Maximising Efficiency and Profit
Your guests
What is a restaurant business without diners? The front-of-house interacts with diners and is an extremely important area in a restaurant’s operations. How do we make this section more efficient?
Efficient dining room design
- Ensure smooth workflow for easy access to the kitchen and sanitary areas.
- Allow for sufficient storage space for tableware such as cutlery, napkins, side plates and extra flatware.
- Maximise seating capacity while still allowing your guests to eat comfortably.
- Maximise diner-staff interaction space and ensure there are no blind spots or dead corners in your dining room.
Clear work organisation & flow
- Determine the suitable service style for your restaurant so that you hire the right type and number of staff.
- Harness technology to minimise waste and mistakes. Consider Point Of Sale (POS) software to track not only your sales but also your inventory to help prevent loss.
Your staff
Maximising efficiency in human resources is not just about hiring the right number of staff, it’s about hiring the right people, training them and retaining talent.
Recruiting
- While personality is important, quantifiable skills and experiences are also vital to know if the person can lead and transfer skills.
- Check references to know more about the person you’re hiring.
- Understand what the market rate for salaries is for different job roles before you make a job offer.
Training
- Well-trained front-of-house staff should be skilled in the suggestive selling of items and drinks in a subtle, non-pushy manner.
- Service staff should have good product knowledge.
- They should also be aware of surroundings and give pre-emptive, proactive service.
- Consider cross-training to allow staff to work better together as a team.
Retaining talent
- Offer a conducive and friendly working environment.
- Provide fair wages matched to the market and acknowledge good performance through wage increases or bonuses.
- Create learning opportunities with good training and upgrading programmes.
For more info, download our Manpower Scheduling Tool for your staff.
Congratulations, you’ve completed the Maximising Efficiency: Your Guests and Staff topic!
Continue on to the next topic, pick a related topic from the Maximising Efficiency and Profits module, or go back to the Chefmanship Academy modules page.
