Management Hacks: Business Toolkit

Management Hacks: Business Toolkit

by | Jan 6, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

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.

 

Hospitality Tools

Restaurant Reservations Optimization Tool

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 3.07.21 PM

Features: 

  • Optimized restaurant reservations and seating
  • 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.

Restaurant Manager by SeatMe

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 3.11.59 PM

Features:

  • Table management, online reservations, wait-list organization
  • 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.

ChowNow

Features:

  • Streamline your online ordering process
  • 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.

Food & Beverage Tools

Food Safety Exam Prep

Screen Shot 2015-12-22 at 3.49.37 PM

Features:

  • 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.

Inventory Tracker

Features:

  • 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.

Uncorkd

Features:

  • Easily track restaurant inventory in real time
  • Streamline order management, and track orders
  • Available online or for iPad

Cost: Free trial; Account from $39/month

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.

Staff Tools

Sirvo

app-user-2

Features:

  • 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

Features:

  • Unlimited HR form sets
  • Fingertip signature
  • Photo upload
  • Automated reminders

Cost: Free demo; Accounts from $75/month

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.

ScheduleFly

Features:

  • 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.

Marketing Tools

Hootsuite

Screen Shot 2015-12-23 at 11.30.42 AM

Features:

  • 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.

Canva

Screen Shot 2015-12-23 at 11.33.44 AM

Features:

  • Design templates
  • Photo editor including cropping, filters, blur
  • Free icons, stock images, and illustrations
  • 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 Marketing

Features:

  • Guest Analytics
  • Menu Management Analytics
  • Enterprise Email
  • SMS Marketing
  • Promotions Manager

Cost: Contact directly for pricing

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.

Bartending Hacks: Moving Up

Bartending Hacks: Moving Up

by | Dec 23, 2015 | Career

Whether it’s a convenient part-time job or a transition gig, the majority of bartenders don’t necessarily plan on it being a life-long career. However, with the flexible work schedule, unique culture, and long-term career opportunities, for many this is what bartending leads to. Here are some of the career options available to bartenders who need a change and tips on successfully moving up the ladder.

Management

The path to becoming a manager at a restaurant is an easy one if you’re willing to put in the time and effort, but it’s a hefty job as they are responsible for the day-to-day success of the restaurant. As such, managers must be familiar with every role they’re overseeing because if one needs to be covered, it’s the manager who will step in.

The basic steps to becoming a manager begin with success in whatever position you currently hold.

The basic steps to becoming a manager begin with success in whatever position you currently hold. As a bartender, you must be active, hard-working, and go above and beyond your job responsibilities. Showing your dedication to the job and the restaurant proves that you are willing to do whatever is in your power to ensure the success of your business.

Once you’ve proven yourself as a loyal and responsible employee, the next step is to make your presence known. When your effort is recognized, your attitude is positive and your work is consistent, managers will notice and at this point, it is up to you to inquire about moving up. A good manager makes their presence known, so don’t be shy.

While tenure and seniority play a huge role in this move, it is never too early to let your superiors know your interest. Taking this initiative will easily help you elevate to bigger and better things.

General Management

Typically, being a General Manager requires management experience and expertise, so you don’t jump straight from bartending into a GM position.

That comes from proving yourself as a manager and depends on your work ethic, management style, and ability to solve problems. Anyone can make a schedule or comp a drink that a guest didn’t like, but the keys to GM-worthy managers lie beyond the basics.

A manager looking to move up to GM doesn’t play favorites or get flustered on the floor. They are constantly working hard and, most importantly, they get their hands dirty. A bar manager who steps behind the bar to help and support their staff is the ideal candidate for General Management.

A bar manager who steps behind the bar to help and support their staff is the ideal candidate for General Management.

As the GM is essentially the manager of managers, they must be beyond competent in all facets of a restaurant (front and back of house). So, if you’re coming from a strictly bartending background, be ready to broaden your skill set to cooking, serving, and maintenance.

Again, tenure and seniority are crucial to locking in a GM position, however, without the aforementioned qualities, experience means nothing.

Liquor/Beer/Wine Representative

As you progress in your bartending career, not only will you thoroughly learn about alcohol itself, but also how the alcohol and restaurant industries work together and conduct business. If you’re interested and enjoy talking to people, especially about alcohol, this can be a great segway into alcohol sales, but you’ll have to work your way up just like you did behind the bar.

