Why do so many restaurant owners and managers not train their staff effectively on sales? You can have the best food in town or the most stunning atmosphere, but if the service is lousy and the customer has a poor dining experience, then that is all the customer will remember. That is why I am baffled as to how little effort so many restaurant owners put into developing policies and procedures for handling each dining guest and then effectively training their staff so it becomes second nature. They are your sales people and need to sell not only meals and drinks, but the restaurant and the dining experience.
The following are 3 musts that every restaurant owner or restaurant manager should consider and implement as part of their operation.
You Lead Your Staff and Manage the Restaurant
The first challenge that any owner or manager faces is the difference between leading people and managing tasks. In a restaurant that means leading your wait staff, buss people and kitchen staff and managing ordering, scheduling and the line.
You can quickly sense a restaurant staff that is lead by an owner or general manager as opposed to ones that are just managed like any other aspect of the operation.
I bring this up because many restaurant owners and managers have years of training and experience in the culinary arts and managing the operations of a restaurant, but many lack the training, experience or even realize that their success or failure is determined by the people that prepare and serve the food. The restaurant owners or managers ability to lead, motivate, train and establish clear expectations of performance is critical to success. Even more than great food!
Are You a Proactive or Reactive Restaurant Owner/Manager
This is simply the difference between working hard and working smart. The restaurant business is hard enough, why make it harder by wasting any of your time on anything that cannot be handled by a member of your team and does not contribute to the success of your business. Your time is valuable and you should plan out every shift or seating to maximize your effectiveness in growing your business.
When I sit down in a restaurant I immediately begin looking to identify the owner or manager of the operation. It has become a game with my wife and I, as she knows what I am looking for. I do not search out the person running the operation because I want to talk to them. I find them because I can tell so much about their operation by watching how they lead and manage their operation. Especially on a busy night.
This leads to a simple question. Where do you think you will have the greatest impact leading your operations on a busy Friday night?
- Sitting in your office away from the hailstorm of activity doing next weeks supply order?
- Running the kitchen or stuck on the line prepping and preparing meals with no idea what is going on?
- Running food to tables, wiping up spills behind your buss people and clearing tables to get people seated?
- Greeting patrons as they enter and taking the time to visit every table at least once during a seating to thank them for coming and make sure everything is satisfactory?
We all know that there are those shifts where you are understaffed for some unplanned reason or slammed with unexpected business, so you step in and lead your team by filling whatever gaps or chock points open up in your operation that evening. The problem is that many consider that N.O.P. “Normal Operating Procedure” and that is not the way to run a successful business of any kind.
Your greatest contribution to the success of your operation (unless you are the chef), is to manage the floor and make sure that your team sees you setting the tone by greeting every person who comes through the door and visits every table to make sure that they are having the dining experience that you would want them to have.
If every night in your restaurant is like a fire drill than you have failed to establish clear expectations for the success of your operation and have also failed at training your people effectively to run the operation around you. If this is the case then you are doomed as most restaurants are to fail. Even worse than failure, you may be doomed to succeed, because you have let the business run you so effectively, rather than you running your business. In the end you will hate the thought of coming to work each day.
Train Your Sales Team For Success
The reaction of most restaurant owners and managers to the question of training their sales team is that they do not have a “sales team”. The reality is that every person who interacts with your dining or bar guest needs to be a sales person for your business, including you.
Every restaurant should have specific policies and procedures for the handling of guests to create a positive dining experience. They are not hard, but they are critical. Here are three simple things that every restaurant should train their wait staff to do before you even ask if they want a beverage.
- Servers should welcome each guest at their table and introduce themselves (you would be surprised how many just walk up and just ask for a drink order). Services should always give them their first name and that they will be serving them. This establishes a relationship with diner.
- Servers should ask if this is their first time to the restaurant and if so give them a quick history about what makes the restaurant special. If they are a returning guest then use the opportunity to show your appreciation that they have come back and re-enforce a few “then you know that we are famous for” items.
- Bus staff should be trained to also introduce themselves (or be introduced by the server) and that they are here to support the server, give their name and let the customer know that they are here to make the dining experience special.
Simple but powerful. With the investment of a few minutes your serving staff has:
- Personalized the experience and set a positive tone for dining experience.
- Established a relationship with the customer and set positive expectations for service.
- Begun to sell not just the food, but the restaurant and the dining experience.
Selling Means Success
Leading and implementing these simple strategies with your restaurant staff will change how you run your business. Develop and implement a sales strategy that markets your restaurant and the dining experience and watch your business grow.
To learn more about how you can grow your restaurant business visit Bssential Solutions and schedule a Free Coaching Session to talk about how you can implement cutting edge marketing and sales strategies to grow your business..
As always, I welcome your input and feedback.
Bill Sifflard - With over thirty years experience as an entrepreneur, an executive, an author and as a business consultant, Bill Sifflard has a long history of experience bringing innovation, efficiency and success to large and small businesses adapting to evolving markets.
As a premiere Sales and Marketing Innovator, Bill is changing how business integrates traditional marketing strategy with the power and potential of the internet utilizing his "Velocity for Success" matrix.
To learn more about Bill and Bssential Small Business Solutions you can visit http://www.bssentials.com and register for his Free eNewsletter or follow all of his blog posts by clicking on the RSS feed button above. 
You must log in to post a comment.