6 Management Tips for New Restaurant Managers

While it is challenging for new restaurant managers to settle into an unfamiliar position, the transition can be a lot smoother when you know how to handle every business operation in the best possible way. For restaurant management, managers must be ready to get their hands dirty and handle tasks on their own when the situation asks for it. Knowledge of the jobs is the only way to ensure that you instruct and manage your staff correctly.

As a new restaurant manager, you must prepare yourself for dealing with various tasks. These include managing your staff and customers, dealing with food service, and other related operations. As crucial as your competence in completing these tasks is, how you approach the job is equally important. A restaurant manager is a leader, and you have to ensure that you can unite your team to operate as one cohesive unit. Well, this article will provide you with 6 vital management tips for new restaurant managers so that you start on the right track. 

Management Tips for New Restaurant Managers

A managerial job at a restaurant can be overwhelming because of the variety of aspects you will have to handle. However, with a few essential details, you can make the job much easier to handle.
Here are some tips for new restaurant managers to improve restaurant management.

Restaurant managers can achieve their goals by implementing effective strategies and hiring the right staff for their operations. These are the basics of restaurant management. 

1. Learn about Different Operations by Doing them Yourself

A good restaurant manager knows how to perform every job at the restaurant. This way, you can know the stresses related to each job and how much time and effort each operation takes on average. As a result, you can plan procedures at the restaurant properly to make processes as efficient as possible. Furthermore, you’ll also be able to solve problems yourself if something goes wrong or if some of your staff is missing.

For excellent restaurant management, you should be ready to get your hands dirty. You should how the kitchen operates, the stress servers deal with, and the difficult parts of the cooks’ job. That said, you should also trust in your employees’ expertise. Talk to them often about their jobs and the methods they use. This way, you can learn from and gain their respect in the best process. You will also know what decisions to make that affect your employees and the customers they serve.

2. Be Consistent in How You Approach Problems

There is no shortage of issues that come up at restaurants. Therefore, while acknowledging that each restaurant and its consequent circumstances are unique, your approach should be consistent. Therefore, you should maintain consistency in the following:

• How you communicate with your employees and your customers

• How you go about maintaining the rules to ensure that the restaurant is operating at its best

• What expectations you have from your employees

A consistent restaurant management approach enables your employees to expect how you’re going to handle a situation. This knowledge can allow them to focus on their own work because they know that you have a plan and won’t crack under pressure. 

3. Be Proactive with Your Restaurant Management

With restaurant management, you must be proactive instead of reactive. You need to stay ahead of all aspects pertaining to your industry so that you can incorporate necessary changes sooner than later. This way, you can continue to keep productivity and efficiency at a maximum. Moreover, you are more likely to inspire your staff members to be greater by aspiring to do that yourself. Therefore, you should stay ahead of the curve with restaurant management decisions like:
• Staffing needs
• Handling inventory
• Marketing campaigns
• Updates to the menu
• Identifying and accounting for trends among consumers
• Updating the equipment in your restaurant with new technological advancements

4. Prioritise Staff Retention

Your staff is an incredibly valuable asset in your business, and you must enable them to be satisfied with their jobs. Happy employees are more motivated to doing better at their jobs, which will ultimately benefit your company. Moreover, losing employees consistently can be considerably damaging to your company. Constantly hiring and training employees can become expensive very quickly. Therefore, considering how tight the profit margins are in this industry, you must make staff retention a priority.

In addition to providing good packages, make the workplace respectful to every employee’s input and work. Mutual respect can help your staff to grow as a team and find satisfaction in the work they do. Furthermore, you should also protect your employees from customer tempers. When you spot a dissatisfied and angry customer, you should try and step in to handle the situation if your employee struggles to do so.

Training your restaurant staff is vital if you want your restaurant to become successful. 

5. Ensure that Customer Satisfaction Is High As Possible

Keeping your customers satisfied is possibly one of the most obvious yet equally vital management tips for new restaurant managers that we could provide. You should tackle every customer-related issue by putting yourself in their place. After that, provide a solution that you believe would help you feel better if you were the customer in that situation. You should make sure to also cater to different dietary needs to improve overall customer satisfaction.

6. Encourage Online Reviews and Keep Word-of-Mouth in Mind

Encourage your customers to share reviews on your website and other review websites such as Zomato, Yell (the UK equivalent of Yelp), etc. This way, other customers can get to know about your restaurant and how its services are. Furthermore, make sure to keep your ears open for what people write and say about your restaurant in terms of its services. You can then try and address whatever concerns and issues customers bring up to make restaurant management

By keeping the aforementioned 6 management tips for new restaurant managers, you can make your managerial job more exciting and manageable.