Mary Claire Britton
Journalist, Copy Writer, Food Stylist, Recipe Developer
Empowering employees (KNG.com) Empowering your Employees: The Perks of Giving Your Staff a Sense of Ownership For restaurant owners and managers, finding and keeping a great staff can be a challenge. In an industry in which longevity doesn’t seem to carry much weight, it’s really no wonder that most restaurants are characterized by high turnover. Many successful companies, however, have discovered the secrets to catching and keeping the cream of the crop. I’m going to share one of those secrets with you today, along with a few practical ways to put it into practice. Giving your employees a sense of ownership: 1.Ask for their input: Sure, as a manager, you need to maintain an air of authority, but getting your staff involved in your restaurant-related decisions will go a long way in strengthening their company bond. I know a chef who frequently solicits menu ideas from his line cooks. When tasked with reworking a portion of the menu, they are immediately given a renewed sense of confidence and enthusiasm for the job. 2.Actually implement their ideas: Granted, not all of your employees will come up with fantastic ideas. But when a member of your staff offers a solution to a problem you’ve been puzzling over, put it into effect and celebrate your employees’ ingenuity. 3.Share your story: I bet starting your business wasn’t a piece of cake, and I bet you have some war stories. Sharing your company’s history often gives employees a renewed perspective and is another great way to foster a deep sense of ownership. 4.Offer opportunities for leadership: Sometimes it can be difficult to relinquish control, especially when the success or failure of your business ultimately rests on your shoulders. However, learning to delegate can be just as valuable for you as it will be for your staff. 5.Responsibility: leadership leads to an increased sense of responsibility, which in turn, leads to a greater sense of pride. Each of these is a necessary component in creating a sense of ownership. When your staff feels personally responsible for the restaurant’s successes and failures, no matter how big or small, they will be highly motivated to help you succeed. Not only will these tips foster a greater sense of ownership within your employees, it will also increase their overall involvement in and enjoyment of working for you. Studies have shown that when employees are engaged and happy, customer satisfaction simultaneously increases. Thus, these tips might not only help you to hold onto your beloved employees, they might also give you a boost in the customer satisfaction category. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts. Have you managed to outwit the high-turnover trend in restaurant staffs? Have you tried any of these tactics in the past? What was the outcome? Please feel free to leave a comment below!
Front of House v. Back of house (KNG) Raise Your White Flag: Ending the Front of House/ Back of House War It’s 7:30 on Friday night. There is a line out the door and the bar is packed with hungry people, anxiously waiting to be seated. There are tickets spilling out of the machine and the pass is full of hot food in desperate need of runners. Every station on the line is slammed and the servers are frantically dashing back and forth across the dining room. “Hey, Chef Dave,” asks server Carl, blissfully unaware of the wrath he is about to incur, “I have a lady out here who wants the crab cake without onions or salt, and also, she wants to know if she can have it with the snapper set instead of the salad”. . . Whether your chef chooses to respond with grace and mercy or rips into Carl like a colony of vultures into a fresh carcass matters very little. 7:30 on a busy Friday night is simply not the time. Here’s the problem: Carl has no idea what actually happens in the kitchen. He doesn’t know that the crab cakes are made daily from scratch , shaped into rounds, and laid out in hotel pans before service. Onions and salt have been folded into the mixture and are now inextricable. No one has time, at this point in the evening, to whip up a batch of salt-free, onion-free crab cakes. Carl isn’t trying to be difficult, but Chef Dave will probably take it personally. Carl will, in turn, become convinced that Chef Dave wants very much to strangle him. Ill-timed questions and miscommunications between servers and cooks alike begin the sort of slow, steady erosion that can lead to an all-out war between your front of house and back of house staffs. A restaurant should never become a battleground. Here is a list of four simple ways to stop the war before it even begins 1.Cross-train: Part of training your wait-staff should include spending a full day in the kitchen. Your servers need to know what kind of labor and care goes into the plates that they will soon be delivering to the dining room. Ideally, they should spend the afternoon assisting with prep and remain in the kitchen during service. This way, they can experience service from the other side of the line and gain some valuable insight. It also wouldn’t hurt to have your kitchen staff back-wait for a shift as a part of their training as well. 2.Communicate: Communication is one of the most commonly stated, yet infrequently implemented strategies for improving almost any sort of relationship. Make certain that your chef speaks with the front of house staff on a daily basis before service to clarify changes to the menu and answer any questions that arise. Line up and family meal present perfect opportunities for these conversations. During service, your chef is going to be too busy to answer all of your questions, so train your staff to feed their questions through the expediter during service. 3.Expedite: Whomever you have positioned on the expo must have a thorough understanding of operations in both front and back of house. During service, this person serves as a buffer between cooks and servers. Find someone who can speak both languages and you will alleviate an awful lot of unnecessary tension between cooks and servers. 4.Educate: Pardon the cliché, but knowledge is power. Your staff wants to feel secure in their work environment, and education is one of the best ways to facilitate such comfort. As much as they may groan and grumble about taking another wine quiz or reciting the specials, yet again, your staff craves the structure and security that comes with intentional education. The more confidant they become, the less tension will be misdirected into the kitchen. Incorporating these concepts into your training practices and daily routines will ease a lot of the tension that tends to build up in a restaurant environment. Your guests will appreciate the changes as well. Anxiety is like a virus that leaks out from the kitchen, spills out into the dining room and onto the plates of your guests, filling them with a remote sense of dread. Peace and love spread just as easily: we simply don’t see them as often. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave a comment below.
