Preparing your staff for the holiday season is an undertaking every restaurateur must take if they want a well-prepared team to take on the influx of hungry and impatient patrons.
Preparing your staff in Four Easy Steps
When prepping your staff for a smooth operation start with these four considerations:
1)Do you need more help than usual?
If you’re planning on having a busy season you need to make sure you have enough staff available during your peak shifts. You may need to consider incentives or compensation for overtime
2) Set expectations for staff with different responsibilities during the holidays.
Different jobs need different responsibilities, so make it clear to your cashiers, servers and cooks and other key staff members what is expected of them to avoid any confusion.
A restaurant operations manual is a comprehensive collection of guidelines, checklist and duties, and other information that every employee needs to know for the success of your business. It essentially acts as a reference guide that employees can quickly check if they need to know something.
3) Schedule shifts.
Create a scheme to manage the restaurant when it’s full or if one or more staff members are absent.
Managing a team is a challenge. There is much to consider, from trading hours to staff routines to factoring in the needs of your business.The best way to get a handle on things is to build a Restaurant Schedule – we have put together 10 tips for building a solid schedule for your team.
4) Simplify tasks in the kitchen.
Your chefs and cooks could be overwhelmed with orders during those peak hours. Long cooking duration decreases customer satisfaction rates and long table turnover or a failure to meet customer’s orders.
By simplifying tasks by breaking down recipes, ingredients, and in which station it should be prepped. This is where a robust KDS comes into play. Your waitstaff can punch in a table’s order and the order is sent to the kitchen where your cooks will have the info on order priority as well as recipes, ingredients and stations. No more losing tickets or forgetting recipes.
