Hospitality Hiring: Why Utilize Online Hiring Platforms

Hospitality Hiring: Why Utilize Online Hiring Platforms

by | Aug 15, 2016 | Business Toolkit, IndiTips

Believe it or not folks, but with every new restaurant opening and new opportunities lying around every corner, we are competing for talent.

Hospitality hiring right now

Effective hiring practices within the hospitality industry are more paramount than ever. We have seen a sharp increase in the national turnover rate, which has risen from 56% five years ago to 70% in 2016. This is a trend that has to slow down if we are going to control cost and maintain a consistent level of service in the years to come.

So, what’s the cause? Much of the problem has to do with outdated hiring practices that don’t consider the patterns and behaviors of this generation of workers.  Namely their desire to work for companies whose brands they admire and relate to as well as those that present clear growth opportunities. 

The solution? Utilizing hiring platforms that can simultaneously reach industry professionals on a broad scale and convey the personal message for which they are searching. In other words, hiring apps that are online and mobile-friendly. 

For years we have been relying on paper applications, “Help Wanted” signs and word of mouth to fill open positions at our establishments.

Out with the old…

For years we have been relying on paper applications, “Help Wanted” signs and word of mouth to fill open positions at our establishments. Using professional and modern online hiring platforms that are industry specific will help modernize some of these outdated hiring practices and will assist in providing a solution to our industry’s turnover problem.

There are some key features with sites like ours, that make the hiring process smoother and more efficient. We have built a central network full of industry professionals seeking positions within companies just like yours. One of the first things that need to happen is marketing and branding yourself in a way that attracts top talent.

Marketing your concept & culture

Why should job seekers choose to work for your company over a competitor? What aspects of your concept and culture make you stand out? These are all questions to ask yourself when you’ve decided to create an account with professional online hiring platforms.

One of the best features on Sirvo is the ability to create a business page and to customize it in a fashion that best represents your brand. This is done by being able to post a business profile picture and a cover photo that showcases one of those great Instagram photos you’ve posted over the years. There is also an area where you can break down your style of cuisine, concept or company motto or mission statement.

Posting an open position is another way for you to brand and market your company, by including specifics to requirements, qualifications and benefits of working for your type of establishment. You want to reach as many qualified candidates as possible and the only way to do so is by presenting yourself and your open position in the best light possible. Your business profile page and it’s look is essential to making a great first impression.

Effective hiring practices within the hospitality industry are more paramount than ever.

Streamline the hiring process

Besides the advantages of being inside of a network and broadcasting open positions specific to your industry’s talent pool, is the benefit to utilizing our Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). What is ATS exactly? Well on Sirvo it’s a feature that allows you to do a number of things like:

  • Receive notifications of new applicants
  • View applicant profiles
  • Categorize applicants in a “qualified” or “declined” category
  • Message applicants directly to set interviews

Boom! Our ATS speeds up the process and centralizes communication within one network. No more getting emails with sketchy attachments or from applicants that you have zero background information on. With Sirvo, both the job seeker and your business have a better idea of who they may be partnering with in the near future.

If we continue to only consider the seven people that walked through our doors to fill out a paper application the last two weeks, then we are essentially eliminating a very large pool of qualified individuals online.

Time to enter the 21st century

We need to face the facts here, we are operating within a hiring process that is outdated and is in desperate need for an update. This isn’t a criticism, it’s a reality. We have been stuck in our old ways of doing things and we are an industry reluctant to change. Utilizing online hiring platforms will save you time, money and will assist in creating a well-rounded team of new hires. If we continue to only consider the seven people that walked through our doors to fill out a paper application the last two weeks, then we are essentially eliminating a very large pool of qualified individuals online.

Aren’t you tired of hiring and training constantly? Isn’t day to day business easier when you have a full staff? This is a fast growing, competitive industry, let’s stop trying to fill space and let’s invest in our hiring process so that we hire the actual “best” candidate to join our team!

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10 Steps To A Great Restaurant Newsletter

10 Steps To A Great Restaurant Newsletter

by | Aug 5, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

Not only does the food you prepare bring in the customers but the environment and atmosphere in which you offer it. Giving your customers a sense of what awaits them begins long before your restaurant newsletter arrives in their email. Your newsletter expresses who you are and what you have to offer. It builds on existing relationships to create new ones. To make sure you do everything right, here are 10 Steps to creating a great restaurant newsletter.

