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How to Know That You’re Hiring the Right Staff

While food is the most important thing in any restaurant (that’s what a restaurant is all about after all), your restaurant staff is equally important. Your staff will be the face of your restaurant, and the way they handle patrons will determine whether or not the customers will come back. When recruiting your restaurant staff, you will need to think about the following, among other factors.

Educational qualifications: You will not want to fill your restaurant with semi-literate unqualified staff. While restaurant employees don’t need to be degree holders, they need to have completed at least some form, of course, related to restaurants.

Experience: On top of educational qualifications, you will need people with experience. This will save you the trouble of having to train your employees before they begin work. Yes, staff orientation is vital, but that is only meant to familiarise employees with their new working environment rather than teach them what to do and what their job description entails. Yes, there are people who want to hire fresh graduates just because they won’t ask for mega salaries, but that comes with its own downside.

Communication skills: A good worker should have good communication skills, no matter their nature of the job. For restaurants, your staff will need to be at their best since they will be handling or dealing with people directly on a day-to-day basis. With your restaurant receiving a diverse range of customers, the way your staff talk to them will be of paramount importance.

Teamwork player: No single restaurant employee can make things move on his/her own without the help of others. All your employees must work towards a common goal, and that calls for teamwork. Thus, an employee who is not ready to work in coordination with fellow staff members will pull your business behind. But how do you know that you’re hiring a team player? Simple, look at their previous work and see what they have achieved. Calling their former employers to find out about their performance is yet another way.

Dress code: With a restaurant worker interacting with customers (some of whom are high-profile) on a daily basis, dress code matters a lot. A good dress code communicates a serious statement to the customers. This will make them love and respect your business.

Cleanliness: A restaurant sells food, which means cleanliness should be a priority. There are customers who won’t eat in your restaurant at all if the level of cleanliness is low. Your employees must be the first ones to give a clean impression by how they look. Their clothes must be clean at all times, especially if they are wearing white.

Qualities of a Good Restaurant Manager

While finding a good chef is difficult, getting a good restaurant manager can even be more difficult. As a matter of fact, a restaurant manager is as important as a chef. This is somebody who will run the business on your behalf, and they will be the face of your restaurant. First of all, a restaurant manager should be a good leader. He will be at the top of the structure, but below him, there will be many people whom he will be leading. As such, he should be able to demonstrate some really good leadership skills. Instead of dividing employees, he should be someone who brings them together always and remind them of the importance of working in harmony. Showing favouritism can ruin otherwise good management. Additionally, a good restaurant manager should have the following qualities.

Passion: While many people are money-driven, passion should be the primary driver in doing anything. A good restaurant manager should be driven by passion, rather than money. That is a sign that the person loves their job and can do their best to achieve the best results no matter the circumstances. Managers handle lots of things; that workload calls for passion. A passionate restaurant manager will also be able to inspire his staff to work hard for the better of your business.

Friendliness: A restaurant manager is a big man at the restaurant. He gives out orders which must be followed for the restaurant to move forward. However, he doesn’t need to be unfriendly or harsh for people to follow his orders. He can still tell people what he wants them to do in a friendly way and they will do. However, friendliness shouldn’t mean that the manager should not be firm.

Innovative: There is a lot of competition in the restaurant business, and that calls for an innovative manager. A restaurant manager who does something over and over again may not be able to keep up with the competition. The manager should be somebody who can keep an eye on what the competitors are doing and try to come up with ways of outperforming them. Any manager who is afraid of change can easily bring down your business.

Other qualities

• A people person
• Consistency
• Organised

Restaurant Staff Retention Tips

Once you have a good team in place, your next focus should be on how to retain them. With every employer wanting to have the best staff in their organisation, retaining your staff can be a problem if you don’t know what to do. As they say, numbers don’t lie, and if your employees are performing well, it won’t be a secret. In fact, their reputation will be out there in the public domain, and your competitors may snatch them up with a promise of bigger salaries. To retain your restaurant staff, here are some tips to help you.

Salary increment: Almost all people are on the lookout for greener pastures. Tell me what you would do if you’re earning $1500 per month and another employer comes with a promise of double the amount? Unless you have other good reasons, that sounds irresistible. That’s the nature of any employee. If anyone comes with better employment terms and conditions, you’re likely to lose them.

