21 Jul
A Question for (past/present) Food Servers and Restaurant Owners
Less than 3 weeks until I’m reunited with my family and I’m not counting down the days or the minutes, I’m counting down the seconds. Graduation will be a sweet experience indeed.
Until then, you can guarantee that any posts I write will be school related, either requests for help or rants about how overwhelming this whole thing is (I’ve done pretty good thus far at holding back on the second topic don’t you think?). This post was inspired by a group project I’m working on for my business writing class. We’re doing a management-consulting style project for a restaurant interested in figuring out how to help their employees be more invested in the company. This theoretical restaurant is located in a college town, which means young staff and high employee turnover.
I’m hoping that crowd sourcing will put me in touch with people from one of two different groups.
- Former/current food-servers/hostesses/managers, particularly at establishments serving entrees averaging between $10-$35 per plate.
- Restaurant owners who’d be interested in talking with me about how they run things at their own place!
We’re going to be thinking about hiring, training, and incentives. What positive and negative experiences have you had in those areas? Any particularly innovative programs you’ve participated in or implemented that might work for our project?
Thanks in advance for offering your advice and expertise! I won’t be able to respond individually to comments as I’m trying to tackle readings for four classes, miscellaneous assignments, a research paper, a 10 page textual analysis, and a 10-15 page conference style paper on top of this group project all within the next week.
It will be so strange to graduate and fly to Poland three days later where I’ll have nothing due. No deadlines. Just relaxing and playing and reading and laughing and hugging and sleeping. Sounds to good to be true, right?
Also:
I'm a farm-raised almost-crunchy stroller-pushing picture-taking lifestyle-blog-writing gastronomy-obsessed divine-seeking thrift-store-combing cheese-inhaling pavement-pounding laughter-sprinkling lover of individuality and taking chances.
I don’t have any advice for your class, but I did want to give you a little encouragement for the next three weeks. We’re in a very similar situation with me trying to finish school and hubs working, and it is not fun AT ALL. But the end result will be so worth it- press on, friend!
1Hey,
I’ve been a server for several years now, so maybe I can offer some tips. A lot depends on the personality and management style of the owner, obviously. If you treat your employees as intelligent contributors with valuable input, they will feel a lot more invested. I’ve worked at corporate restaurants with lots of rules and regulations for employees, and those don’t help employees feel valued. You just feel like a cog in a machine, like they’re waiting for you to mess up. I think if you (as an owner) focus on making good hires and then treat employees with respect and trust, get to know them, and listen to their concerns, they will feel like they’re contributing and have more of a sense of ownership of the place. Make sense?
Jenna Reply:
July 22nd, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Thanks Carrie! I think this is really essential. Have good training in place so there doesn’t need to be a long list of rules that feels stifling.
Hi Jenna,
I second Carrie’s comment about the training. The more training employees get = the more valued they feel (I would say though that this mostly applies to one-on-one or small group training, not corporate, watch-videos, complete questionnaires training).
In terms of incentives, I knew of one small chain (6 restaurants) that incentivized waitstaff who had high sales by empowering them to comp people with free drinks and dessert - a percentage of their sales were comped each shift, and the higher the sales made, the higher the percentage comp (up to 30%!!) Which I think was an interesting method.
I also worked at a restaurant that only hired people after they’d worked a training shift for free (they were given food, but no pay). I don’t know if I agree with this method or not, but it was a good way for the restaurant to identify people as likely or unlikely candidates for hire without going through all the paperwork of hiring someone only to have it not work out.
Good luck! I have a big project for delivery on Aug 1, so I’m down in the trenches with you.
Hannah
Jenna Reply:
July 23rd, 2012 at 3:52 pm
You reminded me of one of the things that the place where I worked did - they let us taste the food (when we were first hired we got a full meal, over time we tasted new dishes as they were introduced). This helped me offer personal opinions in a way that was genuine.
Jenna,
I worked in a coffee shop once, so not exactly the same, but they always had at least one of the barristas who worked the counter sit in on interviews for new employees and then actually took our reccomendations. As an employee it made me feel like my opinion really counted which helped me feel invested and connected with the company.
Jenna Reply:
July 23rd, 2012 at 3:50 pm
Robyn this is an awesome suggestion! Very simple and cost-effective.
We’re going to be thinking about hiring, training, and incentives. What positive and negative experiences have you had in those areas? Any particularly innovative programs you’ve participated in or implemented that might work for our project?
I bussed tables/hostess-ed/ran food/waitressed at an Italian restaurant for 5 years. The biggest perk/incentive was our shift meal-1/2 off the cost of your food right before or right after your shift.
LOVE that idea of being able to comp people stuff, I would’ve loved to have been able to do that!
I worked my way up, and I found that to be very valuable in terms of hiring/training-I knew that place inside and out. For training they would always put you with the best server, and I learned a ton this way.
Also in terms of incentives, we would get a bottle of vino free if we sold xx amount, but that only happened once I think. I would’ve loved “earning” free meals/entrees/appetizers, etc for upselling or whatever.
Sending you warm thoughts for your last two weeks!
5The restaurant I served at for 4 years had all types of incentive programs for alcohol sales. They did these store wide, area wide and national as well. If you had the most alcohol sales of a particular drink or set of drinks for the given time period you won a ipod or something to that effect for the store wide and prizes increase if you were also the area wide winner etc. In our store itself the managers also came up with games each night to motivate the servers to sell those drinks. Played all types of games like hangman, you got to pick a letter for each table ticket showing you sold that specific drink. Or the manager made a game board type of thing and picked a spot on it and put it in an envelope before shift so that no one saw it. Then again for each table ticket you brought with that drink you wrote your initials in a box, the person who had their initials in the box that the manager had chosen won something. The gifts were no silverware rolling for the night, no side work (the manager would do it), free food on your next shift, work water bottle or backpack, free work tee-shirt, etc etc. Another game was like a raffle type. For every table ticket with that drink you put it in a special box, at the end of the night the manager pulled the winning ticket and you got a prize.
Other restaurants have dress up days where the staff can get in costume like 80s night or whatever. This isn’t necessarily an incentive but a fun way to boost moral.
For training I agree that most of the video training is boring! 7am mandatory meetings on a Saturday to watch videos was my least favorite part even if they did provide bagels and such. Food tasting is however very important!! Hard to recommend a food if you haven’t tried it yourself and yeah you have a discount normally but if you spend all your time there you don’t want to be there on your days off trying food so you can tell your customers.
Hope this is helpful! Good luck!
6Is your degree in English a B.A? Or is is the Bachelors of General Studies in English? I am just wondering. Congrats on almost graduating!
Jenna Reply:
July 27th, 2012 at 7:17 pm
B.A.
I worked in a Japanese restaurant during college. The owners/chefs (a married Japanese couple) would make very delicious and nutritious staff dinners. They would also encourage the staff to take food home and as well as much cooked rice as we wanted. There would always be something to nibble on while we worked. When I was sick, they would cook chicken soup and bring it over. They treated me so well that years later when I was back home for vacation, I worked for a week because they needed emergency backup.
8My BIL owns and operates a restaurant and he is AMAZING at what I think must be one of the most challenging jobs there is. From my perspective the way he instills loyalty is by being completely invested himself. But it also means keeping a clear head when it comes to favoritism…one of his long-time employees who had come with him from a former restaurant who was a great worker and a personal friend was fired on the spot when Steve found out that he had been sexually harassing female employees. Steve is passionate about what he does and about his restaurant which involves tons of personal sacrifices on his part and on the part of his family. If it’s just about the money employees can tell, and if it’s not, they can tell too.
9