4 Ways to Improve Your Restaurant's Workflow

All restaurants are in business to satisfy their customers, which typically involves delivering high quality food in a timely and accurate manner. This may sound like an extremely simple and straightforward process, but when you’re confined to a specific amount of space and you’re trying to maximize the safe seating capacity of the place, certain logistics and planning steps should be taken to allow for optimal productivity and smooth service. You want your guests to be not only satisfied but impressed with the speed and proficiency of your waiting and cooking staff. A large part of that has to do with hiring the right people, but once you’re past that, consider the following four ways you can equip your workforce and prepare their workspace for maximum workflow:

Royalty Free Photo

1. Start Using a Tablet-Based Point of Sale System

In the old days, waiters would take orders on paper tickets or notepads, and while this can be a quick enough process for some waiters who have fast and neat handwriting skills, it can never compete with the accuracy, speed, and features of entering orders into a digital point of sale (POS) system. Such systems are used at fast food kiosks to take orders expeditiously, allowing for rapid communication of the order to the kitchen. Rather than waiting for your waiter to bring a scribbled piece of paper to the cooks, why not have them punch a few buttons in their tablet-based restaurant POS system instead?

2. Improve the Path for Food Carrying

Once you have a portable POS that your waiters can use to input orders, next you’ll want to optimize the food pickup process by analyzing any faults or opportunities for improvements along the path to the pickup area. Some restaurants employ food expeditors who neatly arrange trays and meal components in preparation for the pickup, that way the server doesn’t have to stand there and neglect other tables while organizing the current table’s food delivery.

3. Choose Wait Station Locations Wisely

With a portable POS system you may not have  a need for kiosks, but wait stations are still useful for storing utensils, bussing/cleaning equipment, beverages, napkins, straws, sauces, and any items that your staff tends to need quick access to on a regular basis. Corners and nooks are always great spots for wait stations because they’re out of the way of everything and they don’t occupy potential guest seating or staff movement space.

4. Train Cooks to Keep Certain Food Items Available

Finally, now that your waiting staff is well-equipped to communicate with the kitchen and deliver food quickly, it’s time to get the kitchen staff on board. This might involve designing efficient procedures for the preparation of each entrée and side dish and then teaching the cooks how to follow those steps for optimal productivity and safety. Taking this approach will produce much faster and more consistent results than simply instructing your chefs to prepare the food in their own individual way.

Designing a Productive Restaurant Kitchen to Finish the Job

Finally, once you have the front end of the operation fully optimized and equipped and the chefs are ready to go, it’s important to realize that the back end needs to be optimized in the same way. Although all of the steps involved in chef training would go beyond the scope of this guide, some of the key measures to take in regard to kitchen space might include:

• Setting up hot plates and racks in ideal positions
• Positioning freezers, pantries, and other food storage spots within a few steps of the cooking area
• Widening the walking area that waiters use to enter and exit the food pickup area
• Adding or enlarging the food delivery window

Aside from the above considerations, you may also want to get your chefs’ opinions on what can be done to improve their personal workspaces and workflow.