Restaurant staffing.

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Cooking4Fun

Senior Cook
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
339
Location
Buffalo
Anyone here knowledgeable about restaurant staffing? The restaurant I work at lost half its staff during the pandemic and the boss halved the menu to try to offer relief. However I keep hearing that even still the staff we currently have is being stretched thin. How important is brevity when completing orders even when the quality remains high? Are customers fickle about longer waits that it determines where they go for food? We certainly have lost synergy with fewer people working. The boss elects to spend less on staff and wonders why nobody wants to work there anymore. What attributes contribute most to a successful restaurant if location and food quality are both good?
 
Happy, competent staff contributes a great deal to a resto. People are tired of working for crumby wages and not feeling respected. The best thing your employer could do is improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for his staff.
 
Service, courtesy, the appearance of professionalism, these things are of paramount importance. Don't be afraid to speak with the customers. Make them feel relaxed, and comfortable. Maybe give them a little something extra, a treat if you will, to show them that they re appreciated. It can be as simple as N&M's in a glass at the table, or a Hershey's nut filled kiss. It could be water crackers with humus, just something small, but tasty.

And I agree with the above answer, fair and honest wages, and treating employees with respect will give them the incentive to do their best.

I once worked at a place that paid poor wages, and had a boss who was always drunk, and came into the kitchen only to yell and complain. I and my best freind both worked there. We talked the day, and night cooks into quitting on Aug 30 of that year, leaving the owner with no cooking staff, and gave him no notice of our intent to quit. He'd made our lives miserable for a whole summer, where we often worked 12 to 14 hour shifts. I got one day off that summer. Payback can be devastating to a business. The restaurant closed that fall.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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Happy, competent staff contributes a great deal to a resto. People are tired of working for crumby wages and not feeling respected. The best thing your employer could do is improve wages, benefits, and working conditions for his staff.

Minimum wage is going up in a few months anyway so he might just try to convince us that we got a real raise. Lol.
 
Service, courtesy, the appearance of professionalism, these things are of paramount importance. Don't be afraid to speak with the customers. Make them feel relaxed, and comfortable. Maybe give them a little something extra, a treat if you will, to show them that they re appreciated. It can be as simple as N&M's in a glass at the table, or a Hershey's nut filled kiss. It could be water crackers with humus, just something small, but tasty.

And I agree with the above answer, fair and honest wages, and treating employees with respect will give them the incentive to do their best.

I once worked at a place that paid poor wages, and had a boss who was always drunk, and came into the kitchen only to yell and complain. I and my best freind both worked there. We talked the day, and night cooks into quitting on Aug 30 of that year, leaving the owner with no cooking staff, and gave him no notice of our intent to quit. He'd made our lives miserable for a whole summer, where we often worked 12 to 14 hour shifts. I got one day off that summer. Payback can be devastating to a business. The restaurant closed that fall.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

Fun story. Lol. I remember at one of my past jobs I was asked sometimes to work for someone else which I accepted thinking I would be making more money, but instead they merely took away one of my other shifts which was longer, so my generosity of time was actually at a loss.
 
Minimum wage is going up in a few months anyway so he might just try to convince us that we got a real raise. Lol.

That doesn't surprise me. It's part of the reason that resto staff are quitting left, right, and centre. People are tired of being treated as expendable and unimportant. Bosses might tell their staff that they are important, but until they start treating and paying them in a way that makes the staff feel like they are important to the owners, it won't help.
 
I think it’s a red flag that your boss doesn’t appreciate the effort that his staff makes for him financially. He needs to change his attitude toward his team. Since you have fewer people working at this place, it will take longer to serve all the customers. So, your boss should have increased the prices on the menu, which would explain why it takes longer to cook all this food.
When I was in Germany, I visited this place — riwa-restaurant.de. It also took them a bit longer to serve the food. But, it becomes clear when you visit the place. Show this to your boss.
 
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