Driving a restaurant is not an easy task. The hospitality entrepreneur must attend to a large number of variables so that the line of work is constant, consistent and never neglect the minimum apex of his business strategy and the quality that proves his own trajectory.
In order to avoid deviating from this good path, the consultancy specialist in catering Linkers recommends to the businessmen of the sector ten aspects to keep in mind for the day to day organized of their businesses and to obtain a good management of a restaurant.
Decalogue to run a restaurant
1. It is a common enterprise . The management of the restaurant must be orderly and diligent, like that of any ‘good merchant’. The employer will have administrative, tax, social and labor obligations, with dates and deadlines to comply, being essential for an orderly and efficient business policy. In the same way there are several departments where it is necessary to incorporate intermediate positions that inform management and direct their area with the same diligence as the entrepreneur runs the business.
2. Not only product. In a country like Spain, where eating well is the usual thing in the outings, it is the service, the atmosphere and the experience that is lived in a restaurant which will make customers loyal. It is very common to invest time and money in looking for a product concept when creating a new business. No expense or energy is repaired, betting everything on a card. But looking for the product is easy, it’s a matter of money, buying the best of the market, cooking it and putting it on the market. However, we must pay attention to the staff that collects, buys, transforms and serves that product, because today it is really differentiating. Dedicating efforts to find the right team is a winning bet since each member will be an ‘intra proprietor’ in power, working and selling the restaurant as if it were his.
3. Detect professionalism . If a restaurant is a company, it is logical to have departments and salaried workers, but we must also have professionals or freelancers for certain actions that will provide a quality leap. Labor and fiscal management, personnel selection service, trainers, cleaning companies, maintenance, etc. They are essential. But they must have experience and know about the sector. If not, they will not know how to understand the reality of the business and their day to day. The restoration is a very dynamic sector with constant high and low labor, with unwritten customs that continue to prevail in the sector, and these aspects will make that professional give a valid contribution to the business.
4. Urgent or necessary? The businesses in restoration involve different and different obligations: raw material, suppliers, workers, supplies, rent, banks, payments, income, sale plan, new letter, new openings, new products offered by the commercial, taxes, expansion meetings, etc. It is impossible to reach each and every one, so knowing how to differentiate the urgent from the necessary is vital to be able to arrive ‘healthy’ and in good condition to the key moments of the restaurant. You have to attend to the day to day, because if you look long term all things to do the only thing that are achieved are overwhelming.
5. Information is power . It is essential to have information about what is bought, when and at what price; who does what, when and how; how much it costs and at what price it is sold. Therefore, create tools and data sources for management is essential: scanners, inventories, order book, shopping notebook, weekly shopping template, weekly and monthly personnel quadrant, etc. The more ‘information centers’ are implanted in the business, the better decisions will be made and, above all, with more objectivity.
6. Cost control for sustainability . Sales depend, in part, on the business itself and, in another part, on the client. But the control of costs depends exclusively on the good work of the managers: buy at a good price what is necessary, store what is going to be sold -not accumulate-, sell according to the price that is bought and the weight that is plated, have a sufficiently productive staff, etc. If a cost control scheme is created that is adapted to what is sold and not what is expected to be sold, the entrepreneur will achieve crucial stability in the weakest months of the season.
7. The responsible managers . These professionals-manager, head of the room, head chef and shift managers-are those who support the business policy that the owner implements in the restaurant. Its profile responds to people with initiative and a certain degree of autonomy so that the dynamism is constant in each one of its decisions and the real objectives to achieve constitute an incentive for its correct functionality. The relationship with them must be based on trust, responsibility and achievement of objectives. They are area managers who report data and actions filtering the information that comes out of the template so that the decisions of the employer are based on objective facts. There is nothing that slows down more a company than the excess of irrelevant information.
8. The direction, master pillar . The management must be aware that the tasks performed by the personnel, how they are carried out and the result achieved through them, must define the strategy of the company. You can not generalize the tasks of the positions, especially when these positions are directed to a sector that demands differentiation and quality. The employer should not only assess that the employee knows how to develop a task, but see how it develops and if it corresponds to what the company seeks to sell and transmit as a brand.
9. Productivity, in capital letters . The objective of every entrepreneur is the permanence in time of the project carried out. And this materializes in having more income than expenses. The way to show this profitability with respect to the work and performance of the staff is productivity, the way to demonstrate objectively the good work of each of the positions. It is this premise that should govern business management over personalities or affections that will do nothing but make each of the decisions addressed in this aspect vulnerable.
10. Objectivity in decisions . It is the word that must define a correct management of the establishment. Objectivity based on real data and experience, not speculation or speculation; objectivity at the time of making the template, relegate or promote the workers; objectivity when contracting or changing the suppliers that supply; objectivity when creating the menu or incorporating new dishes. And objectivity is nothing more than the consequence of orderly and reliable information.
