Many entrepreneurs who want to open a restaurant often choose to go with franchising for different reasons. Some prefer it to eliminate the problem of creating a business or advertising plan from scratch, while others just think it’s the best way to guarantee a profitable business. In general, restaurant franchising offers several amazing benefits include less capital investment, greater organic marketing, instant brand recognition, and better resource allocation.
Most often, franchisors arranged extensive training programs focused on providing a positive customer experience and understanding how important everyone is in running a reputable business. But whether or not your restaurant franchisor helps you arrange the programs, these tips right here can help you effectively train your new staff for the business.
Begin with an orientation
Before anything else, it’s important to hold orientation training for the staff. This is essential regardless if the people you’re hiring have enough previous experience or not. Every business, especially a restaurant, is different, from its background history to the preferences of its customers. Several basics to plan for the orientation include your philosophy and principles of work, an introduction of the menu, an introduction to the management and staff, and other restaurant’s best practices.
Other topics you can discuss in the meeting include an overview of the services, the preparation for the dishes, and HR details related to the training and payroll.
Create a training manual
You can create a proper guide for your staff by constructing a training manual. It should basically include how the employees should perform and what duties they must perform. You’d want to divide the manual into standard sections such as food preparation, dress code, health and safety, emergency procedures, expected behavior, and payroll. You can also consider creating checklists relevant to opening and closing and post-service duties.
In other words, these will include tasks that must be complete by your stop before the shift, when welcoming customers, taking orders, and during service. Make sure that every staff receives their own copy and have them sign a release confirming that they understand everything on the manual.
Train for different positions
Restaurants are typically busy, so you’d always need to have people working on all sides. This is why it’s important to train your staff in every position, from dishwashing, behind the bar, to working on the food line. You’d also want everyone to know how to welcome and accommodate the customers properly. Training them to be more versatile in the job will not just help them to acquire more experience.
Doing so enables you to ensure that you’ll always have people to handle specific workday activities when it calls for them. The more skilled they are, the more useful they will be for the business. To provide better first-hand training, you can consider shadowing. Have the best servers show how the services should be like, from taking orders to using the POS system. This way, the staff will see how the restaurant’s culture should be put into practice.
Plan for training refreshers
Another important thing to add to your restaurant’s start-up cost is the training refreshers for the staff. Many business owners often overlook this when accounting for the overall cost to open a franchise restaurant and just throw their staff into the wolves. Refreshers might obviously require an extra budget, but it can help assure your employees to maintain great performance and quality customer service.
These regular training sessions are also an excellent way to equip even the experienced people with new techniques and help them establish positive characteristics. At the same time, your people will know that you actually care about their professional development.
Recognize the best employees
In relation to the standard process of providing performance feedback, it’s essential to recognize the top employees. Workplace productivity and satisfaction are more likely to improve if your employees are motivated. To fuel this up, you can create a reward program such as an “Employee of the Month” to acknowledge the best staff. This might seem like an old trick, but many companies still use these kinds of programs to increase the morale of their employees. After all, your staff is your restaurant’s best promotional asset.
Getting a franchise may help you cut down the worries involve in opening up your own restaurant. But that does not mean that you can rest easy when it comes to training your staff for the business. Be sure to note these tips and create a better reputation for the restaurant name by housing well-training employees.