To begin a career as a sales representative for either liquor, beer, or wine, you must start from the bottom as a merchandiser. A merchandiser is responsible for setting up and delivering their brand’s beverages to stores and restaurants, setting up displays and filling orders. It’s not the most glamorous position by any means, but it is a necessary stepping stone in most cases.

Once you’ve paid your dues as a merchandiser (usually about 6-18 months), the next step is sales, as either an inside or outside sales rep. An inside rep conducts sales by phone while outside reps go to liquor stores and restaurants to sell their product.

Just like the food and beverage industry, alcohol sales is heavily influenced by seniority.

Just like the food and beverage industry, alcohol sales is heavily influenced by seniority. This means you may not get prime sales locations right from the get-go, but they’ll come in time. The more time you spend as a sales rep, the more likely you are to move up to higher positions in which the biggest deals are closed.

Sommelier

Many bartenders love the job because of the customers; they get the chance to provide guests with a unique and tailored experience. If this is the case for you, management or sales may not be your next step.

However, that doesn’t mean you don’t have options because you do, and becoming a sommelier is one of them. That is, of course, only if you have a love for wine. If you are, becoming a sommelier is a rigorous yet rewarding next move.

If you’re unfamiliar, a sommelier is a trained expert who specializes in wine service at fine dining restaurants and is responsible for its wine offerings, wine and food pairings, and, providing guests with customized wine recommendations based on preference and budget. As such, the position requires working closely with the culinary team as well as service staff and guests.

A sommelier must have a profound knowledge of how food and alcohol work in harmony and have both front and back of house skills.

Becoming a sommelier is no easy task. Before even starting the transition from bartender to sommelier, it would be smart to begin studying wine and tasting as much as you can. Become familiar with wine varietals (grape types), vintages (year produced) and vineyard (where the wine was produced) while also developing your pallet. Taking tasting notes is essential in order to learn how to decipher the different fruits and spices in a given wine. Once you feel competent in your wine knowledge, you’ll be in good shape to start working toward your first certification.

A sommelier certification requires the completion of a wine training course, which consist of in-depth classes on wine tastings, varietals, pairings and service. Then, at the end of the course is the test, which involves six wines (three white, three red) and requires you to blindly taste each wine and decipher the varietal, vintage and where the wine was made.

After passing the exam, you can call yourself a professional certified sommelier, making you a hot commodity! And, if you want to take it to the next level, you can go for the remaining two certifications, the last of which is Master Sommelier, one of the most prestigious titles a person in the restaurant industry can hold.

Cicerone

A cicerone is similar to a sommelier in terms of responsibilities, such as pairings and service, as well as training, but instead of wine, it’s beer.

A cicerone is required to have expertise in five areas: keeping and serving beer, beer styles, beer flavor, beer ingredients and brew processes, and food- beer pairing.

To be a legitimate cicerone, a certification is needed, of which there are four levels, that require extensive study of beer varieties, history, tasting notes and brewing. The four certifications for Cicerone include:

1. Certified Beer Server
2. Certified Cicerone
3. Advanced Cicerone
4. Master Cicerone

Depending on which level of Cicerone you choose, you will be tested through a written examination, a tasting portion and beer service. The written exam covers service, draft systems, beer styles, brewing and pairing while the tasting portion examines your knowledge of beer styles (by taste), flaws, and service with beer. Although the certification for a Cicerone is grueling and requires intense studying, if you are seriously passionate about beer and want to make this into a career, this is your ticket.

No matter what your interests are as a bartender, if you want something different (but kind of the same) there are many careers out there. After all, it’s understandable to want to grow and shift focus. Hopefully, some of these options open your eyes to the many opportunities available to you in the service industry!

You might also like…

Experience Sirvo for yourself

Sign up now to find hospitality jobs and hire top industry talent.
Sign up
Your Guide To Hiring Holiday and Seasonal Employees

Your Guide To Hiring Holiday and Seasonal Employees

by | Nov 20, 2015 | Business Toolkit, Management

For restaurant and hospitality businesses, the winter season means ramping up staff to handle the holiday rush. Hiring is hard in general, but when it’s the seasonal sort, things can go bad fast. So, we put together an easy guide that will help lighten the load.

Use prior year sales and current volume to plan ahead

To ensure a successful holiday season, carefully consider what your company’s needs will be in the weeks and months ahead.

Do this by comparing last year’s numbers to current data while taking into account growth and upcoming specials.

