6 ways to make your restaurants kitchen more efficient |
Posted: May 17, 2018 |
Owning a restaurant or managing a kitchen can be a highly stressful occupation. Ensuring that the kitchen runs as efficiently as possible will also undoubtedly add to the stress. There are a few things you can do to make sure that your kitchen has the best possible chance to run efficiently and save your business money and improve customer satisfaction.
Follow Employees FeedbackFirstly, it’s easy as a business owner to get stuck in a flow and stick with it throughout all of your operations, which makes it difficult to break it. But as a business owner, you should ensure that you listen and act upon the feedback your employees are giving you. Understating employee feelings and gripes will ensure that you can shape the future of your business. Two of the most optimal ways you can get a good look into your employee's feelings and their liking of the workplace is to either monitor workflows in the kitchen and look for issues that might arise or to set up a direct way for employees to leave feedback. Getting honest feedback from your employees makes it easier to act upon and to streamline work duties.
Streamline Your MenuImpressing your guests with exotic and complex dishes might make your restaurant appear more luxurious, but there are a lot more expenses to doing this, not to mention efficiency issues. Offering exotic dishes means you’ll need to hire specialist chefs as well as invest in more expensive ingredients that might perish if they’re not sold in time. The best way to streamline your menu is to make certain that everything on your menu and everything you offer can be done in an efficient cost effective way, and a way that doesn't put extra stress on your staff. Be sure to select recipes that only use affordable ingredients that suit your budget. At the end of the day, your business’s perception will be on the taste of your food, not the presentation of overly expensive and complex meals.
Create An Employee ManualOne of the most overlooked aspects of making your restaurant kitchen more efficient is implementing an employee manual or operation procedures list. This will mean that all employees know what they’re doing, what they’re expected to do - as well as all of the safety and quality checks that are required. Once you’ve developed your manual, be sure to keep it updated and refine it regularly if you spot that it’s causing efficiency issues or is a little too hard to follow for employees. A few refinements that you should focus on updating regularly are updated regulatory and safety requirements.
Set Up an Efficient Inventory SystemOne of the worst things that can happen to a restaurant at any time is to run out of key ingredients. This won’t just affect your restaurant for one night either, the perception of your business falls and your customers won’t have many nice things to say about you to their friends. This is where having a flawless inventory management system comes in handy. This doesn’t just mean ordering produce, it also means storing it correctly and in a way that your employees can easily access. Having an area in the kitchen with food-grade plastic containers specifically purchased for organisation of food and equipment will streamline the entire process for everyone and also ensure that everyone knows where all the materials and foods are. Research Gate revealed that 17% of restaurants fail within their first year of operation, and one of the largest contributors to this is the lack of an inventory management system.
Assign Daily Prep to Someone You TrustSimilar to hiring a fitting candidate, make sure you give the vital tasks to someone capable and someone you trust to get the job done as effectively as possible. Daily preparation activities have to be done on time and properly or it won’t just make your life harder, it will set back everyone in the kitchen. As the preparation tasks involve things like knife sharpening, stocking ingredients and making sure everything is clean and in working order, it should be a top priority to ensure that someone with experience is doing the preparation tasks. Think of the candidate as the person who keeps the restaurant's doors open.
Do What Prep You Can Ahead of TimeAlthough the freshness of a meal is the main priority, many customers are now looking toward speed and are therefore choosing made to order dishes. This means that you can get a leg up if you make sure to prepare the food beforehand and keep it warmed and ready to go. The easiest way to get on top of this is to have your employees begin food preparation immediately after arriving to begin the first shift. As an example, if you’re selling tacos you can easily have everything ready and waiting for orders to begin and get food out to your customers faster - reducing wait times and boosting customer satisfaction
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