1. Hire and Train your Staff to Deliver Exceptional Service

Hiring great employees is an art, and hiring the wrong person can be costly.  First, start with only hiring the best employees that can deliver on your business’s customer service vision.  Your team needs to work together and be trained well.  In the hospitality business, you can never be genuine and polite enough.  Your team needs to learn and live by this and deliver on this consistently.  Make sure your staff, right from the valet to front doorman, waitpersons, and hosts are polite and courteous.  Schedule weekly meetings with your staff to reiterate your expectations and provide opportunities to improve.  Work shoulder to shoulder with those that are struggling to lead by example and show them how it’s done!  Training never ends, and with restaurants seeing more and more turnover, your job is never done.

2. Give your team the right knowledge, and challenge them to never stop learning!

Product knowledge and menu knowledge are the key to proper training.  Knowledge of the recipes and menu are critical to success.  When they have the right knowledge, employees are able to build confidence and a trust with their valued customers.  Allow them to sample and see your features and specials so that they can answer all questions pertaining to the menu.  Your guests should get the best treatment and be made to feel welcome, special and important, and only your staff can ensure that this is happening consistently.  Take care of your employees well and in turn they will take care of your customers.

3. Make Use of Technology

Today, technology has become an integral part of a person’s life and can prove to be an essential arsenal in the business warfare or if you like your magic wand.

People like to be connected to the Internet or social media 24/7; so make sure your restaurant provides free high-speed, reliable wi-fi to your guests.  Build a mobile-friendly website, as customers like to search for restaurants on the go.  Offer digital tablets to order food, mobile payment options and tableside payment stations for the convenience of payment to your guests and quicker table turns for you.

Also, installing a state-of-the-art POS system can take care of your inventory management and customer information helping you make your business more efficient and customer friendly. For instance, through a good POS system, you can track what your clients are ordering, it can help you run those specials more frequently. Or, that a large percentage of your lunch comes from corporate professionals, hence you need to make sure your staff understands that your guests are on a strict timeline; hence the service must be quick and efficient.

4. Advertise and Market Constantly

Stay connected with and to your customers.  Make use of the right marketing channels to reach to your clients.  Whether through email or SMS marketing or via cost-efficient social media platforms, stay in touch with your customers by regularly updating them with vital information or any other content you feel will be useful to them.  Your informative and friendly messages will help you stay on the top of their minds, and they will repay by visiting you more often.  Also, pictures speak 1000 words!  Remember, there is nothing more powerful than a mouth-watering new feature dish that draws customers in and gets them addicted to your new flavor profile.

When you hire the best employees, train and treat them well, and give them the tools to serve their customers with ease, your business will be successful.  Regularly evaluating what is working and what is not will help you interrogate reality and asses where your opportunities lie – and go after them with urgency.  Once you have a cadence of assessing and evaluating your technology systems, advertising and most importantly your people – your business will go from good to great!

Pinnacle Consulting was built to help local businesses hire, train and develop high performance teams in the hospitality industry – Book your free consultation now to learn more about how we can partner with you!  Morgan@hospitalityconsulting.co