Offer Great Customer Service

Perhaps you have unlimited funds to create a beautiful environment — but even a small, casual restaurant can provide a wonderful experience. Service is key. Friendly, professional, hard-working staff who serve the correct items in an appropriate time-frame let customers know you care about them. Building relationships with customers through simple techniques like calling them by name is key.

Create Your List

Who will receive your newsletter? Your customers who love you! Provide a way for customers to join your email newsletter list. All serving staff should speak about the newsletter after a customer has enjoyed a delicious meal and good experience in the restaurant. Let them know its purpose: providing a weekly menu of specials? Offering coupons and other incentives?

Learn how to take beautiful photos of the foods you offer or find an employee who has a good eye.

Use Photos

Photos are the way to tantalize your customers with Food, Food, Food when you can’t lure them in with the sight and aroma of an actual dish. Learn how to take beautiful photos of the foods you offer or find an employee who has a good eye. Build a photo library of your own foods to use in newsletters.

Plan It Out

Invest planning time into your newsletter. Think about what is most important to communicate and how you can frame it. Create a visually appealing template. If you can’t afford a designer, there are lots of email services out there nowadays that offer help and templates (we use Mailchimp).

Customers want to know what delicious food you’re going to offer them when they visit in response to your newsletter reminder.

Be sure your plan is for something that is easy to digest (no pun intended) and keeps the focus on what’s most important. Also, keep it simple; you don’t have to put everything into this newsletter — save some for the next one. Last but not least, you want to be consistent in frequency, so when you’re planning, keep this in mind!

Be Present On Social Media

Connect your newsletter to your accounts on social media that your customers use – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and more. Provide links to these accounts in every newsletter. Post pictures and company updates to keep in touch with your customers and let them know if there’s anything coming up.

Listen To Your Clients

Be client-centered in your newsletter. What do your customers want to know? They want to know what delicious food you’re going to offer them when they visit in response to your newsletter reminder. Customers look for both familiarity and variety. Your regular, fixed menu offers them familiarity. Specials and Items of the Day offer them variety.

Make sure to share something new each time – a program, a new service or a new award – to make each newsletter unique.

You don’t need to repeat your whole fixed menu in each newsletter. You can summarize it, sometimes pick a dish to highlight. Be specific, though, about Specials and Items of the Day, and whenever possible, include mouth-watering photos.

Provide Boilerplate Information

Your address, phone number, website, email address, links to your social media accounts and hours – make sure they are there and are easy to find. Awards or special mentions? List them. Great Yelp reviews? Provide a link. Make it easy for people to find out more about you and to get in touch.

Make Each Newsletter Unique

Yes, the boilerplate information is important, but this is a “news” letter! If you said the same thing to a friend every time you connected with them, you probably wouldn’t be friends for long. Be sure you share something new each time — a program or special event, a new service or an upgrade, a thought about your food or an experience in the restaurant, a featured staff person or customer, a new award.

This is a “news” letter!

Provide A Call To Action

What do you want people to do in response to this newsletter? Share it with three other people? Bring a friend to dinner? Order lunch for an office? Come to the restaurant during a particular week or for an event? Be specific, and offer an incentive.

If your newsletter is honest, informative, attractive and easy to take in, if it reminds your customers how much they like your food and how much they enjoy visiting you, it will be a great success.

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Bar Reservations May Increase Restaurant Profitablity

Bar Reservations May Increase Restaurant Profitablity

by | Jun 27, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

Do you take reservations for the bar in your restaurant? If not, it may be time to start. According to a new survey from OpenTable, offering reservations for bar dining has many potential benefits including added seating, faster turnaround times and, for a specific type of guest, increased hospitality. 

In late May, OpenTable launched Table Categories, a pilot program that allows users to book bar reservations at a handful of participating restaurants in Chicago. As OpenTable’s Eli Chait, this was a response to internal company data showing that bar dining options are underutilized at many restaurants.

