By Rebecca, Marketing Intern
The restaurant industry can be very unpredictable, making restaurant labor management very difficult. That’s why it’s so important to use a great restaurant scheduling software. Working in a restaurant myself, I have seen the panic wash over the managers’ faces as an assumed slow night turned into an absolute frenzy. On the other hand, there are times when your busy day turns slow and your employees stand around twiddling their thumbs. Not only do these scheduling errors affect your labor costs, but they also affect how customers view your business. When you are understaffed, customers become irritated because of the lack of service. When you are overstaffed, customers may perceive your restaurant as being an unpopular place. So how do you avoid these things?
First we want to take a look at employee scheduling, which really should be done with the use of a restaurant scheduling software. A great way to maximize your profitability during the week is to schedule your top employees on your busiest days. To do this, you must be able to rank your employees. You also want to make sure that every shift has at least one server that is ranked the highest. On the other hand, you want to make sure to cross train your staff. This creates versatility among your staff which can come in handy on a very busy night. Maybe you have three hostesses on a Saturday night and your servers just can’t keep up with the high volume of customers. If the hostesses are cross trained, you can have one pick up a couple of tables without having to call in an additional server.
In order to manage the unpredictability of your restaurant, you need to be able to understand sales forecasting. Understanding volume and sales trends of your business will help you assign who should be working and how many people you need in each position.
TimeForge allows you to build schedules based on employee rankings that have been assigned. Our amazing online restaurant scheduling software also provides sales analytics and the tools you need to predict sales and trends. If you would like to find out more on how we can help with your labor management, feel free to contact us!
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