Five
Valuable Tips For Training
Restaurant/Bar Staff
By Steve Riley
Tip!
Selling a more expensive item does not always equate to increased
profitability. Make sure that your servers understand which items are
most profitable for the restaurant, and promote those.
Hiring restaurant and bar staff
is an ongoing job. Even if you have enough staff, you should be looking
for others at all times. When you go out to eat, when they come in to
eat. Friends of your staff are a great way to find good people. |
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- Develop a training schedule.
Unscheduled training will lead to extra hours and lower productivity.
Explain daily objectives for each trainee and trainer. Create a
training program and checklist. Have the trainee and the trainer sign
off each shift that the objectives have been completed. This also
helps to ensure that they trainee is staying on schedule and your
training is consistent. Keep the sheets in the staff's file in the
office.
- Provide a free meal each shift to
each trainee. Allow them to order from certain sections each shift.
This will give them a chance to try different items. Example: Day 1 -
Apps, Day 2 - soup/salads, Day 3 - mains… How do you expect them to
sell the items if they have never tried them? "Oh, I'm sorry, I've
never tried that." Would you order it?
- You need to compensate the trainer
as their productivity will be lower. They will not be able to take as
much of their normal workload. Less tables for them = less money. See
if giving a free meal to the trainer is enough compensation for
training vs. extra hourly. If not, perhaps you could let them make
their own schedule the following week. Look for something that they
will find a bonus, without costing you extra dollars. paying them more
is an option, but the most expensive option.
- Document the training. This will
save you piles of money if you end up in Labour Court down the road.
See point number 2.
- Spend some time explaining to new
staff that you understand they will make mistakes and this will cost
the store money. You expect mistakes, but excessive, unnecessary
mistakes will not be tolerated. Explain the cost of everyday items to
the staff. Example: This plate costs $32.50, this knife, $2.87, this
napkin $0.04. Restaurant/bar staff seem to think that the store makes
about 80% of every dollar sold. Explain that the average net income is
about 5%. When they sell a dollar, the store makes a nickel.
Tip!
Market Your Restaurant In Hotel Rooms Business travellers and people
on holiday may not be familiar enough with your town to know where to
find an excellent meal. You can give them a hand simply by doing some
hotel room marketing.
Again, you will always be hiring and
training. Sure, May and September are the busy times for turnover, but
if you have a system in place and a plan…you should be good. Remember
that they want to work for you and they want to be trained. When they
are trained properly, they are less likely to quit and go and work for
your competitor.
Top Shelf Consulting has been helping Ontario restaurants increase
profits since 2000. Specializing in Menu Engineering, Cost Controls, and
Service Selling, Top Shelf offers both one-on-one consultations as well
as full-day seminars.
Check us out at
http://www.topshelfconsulting.ca |