Start by reviewing your previous year’s traction prior to and throughout the winter months to give you a sort of baseline. Then compare it to the current year’s highlights that could impact your anticipated volume such as reservations, sales, events, social media presence, press, etc. Another aspect to take into account are any holiday promotions, events, and campaigns that may drive volume in the coming months.

Marry the data you gathered to plan ahead for potential gaps in coverage, departments, jobs, and days of week/times of day. This will then give you the information you need to successfully hire additional staff for the season.

Be diligent and detailed while hiring for the season

When managers, operators, and owners approach seasonal hiring as just a temporary adjustment, there is often little consideration given to the long-term effects this will have on the company, permanent employees, and customers. Although the positions and those filling them may indeed be temporary, making hiring decisions on the fly rarely works out well.

With coverage needs thoroughly identified, job descriptions and postings can be very specific and detailed in terms of the experience, qualifications, and skills required for each role you need to fill.

This helps to ensure that applicants are aware of your needs and if they are a match. This will inevitably lead to higher quality applicants thereby making it significantly easier on you and your hiring staff when making the final decisions.

When it comes time to actually hire, don’t be hasty in the decision. To be confident that your seasonal employees will only help your cause, not hurt it, get all the facts before making the call. As you would with permanent employees, check that their experience, skill-set, and personality are appropriate for the position and your company. It can be hard to do all this in the limited time you have to hire, so use all of the resources available to you.

Ensure fair treatment of seasonal talent

As the holidays approach and volume starts ramping up, it can be easy for both managers and long-term employees to get caught in the storm and lose sight of the fact that quality customer experiences are an outcome of employee experience, including those of seasonal employees. If seasonal hires are treated like machines and given little respect by superiors and coworkers, performance and profitability will suffer.

When employees are treated fairly, they can better focus on performing well on the job.

Avoid this by treating seasonal employees with the same care as their non-seasonal counterparts. To do so, cultivate a positive culture and implement the appropriate systems and solutions that acknowledge the importance respect in the workplace. This includes ensuring that permanent staff of all levels give the same support to seasonal employees as they would to each other, properly scheduling all staff as to allow for maintained work-life balance through the busy season, and being consistent in regard to managing the changes that come with the seasonal nature of the industry.

Think of the seasonal employee as a long-term investment

You’ve done all this great work in sourcing additional talent for the season, so don’t let it go to waste. Be deliberate about keeping in touch with your seasonal hires so that you can recruit them in following years, or, if the situation arises, you can hire them permanently in the future.

A great way to establish continued communication is by having an exit interview of sorts.

It doesn’t have to be formal, just a way to initiate a dialogue. Provide feedback on performance and ask for it in return. Inquire about their interests and potential availability in the future. If nothing else, it will reinforce the positive experience they had while working for you, which is the impression they’ll share with their communities and networks. It’s great press!

Serving Hacks Part 1: Cracking The Interview

Serving Hacks Part 1: Cracking The Interview

by | Nov 4, 2015 | Career

Whether it’s your first time interviewing for a server job or you’re a seasoned veteran in the industry, you have to be ready for whatever they may throw at you. From how to present yourself to demonstrating your skills, here are some tips to help you dominate the interview.

Think of it as just another table

For me, approaching the interview like you’d approach your tables is the best way to express your qualities and personality.

Your interviewer is looking to see who you are when you’re at a table and what better way to show this than by treating them as you would treat a guest.

Confidence is key

Serving is all about confidence. Guests can tell from a mile away if you’re comfortable with what you’re doing or if you’re nervous as hell, and so can your interviewer.

It’s crucial to exude confidence, even if you’re faking it!

So, whether you know everything there is to know about serving or you’re in over your head, it’s crucial to exude confidence, even if you’re faking it! From dominant body language to assertiveness, showing your interviewer that you can keep your cool while being grilled will show them that, if you’re hired, you’ll do the same with your tables.

Stay positive

Positivity is contagious and attractive to a manager as well as a guest. Conveying that you’re happy with what you do and can keep a positive attitude despite the mayhem around you is a crucial element of both serving and interviewing.

So, do your best to keep on smiling even if you’re not totally feeling it.

All about the attentiveness

I try to incorporate this word in every serving interview as a fancier way of saying “guest/customer service”. In the industry, putting the guest first is elemental.

In the industry, putting the guest first is elemental.

Proving that this is important to you will delight your interviewer and reflect well on your priorities as a server. Use this buzzword and give an example of how attentive you can, and will, be.

