The Unique Challenges Managing Restaurant Service
There are some special challenges when it comes to managing service in a restaurant. Managing some things like cleanliness, ticket times, plate presentation, are all fairly straight forward. The item to be managed is right in front of you, it's correct or not, and it usually happens in one place. Managing service does not always have these luxuries. In a busy dining room, with servers spread across the floor having relatively short interactions with guests at random intervals, how can you as the manager be in all the right places at the right times? You can't, but you can implement a strategy to be in the best places at the best times.
Finding the best moment
It is a common mistake for managers to think being hands-on means picking up the pieces your team can't. The classic dining room example is managers running around bussing tables when it is busy. Some managers even do this to "hide" from the challenge of the busy shift. Others who have been promoted from a service position are used to being successful by filling in the holes. When you are engaging in this you are strategically putting yourself everywhere except where your servers are. How can you manage your service expectations from there?
To manage service you need to find the moment of guest interaction. This is easier than it sounds. Every time a guest is sat, food goes out to the dining room, or a ticket rings behind the bar, you know there is going to be a guest interaction soon. You have to focus on these moments and move towards the guest experience. In this way, being hands-on puts you directly in the middle of the guest interaction. This not only allows you to observe the service experience, but also builds team camaraderie and engages with the guests.
To be clear, there is a difference between being hands on because you are understaffed versus being engaged. If you have to be in the moment to make the moment happen, then you are understaffed. If you are in the moment because you strategically placed yourself there, then you are managing.
Narrowing your attention
Even with a more strategic level of engagement, you can't be everywhere at once. You need to narrow your selection process down to key people or behaviors. Some examples of this include:
Employees new to the dining room
The employee who has a low guest check average
The employee who just got a guest complaint
A behavior you want to instill into your team, such as shaking a martini tin at the table or inviting the guests back when processing payment.
Everything in the dining room needs to be managed, but if you can spend a bulk of your time narrowing your focus to key items you want to monitor, you will make a greater impact on your team's results.
Validate with data
When selecting your focus, it is important to use as much data as is available. Do you know who has the highest and lowest guest check average on your team? Highest tip percentages? Highest alcohol sales? Service behaviors can be linked directly to these metrics. It is a common mistake for managers to make assumptions about who performs. Sometimes the employees we like to work with are not the best performers. This personal preference can create a selection bias when we choose who and what to focus on. Validating with data gives you an objective measure to assess your team and eliminates the bias.
Manage the flow
The flow of guests to the dining room sets the pace for the entire restaurant. It is a huge mistake to flood the dining room with a wave of guests, yet this happens in restaurant after restaurant. Your service team will get double and triple sat. Your bartenders will then get a long string of tickets they can't keep up with, and the kitchen will be next. All your guests will get up at once, and then the cycle continues. I once started started working for a franchise group that purposely trained this. They called it "Psycho seating", and it was a failure every weekend.
To manage this flow better you need to have a sense of what your servers and kitchen can handle. Can your kitchen handle 5 tables getting rung in at once? 10? 15? What about the bar? Whatever the number, this needs to be managed at the door. It is common for the youngest and least experienced people in the dining room to be at the host stand, but this is where the pace of the restaurant is set. Develop your host team to understand pacing, and until then you will have to micro-manage it. Until this is done, trying to be in the right place at the right time will simply allow you to observe poor service. Your service team will not be in a position to hit expectations because they have been flooded with too many guests.
Managing service can be hard, but with a focused agenda you can put yourself in the best places at the right moments to manage the people that need it the most.