“We estimate that non-standard seating options like bar, communal tables, and high-tops make up 12 to 15 percent of restaurant inventory in the U.S. These seats are typically empty or highly coveted, as some diners actually prefer a seat in the center of the action.”

In order to establish some bar dining benchmarks, and to kick off their Insider Survey Series, OpenTable polled 420 restaurant partners, of which 62% were casual fine dining, 31% full-service casual, 12% formal dining establishments.

Here are the survey key findings:

  • 36% of respondents are already accept dining reservations in their bars and 12% are interested in doing so.
  • 52% report that the bar generates the same amount or more revenue than that of the dining room.
  • 54% say that the average turnaround time in the bar is under 60 minutes.
  • 85% agreed with the statement, “Investing in my bar area increased my restaurant’s profitability.”

So, what’s the main advantage of offering bar reservations? As BonAppetit‘s Sam Dean explains, it all comes down to having the flexibility to seat more guests.

“Solo diners can drop in without having to hog a two-top, and a friendly word from a bartender can free up enough space at the bar for a whole new party—after all, you can’t exactly ask a couple to slide down to the next booth in the middle of their meal.”

However, skeptics remain, fearing that bar reservations may compromise customer service and guest experience. In response, OpenTable says that implementing this practice satisfies another type of clientele that prefers the bar scene.

“Offering bar seats to guests who are thrilled to book them means those diners get the experience they desire—and seats stay occupied all night.”

And, yes, for the customers that like to get their names in the book but would rather sit at the bar, this is definitely the case. But what about those that prefer the bar precisely because it doesn’t require a reservation? They probably wouldn’t be too pleased.

All in all, it really comes down to the establishment and its clientele. That said, with the right conditions, allowing customers to book the bar could mean more money in the register.

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How To Deal With Coworker Conflict

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Restaurant Employment Tips: How to Turn Over Tables Quickly

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Restaurants Answer Call for Local and Organic Foods

Restaurants Answer Call for Local and Organic Foods

by | Jun 24, 2016 | IndiNews

Many restaurants are beginning to understand why organic matters. An increasing number of restaurants are offering wider selections of organic and local produce menu items due to the large consumer demand. Most consumers are not aware that, the term “local” can mean the produce was grown as many as 400 miles away; however the term “organic” must adhere to strict government standards. 

Why the Interest in Locally Sourced Foods?

A recent survey conducted by Technomic, suggests that a large percentage of consumers prefer to purchase locally sourced beverages and foods. As many as 26% are willing to pay more in order to get them. Additionally, more than 50% of customers reported eating locally sourced food items at least once a week.

More than 50% of customers reported eating locally sourced food items at least once a week.

Over 50% of individuals surveyed claimed they prefer local foods simply because they consider them to taste better. The majority said they wanted to eat less processed and natural foods. Other consumers stated that they consume these foods out of concern for the environment, and wanted to contribute by supporting local businesses and farmers.

However, consumers are not the only ones attracted to locally sourced, organic foods. The National Restaurant Association polled 1,600 chefs about the latest food trends for 2016. The majority of the chefs included the word, “local” in three of the top 10 responses. These responses included:

  • Meats and seafood that are locally sourced
  • Produce that is locally grown
  • Hyper-local sourcing

Brands Responding to Consumer Demands

Due to the consumer demand for high quality organic and locally sourced ingredients continues to rise, food manufacturers have jumped on the band wagon to widely respond to the trend.

One report suggests that even those consumers who order carry-out items are questing locally sourced, organic foods. Technomic MenuMonitor data shows five-year increases in local organic food requests by:

  • 150% for desserts
  • 137% for entrees
  • 82% for appetizers

This has led to…

  • Wendy’s adding organic beverages
  • Elevation Burger adding pure organic beef burgers
  • Noodle & Co. offering organic tofu and naturally raised pork products
  • Papa John’s using freshly picked, within six hours, tomatoes in their sauce

But that’s not all…

In 2015, Panera introduced the “transparent” menu, beginning a movement toward clean eating. Most recently the food chain produced a clean soup menu to support the initiative toward selling locally sourced and organic foods, and has been rewarded for its efforts.

According to Technomic’s most recent survey, the company stands as a leading fast food chain. Quality Systems Regulations (QSR) have witnessed increases in sales and brand equity by including local and organic foods on their menus.

