Fewer menu items lead to more efficiency in the kitchen, faster service and minimization of errors. When you boot up again, your historical shopping data should be used to choose which dishes and drinks are not only your best sellers, but also the ones that get the best overall experience. By Larry and Adam Mogelonsky – December 3, 2021
Many restaurateurs took a bearish stance on food income when we emerged from the pandemic, arguing that eating habits changed irrevocably because of the time spent locking and learning how to cook or bake. We point out the opposite for one simple reason.
Eating at home means a well-cooked meal. Eating out is an experience.
Even if you’ve got all your free time to become a master of the kitchen and can make dishes of the same quality as a restaurant for a fraction of the price, there is simply no comparison to the sensory enhancement of escaping the house. The ambience created by furnishing a restaurant; the sounds of other groups meeting nearby; the brief conversations with a cozy but knowledgeable waiter as they dance through the hallways; Even the ride to and from the selected restaurant by taxi or on foot – all of this adds to the culinary experience that a home-cooked dinner can never offer. And we didn’t even take into account the fact that you don’t spend hours chopping vegetables and standing over a saucepan preparing the food.
Overall, the prices for dining in a restaurant are well worth the effort. Enjoying a new environment with family or friends over a meal and drink is an irreplaceable part of the human experience. No doubt countless other paying customers are feeling the same as we are, and this is likely to lead to an electrifying rush of customers wanting to get a table at your restaurant once any part of the population has been vaccinated in late spring or early summer.
Having a good problem
We all long for a return to normal so that we can resume the burgeoning service sector of the economy, but not so quickly. Every increase or every strong fluctuation in the order volume ultimately leads to many “good problems”. They are still problems, but they are associated with an increase in sales.
When you think in terms of staffing, one challenge with a spike is you end up understaffing a point of sale and waiting your guests, resulting in poor meal satisfaction and damaging your reputation in the long run. Surges are hard to predict, meaning you can’t model shiftwork requirements far enough in advance, while the pandemic has also resulted in many high-quality servers and chefs leaving the industry, limiting your available workforce.
In terms of personnel and reputation management, COVID-19 security training is an important aspect. That said, even if patrons may take on a slightly smug appearance after achieving a semblance of herd immunity, it doesn’t mean your staff can adhere to community guidelines. So, not only do you need to get back to a full roster quickly to adequately service the surge, but you also need to retrain everyone and enforce these safety measures to avoid TripAdvisor getting a fine or impromptu criticism about how “unsafe” You are business is.
At the same time, you must also take care of facilitating the proper sourcing of ingredients and carefully maximizing the volume of reservations while complying with the ever-changing physical distancing regulations.
Technology as a grace to save
These challenges are far too many for a single restaurant manager or F&B director to properly coordinate without a symphony of great software tools. To get back to the maxim from the start, the general point of technology at this point is to provide a great dining experience when you welcome back guests. In addition, guests now expect greatness when dining out as the overall quality of food prepared at home has been improved.
The first and most obvious step is to make sure that all the parameters are set on your online reservation platform, taking into account the pace, flexible availability limits (to account for an increase in last minute bookers) and average turnaround time for you this can maximize the total number of covers you can fit in a single day. Even more than the undersupply issues mentioned above, the last thing you want is for seats to be closed and potential guests to opt for a table elsewhere as they cannot book directly through their phone.
Next, make sure that all of your additional online information is completely up to date. Google, social media, and Yelp hours of operation need to be kept up to date, along with the latest coronavirus security guidelines. Fortunately, if your content is visible on a wide variety of websites, there are some content automation services that you can use to distribute information and keep these channels updated so your teams don’t have to do it manually and waste time. Having all of this content equally accessible means more reservation confidence and fewer people calling to verify the details – another time wasted. Updated images speak volumes here, especially in terms of showing off your redesigned patio areas when the weather warms up.
Third, apps are emerging that are dedicated to providing high quality part-time or shift workers. Temporary employment agencies have been indispensable in the past, especially for banquets or events. In this new normal, however, you need people you can trust to meet your branding standards, coronavirus security protocols, and quality of service, and outdated third-party sources often cannot deliver what is needed. Such contemporary apps help to connect restaurants or catering companies with verified employees. They behave similarly to other gig economy platforms, except that you can hire former employees with good records instead of finding a different person each time.
Most importantly, in this imminent recovery, we often emphasize that “less is more” or, in this case, fewer menu items lead to more efficiency in the kitchen, faster service and minimization of errors. When you boot up again, your historical shopping data should be used to choose which dishes and drinks are not only your best sellers, but also the ones that get the best overall experience.
Really pour it over it to remove anything that lacks speed or doesn’t add memorable quality to the food.
To reiterate, we have all spent the past year banding together inside and preparing exquisite food for ourselves. That’s why restaurants really have to do something to delight their customers. We hope that by increasing the tech stack properly, you can ensure that your people can best focus on what really matters.
Larry and Adam Mogelonsky represent one of the world’s most widely published hospitality writing teams, with over a decade worth of material online. As a partner in Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited, a Toronto-based consulting practice, Larry focuses on asset management, sales and operations while Adam specializes in hotel technology and marketing. Her experience spans branded and independent properties around the world ranging from luxury and boutique to select service. Her work includes six books “Are you an ostrich or a lama?” (2012), “Llamas Rule” (2013), “Hotel Llama” (2015), “The Llama is Inn” (2017), “The Hotel Mogel” (2018) and “More Hotel Mogel” (2020). You can reach Larry at larry@hotelmogel.com or Adam at adam@hotelmogel.com to discuss the challenges of the hotel business or to book lectures.
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