Trust goes a long way

Establishing trust with customers is goal #1. If you can establish trust right off the bat, guests are more likely to be comfortable asking you questions and following your suggestions. This is good business for the restaurant and, not to mention, you’ll probably get a better tip!

So, it goes without saying, getting your interviewer to trust you goes a long way in demonstrating that you can do the same with customers.

Pro-tip: A great way to gain trust quickly is through your drink recommendation. If you have a suggestion for a drink that you know is universally enjoyed, the guest will likely feed off of your interest and try it. If you describe it correctly and they like it, you’re in. Expressing something like this to your interviewer will show off your know-how and get some extra points!

Make organization and efficiency a priority

When interviewing, be sure to articulate how important being both organized and efficient while serving is to you.

While most people believe that serving is a brainless, simple occupation, the amount of multi-tasking involved is far from easy. From drink and food orders to maintaining tables and helping out co-workers, there is a lot on your plate.

Describe your go-to strategy for staying organized and on-task while on the job.

Establishing that you can handle the multitudes of responsibilities and can manage your time efficiently is a sure-fire way to impress a manager and interviewer. To do so, describe your go-to strategy for staying organized and on-task while on the job.

Keep your head in the game

In the industry, we call it being in the weeds. You’re dealing with a fussy customer, trying to find a manager to comp a bill, thinking about the fight you’re having with your roommates; what do you do?

Freak out and cry in the corner or keep your head and breathe? The latter, obviously.

A simple way to impress your interviewer is to be aware of this and express how you would deal with the stress. Servers are ubiquitously known as prima donnas and have trouble keeping their emotions in check. If you show that you can keep your cool, you are on your way to getting a job.

The interview is half the battle to becoming a great server. Use these tips to nail it every time and the rest of our serving hacks for when you get hired!

You might also like…

Experience Sirvo for yourself

Sign up now to find hospitality jobs and hire top industry talent.
Sign up
Why Hiring For ‘All Positions’ Isn’t Doing The Trick

Why Hiring For ‘All Positions’ Isn’t Doing The Trick

by | Oct 7, 2015 | Business Toolkit, Management

It may be easier at the time to post one listing for ‘All Positions’ in need of filling instead of listings for specific positions, but will it pay off in the end? Probably not, and here’s why.

Let’s start from the top of the hiring game: attracting talent.

This begins with discovering your open job(s), which Sirvo strives to make as easy as possible; with our Search feature, candidates can simply type in a keyword and see all relevant results.

In most cases, the keyword will be a job title, which means that “All Positions” with no mention of actual positions won’t be shown as a result. This drastically decreases your chance to reach potential employees right off the bat.

Beyond the title, the description and requirements are even more important!

To make a smart hire in less time, attracting the candidates you’re looking for, from personality to skill-set, is a necessity.

The specifics you require for each position are must-haves in the job listing because it tells candidates exactly what you need in an employee, so they know whether or not they fit the bill. Without them, you’re more likely to receive applications from those who don’t possess the necessary credentials required to fill the position instead of those that do.

Plus, in the future, Sirvo will offer job-candidate matching based on how qualified candidates are according to the details in the job listing, but you won’t be able to take advantage without including specifics about experience, skills, and requirements.

When it’s time to review applications, let Sirvo help.

To make it easier for employers to hone in on qualified candidates, Sirvo provides an applicant tracking system, which assists in organizing and managing candidates.

Every job listing has its own ATS Inbox where, upon receipt, applications are stored by default. From that point, after reviewing applications, candidates can be moved to Qualified or Declined based on whether or not they are still in the running for the position.

This way, applications are automatically sorted by position, making it easy to review and compare candidates. This is also helpful if hiring is conducted by several people. All applications to ‘Position A’ are separate from applications to ‘Position B’.

However, job listings for “All Positions” will negate this first level of organization built into the ATS, making it more difficult to review and manage candidates for each position.

The bottom line: hiring for ‘all positions’ is harder than the alternative.

Although it may take some additional time up front to create job listings for individual positions rather than lumping them together, you’ll definitely make up for it when it comes time to review applications and hire.

Not only are you increasing the odds of engaging professionals that have the specific qualifications that you’re seeking, you’re also making it easier for you and your staff to manage the entire process.

It all boils down to making your hiring process as efficient as possible, meaning the resources you spend attracting candidates, reviewing applications, and ultimately hiring are just what’s necessary to find the right person for the right position.

 

Experience Sirvo for yourself

Sign up now to find hospitality jobs and hire top industry talent.
Sign up