Solve the restaurant management puzzle effectively from A to Z

With the improvement in quality of life, people are not only concerned about the quality of food but also the accompanying services. This creates pressure to manage the restaurant effectively to enhance competitiveness in the market. To solve this puzzle, let’s explore with Kamereo in the following article!

What is restaurant management?

Restaurant management is a crucial job that helps control business operations to optimize costs and profits. Managers make important decisions that impact all restaurant activities. At the same time, they strive to balance coordinating activities to ensure the interests of all three parties: customers, employees, and the restaurant itself.

The job of a restaurant manager

A restaurant manager is a vital position responsible for ensuring the restaurant operates smoothly and efficiently. The main tasks include:

Personnel management

Recruitment and training of staff

Staff play an essential role in the success of your restaurant. Having a professional team, from chefs to waiters to janitors, can drive strong business growth.

The first step is ensuring you select the right individuals. When recruiting, look for people with high work capacity who align with the culture and development direction of each position. During the job negotiation process, clarify their duties and roles to avoid future misunderstandings.

After recruitment, training new staff is crucial so they understand the restaurant’s goals and perform their tasks effectively. If possible, provide training programs and manuals. This helps staff learn independently, improving their skills and job performance.

Defining the role of each staff member

Clearly defining the roles of each staff member helps them understand their responsibilities. This way, employees know the scope of their intervention and can identify the right person to report to when problems arise. This approach ensures that when an incident occurs in the restaurant, staff know exactly who is responsible for resolving it.

Additionally, this helps staff manage their work independently, maintaining smooth operations even when the manager is absent. This ensures the restaurant’s stability in all situations.

Building work schedules

Scheduling is crucial for both managers and staff. It helps staff quickly track their personal and group work progress. Moreover, the manager can ensure the restaurant operates smoothly. Scheduling also supports the restaurant in coordinating resources appropriately, avoiding overload or understaffing.

Setting KPIs, salaries, and bonuses for staff

Clear KPI and salary policies motivate staff to work hard to excel in their duties. However, you need to establish rules and announce them transparently so that both new and old staff understand. This ensures fairness, transparency, and minimizes unnecessary internal conflicts.

Managing food hygiene and safety

This is extremely important for the sustainable development of the restaurant. Therefore, you must train staff on how to maintain hygiene during food preparation and service.

Additionally, the manager should establish penalties for those who do not comply. Many restaurants install cameras in the preparation and processing areas for strict monitoring. This ensures that staff adhere to the food safety regulations set by the restaurant.

Production management

Ingredients

Ingredients are the essential inputs for every restaurant. Therefore, suppliers must meet criteria for quality, price, quantity, and delivery time. To ensure this, seek out reputable suppliers near your restaurant.

If you are still uncertain about where to source quality ingredients, consider Kamereo. With many years of experience, we proudly serve about 3,000 customers, completing thousands of orders each month.

Kamereo’s unique features include a modern logistics system that meets the storage requirements for different types of ingredients. Additionally, a large team of shippers ensures fast delivery times. Kamereo also has the advantage of a large inventory, suitable for restaurants of all sizes.

Here are some ingredients currently available at Kamereo:

Managing dishes

To manage dishes effectively, divide the menu into specific groups. Then, identify the main dish for each group, making management more convenient.

Typically, dishes are controlled by portioning ingredients and managing inventory. This helps avoid rough estimations or inaccurate calculations of each dish’s components.

Pricing dishes

Pricing the menu is a crucial step in managing a restaurant. A mistake in pricing just one dish could result in lost profit opportunities or a reduced customer base. Therefore, you need to list all costs of ingredients, labor, and other related expenses for each dish.

Then, you can multiply the total costs by the desired profit margin to set a reasonable selling price for each dish. As a manager, you need to constantly research and update market information to adjust dish prices accordingly. This is assessed based on profit and customer satisfaction.

