Seven Essential Skills for Restaurant Operations and Management

Set realistic goals for your restaurant

The restaurant industry is constantly evolving, adapting, and either growing or shrinking. If you are not setting or measuring goals effectively, you could face more uncertainty and risk. There are four critical areas of the restaurant business:

1. Food Selection and Quality

It turns customers into regulars and helps attract new guests. You can set goals to enhance food quality and presentation by analyzing your menu, food preparation procedures, and how the kitchen staff plates the dishes. You can set goals for your team to improve the quality based on what you see.

2. Restaurant Staff 

The service industry is all about people, and no restaurant or bar is complete without a solid team. Therefore, creating goals to retain and manage your current team is crucial in developing consistent and high-quality customer service and operations.

It's no secret that restaurants and bars have a high turnover rate, so when setting goals for your staff, focus on creating a healthy and supportive working environment that will keep them loyal, long-term employees. Plans could include updating training methods, clearly communicating expectations and standards, showing appreciation for your staff, updating your restaurant’s management technology, and more. We’ll go deeper on these subjects a little later.

Setting goals that prioritize your employees’ well-being and foster a stable working environment creates a foundation for your restaurant or bar to achieve long-term success with a solid and dependable team.

3. Restaurant Marketing

Digital and word-of-mouth marketing are two of the best ways to build and nurture your customer base and increase profits for your restaurant. Consider your current marketing and promotions strategy if you haven’t already started creating digital marketing goals and strategies to grow your business. For example, do you use email newsletters or social media to spread the word about your restaurant or bar? 

Because it’s relatively easy to do, many businesses often use social media for marketing their business. The problem is that measuring and monitoring how and when people interact or view your content is complex.

For example, the holidays are an excellent time to use social media to announce seasonal specials and discounts to attract new customers.

You can easily give audiences a glimpse of your restaurant or bar's theme, showcase an immersive experience, and give them a taste of your seasonal offerings. Still, the content quickly disappears or gets overlooked if a potential customer doesn’t see your posts on time.

The best restaurant marketing practices require focused effort and are more customer-focused than social media. Every bar and restaurant should forego a social media presence until they have a robust and well-maintained local business presence.

• Permission-based text marketing is in the moment, and you’re more likely to fill empty tables with this technique. We recommend the Small Business Big Marketing Podcast episode for fantastic tips and methods to incentivize customers and fill tables! Collect guests’ mobile phone numbers and get permission to share specials and events with them by text.
• Claim and set up your Google Business Profile. Ask visitors to share a review after their visit.
• Visit and claim your Yelp profile. When people travel or want to find a new local restaurant, Yelp is often a go-to because they can explore your menu, hours, location — and most importantly — read what other diners say about their experience.
• Claim and set up your Bing Places for Business profile. Ask visitors to share a review after their visit.

While social media is a great way to connect with new customers, it's also essential to nurture relationships with loyal customers. A point-of-sale (POS) system serves as the perfect connection to your regular diners because it gives you the option to provide a gift and loyalty card program. You can also take advantage of marketing directly to your loyal customers through email with the help of some POS systems. 

4. Restaurant Finances

Gaining a solid understanding of your business's profit margins will help your restaurant flourish. Defining financial goals may seem daunting, but you can start pinpointing areas that need improvement and establish  S-M-A-R-T goals to improve your revenue. An example of this could be adjusting happy hour offers to attract customers during slower hours of the day.

Implementing cost-effective food options is another crucial element in improving profit margins. Start by assessing your current inventory costs and set goals to reduce them. You could include finding local sources, negotiating with your food suppliers, or developing new recipes with any surplus ingredients you have.

Ultimately, setting goals in the critical areas of food, staff, marketing, and finances is crucial to the success of your business because each plays a foundational role in a restaurant. As you establish and implement goals for your business, use these categories to drive your action plans.