How to Better Manage your Restaurant Workforce

All over the world, restaurants are facing the same challenges. The food service industry is highly competitive. Budgets are tight and margins are thin. Social media gives your potential customers constant incentive to try other restaurants. These are just a few of the reasons that nearly one in five restaurants are destined to fail within their first year in business.[i] How can you make your restaurant stand out from the crowd? It may be counterintuitive, but it is not your food. Running a great restaurant starts with great staff.

More than anything else, your staff is what sets your restaurant apart. Learning how to better manage a restaurant workforce is an essential part of making your restaurant a place your customers want to visit again and again.

Are You Stuck in the Past?

Changing your décor, menu, or style may help set you apart temporarily, but changing the way you do business is a better long-term solution. A pencil and paper are arguably the cheapest tools available to manage your staff, but you will be spending a great deal of time and energy using them. Many restaurants have moved to automated tools to manage marketing, reservations, and sales.

Effective management tools help speed the process of HR, payroll, and scheduling, freeing your managers to interact with your customers, employees and suppliers. In addition, these automated tools make it easy to expand when the time comes. In short, a modern workforce management tool will save you time and money, while opening new opportunities for growth. However, many restaurant owners are reluctant to change the way they do business.

The Future Is Waiting

While many restaurant managers are already seeing the benefits of modern management tools, some managers are reluctant to make the change. They worry that technology-based tools are complex, expensive or hard to learn. This is a misconception.

Today’s systems are well entrenched in the industry. These tools are mobile, online, and user-friendly. Furthermore, the cost of using these tools continues to drop. Finally, these modern tools let you pay only for the services you actually need.

Better Management Means Better Business

Running a successful restaurant is hard. The challenges of managing the staff can quickly overwhelm pencil and paper management techniques, leaving little time to build your business and serve your customers better. If you are looking to save money on administration, communication, payroll, and scheduling, an online workforce management tool could be the answer.

Today’s workforce management tools allow your chefs, managers, and wait staff to collaborate across different locations and job positions and wow your customers. Do you need to know how to better manage your restaurant workforce? Today’s technology-based tools could be the key.

[i] https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2017/01/29/no-most-restaurants-dont-fail-in-the-first-year/#15dfe60e4fcc