I believe the most important factor to a restaurant success is on how much your management team values their staff. Location is believed to be the most important factor in a restaurants ability to attract guests. During my long, exciting career in the restaurant business I have seen many restaurants flourish even they are in very bad locations while others in excellent locations struggled. Sorry to say I disagree with them as I truly believe the key factor in the success of restaurants depends on the lead manager's ability to create a strong team, to motivate and the most important of all is to retain their staff.
I always hate to hear my management team discussing which staff members need to be replaced. It is a disaster to lose an employee as it hurts your business in some way. From the time you officially hired a new employee you are starting to invest money with them. You need to spend lots of money to process and train them. Take a look at the effects of losing an employee to your business below.
1. All of your employees especially those serving you for long time has a wealth of knowledge regarding your business. They are pretty much familiar with the systems and procedures of your restaurant. Experienced employees make the operations runs smoothly each day. If you lose an employee, how much time you think a newbie to learn all the things experienced employee knows?
2. There's a possibility your terminated employees will fire back with their frustrations on your company using social media.
3. You are automatically investing money from the time you hired a new employee. It will be lost when they leave, no matter what the reason is.
4. The morale of the group will be affected from terminations of their member.
5. The more effective your systems in operating your business, the highest the income you will be making. Great systems can only be achieved when you have a group of experience staff working for you.
How to develop an amazing sales team?
1. Provide continues training to your staff.
2. Your managers must be physically involved in the training process.
3. You need to have a lead manager with excellent ability to motivate staff and a talented performance coach as well.
4. Each and every employee must be valued by your entire management team and show them how important they are to the company.
5. Talk personally with your employees regarding performance issues. Employees with bad working habits won’t change if you are not telling them directly instead you tell other people of what they are doing incorrectly. It is best to talk with your employees face-to-face and explain the changes you want them to do.
6. Give your employees a chance to improve their performance than to terminate them. For instance, if Jeffrey is working with your company for more than a year and been late for three times this week your managers certainly have the right to fire him out of work. In terminating Jimmy from his work means you will also lose the money invested in him and of course need more time and lots of money in finding and training his replacement.
I have visited hundreds of successful restaurants here and abroad, the one thing in common why they are still in this business and enjoying their success is a team of highly trained employees that are loyal to their restaurant. They love to work and be at work as they feel valuable and the company cared them so much. If your restaurant is surrounded by a group of motivated staff it creates an energy that customers will feel when they visit. This positive energy will drive customers from keep coming back and encourage others to come and eat as well.