Customer service management

From the early days of operation, you should establish a unique service style for the restaurant so that staff can easily learn and form habits. This style can be reflected in small details such as greeting customers when they arrive or leave, offering water while they wait for their food, etc. This creates consistency in service and increases professionalism in the eyes of customers.

Additionally, the restaurant can enhance service style through the following actions:

• Respecting customer opinions: All feedback from customers, whether praise or criticism, is important for improving service. When receiving feedback, listen, remember, and evaluate it to find ways to improve or promote it to enhance service quality.
• Customer care programs: These help create a bond between customers and the restaurant. You can organize promotions for members or offer new dishes for their next visit. These small details make customers feel cared for and valued.

Financial management

The key to financial planning is ensuring you always have enough capital to cover the restaurant’s operating costs. Without this, you may struggle to maintain service quality or even face temporary closure. Although it may seem simple, unforeseen risks or costs can arise. Therefore, understanding the restaurant’s cash flow is crucial.

The first step in building a restaurant management model is recording all expenses, including ingredients, rent, staff salaries, equipment depreciation, debt payments, utility bills, and other incidental costs. This helps you determine profit goals, daily or monthly revenue targets.

Facility management

Facilities to manage

You do not need to manage all the facilities in the restaurant. This does not improve efficiency while taking up a lot of time. The table below lists some facilities that need to be managed:

General technical facilities

• Guest reception area, banquet/VIP rooms, bar counter, storage rooms
• Hallways, restrooms, kitchen, garden, hallways.
• Water supply, filtration, drainage, waste treatment systems
• Electrical system, gas, emergency exits, security protection

Service area facilities

• Furniture: Tables, chairs, wine racks, cabinets…
• Fabrics: Tablecloths, curtains, carpets…
• Service tools: Trolleys, trays, dishes, cups, knives, forks…
• Cleaning equipment: Brooms, vacuum cleaners…
• Decorations: Flower vases, paintings, menus…

Bar counter technical facilities

Coffee machines, fruit juicers, sound and light systems, crushed ice and ice cube machines, jiggers, stirrers, shakers.

Kitchen technical facilities

• Storage equipment: Storage rooms, ice boxes, freezers
• Preliminary processing tools: Basins, baskets, knives, cutting boards, bowls, chopsticks
• Cooking equipment: Stoves, ovens, pots, pans

How to manage facilities

First, you need to create a detailed plan for each item that needs investment, then find the right suppliers. Quantity is also an important factor because buying too much or too little can lead to unnecessary additional costs. To determine the exact quantity, calculate based on the number of customers expected to be served during peak hours.

Facilities need to be maintained and serviced regularly to minimize damage. To keep equipment in good condition, you need to follow usage instructions, ensure correct capacity and purpose, especially for high-value equipment such as freezers, stoves, refrigerators, etc., which require periodic maintenance.

Business and marketing

Managing business operations is a major challenge for many restaurant owners. The reason is that there are many aspects that need to be tracked and reported daily. Some factors that need to be closely monitored include costs, revenue, and profits. To perform this job well, using professional restaurant management software is essential, helping to automate the calculation of business results.

Management software allows you to consolidate data into a single report. This makes it easy to track performance, while saving time and reducing errors.

Additionally, marketing and branding activities need to be carefully managed. These activities are directly related to customers, so they need careful management of content, images, and timing of implementation. In particular, the strategy must be aligned with the culture and preferences of customers.

You can also register your restaurant on lists of good eateries, reputable party venues, food delivery apps, or online reservation sites to increase sales and promote the brand.

Handling incidents and complaints

The process of handling complaints and incidents plays a key role in establishing the restaurant’s professionalism. This not only makes customers feel respected but also strengthens their trust in the service and product quality provided by the restaurant.

Complaints can come from various sources such as social media, email, website, or even on-site. Some common incidents in restaurants include receiving the wrong food, poor service, overbilling, or rude staff behavior. However, if you can successfully resolve these complaints, it creates a positive experience for the customer.

