Operations
How staff retention strategies, smart tech help restaurants manage busy fall nights
Leverage these tips to keep employees - and customers - satisfied this fall.
September 27, 2024 by Jessica Bryant — Vice President and Restaurants Head of Operations, NCR Voyix
Restaurant job growth has declined in recent months, adding only 900 jobs, representing the weakest quarterly employment performance since the fourth quarter of 2020. Simultaneously, consumers are eating out more frequently and increasing their disposable income, even amid inflation.
To keep customers happy, restaurants can employ savvy retention strategies and smart technology to make their team members' jobs easier, especially since autumn is notorious for higher-than-normal turnover due to students returning to school.
Here are some tips for keeping restaurant employees — and customers — satisfied.
Technology makes employees' jobs easier
According to the 2024 State of the Restaurant Industry report, operators increasingly rely on technology to overcome challenges by reducing costs and boosting business, among other areas. Restaurateurs know nothing slows down busy staff more than frustrating, complicated or difficult-to-use restaurant technology. Intuitive tech significantly eases team members' stress and the overwhelming feeling they can get when reducing wait times and increasing throughput to better service guests.
For example, intuitive kitchen production systems allow kitchen staff to turn out high-quality food quickly and efficiently at greater volumes. Such innovative technology streamlines and optimizes kitchen operations by managing the flow of orders in and out of the kitchen.
Another kind of technology that can help is handheld point-of-sale (POS) devices that allow staff members in the drive-thru to process orders before customers reach the call box. These portable devices enable your restaurant to service customers faster and lend themselves to easy scalability.
And let's not forget about kiosks, which enable quick-service restaurants to provide a self-service option that increases efficiency since diners can place their orders and pay for them using a touchscreen. Kiosks also free up employees for other duties, including providing more hospitable customer experiences like whisking away their trays and trash or refilling drinks tableside.
Schedule smarter, not harder
During busy fall evenings when a restaurant is slammed with guests, there's nothing worse than not having enough employees to staff the counters, drive-thru or kitchen. If team members are frazzled and behind on orders, they are not able to provide the great service experiences guests expect.
Manually estimating the appropriate number of team members turns scheduling into a guessing game. But smart technology can forecast guests and sales, helping restaurants determine how many employees they'll need to meet projected demands. Strategic forecasting with predictive scheduling systems can ensure a restaurant is staffed appropriately, using historical data such as peak hours and busiest days as a guide.
Many labor management systems even allow employees to choose and swap shifts, access mobile scheduling and request time off. This technology can reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary overtime that can eat into a restaurant's profit margins.
Streamline training for new employees
Training new employees can be a time-consuming — but necessary — task. There are numerous strategies and tactics that restaurants can leverage to streamline the training process while ensuring new employees gain the skills they need to succeed.
For example, an intuitive, easy-to-use point-of-sale (POS) system requires minimal instruction and significantly streamlines training activities. For new employees who have worked in the restaurant business before, these systems offer a familiar experience that will be a major time saver over their first few weeks.
Further, cross-training staff members always pays off, whether you coach employees to perform tasks outside their everyday responsibilities or allow team members to capitalize on their strengths in different areas. For instance, kitchen management systems, often available in multiple languages, enable faster training across multilingual staff and provide video tutorials on how to prepare different dishes. So, if kitchen staff is slammed but counter employees are cross-trained to help on the food production line, restaurants can quickly move team members from one area to another to serve their guests quicker and more efficiently.
Consider a foundational platform to unify different technologies
Technology can help but won't have the same impact without a restaurant-specific foundational platform that ties various systems together. The right platform ensures all technology works cohesively and provides a unified view of the customer and their transactions.
Think about the kiosk example. A consumer ordering and paying at a kiosk might want to use their loyalty number and would expect the solution to recall their preferences. A platform that ties your technology together enables data integration among all systems so that everything works cohesively within your operational flow. Such an intuitive platform allows your restaurant to "plug and play" your technologies so that no matter where the customer interaction takes place, like the loyalty member ordering from the kiosk, restaurant data is consistent.
Keep team members happy so they do the same for guests
Autumn is a busy time for restaurants, especially with people eating out more frequently. It's not a time when managers want to experience greater-than-normal turnover. Hungry guests want the places they frequent to provide quality meals and efficient service by knowledgeable, friendly team members.
Consider tapping into these suggested retention strategies and utilizing smart restaurant technology, including ensuring you have a foundational platform to tie them together, to make employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. When restaurants take great care of their staff members by giving them the right technology, those employees are more likely to take great care of guests.
About Jessica Bryant
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