How to manage a restaurant

This article is part of our “Open a Restaurant” series – our guide for anyone interested in opening a restaurant. In this article we will look at how to manage the organization of a restaurant.

Location and digitization

Choosing the perfect location for your restaurant boils down to visibility and accessibility. And while physical location remains important, it also depends very much on your concept. Are people expected to come to you or are you going to focus on delivery (either your own or third-party), catering, or pop-up bars?

Crucially for the restaurant industry, you should also start thinking about your online day-to day presence. What role will the web, social media and third-party online businesses have for your restaurant? Third-party review sites and social media is one way to interact with your customers on their terms. Apps and online solutions will also help you communicate deals and personalized offers.

Ambiance

Once you have secured your physical location, it’s time to organize your layout and design your space to meet the goals set forth in your concept stage. Ideally you will achieve a systematic flow from the front door back to the kitchen, allowing your dining experience to match the ambience specified in your concept.

And don’t forget the production area; a poorly organized kitchen means substandard service. Here you should look at how technology can help you stremline both the customer experience and the workload of your staff. Do the servers need to go back and forth to the table or is there a different solution? Look into multi-purpose devices for ordering and payments, QR-codes for mobile ordering and payments, self-service kiosks, kitchen display systems, pager systems, and automation.

Menu

Your menu is the ideal tool for you to communicate your restaurant brand. Gone are the days when you posted a menu in the window and left it at that. You should make your menu accessible in as many places as possible – on social media, web, and third-party apps. And wherever your menu is, consider making it interactive. Technology allows your customers to book a table, pre-order foods, find out about allergens and even pay with just a few clicks.

Another thing to consider is menu engineering – the practice of analyzing and strategically designing your menu to highlight your restaurant’s most popular and profitable menu items. Reducing food costs and focus on profit margins for the restaurant industry is more important than ever. optimize your pos system and the inventory management for best decision making will create a successful restaurant. Having an effective restaurant management matters for the guest experience who wants personlaized offerings and high-quality. it is hard work to become the best restaurant for the guests, for new staff and team members will be the future.

Restaurant staff

Your goal should be to hire experienced staff and build up a business culture with employee benefits and promotion opportunities that will reduce staff turnover. This is a challenge for any restaurant owner. One helpful strategy is to look at what duties can be automated. This will not only save staff costs but also lead to happier employees.

An integrated system that assists from order directly through to the back office has the potential to elevate the customer owner, reduce stress among staff and increase your profits. Making life easier for your employees means they have more energy left over to make customers feel appreciated.

High-end and casual restaurants – both call on Trivec

For over a century Berns has been serving food and beverage of absolute top class. Today Berns consists of several restaurants, event and conference venues, a hotel, and bars. And with roughly 40 cash registers and 80 portable payment terminals, anything that can be automated is greatly appreciated.

To help them stremline and automate through an integrated system, Berns turned to Trivec. They now save hours of work each day by using staffing management, digitized tip management and customized cash reports from Trivec POS.

“The system is very intuitive, and even though a few staff members haven’t worked with the system before they are up and running in no time,” says restaurant mnager, Anna Lundblad.