Running a restaurant is not an easy job at all. There’s the front of house and the kitchen to manage, as well as the matter of keeping produce both in stock and fresh. Not everyone manages their cold storage appropriately, leading to problem with organisation, food freshness and maintaining adequate stock levels to avoid items being regularly unavailable on the menu which upsets customers.
In this article, we cover how to run a restaurant in a way to prevent customer complaints before they happen. This in turn should lead to positive restaurant reviews and good word of mouth too.
Keeping Produce Fresher for Longer
Before food dishes are prepped and cooked for eager diners, the produce (the raw materials) must be kept in the best condition possible. When lettuce is left out and not refrigerated, it tends to wilt. Meats must be kept at the right temperature to avoid bacterial build-up potentially causing food poisoning with paying customers.
For many reasons, it makes sense for kitchens to use bespoke cold rooms to keep produce cold and items that must be kept frozen, stored in a separate area that maintains a freezing temperature. A selection of options is provided through Fridge Freezer Direct to cover all your possible refrigeration needs. Their Fridge Freezer Direct website provides more information about how to customise and order a walk-in cold room to your restaurant’s exact requirements.
Use Point-of-Sale Equipment
There are many choices of point of sale equipment that provides a digital solution to the ordering and order management within restaurants. Avoid ordering mistakes when not being able to read the scrawls of a hurried waiter or waitress by having it all entered digitally.
Systems like the Lavu iPad POS system are designed for restaurant, bar and café staff to use with Apple’s iPad tablets. There’s also ShopKeep which is also intended for iPad users.
Beyond Apple, Upserve is cross-platform with Android and iOS solutions for wait staff and managers to use. Some are also Windows, Mac or Linux compatible with portable web solutions to take orders but manage them from a desktop solution.
Up the Service Level
Restaurant diners rate service as almost as important as the food quality because when the food is great, but they cannot flag down the wait staff, they have a problem. Their frustration is compounded when the restaurant isn’t that busy with many empty tables and it still isn’t easy to get their attention.
Waiters and waitresses need to be looking over their tables and going back to check on diners regularly. By being attentive to their customers’ needs, offering to provide another drink, or fix any forgotten details, they provide the comfort level that diners expect. After all, people who go out to eat want to be waited on. That’s part of the experience, and when that feels lacking, or the staff have their head in their smartphones, that feeling is absent.
With the momentum created through positive word of mouth, even new restaurants can build up a collection of dedicated regulars pretty quickly.
