Ways To Improve Efficiency in Your Restaurant

Your restaurant is running smoothly, but you know things could be better.  Sometimes things that were once efficient aren’t as good as they used to be.  You may find that customers aren’t getting their food fast enough; wait times for tables could be shorter, or employees feel like things aren’t as organized as they could be.  While these concerns aren’t detrimental to your business, improved efficiency is always optimal.  Here are some ways to make your restaurant perform in a more efficient manner.

Music as Motivation

Playing music in the kitchen can help motivate the cooks. Studies have shown that musical tempo can affect our heart rate and breathing. Fast paced music can increase these psychological variables, which can result in increased productivity.  Fast paced music can also have an influence on your customers, provoking them to spend less time at tables, which can increase your rate of table-turn. Many services offer music for business use, and can help build playlists for such purposes as the ones mentioned above.

Improve Your Supplier Ordering Process

If you order from multiple suppliers, placing these orders individually can be very time consuming. Services such as BlueCart can help automate this process. Rather than placing orders one at a time, you can place multiple orders at once. Reducing the amount of time you spend on this task leaves you available for more important responsibilities, like customer service and employee relations.

Speed Up Checkout

Letting customers pay however they want can speed up the checkout process. Many people now use Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and Samsung Pay to pay with their smartphones. Enabling this in your restaurant can make checkout much faster. If you’re a sit down restaurant, let customers order on tablets right from the table with services such as Toast. This can allow your staff to focus on serving customers rather than taking orders, and even let customers pay right from their table, which further frees your servers to focus on customer satisfaction.

Streamline Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the most valuable marketing tools available today. Using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest can be valuable promotional tools, but they can take a lot of time to manage. Using a social media managing tool such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social can make it easier to manage multiple social media accounts.

Promote a Culture of Open Communication

It’s important that your employees feel comfortable and even willing to voice their concerns/opinions and give feedback. At many companies, employees fear that if they identify ways the business could be run better, management could be insulted and they could potentially lose their job. Or employees don’t feel that their suggestions or ideas are heard at all. You can’t possibly see everything that’s happening in your business, so it’s important to take time to ensure your employees are comfortable with you or your management so they can feel confident in voicing their concerns. Ultimately, allowing your employees to inspire new and fresh ideas will help you to solve problems and improve efficiency.