Article for KNG.com about menu design. Putting Your Menus to Work: How choosing the right covers can increase your sales. Let’s talk for a minute about menus. We all know the importance of perfecting your menu’s content, but what about its exterior? KNG has been working day and night to improve and expand their already impressive line of menu covers. KNG realizes that your menu cover should reflect the very essence of your restaurant. They also realize that your restaurant is one of a kind, and therefore requires a completely unique cover. For this reason, KNG is committed to partnering with you to design a menu cover that is perfect for your restaurant. So how do you choose a menu cover? Follow these three simple steps: 1. Know yourself: Menu covers are not only an extension of your restaurant, but a very concise way for you to say to the world, “this is exactly who we are.” If this isn’t already crystal clear to you, designing a new menu cover might actually be a really great opportunity for you to refocus and tighten up your branding concept. 2. Know your client base: Believe it or not, your clientele plays a major role in your menu-cover decisions. For example: if the majority of your guests are older, wealthier, and more conservative, you might consider going with a more traditional, elegant, and conservative look. If your guests are mostly young hipsters, you might consider an edgier, more artistic design. 3. Know your food: If you are operating a hip little burger joint, you probably won’t be looking for a faux-alligator skin or super-fancy cork cover. You’ll probably want to stick with the classic café style, tailoring it to match your unique design concept. (KNG does this exceptionally well). If, however, your reviewers are calling your chef the next Thomas Keller, and your prices make even the biggest spenders blush, you should consider a sturdier, more refined menu cover. No matter how high-brow, low-brow, or off-the-wall your concept, KNG has a team of designers waiting in the wings to help you design a menu cover that truly reflects your restaurant’s core. You can choose from their pre-designed templates or work with them to create something entirely new. If you can imagine it, they will build it. As children, we are told “never to judge a book by its cover.” While it really is a lovely sentiment, you’ve got to remember that your guests have thrown that age-old adage to the wind. From the moment they whisk through your doors, they are sizing you up. Presenting your guests them with lovely, well-thought-out, appropriate menus, enveloped in menu covers that reflect the very essence of your restaurant will quiet their criticism and enable them to readily appreciate and enjoy your unique concept.
