F&B Business Management

4 Ways for F&B Owners to Increase Productivity

It is every restaurant owner’s dream to see their business flourish and bloom. But when it comes down to the details, how exactly do you achieve that? It’s time to jog your restaurant into action! Need a boost in your productivity? Not to worry, we’re here with plenty of ideas to get you on the right track.

1. Train your staff!

Your staff is the vital backbone to your business- they represent your entire brand. Beyond serving meals, delivering them with great service is a sure way to ensure loyalty. Taking aside the time for basic training is a good way to not only improve efficiency, teamwork and coordination between front and back operations, but to also present a good brand identity. A training programme with set steps is a great way to start! Here are a few goals to keep in mind: 

  • Assigning your staff roles is vital. Without roles, clashing is bound to happen while executing duties. Next, ensuring differing roles have separate responsibilities to focus on is a great way to improve coordination. For example, the front of house should maintain pleasant service, greeting customers, and handling customer complaints. For more tips on how to ensure great customer service, you can learn more here! Meanwhile, kitchen staff should focus on maintaining the quality of food under time constraints. 
  • Making sure your staff have a general perspective of other roles would create an understanding of how the restaurant functions together as a whole. 

2. Ask your employees for feedback!

While a customer’s perception of your restaurant is important, the people who bring it together understand how it works best. They can provide issues with solutions, make suggestions, and offer you ideas on how things can be improved. Having regular meetings to allow your employees to voice their opinions is a win-win: they bring different perspectives and value to your business while allowing your restaurant to advance further. Putting your heads together is always a good idea!

However, keep in mind that too many meetings run the risk of killing productivity. Avoid having filler meetings when nothing much has happened, and only schedule them when there are important developments. 15 minutes are sufficient on a weekly basis, and keeps your employees from feeling they are wasting precious time. Preparing an agenda and an outline for the meeting would also be helpful to keep discussions short, and on track. 

3. Keep track of food costs and inventory

Keeping track of the right supplies and ingredients for your restaurant is difficult enough. Managing food inventory and costs can be time consuming- often getting in the way of the other aspects of your business. Manually recording inventory is a sure way to drag down productivity levels, especially for your staff, who could be focusing on other areas. Sourcing for suppliers and fresh ingredients is especially tedious. Predicting stock is an even bigger challenge due to the pandemic. 

It is common and fairly convenient to use Excel for manual inventory management. Wait! Here’s the catch: Manually and tediously recording your data, one by one, is prone to human error. Excel definitely won’t make your business ‘excel’ in the long run! The only way to reduce error is to review your formula cells, but who has the time for that? When errors constantly occur across your operations, they’re sure to cost you loss of inventory and profits. Not to worry, we have a solution!

Utilizing an efficient platform like a cloud based procurement and inventory system allows you to take charge of inventory control, food costs, and sourcing. Lucky for you, Food Market Hub provides exactly that! We are the perfect solution for any restaurant owner who wishes to relax, yet run his business efficiently!

4. Expand to other services

How do you get your dishes to your customers, especially in our current pandemic? While it may have been an option in the past, it is a necessity in these times. With reduced seating to absolutely no dine in, it is crucial to find more delivery options for customers who can’t pick up their food.  Grab, Foodpanda and other delivery services are options to consider. 

To improve operations directly with your customers, a POS system can not only help you with providing better customer service, but reduced waiting time, quicker transactions, and scanning of items. This would take the workload off your employees, allowing them to perform other tasks efficiently. To reduce less time on creating social media content, utilize creative platforms! Constantly coming up with engaging content can feel like a pet that constantly needs food, love, and attention. It needs special time to itself! Canva is a great example of a convenient and user friendly platform. It even offers Instagram story templates!  

Conclusion

Boosting your business’s productivity and efficiency is every restaurant owner’s wish. Luckily, these tips are sure to get you on the right track! Inventory plays a huge role in increasing your productivity, freeing up your time to focus on the other aspects of your restaurant! 

If you’re interested in a hassle-free system, Food Market Hub helps to boost your profit margin by 13% and reduces 57% time spent on admin work. Contact us and join our world of 3,600 restaurants and suppliers!