Brick Ovens: September 2016

Friday, September 30, 2016

Importance of training employees:

Everyone knows that having a well-trained staff can make your life as a manger much easier. When everyone is well trained, and they are doing what they need to do and doing it well, this affords you time to tend to other activities. How often as an owner operator do you get to interact with your guests? It is never enough because there is always a fire that needs to be put out right now. That turns into a constant struggle of trying to fight fires all night long especially during the peak hours of operation.

Who is it that suffers in the end? It is you the owner/manager of the establishment because of continually having to cope the moral of the staff drops. This in turn spills over to the customer experience and will not want to return to your eatery, plus tell everyone about their bad experience. So how do you break the cycle? That will take a little bit of effort on your part.

What I have found to be the most successful way to train employees is to make a video of what it is that they are supposed to be doing. In the video include all the principal functions on a tell-them-show-them-method. You can also make a more detailed manual of each position in the establishment that outlines all the activities that are expected of the staff. Now that each person knows the functions of their job, how do you correlate this to the real world?

An easy way to track this is performance metrics - just monitor how much production each person is producing. For example, a waiter can track his average sale per person. If the overall production is increasing then your training is paying dividends. You can take those fourteen hour days and cut them back some and have a better quality of life.

Michael Cosentino

Three tips to running a successful restaurant:

How to get results

You might be thinking that all there is to managing a restaurant is having a good menu, but I can assure you that there is more to it than just that. Think of how many places there are to eat in any given area; you have your fast food places to your more upscale places. Your restaurant might have the best food in the area. However, this is not enough.

What is it that you see when you first walk into an establishment, it starts even before that. The first thing your customers see is the parking lot and the building itself. It does not have to cost thousands of dollars to have a parking lot that is free from trash nor having a building with a fresh coat of paint on it. Power washing the building can go a long way to improving what the customer sees and thinks.

Training is key

Another area that deserves your attention is the friendliness of your staff. You could have the most efficient staff that gets everything done quickly. However they lack that friendly smile which makes the patrons want to be there and come back again. This can only be coached-up so far, when you are interviewing someone look for the easy, friendly smile.

Now to your menu, ask yourself how many different items should I have on it? It is easy to try to do a lot of various entries to try to appeal to everyone. The downside of this is the amount of money it takes to have all the different items on hand which ties up capital. Plus it is very hard to make all the dishes well. Try to simplify what it’s that you are doing. The items that you do put out make sure they are of the highest quality. This simple steps will help you to achieve the goal of a successful business.

Michael Cosentino