Whether you own a city centre based restaurant or a local cafe, there will be periods of increased demand which can be a management nightmare. Every hospitality venue experiences the rushes of business and the drag of a quiet day. When trying to manage staff, cater to a crowd and keep customers satisfied, tensions can escalate and things can get out of hand. Having a crowded restaurant is indeed the goal for restaurant owners, but an owner needs to know hot to handle the stressful situations that occur. How to manage a busy day at a restaurant is a question all restaurant owners should focus on. Fortunately, there are many ways you can prepare yourself and your staff better for busy days. Here are some of the most effective tips to manage busy restaurants:
Stay Organised
Keeping your venue organised is the key to staying on top of things. There are three main organisation methods that can be added to your EPoS system to assist your organisation. They include:
Reservations Software, managing reservations through an EPoS system is a must-have addition. Relying on handwritten notes and spreadsheets brings too many mistakes, software like SPARK Reservations helps you organise the chaos, ensure everyone gets a seat, and boost profits. Here's how:
Reduce No Shows: Send automated reservation reminders by text or email
Guest Profiles: Treat guests like VIP's, save notes, offer promotions, add dining preferences with guests so they don't need to remind you with each visit
Optimised Table Turnover: Set table time slots depending on the amount of guests
Reports & Sales Data: Access reports anytime - even after hours - so you can efficiently plan
The next key organisation element is ensuring staff rotas are fully prepared and organised efficiently. With SPARK Staff Scheduling we can provide smart hospitality scheduling for your business. Here's how:
Plan & Schedule: Make sure all employees know where they are needed with simple planning
Time Clock: Track and manage employee work hours on the job with clocking in and out functions
Real-time Availability: Message and updates are instantly sent, allowing staff to be updated at all times
Full Integration: Our system is designed to integrate and work with all devices inside your SPARK ecosystem
Another integrated software for a SPARK EPoS solution is Stock Management. Having Stock Management integrated across devices allows for a smoother problem free stock take, products will appear unavailable when stock is empty, and it keeps all items accounted for. Here's how:
Stock Locations: Stock can be sorted in areas for sorting and location, ensuring nothing is unaccounted for
Stock Movement: Stock can easily be moved and updated on the system which will then update across all devices
Stock Alerts: Stock levels are colour coded for ease, for example when stock turns red staff will be alerted
Reports & Forecasting: By keeping accurate levels and reports means efficient forecasting for future stock levels
Hardworking Staff
One of the most important aspects of restaurant management is hiring and maintaining well-trained staff. In order to ensure your guests have a positive experience from start to finish, you need to have solid support staff. Staff need to be vigilant, skilled, and competent enough to make decisions to prevent problems. Both the back-of-house and front-of-house of a restaurant are high-pressure environments, which is why staff need to be able to work as a team. Staff work harder when there is a good support system behind them. Providing staff with support, feedback, and the opportunity to improve is key. Another key factor in helping staff is providing them with easy to use products. SPARK products are intuitive and have an easy-to-use UI making them simple for new staff members to learn which reduces training needs, saving time and resources. In a restaurant everyone should understand the scope of their job and what is expected from them.
Focus on Customer Satisfaction
Even with the most hard working staff and the biggest premises, unreserved customers will still need to wait to be seated, and customers will still have to wait for service. So when there's nothing to be done to keep queues at bay, and speed up service, a business needs to focus on improving customer satisfaction.
The key to making people happy is good communication from start to finish. Even at the busiest times staff members need to keep on top of their 'zones' and regularly check on their customers to ensure there are no problems, and if there are problems they can be quickly rectified. The way situations are handled on a busy day goes a long way towards creating learning opportunities.
Set Goals
At the end of the day during busy periods business is booming and profits are soaring. Regardless of how great business is, goals are always a key element. Setting goals gives staff the opportunity to work towards something. So setting goals within a venue is motivation for staff to work harder and hit these goals. However, an important thing to consider is managing your expectations. Whilst goals are great to aim for, always remember that when goals aren't reached this is an opportunity to re-evaluate what isn't working.
Avoid Panicking
Managing a busy restaurant can be a major cause of stress, especially if things aren't going well. The most important thing you should remember is to not panic. Having the restaurant owner or manager panicking doesn't help the staff and only worsens the situation.
Once the day is over it's time to re-evaluate and process what went well throughout the day and what went wrong. This allows for improvement and opportunity to make changes. Instead of worrying about the problem, focus on fixing them one at a time. With a level-headed restaurant manager, a restaurant should run smoothly with staff and customers satisfied.
Getting through those busy days may seem like a difficult task but by implementing just a few of the steps you can improve your business. Many things may feel unchangeable within a business but the key element is a strong EPoS System to help process orders quickly and integrate across devices. With SPARK EPoS there are so many elements to assist your hospitality venue in its daily runnings, both slow and busy days.
If you've got a busy period coming up at your venue, contact SPARK EPoS to find the right products to assist you.