Promotional Copy (KNG) Catalyst Kitchens: the hero we’ve been hoping for. I had an epiphany the other day: you see, I’ve always felt a little guilty about working in the restaurant industry. We get so bent out of shape over tiny details, we yell at each other, get our feelings hurt and yet, at the end of the day, we’re not saving lives. We’re not performing open-heart surgery or promoting world peace. We’re not finding the cure for cancer or putting an end to poverty. In this world of struggle, sometimes being a chef can feel so frivolous. Here’s the thing, though: our jobs are important, and although the outcome is far less concrete than say, that of the Peace Corps, in our own way we are saving lives. Hear me out: Sitting down together to share a meal holds a gravity that is both overlooked and underestimated. When we eat together, inextricable bonds are built. Sharing our human need for sustenance, both physically and emotionally, creates unrivaled levels of intimacy. We all need to eat, and we all need the sort of human connection that comes along with sharing meals together. We who work in restaurants work bravely to promote world peace through physical and emotional nourishment. . . …However, if this sort of philosophizing seems a bit too ethereal for the daily grind that is life in the restaurant business, there is a more concrete solution. KNG recently joined forces with Catalyst Kitchens, an organization that might actually be saving the world through food in a more literal way. Unlike many of us, who see the vast brokenness of the world and are too overwhelmed by the scope of its problems to respond, Catalyst Kitchens saw poverty and hunger and stepped right up to bat, finding a viable solution. Their mission is to provide foodservice-related training, building independence, while providing healthy meals for those in need. The folks over at Catalyst Kitchens have created a program that genuinely transforms lives, one by one. What began as a small, Seattle-based operation has grown into a nationwide force of nature, and they are continuing to expand. Their goal is to initiate fifty new programs within the next five years. That would mean job training for 6,000 people and more than 10 million meals provided each year. And, as if their ideas weren’t brilliant enough, their success rates are enough to inspire even the most jaded server on your staff. The program now stretches across 18 states and, in 2011, provided training to 1,400 at-risk individuals. 60% successfully completed the program. In the same year, Catalyst Kitchens provided over 4.2 million meals to communities in need. Not everyone who enters the program chooses a permanent career in the restaurant industry, but all are given the tools to succeed in whatever field they consequently choose, via foodservice. Naturally, we are not the only ones taking note. Catalyst Kitchens attributes much of its success to the generosity of its donors and sponsors. CDN, Component Hardware Group, KNG, Monster, Starbucks, and the Walmart Foundation are committed to providing support in the form of donations, discounts and grants to members. Catalyst Kitchens also recently received an impressive grant from Walmart as well as the 2012 Social Impact Exchange Business Plan Competition. All in all, the wonderful people over at Catalyst Kitchens have masterfully created a program that combines passion with progress. With food and cooking as their medium, they seek to empower and give hope to individuals in need of a boost. If you, like me, have ever found yourself wondering if your gift for the culinary arts could possibly be turned into something more concretely significant, let me encourage you to visit http://www.catalystkitchens.org, and get involved. Email: Have you ever wished there were a way to use your restaurant-related talents in a more meaningful way. . . say, to save the world? Catalyst Kitchens might have beaten you to the punch. But it’s not too late to get involved! Click here to find out how Catalyst Kitchens is using the culinary arts to transform lives, one at a time.
Dealing with negative feedback on the internet (KNG). When Yelp Gives You Lemons: The Bright Side of Negative Reviews Once upon a time, I managed the kitchen of a busy bakery in a big city. I took my job very seriously, was never late for my 2AM shifts, and often found myself pouring over our online reviews shortly before collapsing on a pile of flour-coated chef coats that my sleep-deprived brain mistook for my bed. I think I actually cried over one particularly nasty comment left by a particularly disgruntled customer. The truth is, that most people who leave online reviews are of the predominantly unhappy sort. This is simply human behavior 101: studies have shown that people who have negative experiences recount said incident to an average of ten people, while those with positive experiences tell an average of three. Like it or not, online reviews matter: today more than ever before. Yelp recently conducted a survey that showed that a rating improvement by a mere half of a star (from a 3 to a 3.5) could result in a 19% increase in reservations. Another study shows that when making a decision, 70% of consumers are just as likely to trust an online review, as they are to trust the word of a close friend. For restaurant owners and managers, this is exceptionally frustrating, because any old schmuck with no formal experience and a bad attitude can post an ugly review about your restaurant, and millions will blindly take him at his word. As frustrating and as negative people and negative reviews can be, they are a fixture of human experience and will always be a part of our reality. So what is the best way to deal with them? 1. Pay attention: Set up a Google alert for your restaurant’s name. This way you will always know what is being said about your business and you will be able to contribute to the conversation, rather than react later. 2. Respond publically: If someone leaves a negative comment about your restaurant in a public forum, your first move should be to respond in line. But watch your tone. Do not respond angrily, defensively, or aggressively. Instead, humbly acknowledge your shortcomings and promise to do better. It may seem petty to respond, but it shows your customers that you care, that you are involved, and that you are committed to improving. 3. Respond privately: It is always a good idea to send a personal apology to the offended customer. Even if you feel in your heart of hearts that they are wrong, the old saying applies: the customer is always right. It never hurts to offer a discount or coupon, and who knows: they might even edit their rating or their review after being treated so kindly. 4. Evaluate: After you’ve cooled down a bit, re-read the review and find out if there is any truth to it. Do some investigating and determine whether or not you need to make a few changes. 5. Make Lemonade: Think of online reviews as free (and incredibly harsh) market research. This kind of feedback, whether negative or positive, is an incredibly valuable tool that you can use to shape your restaurant into the successful institution you’ve always hoped it would be. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you take online reviews seriously, or have you quit paying attention? Have you ever gotten a really nasty online review? How did you handle it? Please feel free to leave us a comment below.