Restaurant Business

On a yearly basis, close to 42,000 restaurants open their doors. Over the course of the next 3 years, half of them are done and dusted. Many of those establishments could have still gone up and running, had help been provided. If you feel there are holes in your restaurant’s management, then these errors could be the reason behind them.

1. You Are A Newbie To The Restaurant Business

Many people get into the business thinking it to be all fine wine and champagne, but if you were to rave and throw expectations—let alone money—then shutting shop is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’.

You can make extremely good money if you love the idea of putting out good food, give your customers a great experience and have a solid business plan in place. If you have the burning passion to do the above, then it feels less like work and more like a fun activity that you can bask in. You only stop when you are utterly tired and not you are done.

Most of the time, you will have to man the stations for 14-hour shifts, and sleep the aching joints off until the sun rises the next day. Managing your team, supporting them, making changes on the fly- these require your attention and if you are driven, then this comes easy.

If you are a first-timer to the restaurant business, make sure that you enjoy the culinary side- on the plate and off of it. If you are not the things mentioned above, then it just means that the restaurant business isn’t really your cup of tea.

2. You Should Know How To Do Every Role In The Restaurant

Never tell your staff how to do their job, when you yourself have never done it. If you are clueless, then train for a few minutes at every station. Have the managers do a stage in every position in the restaurant for a week each.

Why does it matter that you do this?

• You understand what your employees do, and what the difficulties are that they could possibly face.
• You will bond with the employees at a deeper level and is indeed a form of a ‘team-building exercise’.
• You will gain the respect of wanting to learn their aspect of the job. Anyone can walk into a room and act like the boss. But to be a leader you need to be on the field, and get involved in moving your team ahead.

3. Hiring The Wrong People

This is one of the biggest mistakes restaurant owners make. If you want a sure-fire way to lower your turnover, then just hire a handful of bad people and you should be good.

Restaurant competition is brutal, and in this industry when a customer walks in through your doors, they have chosen to spend their money at your establishment and nowhere else. It is your responsibility to give them all that their money’s worth.

It is your responsibility to hire and train new talent and keep them engaged to grow and promote them in terms of responsibilities and monetary gains that they make.

Bad attitude and substandard skills have no place in the restaurant but out the door. Today’s workforce needs flexible hours to follow other interests and skill up in other ways, they want to learn and want to develop in an environment that is conducive to that. Make sure to hand out books, articles from the internet, take them into seminars, and expand their horizons.

Most of the staff that leaves does so not because of the money, but because they aren’t getting to experience new things and feel appreciated enough.

4. Your Staff Have A Free Hand In The Restaurant

You don’t need to be in an army regiment for a mutiny to happen- it can happen very much within the 4 walls of your restaurant. As an owner of the restaurant, you have two primary roles:

1. To scale and build your business. After you acquaint yourself with all of the roles in the restaurant, your job is to Promote, Preach, and deliver on what is promised.
2. Train your team into running the restaurant as per your standards and in line with your goals and core values that you want to see exhibited. You manage the managers, who in turn manage the team. In other words, you build a team that extends to build the business.

Every day you need to reaffirm to your team what YOUR standards and expectations are. You can do so with the help of a chant, or a pop quiz before the doors open. Remind them what it means to stay committed to your restaurant. It can be considered a subtle form of brainwashing, but it is better safe than sorry. Your team needs to be on the same plane as you are.

5. You Are Too Proud To Ask For Help

Your ego needs to take a beating. There are times when it is argued when you were indeed wrong, but you won’t concede because of the inflated ego of looking wrong. Egos have started wars and closed down businesses- your restaurant could also fall victim to a downfall.

Acting tough with the staff is needed, but all talk and no substance can only smoke mirror the rest of the team for so long. Over time, they will see through you, take control, and cast aside directions if you are not just and firm. Ask for help from your managers when the situation demands. More times than not, you require someone else to share the load for the time being.

6. If You Are Using Outdated Marketing Techniques, You Will Soon Turn Outdated Too

Gone are the days of yellow page ads, postcards, and snail-mail. It is a waste of your money and resources. The need of the hour is to hop online and create a presence there. This is where all of your customers are, be it young or old. You are losing the opportunity to rope in new clients and customers in the process of not shaping with the change in the marketing age. On the very minimum, you must have a few of the below ticked off:

• LinkedIn
• Google My Business
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Foursquare

Have an email newsletter with the help of email services like MailChimp or AWeber. These are people who know what to do, get a professional web designer who can update your website. If you have the menu posted online, then do update it every week or so.

7. You Don’t Have A Forecast Or A Budget In Place

Another cardinal sin when it comes to ownership of a restaurant business would be the lack of a forecast, a profit, and loss statement, or a budget in general.

If you were abandoned in the rocky mountains, you would need a compass and a map to navigate your way out. You also need a plan of action! In the same way, in which you need a compass to keep track of where you need to go, you need a plan on how you want to progress your business forward. As Benjamin Franklin said, “If you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail” sits beautifully here.

8. Your Business Culture Is Rotten

   

   Restaurant Establishment

if you have a negative attitude, your staff will gladly adopt it as their own. You can expect to be mad at an employee for being late when you yourself land late. Get real with yourself, as you aren’t holier than thou.

The best restaurants develop a culture of excellence and set the tone for the values that emanate in the business. If you want to do well, then think nothing short of “world-class”. Every employee must act as the cogs in an intricately assembled watch that sticks to every beat without missing.

Read up with books relating to the restaurant business, attend seminars, and keep skilling up. It isn’t your employees who are only expected to learn and be knowledge-hungry- at some point in time, they will know more than you and they will see how ill-equipped you are in running the establishment. Then it is only a matter of time when they are going to leave with their talent and skill to your rivals, or better yet start a competing restaurant that chews yours up.

All you need to do is to improve what you learn in a day, and over the course of 365 days, you will cast a shadow on your former self and be the truly world-class restaurant owner that you vow to have become.

9. If Your Menu And Concepts Are Centered Around Personal Egos And Not What The Actual Customer Wants

If you watch Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, then you know behind the hostile verbal riposte that is doled out to anyone in earshot, there is a method to the madness. He does indeed have the recipe that can potentially turn around a failing restaurant establishment:

• He shortens the menu- you are better off making 10 great tasting dishes, than 40 so-so dishes that don’t leave a lasting impact.
• Have a signature dish that screams special and unique.
• Listen to what the market and especially your customers are responding to. Make sure the dinner service is fast and you deliver on what the customers would have to eat, and not what you think they should eat. Sound easy enough?

Knowing what to have and what not to have on the menu is a challenge in itself. Do market research on what are the delicacies that are the ‘it’ thing. Just because you make great meatloaf doesn’t mean it needs to have a place on the menu. There are many psychological factors that come into play, from the placement and the font style, that all contribute to an increased engagement.

Good tasting food that is seasoned well and presented neatly will appeal to customers. Complexity in the name of the dish doesn’t translate to want from the end of the customer. After all, it isn’t rocket science, you know…