By Sagi Rochman
On a scale of 1 to 5, how complicated would you rate your life as a restaurateur?
1 – “This is a breeze!”
2 – “I get the occasional cold feet before heading into work, but overall it’s fine.”
3 – “Eh, it’s not so hot right now, but it could probably be a lot worse… Right?”
4 – “I put out fires all… day… long…”
5 – “Just drop me in that lobster pot ‘cause I’m done.”
Hopefully, most of you restaurant managers and operators only rate yourself somewhere
around a 1 or 2. Anything more than that should raise a red flag. Work-related stress
and employee burnout can be huge killers for your restaurant operations, employee
morale, as well as guest satisfaction. If you find yourself sweating the small stuff,
medium stuff, and over-sized stuff, then you’ve got to find ways to KISS it.
Keep It Simple, Stupid!
In honor of National Simplify Your Life Week, we’re sharing these five tips to help you simplify your life as a restaurateur and get yourself—and your business—back on track:
BE PREDICTABLE
Predictability can often seem boring. But, when it comes to running a restaurant or business, predictability ensures structure and provides a more streamlined approach to getting things done. Consider the following to make your operation run smoother:
● Consolidate and conduct new employee onboarding on the same day each month.
● Develop an ongoing training schedule for new employees and old.
● Schedule team meetings on the same day and time every month (or quarter).
● Perform employee reviews on the same day and time every quarter (or year).
● Create processes that are easy to follow and replicate for all locations and all positions.
DITCH THE PAPER
If you’re trying to simplify your life, one of the first areas to clean up is your desk. Paper is difficult to track and keep organized. You can’t easily carry paper throughout the restaurant or as you travel to other locations. If you want to be more productive, efficient and effective, ditch the paper and go digital. You’ll have real-time access to all information and details at a moment’s notice.
CONSOLIDATE YOUR TECH
There is a lot that goes into managing a restaurant — going digital is a good start, especially when there is more than one location to look after. You’ll need a way to consolidate as much of your technology as possible. By using less hardware and software, and putting it all in the cloud, you and your team will have better insights into what’s happening across all locations with simplified and enhanced visibility.
SHORTEN YOUR TO-DO LIST
Sadly, there isn’t some magic wand you can wave to rid yourself of all the competing priorities coming your way. Running a business is hard, but what you can do is trick yourself into seeing less of your tasks at once. By shortening your list of current responsibilities, you can better handle the day-to-day of managing your restaurant and stress less about everything else swirling around.
● Invest in a tool that will allow you to schedule ongoing and future tasks for later review and followup. Eliminate them from your current list.
● Truncate related tasks into a single digital checklist. For instance, let’s say you’re monitoring and managing the process of hiring for a new position. Rather than include each individual task on your To-Do list, tuck them into a separate checklist and work off that. This will keep your To-Do list from getting bogged down with individual tasks that can’t
all be done right away anyway.
● Be realistic about what needs to be done and when. If you’re trying to run too many promotions because you want to take advantage of the Pokémon GO crowd, cut out the excess. You should know your audience well enough to know what they like, so focus on those efforts. There’s no sense in driving yourself crazy by trying to do too much all at once.
UPGRADE REGULARLY
Everything in your restaurant requires upgrades at some point: your technology, training process, menu, equipment, marketing and even your team. Rather than wait for items to expire, training to go stale, customers to become bored and your employee turnover to rise, develop a proactive system for keeping everything updated and refreshed regularly.
It’ll save you the trouble of taking time away from running the business while you deal with any one of those fires.
Sagi Rochman and Better Chains
Better Chains Founder and CEO, Sagi Rochman, is an international hospitality owner and
technology innovator. After honing his restaurateur career in Israel, Rochman moved to Long Beach and opened up Sachi Bar and Sababa. When he met Marty Cox, President and Founder of It’s a Grind Coffee Franchise, they decided to collaborate on what is now, Better Chains: a technology firm that simplifies restaurant operation systems.
“Technology is the answer,” he said. “The restaurants must jump in.”
Better Chains products range from applicant tracking systems, to training modules, to staff scheduling and more. For more information, visit www.betterchains.com.
