The end of a calendar year is a time of natural reflection and preparation. For restaurant business owners, it’s a busy season—holiday parties, out-of-town guests, frenzied regulars all grateful for a space to sit down over a meal and celebrate their holidays with you. It’s important to gracefully manage this rush, both with your customers and your staff.
Even as the business year ends with a flourish, possibly with added work, it is important to begin preparations for the coming year. Business may briefly lull, employees may adjust schedules, and most importantly, owner-operators should be focused on goals for the coming year. While there are budgets to be made and new ideas or technologies to implement, our restaurant consultants believe that every good new year plan begins with internal reflection, and in particular, attention to the needs and goals of your staff. A restaurant is nothing without good management, happy staff, and good training for a shared vision.
As the NFL and college football playoffs commence, Jill Raff’s advice in her latest Speakerbox for Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN), comparing staff training and restaurant operations to the driven, thoughtful training and preparation that goes into building a solid football team. “Restaurant operations involve a high-pressure environment with fluctuating demands. Seamless collaboration is a must. Things happen. There are many moving parts, just like a football play,” she writes. “The diversity and versatility of your employees will be an asset to meet these demands. While not without its challenges, cross-training offers unique benefits that enhance team productivity, cohesion, and collaboration, as well as employee growth.”
Raff goes on to explain the benefits of cross-training any group, including a shared understanding of roles, enhanced communication, and strengthened problem solving. Building a unified vision ensures that everyone is operating at the highest level, working toward a common goal, with a full understanding of how their role contributes to that desired end result. It not only improves operations; when employees understand how they fit into a team, it builds morale, the most important component of your restaurant’s work culture. “Cross-training signals an investment in employee growth. As employees feel better about being a part of a greater whole and contributing to the greater good of their mutual goals, morale is uplifted, and they will feel valued, valuable, and respected. This pride in their work will lead to reduced turnover, and it will increase the possibility of envisioning long-term opportunities for themselves,” Raff says.
National Restaurant Consultants (NRC) has always prioritized staff hiring and training, for exactly this reason. The quality and commitment of your restaurant staff directly impacts everything else. Our consultants are experts in the hiring and training processes required to achieve solid employee communications and performance. Raff shares many of our ideologies about these hiring and training processes, recommending that every staff vision-building process include identifying key skills for each role, assessing eagerness and readiness, and designing a structured program with step-by-step instructions, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
Richard Weil, owner and principal of National Restaurant Consultants fully understands as an experience operator himself. “Staff culture begins with the interview, to the first day/shift and is reinforced everyday with how staff interacts with not only themselves, but this carries forward to every guest.”
Begin preparing for a great 2025. Reach out today and schedule a consultation with NRC in the new year. Our restaurant consultants will begin the operations analysis process and organize your staff for a unified, solid business year.