Restaurant Talking Points

Consistency is a word I’ve been hearing over and over lately. Unfortunately I usually hear the word consistency after the words “lack of”, “need better service” and “I can’t get no”

I hear this from restaurant owners who are calling to ask for help in getting their team to provide better service. 75% of these calls are from people feeling anxious about the economy.

You can’t pick up a newspaper, listen to the radio or watch the news on TV these days without hearing news about the economy. And it’s being presented with a very doom and gloom slant.

As a result of all this negative talk, many restaurateurs are starting to worry about how this economic downturn will affect their business. They are taking a hard look at their restaurant operations looking for ways to improve. Most come to the same conclusion; they need to outservice their competition.

Here’s a typical phone conversation:

Restaurant Owner: Our service is very inconsistent. What can I do to get our staff to be more consistent?

4RS: What kind of service training do you provide?

RO: What do you mean?

4RS: If you hired me as a server today, what kind of training would I receive before I was given the green light to start waiting on guests?

RO: You would have to pass our menu test and follow a head waiter for a couple of shifts. (Shadow method)

4RS: OK. How do you communicate YOUR service expectations to your new team members?

Restaurant: huh?

4RS: How does your team know what you expect during the service cycle? For instance do you have standards about what should happen when they greet a table or what to do after the entrees have been delivered? Do you have anything written down or any classroom training that focuses on these types of service expectations?

Restaurant: No, not really. We’ve been meaning to get to that.

4RS: Well let’s not focus on what isn’t happening, but instead lets focus on what you should and will be doing moving forward
——-

That’s a pretty typical conversation and here’s the plan we lay out to help these restaurants outservice their competition.

1. ==> Have your service cycle steps and standards on paper. It’s easier to train your staff when you have your service standards written down. You need to present these in a classrom setting. Whether you use an off the shelf training package that includes an instructors guide, like what we offer, or you develope your own material this is an important first step.

2. ==> Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. If you want consistent service then your message has to be delivered over and over and over. Every pre-shift meeting should include a topic about service expectations. Use a game like our Millionaire style game to help hammer your points across each month.

3. ==> Measure. Have you ever watched a sporting event on TV that didn’t have a ton of stats on each player. In golf they keep track of fairways hit, greens hit, average number of putts and so on. What you’ll notice is that no one is perfect…but they measure to see how close they can get. I have yet to watch an event that didn’t keep score.

That’s the way your service team should be. No one will get it perfect every single time but most team members don’t have any idea how they are doing. They don’t know the score. A service audit for each team member once a month will put you on the path to a consistent level of service.

We’ll talk more about a service audit next month. Until then I’m off to the driving range to see if I can get rid of the consistent slice I have when using the driver.