything from poor service and inconsistencies in food/beverages to comps, and more.
It’s best if your mystery shopper is experienced in restaurant and hospitality operations and someone you’re familiar with, but you’re employees are not.
Also, having your mystery shopper visit regularly will allow him or her to form relationships with your staff, increasing access to what’s going on behind the scenes.
Do an accurate inventory, and do it often
Whether you’re responsible for both food and beverages, or just one or the other, don’t just do an inventory on one time of item or before placing weekly orders. If possible, aim to do a thorough inventory 2-3 times per week. While inventory should always be done when the business is closed, don’t do it on the same days every week.
This is a lot to take on, but there are tools that can help. It’ll be worth it in the end; you’ll not only be protecting the business from unnecessary spending but also ensuring that business operations are running as they should.
Rotate staff between units and shifts
The more comfortable staff is with each other the more likely they will get together to do things that should not be done. This is a tough tightrope to walk.
You need to have people together enough that they work smoothly with each other, but not consistent enough to become overly friendly.
The side benefit of this is that everyone starts knowing how to work with everyone else, which is a plus if you have to switch around people for special events, staffing shortages, etc.
The bottom line is that there are several small steps that you can take to tighten up business operations and ensure that everything is being run as it should be.
Being a manager in a restaurant, or in any hospitality business, is a constant juggling act. From supervising staff to heading business operations, it can be a struggle to keep up. So that ‘s why January’s Hacks Series is all about management tips and tricks. To kick it off, we’re sharing our list of the best apps, online tools, and digital solutions to help streamline your management processes.
Number of reservations by party size and seating arrangement by table size
Cost: Free
The tool from the Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) allows restaurant operators and managers to optimize their reservations and seating by inputting key parameters into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, then using the Solver add-in to view the outputs. The tool’s creator, Gary Thompson, explains that it does so by determining the “best mix of tables in a restaurant, while simultaneously determining which reservations should be accepted from forecasted demand.” The inputs include party size, table size and number, average dining time, and average revenue by party size as well as the degree to which to inflate the amount of time guests will be seated at a table, termed the ‘Round-Up’.
The full description and instructions document depicts the components of the tool and explains how to use the tool by presenting a practical example of table mix optimization for two nights. The tool is provided by CHR free of charge and can be downloaded here.
Maintain an online guestbook to track diner contact info, food preferences, allergies, and more
Available for iPad
Cost: Free trial; $99/month
It should be no surprise that Yelp, an industry leader, has developed a restaurant management tool. SeatMe is an advance management system for your front-of-house needs, allowing you to take online reservations, manage seating, keep track of available tables, and even text waiting patrons when their tables are ready.
Enable ordering on your restaurant website, from you Facebook page, or from within the ChowNow app
Available online or for iOS and Android
Cost: Free Basic Account; Pro Account from $8.99/month
Online ordering goes fancy with ChowNow, a handy app that gives foodies access to your menu via your own website, Facebook page, or the ChowNow mobile app. Allow diners to customize their orders, so your kitchen knows just what to make, and check out online – orders are beamed straight to your restaurant’s main tablet, where employees can check and complete the order, and finally notify patrons when their orders will be ready.
Hundreds of questions cover requirements from the ServSafe Food Protection Manager Certification Examination, the American Food Safety Institute (AFSI) Food Manager Certification (FMC) exam, and the National Registry of Food Safety Professionals (NRFSP) Certified Food Safety Professional examination
Choose study mode or test mode
Available online or for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Palm
Cost: $3.99
The Food Safety Exam Prep app from Upward Mobility offers the most comprehensive food prep information, health requirements, and U.S. safety standards of any mobile app. The test module is perfect for keeping your kitchen current on safety standards, and will help anyone prepare for certification or re-certification.
Built-in extras include a barcode scanner, multiple currency support, database backup and restore, password protection, and auto-default values
Filter by item, category, company, location, supplier/client, payment and shipment
Available for Android
Cost: $5.99
For simple inventory tracking – and streamlined bookkeeping and tax reporting – Inventory Tracker delivers with an easy-to-use solution. The handy app makes it easy to track your restaurant inventory, sales, revenues and balance sheet – daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. Create reports and transfer data to spreadsheet format.
Wine pairing, not to mention keeping track of an extensive wine cellar, is one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of the restaurant business, especially without a Sommelier. Enter Uncorkd, an iPad-based wine menu that also keeps track of your wine inventory. Customers can get a comprehensive view of your restaurant’s wine menu including a bottle’s origin, vintage and recommended pairings, while you can easily track inventory.
Publicly accessible business pages that display open jobs
Multi-admin business accounts
Re-usable job listings
Applicant tracking system
Messaging hub
Cost: Free for the moment
Sirvo helps businesses in the hospitality industry hire by connecting employers and job seekers on a platform that simplifies the hiring process, from posting jobs to reviewing applications. With Sirvo, you don’t have to worry about your job listings getting buried under more recent postings because your business page acts as your own hosted careers site. This makes advertising positions easier on you and finding jobs easier on professionals. Plus, you can invite admins to help manage your business page, search and message candidates, and organize applicants using the applicant tracking system.
WorkBright provides businesses that need to onboard new employees rapidly with paperless HR. By reducing the time it takes to collect and process new hire forms and automating the tedious workflows and data entry involved in onboarding new employees, WorkBright virtually eliminates the hiring costs associated with dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Plus, WorkBright ensures that your HR files are compliant, organized, and easily-accessible.
Digital access to staff schedule, from anywhere at anytime
Forecast labor costs with an as-you-schedule dollar tally
Available online from any computer or mobile device
Cost: Free trial; Accounts from $19/month
The purpose of ScheduleFly is to make restaurant staff scheduling easier by simplifying communications between you and your employees. The app turns any mobile device or computer into your communications central: post time schedules, your employees can request shift changes, and you can all coordinate on time off. Best of all, the app makes it easy to avoid costly overtime and forecast labor costs.
Manage your social presence across sites, from one platform
Log on once to schedule posts throughout the day, week or month
Available online or for iOS and Android
Cost: Free Basic Account; Pro Account from $8.99/month
Chances are, your restaurant has gone social and chances are, all that required networking is overwhelming. HootSuite steps in with a simple tool that makes it easy to manage all your social networks, scheduling posts and cross-publishing photos, status updates, and more to multiple social sites. Integrated social profiles include Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, LinkedIn, Google+ Pages, and others.
Magic resize to automatically create images for all social media platforms (instagram, twitter, google+, etc.)
Cost: Free Basic Account; Canva for Work $119.40/year, $12.95/month
Canva makes designing graphics for social media, presentations, posters, and more exceptionally easy. Included are tons of different layouts to get your design started that are available in pre-set dimensions (for social media) as well as in custom dimensions. Build your designs with Canva’s integrated images, icons and shapes, backgrounds, fonts, and photo filters, many of which are free. Plus, you can upload your own images!
To help businesses produce on-brand marketing materials, Canva recently introduced Canva for Work, which allows teams to collaborate, save brand colors, logos, and fonts, and build their own templates. Also included is automated resizing for various social media images sizes.
Fishbowl is not new and is an industry standard, but we wanted to include it anyway because it should definitely be in you business tool repertoire. With several analytics-based solutions available, Fishbowl focusses on helping restaurants optimize their marketing, strategy, and revenue management. From measuring dining behavior and defining target segments to analyzing and optimizing digital marketing efforts, Fishbowl will help maximize your marketing returns.
Integrating digital solutions and apps in your management practices will not only increase efficiency but also improve your processes and save your business money, so take a few minutes to check out your options! Coming up next are tips on business operations, so be sure to check back in.
