Restaurateurs: Get Your Staff to Help More

Restaurant owners are notorious for doing everything themselves – because they have to and because their way is what distinguishes them from every other restaurant.

But being the chef, CEO, bookkeeper and bottle-washer can be exhausting!

The best way to ensure the success of a restaurant is to slowly train reliable staff to take on more and more responsibilities. The table below shows how you can use training to create new roles for your star staff:

Training can be accomplished through a variety of methods. Consider expanding the type of staff (front-of-house, back-of-house, or entry-level staff) that you use as trainers and the ways you share information. Some creative trainings used by restaurants include:

1. ROLE PLAYING

For example, here is a brief role-playing exercise to teach servers to up-sell holiday reservations:

Server: Thanks again for coming in tonight. Did you enjoy your evening?
Customer 1: Yes, very much!
Server: Great! If you’d like to share this experience with your co-workers or family, we’re taking reservations now for holiday parties and catering events. Do you have any plans?
Customer 1: I haven’t even thought about the holidays yet!
Server: I know what you mean, but we book up so quickly and I like to give our customers the first shot at our prime times.
Customer 1: You know, our book club wanted to have an ornament exchange in December. Maybe I should reserve a table now. There’ll be 12 of us.
Server: Great! Let me get you our hostess and we’ll make sure you have a great spot.
Customer 1: Thanks!

2. CROSS-TRAINING

Do you have a dishwasher that is dedicated? A prep cook who seems to always “make it work”? Consider cross-training them to take on specific responsibilities at busy times.

3. CLASSROOM LEARNING 

Don’t be afraid to take your back-of-house staff off the line or front-of-house staff off the schedule to send them to class. Research shows that adult learners understand best through a combination of classroom and hands-on training. If you are training your staff by shadowing or observing, you are still paying for them to learn, but may be missing the best way for them to pick up information quickly.

Consider sending your star performers to training offered by NYC Business Solutions. The curriculum was designed with input from over 150 restaurant owners across the country. More than 30 NYC restaurants and foodservice businesses have participated. Learn more about this free training by visiting: www.nsyra.org/training.

Sara Schlossberg is the Executive Director of Training for NYC Business Solutions. Please ask Sara your questions about how to best train staff using the comments section below! And, please help your friends out by sharing her post on Facebook and Twitter.