1. Stay Consistent

We often have heard this phrase “Consistency is the key to success”, Same goes with the restaurant industry where you’re recognized for your quality practices.

The restaurant business is fast and unpredictable, no two days are the same here. Every single day brings in a new challenge that requires a smart and quick solution.

Your business can not afford any inconsistent approach to how you deal with a new issue.

Here are a few things a restaurant manager is expected to do in order to stay consistent.

* How a certain communication
* Have defined rules
* Know your expectations

Even if you have an unexpected number of customers at your door and have a little circus going around the kitchen, your employees are supposed to deliver the same level of customer service and food quality, as before.

Your consistency can normalize unpredictability and allow your staff to handle high-stress loads without losing track.

2. Make your staff feel important

Employee retention is a big issue faced in the restaurant industry. It is said that an average tenure of a restaurant employee is less than two months. This harsh reality has made the restaurant managers realize that hiring a new employee is way much harder than retaining the existing one. The process of conducting interviews, doing follow-ups, and training new employees is not only cost money but considerable time as well.

Here are some employee retention tactics that can be helpful in restaurant management:

1. Employee of the Month

Appreciation is as important as the monetary reward and appreciating the hardworking employees with titles like “employee of the month” can be a great motivation itself. You can also give them bonus checks, gift cards, or something valuable as a symbol of achievement.

2. Open-Book Management

Treat your employees as a team members, so they can own the business in return. The practice of Open-Book Management can bring transparency and clarity among the employees. It depicts that the company is transparent to its team members about its financial information, profitability, and profit-sharing. This is how they feel more valued and an integral part of the system.

3. Free meals and discounted offers

Especially when it's a busy season and you expect your employee to do a little more hard work and do overtime due to shortage of staff, free meals should be offered to them. Also, you can give them a token of appreciation in the shape of gift cards or discounts for family members.

4. Incentive or Bonus on completion of tenure

The restaurant manager can specify bonuses on the completion tenure like 3 or 6 months. By implementing this strategy, the restaurant can retain its employees and save a huge cost and time on new recruitments.

3. Make seasonal changes to the restaurant’s menu.

In the restaurant industry, it is expected to keep your menu up to the minute and have your customer’s preference in view while designing or redesigning your menu.

This leads to another amazing restaurant management strategy, switching up menus. Your menu cards need to be a mix of both signature dishes and new trendy items. This strategy does two things:

1. Keep your customers Coming back
2. Get reviews about the new additions

Moreover, changing your restaurant’s menu according to the season or weather can have a huge impact on the restaurant’s performance. It helps in keeping your kitchen keep fresh things and has a smooth relationship with the suppliers of fruits and vegetables.

Using seasonal, local ingredients are easily available and reduce the chances of wastage, also it saves the business from spending extra bucks on transportation that were used in the import of certain ingredients.

4. Prioritize Customer satisfaction

Restaurant management is not limited to just in-house tasks, but it includes the responsibility to bring in new customers. Your restaurant requires a proper marketing strategy to keep your customers interested in you.

In this Tec savvy era, social media has empowered businesses with several tools that are not only free but convenient to be utilized as a medium of marketing. A proper Social Media Strategy can land you many new customers.

Your restaurant’s digital Presence is your brand face that needs to be maintained with meaningful content which provides value. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the ideal platforms to have your business accounts on. Keep these accounts alive by updating content regularly.

Once you have built your online presence, don’t forget to interact with your customers who comment, message, have queries regarding your products. An efficient social media interaction makes your customer feel special and acknowledged.

Another Digital Marketing strategy is paid social media ads that can articulate brand awareness about your restaurant and target certain audiences. You can track the investment through various matrices and KPIs and then redesign your strategy accordingly.

5. Train restaurant employees

“Customer is always right” is the most used phrase in the restaurant business. But your employees cater to various customers with different demeanors on daily basis, so it gets overwhelming sometimes. To accommodate such situations your restaurant needs to have a certain rule book and predefined responses to possible actions.

Your staff should know how to respond when someone asks to avoid certain ingredients because of dietary restrictions. Or how to handle or dissatisfied and angry customers, and the ones who show up to your restaurant 10 minutes before the closing time.

It is quite beneficial to prepare your staff for any scenario in advance that brings consistency to the team and makes your restaurant management better and hassle-free.

6. Suggest easier methods for sales and inventory measurement

Amongst many hectic tasks in restaurant management, inventory and sales management stays at the top.

In addition to day-to-day exploding tasks in a restaurant manager’s work life, number-crunching often takes a huge chunk of it. Moreover, sales tracking, inventory management, and payrolls also claim their part in the daily process. In this scenario, an efficient Point-of-Sale (POS) system can help you navigate in an organized manner.

A modern POS system allows you to integrate your whole restaurant management system centrally. It also enables the restaurant

> To change your menus,
> To access analytical reports
> To manage online orders
> To send marketing deals and offers
> To generate coupons and discount
> To create customer profiles and manage all of them on the go via mobility.

In this age, manual inventory management and sales tracking can be both time-consuming and hectic. It is important to take proactive and diligent decisions for your business to make a successful restaurant

7. Keep eye on online reviews

A restaurant manager has to consider the company’s reputation before anything. Customer reviews and word of mouth are two main factors that help a customer choose your restaurant. Smart initiatives and good customer service can have a huge impact on your online presence that makes your brand positioning better.

Pay attention to the online reviews, especially the ones on Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, and Google reviews. They can help you know what your customers are talking about and responding to them on daily basis will help you have a good handle on the perception of your brand.

Next Step: Schedule a free trial on the Cafesquad site and enjoy free POS for your restaurant.