Each manager should design a specific process to deal with each type of complaint. For example, when receiving a complaint directly at the restaurant, you should apologize to the customer first, then investigate and resolve the issue. This creates a sense of respect and goodwill from the restaurant.

When handling an incident, you need to ensure that the parties involved understand and acknowledge the restaurant’s responsibilities. Although the restaurant may face a minor disadvantage, this will help maintain the customer base and leave a positive impression.

If the complaint is complicated or involves high value, you should report it to higher management for resolution. The resolution method can be flexibly changed depending on the nature of the complaint or incident, ensuring customer satisfaction.

Service Quality Management

To ensure that service quality is always maintained at a high level, the restaurant needs to implement the following steps in the service quality management process:

• Step 1: Research to understand customer preferences and habits. Information that needs to be collected includes demographics, behavior, and customer preferences.
• Step 2: Maintain customer care by conducting surveys and offering vouchers to loyal customers to build a loyal customer base and increase return rates.
• Step 3: Measure customer satisfaction through surveys during meals or via email and text messages, which will help the restaurant improve and enhance service quality. Note that surveys should be concise and focus on key points to avoid inconveniencing customers.
• Step 4: After gathering the above information, establish service quality standards and communicate them to all employees. Additionally, clear reward and penalty policies can be set to ensure that employees adhere to these standards.

Daily Restaurant Management Process

To optimize time and costs, you need a well-designed operating process suitable for the scale of the restaurant. If staff strictly follow the steps in this process, the restaurant will operate smoothly, minimize errors, and enhance service quality. Below are the stages of the restaurant management process:

Stage 1: Before welcoming guests

• Prepare and arrange everything to be ready to welcome guests.
• Hold a pre-shift meeting with staff to align the working spirit and review internal regulations.

Stage 2: During operation

• Welcome customers upon arrival.
• Take and record orders.
• Serve food and ensure customers have the best experience.
• See customers off courteously.

Stage 3: Before closing

• Complete end-of-day tasks and prepare for the next working day.

Essential Restaurant Management Skills

In addition to focusing on training service staff, improving management skills is also very important. This ensures that business operations run smoothly. Here are some methods that many restaurant owners have successfully applied:

• Always maintain a positive attitude in all situations, especially when interacting with customers.
• Be transparent and clear about work-related issues with employees.
• Set an example of hard work and responsibility for the team to follow.
• Work according to a specific, detailed, and well-organized plan.
• Continuously learn, seek improvement methods, and innovate in management.
• Delegate important tasks to employees to develop their capabilities.
• Learn from successful restaurant business models.
• Take responsibility for personal mistakes and learn deeply from them.

Solutions to Make Restaurant Management Easier

Many restaurant owners often face issues such as lack of time for management, errors due to manual processes, and difficulty in identifying key issues in business operations. An effective solution to this problem is to use restaurant management software to control all activities, save time, and reduce errors.

Management software will help improve service quality by supporting table orders, quick payments, and automatically sending orders to the kitchen, minimizing errors in order-taking. Additionally, you will receive comprehensive daily business reports that are detailed and complete.

Notes for Effective Restaurant Management

Restaurant management is not simple, requiring the manager to be highly attentive. Below are some considerations you should review and apply immediately:

• Maintain consistency in operational and management processes.
• Proactively resolve any issues that arise in the restaurant.
• Experience working in different positions to gain deeper insights into management.
• Prioritize retaining talented employees and creating a positive working environment.
• Closely monitor and continuously improve customer experience.
• Invest in effective advertising campaigns.
• Continuously analyze reports to find solutions to improve service quality.
• Focus efforts on maintaining and increasing loyal customers.

Conclusion

The above is a comprehensive guide to restaurant management that you should know. This work requires the manager to have skills, experience, and knowledge to apply effectively in restaurant operations. Follow F&B Business Experiences for more useful information about restaurants!