Focus more on passion than experience: While experience is essential, passion plays a bigger role when it comes to employee retention. A passionate restaurant worker is not motivated by the salary they earn; rather, they are motivated by the fact that they love their job. No matter what, they can not be swayed easily.

Reward long service: A restaurant employee who has been with you for five or so years deserves a reward for his loyalty. That will make him feel valued and motivated to stay with you even longer, helping you to achieve your business objectives.

Reward good performance: Recognising and rewarding good performance will inspire your employees to be at their best.

Why Customer Retention is Essential for Your Restaurant

Customer retention is the process of ensuring that the customers you already have remained loyal to your business. Now, this is not an easy task. Yes, finding customers who will eat at your restaurant may be easy, but when it comes to retaining them, it is a whole different matter. Find here some of the reasons why retaining your restaurant customers is important.

Encourages repeat business: When customers keep on coming back to your business, this is known as repeat business. Your restaurant business cannot be successful based on one-time customers. After all, new one-time customers cannot make any business successful. With customer retention, you can be sure your customers will stay with you for long, boosting your sales and sustaining your business. Repeat business is only possible if customers like your services.

Creates loyalty: When a customer comes back only a couple of times, say, 10 or even 20 times, this is a repeat customer, and we may not claim that such a customer is loyal. However, when they keep on coming to your business for years, they qualify to be called loyal customers. Loyal customers won’t eat elsewhere easily. No matter what, they will always come to your restaurant unless otherwise.

Customer Retention Tips

Customer retention is an important part and parcel of your restaurant success. In fact, I would dare say that your business will continue to struggle and even go down the cliff if you get this one wrong. Thus, if all the faces at your restaurant are new every day, you should really be worried. It may mean that your services are poor. For purposes of retaining customers at your restaurant business, these tips may help.

Offer discounts: If someone brought 15 customers to your restaurant for a meal, it would only be better if you gave them a discount. If someone has been visiting your restaurant frequently for the last one month, wouldn’t it be noble to give them a discount or freebie? Discounts ensure that customers feel valued and appreciated.

Good customer service: Good services will always persuade customers to come back. Most restaurant customers like quick services. Remember, they will come there while hungry or they may have taken a lunch break from the office, so they want to return to work as fast as possible. Keeping them waiting for 10 minutes after placing an order will only discourage them.

Bonuses: These could take various forms, including free meals or gifts.

Why You Need a Restaurant Website

A good restaurant should be accompanied by a website. A website is just but one of the many ways of having an online presence. The internet is a platform where you can easily find customers, who will frequent your restaurant, ensuring that your sales stay afloat. With this platform, people don’t have to struggle to find where to eat. With a good website, potential customers will be able to find your restaurant easily.

Benefits of Having a Restaurant Website

Marketing in itself: The first benefit of having a website is that a website is a marketing strategy in itself. While you can market your restaurant on other platforms, such as social media, your website comes with a different thing. This is where you can upload comprehensive information about your business for customers to see or read. Upload photos of your restaurant, including the kitchen, the dining, and the reception to your website to attract customers.

Good customer relations: With a website, you have an excellent way of communicating with your clients. Ensure that your site features a customer care department that handles all issues brought forth by customers and leads. There are those customers who will call or email the team to find out particular information about your restaurant. Some will prefer live chat. Ensure that your website is designed in a way that it offers multiple support channels.

Professional touch: Having a good working website in place for your restaurant alone carries a big message to your clients. It shows that you’re serious about what you do and that you’re doing it in a professional way.

Characteristics of a Good Restaurant Website

A good restaurant website should be well optimised to ensure that customers can easily find it when surfing the internet. It doesn’t matter how good it looks, if it is not optimised, customers will struggle to find your business online. Having said that, a good restaurant website may have the following features:

Visuals: Oh yes, people are attracted more to what they see than what they read. With a high-definition camera, take and upload images of your restaurant and the foods you serve. Seeing these images alone may help someone make a decision to visit your business and become a customer. You can complement these still images with videos if that’s necessary.

Good support: This one is a must for purposes of communicating with customers. For instance, a potential customer may want to know the meals you serve to know whether his favourite dish is among them. This will help them make an informed decision. While most restaurant websites will contain the dishes served, some people may want to have comprehensive information around that. Besides, customer support has lots of other crucial responsibilities.

Mobile friendly: This is more than essential since the majority of internet users use mobile gadgets.