It can be difficult to get enough financing to open a restaurant, but even trained chefs and financiers find themselves to be quite overwhelmed when they hit the ground running. Although the end goal of managing a restaurant is to service a steady flow of guests from the time that doors open until they close for the day, there is a precise system that needs to synchronized in the kitchen.
A restaurant POS system cannot be an afterthought if you want your servers to be on point and your cooks to remain calm throughout their shifts. Although verbal communication between the front and back of the house is integral for all orders to be precisely prepared, you don’t want the kitchen to be a madhouse where everyone is yelling back and forth.
These next five tips will enable you to manage a restaurant that gets a lot of positive reviews from diners, even if it is your first foray in the food service industry.
1. Make Sure Your Menus Are Perfect
How many times have you gone to a restaurant and been appalled to open a menu and find entire entrees crossed out because they’re no longer being offered? What about finding a menu that has spelling and formatting errors? Yes, it can be expensive to get an entire set of restaurant menus printed up, but diners want to feel like they’re in a dining establishment that takes itself seriously. Ditch the sharpie and opt to get new menus if you have to take away an appetizer, entree, or dessert.
2. Always Keep a Host By the Front Door
Diners who come into restaurants don’t enjoy it when they have to wait several minutes to be seated. Most like it even less when they are told to seat themselves because a lot of times they’ll ultimately be asked to move to a different area by their servers. Have someone always standing by the front door to greet customers with a smile and offer them menus. It just makes a better first impression.
3. Offer Payment by Credit Card
You might really enjoy seeing a drawer full of cash by your main restaurant POS system after closing your restaurant up each day, but you will prompt diners to spend more if you enable them to pay with their credit cards. Servers can end up getting stiffed by diners who didn’t bring enough cash with them to pay the bill and leave a tip, and others will simply order more conservatively if they can’t use their credit or debit cards.
4. Keep Your Restaurant Amazingly Clean
Remember that restaurants are essentially commercial dining rooms so there are going to be a lot of spills and crumbs collecting in areas you won’t see them in unless you clean your establishment thoroughly. Bussers can do a pretty good job of keeping the surfaces of tables clean, but you will also need to mop the floors, clean off the menus, sanitize the drink stations and wipe down all of the counters before your restaurant opens and after it closes.
Your restaurant can sell cheeseburgers just as easily as it can sell liver pate if you make sure the exterior is inviting and the interior is clean and well managed. A lot of new restaurants aren’t run by seasoned veterans, but instead are the dreams of foodies and entrepreneurs with big ambitions. Use these tips to ensure that your restaurant feeds diners for generations to come.