11 Ways to Say Thank You to your Employees

Don’t Eliminate the Middle Man—Add One!

I came across this interesting article by Richard Saporito. It highlights that the service personnel in your restaurant is equally as important as the chef at the back. As mentioned in my Creating Great Customer Service Culture , 60% of restaurants fail in the first year. Reason being is that the food is only 20% contribution to the sucess of the restaurant. The article is as follow.

Don’t Eliminate the Middle Man—Add One!

Today, there are situations when we actually add a “middle person” instead of eliminating one for increased service efficiency. If it’s cost-effective and demand is high, then proper market positioning will make it a worthwhile endeavor. For example, my sister just informed me of a food delivery service in New Mexico that will let you choose one out of many different food outlets (all types of ethnic/fast food)- and then guarantees delivery within a specific time period. This not only gives the customer assurance of reliability, but more choices for dining take –out style.

In other areas of industry, the same idea holds true. There are electrical suppliers that no longer manufacture the product of electricity, but now are involved only in the delivery process of electricity to the customers. Because of market fluctuations, the new delivery supplier will utilize many other different energy suppliers to get the product of electricity to the customer efficiently and at the best market price. Again, adding the middle man seems to benefit all around.

In relating this theory to restaurants, it is the food runner that has become popular, especially in the larger dining establishments that rarely existed years ago. Food runners are employees who only work the rush hours of the dining room- only running food back and forth from the kitchen to the tables with light dining room table interaction (condiments, fresh pepper etc.). It is a 2-4 hr. shift, depending on how long the dining rush lasts.

Before large restaurants existed, the waiter would complete the process of order taking and delivering of the food. Today, the food runner can be implemented (additional middle man) relieving the waiter of this time consuming and sometimes painstaking process. The waiter must share a percentage of his tip with the runner, but in return his job is eased because the food is delivered for him- allowing extra time to work more tables and up sell to customers thereby increasing sales. Though, it does remain the waiter’s nresponsibility to check the table for additional diner needs-- either while the food is being placed by the runner or shortly thereafter. The tip-out to the runner is usually 10-15% depending on the service system, but well worth it if waiter sales can increase by 20-30 %.

The main point is the food runner addition improves delivery service efficiency while being cost-effective (if the sales increase outweighs the payroll increase). Properly integrating employees into the dining room with exact middle man connections always makes for smooth service flow. It’s not a matter of just blindly throwing extra employees at a service problem, but organizing the best system possible with the minimal amount of labor.

Adding the middle man can sometimes streamline operations in such way that it becomes irresistible and impossible to ignore. Always, the demand arises when delivery routes of a service system become overloaded.

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About the author: Richard Saporito is a NYC Restaurant Insider with more than 30 years experience. He is currently the President of Topserve Restaurant Consulting, Inc. and the author of "How To Improve Dining Room Service." Discover how to improve your restaurant's dining room service and dramatically increase your profits here: How to Improve Dining Room Service E- Book


Restaurant Promo Ideas

Communicate with your customers

Regularly communicate with your customers. It can be either via a newsletter, a letter written to them personally or paying them a visit. This is the reason you see famous brands like Coca Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Colgate spending million of dollars for advertising even though most people know these brands. Even a kid knows who Colonel Sanders is. By regularly keeping in touch, your customers will feel like they are an important part of your establishment and this will encourage them to return far more often. There are a few key things to remember when creating a newsletter. Firstly you will have to do it on a regularly basis but don't do it every two weeks then this will be regarded as junk mail. A monthly newsletter is more than enough. Keep your content interesting and add in special offers here and there. As for me apart from printing flyers and putting on cars and in mailboxes, I sent personally signed letters highlighting our specials to our regulars. This is what I’ve learnt recently from a marketing article which says to take care of the 20 percent that give us 80 percent of your business. The 80/20 rule. But you must remember to continuously add more names to your list. Reason being people might shift or be transferred out. So you will constantly have a new list . Each letter is written the name of the regular instead of Dear Sir. So they will feel that I’m writing to them personally. As my list is getting bigger, I will be purchasing a stamp with my signature on it so as I cansign more letters. Malaysia is commonly known for its diversity of its multicultural community, you will find a variety of festivals here. I visit our regulars bringing some festive goodies to say hi and also thank them for their business. When I visit the Chinese regulars during the Mid Autumn festival, I bring Mooncakes. For the Muslim regulars, I visit them during the Hari Raya bringing Malay Kueh and the Indian regulars bringing Indian sweets. This makes our regulars feel important and we are their first choice when they need a place to dine. You don’t have to go on the day of the festival, I do it about a week before the holidays.

Restaurant Promotion Ideas