Running a Restaurant For Dummies

Must-Have Personality Traits for a Successful Restaurateur

If you’re running a restaurant, you probably already know you need patience, friendliness, and complete dedication, but review the traits in the following list to see what the minimum requirements for a good restaurateur are:

• Ability to hold (or hold off) liquor

• Business sense

• Leadership skills

• Passion

• Persistence

• Positive energy

• Presence

• Schmoozability

• Tolerance

• No life (outside the restaurant)

How to Make Your Restaurant a Great Place to Work

Staff turnover in the restaurant business is inevitable if not predictable. Chefs, wait staff, and kitchen help may eventually leave for various reasons — to start their own restaurants, to start a family, to start their acting career — but while you have them, encourage them to a degree of dedication and loyalty to you and your restaurant by using the following tips:

• Educate employees about your products and concept.

• Let them taste the food on a regular basis.

• Praise, praise, praise them.

• Encourage communication.

• Build staff camaraderie.

• Run targeted incentive programs and contests.

• Cross-train your staff to keep it interesting. Cross-training gives you a lot of flexibility as the manager, and it keeps staff members engaged and interested about new areas of your business.

• Be consistent. Your staff should know what to expect from you and what you expect from them. Apply policies and procedures consistently across the board.

Numbers and Reports to Track Your Restaurant’s Success

You know that running a restaurant is a perilous proposition from a financial standpoint. The daunting failure rate of restaurants makes it imperative that you pay close attention to the numbers, whether you’re just getting started or are well-established. The numbers to pay attention to include the ones in the following list:

• Daily business review

• Income statement

• Cash flow analysis

• Menu mix analysis

• Cost of goods sold report

How to Identify Unsatisfied Guests in Your Restaurant

The key to your restaurant’s success is satisfied customers who enjoy the food and service enough to come back, hopefully bringing friends, and otherwise spreading positive words about your establishment. The key to satisfying customers is to be attentive to their needs. The following list points to clues that your customers may need something, from some menu education to the check:

• Human periscopes: Look for people looking up and around and then back down. Typically, people do this because they don’t have something they need.

• Leaving food on the plate: Maybe the customer plans to box it up to go home, but confirm it. You want empty plates going back to the dish area.

• Safe orders: If customers order chicken in your seafood restaurant, they may be afraid of the menu and simply need some educating. Don’t let them miss what you do best.

• Waiting on a refill: People like full glasses of their beverage, especially nonalcoholic drinks, so replenish the water, soda, and iced tea regularly.

• Watch gazing: Customers who keep looking at their watches may not be wondering where their food is, but investigate the situation anyway.

• Waving and snapping: If you see these gestures, it’s not good. Get to the customer quickly and try to fix the problem immediately.

How to Resolve Customer Service Issues in Your Restaurant

Even the best restaurants don’t please every customer every time. When a customer in your restaurant is dissatisfied for whatever reason, follow these steps to deal with the problem:

1. Listen. Let the customer talk and don’t interrupt.

2. Apologize or thank them, depending on the situation.

3. Rectify the current situation.

4. Develop a long-term solution to avoid future customer-service problems.

   This step reinforces to your diner that you heard their issue and acted on it.

How to Stay Competitive in the Restaurant Business

You know that running a restaurant is difficult and chancy. You need to do what you can to stay ahead of competitors and to stay on top of your customers’ needs and wants. Use the tips in the following list to keep your restaurant competitive:

• Play up your strengths and make them matter to your diners.

• Analyze your competition, determine their deficiencies, and exploit them.

• Close the gaps on your own deficiencies.

• Continually create new points of difference.

• Know your audience, know how your points of difference matter to them, and know how to reach them.

Words That Sell Your Restaurant’s Menu Items

Your menu is an important business tool for your restaurant. You can use it to entice diners into your restaurant and use it to help sell your specialty dishes once they’re inside. Take advantage of your menu’s power by including menu lingo that sells. The following list offers tips for terms that help sell your menu items:

• Many great menu items start with the preparation method. Words like braised, seared, pan-fried, oven-roasted, wood-fired, and poached lend a level of prestige to a dish that increases a diner’s perception of its value.

• Incorporate reasons the dish is special, different, or unique into the name. Is your beef aged to perfection? Are your eggs farm fresh? Is your bread baked in-house each morning? Is your produce locally grown or organic? Use value-laden terms whenever possible — and make sure they provide an accurate description.

• Great ingredients make for great descriptions. Are there any standouts or hard-to-find items? Does a dish contain seasonal items that you should highlight?

• Highlight where the ingredients come from. Kansas City beef and New Zealand rack of lamb mean something to people.

• Be specific. Sure you’re serving pasta, but what kind of pasta? Tell the guests whether it’s fettuccine, linguine, capellini, or radiatore. And that sauce you’re serving tonight is probably great, but be more descriptive — ragout, coulis, demi-glace, or reduction, for example. Getting down to specifics has the dual advantage of providing more information and enhancing the diner’s perception of the dish.