Payroll is the largest single expense category for any restaurant. It is therefore extremely important, especially in a period of downturn, to manage this expense effectively. On the other hand, the kitchen, bar, and wait staff you employ are what make your business tick and your personal connection with these people is an important dynamic. Balancing personal relationships with labor cost management is one of the more difficult aspects of being a food service manager.
Some tips to help you walk that tight rope:
Evaluate how much work needs to be done. As you know very well, different times of day, days in a week, and times of month and year can see very different sales volumes. One of the most common mistakes made in staff management is over scheduling, and you won’t know how many people to schedule unless you can predict sales volume on a given day. Keep a record of sales so that you can evaluate when your peak sales periods are.
Next, go through a list of your available staff and rank them according to ability. It’s very important to be objective and put personal relationships aside and create an accurate ranking. Once you can predict sales peaks and valleys, and know the number and quality of staff available to you, you can start creating a schedule that will meet peak demands without having to pay extra staff.
Scheduling is a fine art. You have already ranked your employees and know when peak demand times will occur. Now it’s time to start matching staff with sales volume. The trick is to make sure you always have top performing staff around for busy times, which will allow you to reduce the overall staff scheduled for peak sales periods. Top employees perform many different tasks efficiently, and can help less experienced staff members so you don’t have to. These employees are the fulcrum of your business, and you want to make sure they are there when you’re making the most money.
Conversely, less experienced staff are never going to develop into top staff if they always have someone there to hold their hand. Slow and moderate sales days are a great time to schedule these employees and give your top staff the day off. You can take advantage of the relatively slow activity to train and get to know your newest staff members, improving retention and performance during peak times.
Also update your schedules periodically. Over time factors like sales and staff performance will change, and you’ll need to adjust your scheduling accordingly. Staff scheduling should be an ongoing process that you constantly refine to make sure your business is maximizing sales.
Train your staff for multiple jobs. This technique is also referred to as cross-training, and is one of the most effective ways for you to reduce labor costs. Inevitably, gaps are going to appear in the line of tasks involved in seating, serving, and feeding your customers. Line cooks get sick. Bartenders quit suddenly. Servers and hosts no call no show. And even if you get through a shift with every one of your staff present and ready for work, a busy night gets hectic, and someone is always going to need extra help.
This is where cross-training comes in.
Some examples include:
Effective cross-training makes your staff more efficient and brings better service to your customers. It also allows you to save on employee hours: on a slow night, cut your hosts and let servers handle both hosting and serving. Bussers who can run food allow your servers to handle more tables, meaning you can schedule one less server for that shift, saving you money and making your servers happy because they will get more tips. The list of benefits you reap from cross-training goes on.
Conduct periodic employee reviews. Tracking staff performance is always an important task. The best resource you have when it comes to evaluating your staff is the staff themselves. Sit down face-to-face with each member and get a feel for how they and the employees around them are performing. Use these meetings as a way to hand out raises, promotions, and feedback. Meanwhile, you’ll be getting feedback on how your restaurant or commercial kitchen is running, and what areas need to be addressed. Employee reviews help you cut the staff that aren’t working while quickly promoting the staff that are performing well.