If you are a restaurant owner or a professional in the hospitality industry, how do you know if your restaurant business is running inefficiently? Here are some warning signs that your hospitality business is being run poorly:

• Loss of benefits.
• Negative work environment and interpersonal conflicts between employees.
• Lack of personal responsibility.
• Lower quality products.
• Customer dissatisfaction.

There are many causes to explain these inefficient. It’s usually a combination of many issues, such as manager inefficiency, outdated business practices, staff not properly trained, miscommunication, or lack of focus on customer service. These reasons are usually closely related to each other. When one problem gets worse, they often make the rest worse too. As one problem gets worse, it often creates or worsens other problems.

To improve the productivity and efficiency of your restaurant, it is likely that several co-existing issues need to be addressed. This will mean that the solution to the problems of one of the areas will imply that the other areas also improve.

How to improve productivity and efficiency in your restaurant

Fortunately, there are many corrective or proactive steps you can take to improve your restaurant’s productivity. In this post we give you some tips to improve both the productivity and efficiency of your hospitality business:

1. INVEST IN AND IMPLEMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS AND TOOLS.

These tools allow your team to access the same information they need and instantly share crucial data or updates through organized and accessible programs. Others may be task management tools, which help improve the efficiency of the time your staff spends on various tasks. These analyzes will help you improve productivity to optimize the efficiency of the restaurant.

All these tools reduce and automate the administrative work necessary to manage your hospitality business.

2. PROMOTE SELF-MANAGEMENT.

• Give employees control over their own schedules.
• Allow employees to change shifts.
• Avoid micromanagement and hypervigilance.
• Trust in your employee’s autonomy, promoting both responsibility and self-sufficiency.

Increased self-management will help decrease managerial workload, improve the overall work environment, and increase employee satisfaction. Discouraging unproductive manager-employee power dynamics will grow healthy professional relationships.

3. IMPROVES COMMUNICATION.

• Establishes positive, consistent, and transparent methods of communication with all staff members.
• Avoid unproductive check-ins, text messages or emails.
• Reduce notification overload through mindful communication.
• Analyze and solve possible communication gaps.
• Communicate with your employees in a personal and non-punitive way if they seem depressed or are less productive.

4. PRACTICE AND PROMOTE SELF-CARE.

Healthy and happy workers are crucial to the success of your restaurant. Actively model self-care and good hygiene practices for your staff.

5. REWARD YOUR RESTAURANT STAFF.

Not only will it recognize their achievements and positively reinforce them, but it will also help your restaurant’s profit margin. Studies have shown that incentivizing employees with rewards increases overall business profits and results in more motivated employees.

6. DECORATE YOUR RESTAURANT CONSCIOUSLY.

Research color combinations that are psychologically proven to boost mood and food sales. For example, red, yellow, and orange can increase a customer’s appetite. However, too many shades of yellow increase anxiety levels and decrease the time your customers will want to spend in your establishment.

Keep spaces organized and discourage clutter. Customers are more engaged and comfortable in clean, aesthetically pleasing environments. This order directly affects efficiency and productivity in a positive way.

Increase natural light to positively impact the mood of customers and staff, thereby increasing productivity as well. If you don’t have access to natural light sources, consider implementing lighting that more closely mimics sunlight rather than overly bright fluorescent lights.

The ability to increase efficiency and profitability is within your reach as an owner. Taking corrective or proactive action to address the inefficiency will benefit your entire restaurant.