How Many Employees Does A Restaurant Need?

One of the problems that new restaurant owners face is not knowing how many employees they need to be appropriate for their restaurant. As a result, many restaurant owners choose to over-hire employees first by following the formula of more is better than less. What subsequently happens though are high labor cost, employees not working for their wages and employees not working equally. Some employees might work a lot, while others work very little. On the other hand, if restaurants under-hire, they won't be able to extensively service their customers. These problems happen because of setting manpower incorrectly.   Then how are you supposed to know how many employees you need per restaurant?   Calculate the labor cost for each position first.   The basic concept behind planning manpower is subtracting labor cost, which is about 18-20%, from projected income. The information that you get from that is a figure representing the monthly salaries of restaurant employees. This figure will determine the salaries you pay to your employees based on their positions.     Formula:   Projected Income – 20% = Total Monthly Salaries of Employees.   For example

500,000 monthly income – 20% = 100,000 Analyze Restaurant Area to Plan Manpower After you get your salary figure, the next thing you need to do is take a look at your restaurant's layout. Look at the layout of the kitchen. Check out the opening and closing hours, menu items and restaurant format. Begin with the layout by determining how many employees are needed to meet work requirements at each section of the layout from the time the restaurant opens up to closing time. Generally, a restaurant should have the following positions: Storefront Positions • Cashier. • Receptionist. • Table service staff. • Waiters. Kitchen Positions • Chef • Helper • Cleaner Other Positions • Bartender. • Dishwasher. Example of a Restaurant Layout Used for Specifying Work Positions In any case, there is no strict formula for calculating how many employees you are supposed to have for each position. To sufficiently and appropriately provide services to customers consistently with your restaurant, give primary focus to customer service effectiveness. For example, if the restaurant opens for more than eight hours, the receptionist must have a break shift, so we should have two receptionists to take alternate shifts. The same goes for cashiers. Additionally, you might need 3-4 order takers and three waiters and two employees for each kitchen position to alternate shifts, along with two bartenders, two dishwashers and one restaurant manager. Let's say you have 25 employees total. You will need to set the salary of each position based on how much competitors pay their employees in order to prevent them from stealing your employees. After you have set salaries for all positions, subtract that from the total salaries figure that you calculated earlier. If it turns out that the position salaries exceed the total figure, see if you can eliminate some positions or if some positions can also help out in other positions to keep your labor cost from exceeding total salaries. Once you have calculated the number of employees and labor cost for each work position, it's time to accept job applications according to the positions and numbers that you calculated.