Prepare Your Restaurant to Draw In Customers for the End-of-Year Festivities! Check Out the Tricks for Preparing Your Restaurant and Employees for Best Results.
Dec 16, 2021
Share
The end-of-year festivities that make people willing to pay out to buy happiness, eat, go on vacations, shop and party to send off the year. Money-making opportunities like this can’t be missed, but how do you prepare the restaurant and employees? Today we’re here to check your readiness.
Start with the Storefront
1. Promotions Are a Must - Emphasize Promotions for Large Customer Groups and Parties
At the end of the year, companies and stores usually host parties for their employees or the employees themselves have parties. Many families have reunions and celebrate. Holding a party at a restaurant is a convenient option, because they won’t have to waste time preparing, cooking food and cleaning up. So, promotions geared toward large groups are best during this season. Promotions that attract this group of customers include the following: - Promotions including specially priced meal sets. Since a lot of people are attending, they’ll naturally order a lot of food. If you provide them with specially priced options, the customers will sense more convenience and the prices they pay will feel more worthwhile. - Free banquet rooms and karaoke rooms when ordering a specified amount of food. This promotion is perfect for any restaurant with the space for it, because although it’s a party, the companies still need separate and clear boundaries and the added entertainment is good for attracting interest. - Promotions on Alcoholic Beverages - Try offering promotions on alcoholic beverages. Emphasize selling a large quantity for a lower price like 3-5 beers for a special price. Even though beverages don’t earn as much profit as food, they can lead customers to ordering more food. In addition, try not charging a bottle opening fee from customers who make reservations for parties and bring their own wine or liquor. - Don’t forget to advertise your restaurant’s promotions on social media, on your storefront’s sign. Or, if you’re near a company, store or factory, make fliers to advertise your banquet promotions and hand them out to the companies’ personnel department because many companies have a banquet budget for this time. This can increase sales opportunities. There are still more interesting promotions. Learn more about them in “How to Prepare for Large Groups of Customers, the End-of-Year Season and Offering Food Set Promotions That Are Worthwhile and Earn Profit”
2. Train Your Employees to Handle Large Customer Groups and Parties - Now that you’re offering good promotions, you also have to prepare to handle customers well. If your promotions are effective and you get a lot of customers, you’ll have to train and prepare your employees as follows:
When taking reservations, check carefully. Never double book customers. Estimate well how many hours the customers’ parties will last. If the customers don’t show up on time, know how many minutes to wait before turning over. When booking several groups, space out the tables for privacy. The flow of the banquet tables must be arranged in a way that doesn’t obstruct other tables’ paths. Having a banquet room would make this more convenient. The same goes for the arrangements in the banquet and karaoke rooms. The schedule should be managed, so it’s suitable for the promotions you offer.
Create a table arrangement plan for each day using customers’ reservations as a guideline and considering the reservation and departure times well.
Arrange and prepare the tables and utensils before the customers arrive. Beverages such as soft drinks, water and ice should be placed in an easily accessible corner so they’re not in the way and you should prepare a little bit more then usual because of the high number of customers. The employees would be busier. There could be problems if there aren’t enough dishes, utensils, soft drinks and ice. If beverages need to be stocked inside the banquet room, don’t forget to check the quantity thoroughly.
Although there are a lot of customers, the serve time must be fast. Train your employees on how to serve food, place food on the table and arrange meal sets, and how to arrange them in a standard arrangement quickly.
The clearing and cleaning of tables also need to be quick. Clear the tables well to prepare to receive the next group of customers.
It gets more chaotic during holidays. You might need to train your employees so they can perform several duties. Create a good work-break schedule so you won’t be short-staffed.
3. Decorate Your Restaurant to Create an Atmosphere That Suits the Holidays - Try decorating your restaurant, so it looks colorful and festive. Psychologically, this helps people feel relaxed, happy and want to eat more. Try adding string lights, ribbons, a Christmas tree, present boxes, well wishes posters or anything that conveys the feeling of a new year and parties. This will help put people in a more celebratory mood. If your restaurant is normally decorated in gray tones or you have a bistro that plays with lights and shadows, try decorations that match the restaurant’s atmosphere, like a table with gift packages on it or a ‘Happy New Year’ neon sign. Other than the decorations, the employees’ uniforms can also help set the mood. Try changing the regular uniforms to brighter ones. Adding New Year’s hairbands or hats can make everything look more fun. 4. Maintain a Strict Hygiene Standard - More customers means more food waste. It also means the restaurant will be messier than usual, whether it’s from the heavier foot traffic or people using more dishes, tables, toilet paper and restrooms. The food waste will also increase. All of this requires additional management measures like the following:
You need to establish the fastest and most hygienic method for cleaning the tables.
Have additional dish washing rounds because the dishes can be circulated faster. Otherwise, you could hire additional people to wash the dishes during this time if you don’t have a dishwasher.
Food waste must be bagged and stored to await pick-up by a garbage truck. There may be more waste than usual, so you should store it in lidded containers to contain unpleasant odors.
Increase floor-mopping frequency and bathroom cleaning. Ensure that the toilet paper doesn’t run out.
At any rate, the sanitation standards for the storefront, kitchen and back of the restaurant will also require additional management measures.
Always remember that having more customers doesn’t mean the hygiene standards can be more lax. You have to pay as much attention to it as the other services, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Other than providing alcohol gel and temperature-taking stations, there are other additional measures for restaurants. Learn about Covid-free settings in “How to Open a Safe Restaurant” at COVID Free Setting, Department of Health
As for the kitchen, You Need To Make The Following Preparations:
1. Create A Kitchen Flow and Prepare for Orders from Large Customer Groups Flow means the fluidity of the cooking process in the kitchen. How fast the food is served up or how many things go wrong depends largely on flow. It depends on where the work stations are located so that the flow is not complicated or going back and forth. For example, the kitchen process starts with taking orders. Then, ingredients are grabbed from the freezer and brought to the stove to be cooked and arranged on a plate and then the food is served. Therefore, you should arrange the freezer, ingredient preparation table, stove and dish arrangement table next to each other in order to create a better flow. Spike the order slips on a spindle or find a place to clip them in order, so they’re not lost or mixed up. So, if the work order in your kitchen is still confusing, fix the flow immediately! If a party has pre-ordered food but you can’t prepare the food in advance because hot, freshly cooked food is more appetizing and hygienic, you could precook it. For example, you could cut the vegetables, poach meat for salads and make soups, sauces and dips in advance. That way, when it’s time, you can cook it again to save cooking time.
2. Prepare the Right Ingredients for the Promotions You Advertised - It won’t be good if you’ve advertised your promotion through social media but don’t have the ingredients for it. To prevent this, the owner and kitchen staff have to do the following accurately:
Accurately estimate the daily sales by using your sales for the same period from previous years as well as the weekly sales and table reservations or try out the promotion for 1-2 days to see the results, collect the data and analyze it.
Accurately calculate the ingredients. Don’t forget to always take into consideration the ingredient yield. Then, check to see how much of the ingredients you’ll really need for your estimated sales and much pre-trimmed ingredients you’ll need to have.
Accurately check the stock. Make a daily report on the inventory. When the ingredients you ordered are delivered, inspect them before accepting them to make sure nothing is missing or spoiled. Check to ensure they’re the specs you ordered.
Solve problems accurately. You always need a backup plan in case you have an ingredient shortage. You need a backup supplier whom you can order from immediately. Or, if a lot of your ingredients are near expiration, you need to be able to turn them into special promotional menu items and have the employees promote their sales.