Tender Greens, a California based company, has built a substantial consumer following by providing fresh, local produce and has begun experimenting with aeroponic towers of vegetables that appear within the restaurants themselves. As testament to its success, Tender Greens is expected to expand to New York City.

The Future of Organic and Local Food

Restaurateurs who have been authentic and trustworthy about what ingredients are used in their products and where they come from, are those who have most highly succeed. Regardless of how consumers perceive or define the food items they demand, the industry is clearly moving toward a well-defined, clean-eating trend that extends toward a healthier way of life.

The industry is clearly moving toward a well-defined, clean-eating trend that extends toward a healthier way of life.

More and more consumers are demanding information about how foods are being prepared. They want to know about food portions and how it is prepared. Consumers are interested in exactly what the ingredients are, where they originated, and what a given restaurant’s effect is on the environment.

The industry can expect to see a steady increase in organic and locally sourced menu offerings among QSRs. This is a move that can serve, not only to attract new consumers, but also to meet the demands of former and existing consumers. The growing emphasis being placed on sustainability, transparency and food safety will only strengthen this trend.

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Restaurant Best Practices for Alcohol Delivery and Receiving

Restaurant Best Practices for Alcohol Delivery and Receiving

by | Jun 13, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

Alcohol delivery and receiving are important for the industries in which a large portion of revenues comes from alcohol sales. Within these industries, such as restaurants, finding more affordable, faster and efficient services for alcohol can become one of the most important aspects of the  business. By using these four practices that successful restaurants have in common, your involvement can become one of the most improved parts of the day-to-day operations.

 

Faster Delivery Times

Through automatic ordering, businesses are able to have faster delivery times without having to remember to order their usual shipments. These deliveries would be automated from the alcohol warehouse directly to the company. This can then give way to an easier payment solution through an online method of direct deposit, or easy card pay without having to authorize payments every time a shipment is required by the company.

If the restaurant is new to the alcohol warehouse, ID verification, as well as verification of the business for selling alcohol is essential.

There can be downfalls. While every restaurant wants faster delivery times, alcohol may have minor setbacks that make it a longer process. If the restaurant is new to the alcohol warehouse, ID verification, as well as verification of the business for selling alcohol is essential. These are two very important documents that have to be thoroughly checked in order for the warehouse to distribute the alcohol to the company. However, after the initial check of these documents, then the transition and delivery and receiving process should go much smoother.

Minimal Hassle

Have minimal hassle when ordering and receiving the correct order that was placed with the company. With the latest in technology advancements, the alcohol delivery and receiving process can go much smoother, while also helping both companies have an easier time communicating with one another.

When a regular schedule is established, so can automatic shipments, payments and inventory tracking be established by both companies.

No longer will the need to call, place the order, authorize the order and payment, have delivery, sign for receiving, and putting away be necessary. This can all be done automatically, with minimal hassle through the use of a program that inputs the amounts of alcohol that you currently have left, and then determines when you may need more.

Easier Payment Solutions

Through the use of easier payment solutions, the correct amount that is charged for the alcohol shipments can easily be paid. This is a way to automatically pay for shipments that are being sent to your restaurant. However, having a schedule and relationship established should be done first prior to authorizing automatic payments for each of the shipments every month. Once this relationship is established, however, it can then become much more efficient not only for the restaurant ordering and paying for the alcohol, but also for the warehouse that is fulfilling the order.

Inventory Tracking

The ability to track the current inventory of the alcohol that is on hand can provide a much more efficient way for restaurant owners to know when they are getting low. This, then, prompts them to notify the appropriate companies for the next shipment. Which leads them to use the first point, allowing for faster delivery times through automatic shipments.

Having the inventory tracked through an app or other means can allow the restaurant to run more effectively without having to write the amounts down and keep track of shipments.

If restaurants used technology that was able to provide these four points, and connected with their alcohol shipment companies easier; they could all benefit. The process of ordering, delivery, and receiving alcohol would be more efficient, more effective and provide numerous benefits to those using the service. This can greatly benefit both the restaurant that is ordering the alcohol and the warehouses that are meeting the shipments for them.

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