The reality of running a restaurant and team of employees can be a complete 360 of what we had trained ourselves and how we trained the staff during operation. It is very important to know how to run a restaurant, but even more important to know the reality of the day and life within the restaurant. Truly understand these 5 things to start your successful career in the restaurant business.
1: REALITY VS. EDUCATION: Know how to understand the two and balance them. Every shift can be different, every event you run can be different, and personalities of clients can change. Train to what you would like to see, but be open to change. However, standing by your mission statement is huge and one thing to not budge on.
2. COMMUNICATION: Lack of Communication is always the main reason of failure. The people who lack communication always get blamed the most for doing something wrong and vise versa. Over communication is the only way to get things done in the restaurant business.
3. CUSTOMER SERVICE: Customers are most of the time right, but not always. Sometimes customers egos are better left avoided if possible. Always do your best and expect the best, but never expect your staff to bend over backwards for some of the harshest of people. Also, if your a customer don't be that person.
4. SUPPORT YOUR STAFF: Having fun and trusting your staff is very important to get the best value out of them. Value for Value.
5. SAVE A DOLLAR, NOT A PENNY: Inexperienced but smart owners will hound over pennies, but always forget about the dollars. Having high turnover and having to train so many new employees is the leading cause of failure along with internal theft from un-happy employees.
The biggest cause of turnover is the lack of understanding and the lack of communication between staff and leadership. Bad attitudes can be toxic to the overall success of the business. To help you as leadership understand is by actually being the best or most knowledgable in each position of the restaurant and appreciate the staff more by being able to be hands on.
The reality of customer service is that it can fail or succeed your business. I believe the industry that is most taxing mentally & physically combined is within the hospitality industry. More people these days think that hospitality workers get paid a lot and end up treating them like servants. Today, this is ethically & morally false for what they deserve as I believe having a good shift is more like a theatrical performance. The staff is on stage to be creative with up-selling, being unique, and knowing the script of menu training, brand standards, etc. with having to communicate everything at high pace and in an effective manner. Mastering the art of multi-tasking. Second, hospitality employers & owners have some of the most ego heavy attitudes that I have encountered first hand. From experiencing I learned that this industry can be one of the most rewarding at the end of the day. When you try to make the environment fun and trust your staff to see your vision through good training you will feel the most accomplished.
To be good you have to know everything I am about to talk about. If you don’t formulate the importance of what I am saying you could fail by a thousand paper cuts. If your not in the hospitality business but you are in any business (and also eat out) then listen up because this is just important to understand the reality of how the restaurant or hotel is orchestrated daily to be successful and appreciate what should be going on. Once you figure out the importance of operations and learn the tricks, you can roll with the punches one issue at a time. I believe everyone should work at least once in the hospitality industry to learn:
- How to solve issues on the fly by mixing perfectly your knowledge and experience within seconds.
- Learning how to multi-task a hundred different task all at once is important.
- Learn how to up-sell and give brilliant experiences for the customer that they will remember every-time they come in.
- Experience the need for mental patience and living in the present moment.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Sure, I believe this industry is the most under rated, but way more respected when you have actually been in it before. In every business there is a lot to learn as long as you are looking for the value in your job and leaving feeling like you served a purpose. If you believe you're just there for the money, you should get out of that business fast. This is the main reason I like consulting and marketing for companies because I can fix the things that need to be fixed, help grow the company, and move on to the next. Finding out your formula is figuring out the unique story that everyone should buy into and support.
Be different and stand out.