Many of the newest restaurants stem out of the busy franchising industry with quick-service restaurants as the largest industry segment, comprising more than $250 billion of that industry’s total economic output. Its nearest competitor segment, business services, generates about $100 billion. Keeping all those restaurant employees productive can seem challenging, but you can do it with the right culture.
Your company culture determines your own and your employee’s productivity. If your culture prioritizes business success, employee self-care, and recognizes that the latter means something different for each person, you will probably employ some very productive people.
Organize the Kitchen with Kaizen
When you prioritize business success, you order your kitchen in a way that puts everything in easy reach but stores it in a safe manner. This doesn’t just mean that it adheres to OSHA standards. It refers to using a Japanese business methodology known as kaizen that began on manufacturing production lines like that of Toyota vehicles. Now, you might wonder how car manufacturing can help you run a better kitchen, but kaizen simply assigns a manager who knows the line to the floor. That manager spots every problem as they observe and then implements a fix to increase productivity and make the job go faster while remaining safe to do.
This might be as simple as moving the pots and pans hanging from the ceiling down six inches because the new assistant chef isn’t as tall as the prior one. You lose cooking time each time the assistant chef needs to find a stool to grab a pot or pull aside the taller sous chef to grab something. A kaizen line manager spots those problems and implements an instant fix.
In keeping with the safety notion, according to the National Floor Safety Institute, most of your workers’ compensation claims stem from slips and falls. They’re also the top reason for occupational injury of individuals 55 years old or older. That means keeping spills mopped up and the floors dry can help eliminate the main injury employees incur.
Your kitchen staff also needs all the ingredients where they can reach them easily. Implementing proper inventory controls guarantees your chef the right ingredients every day. Proper kitchen organization ensures they can easily reach them without delay.
Staff the Right Positions for Each Time of Day
Knowing who you need and at what times also maximizes productivity on all fronts. You can also apply the kaizen mentality to staffing. During downtimes when the dining room empties out, all staff can clean, or you can use half shifts, so only bus staff and one or two wait staff remain on duty. Their focus should turn to prepping for the next wave of patrons.
Finance Formal Training for Employees
You can build all of these ideas and others into their training program. Providing formal, written training helps them retain knowledge, while it provides you with a documented method of testing their knowledge. That protects you since you can reference the training documents so the employee can never claim they did not know some safety method or job duty.
Encourage Appropriate Self-Care
Finally, your employees need to know that you care about them. You need to let them know that you support their self-care. While that means different things to different people, using or abusing drugs or alcohol, especially on the job, cannot be tolerated. When you note an employee shows up to work drunk, high, or with a hangover, pull them aside to talk. You can intervene by mandating they seek treatment. You can help them help themselves avoid serious life consequences, such as prison. For example, in Texas, DWIs count as a third-degree felony. Incurring three DWIs there lands the individual in prison for two to ten years. Your attentiveness to their developing problem can help nip it in the bud before it grows dangerous.
While all of those actions can make your business productive, you can always improve. Who better to advise you on what would make work move faster than you employees? Ask your customers, too. They know what kept their food from reaching their table hot or melted the ice in their drink before it reached them. Asking for their input, then implementing changes helps you create a better company culture, translating to more productive employees and improved profits.