It is essential to place proper floor diagrams with positioning points in strategic areas of a restaurant to provide excellent dining service. You also cannot rely on the fact that the floor diagrams are in the computer system.
Case in point # 1: What happens when a new waiter, with 3 plates of hot pasta, walks alone from the kitchen to a busy dining room and cannot make out the correct table where the food should arrive? Does the waiter put the 3 hot pasta dishes somewhere and then log into the computer to see which is the correct table? I do not believe it. The waiter is going to guess that it may possibly result in a costly mistake that the food goes to the wrong table. If the floor diagram was correctly placed in an inconspicuous place for the waiter to glance at, then the food gets to the table quickly and smoothly.
Case at point # 2: I recently had a situation in a restaurant where the owner was changing the numbers on the dining room table during the actual shift – spelling disaster. His explanation was that he needed to keep track of the coupons being distributed for the restaurant’s marketing campaign, which used a separate numbered table for each individual coupon.
The owner failed to realize that there was no way to provide excellent restaurant customer service using this system. It was no wonder that the dining room service staff frequently brought delicious and delicately prepared food to the wrong table. How many times does this happen in a night, a week, a month? Why not grab a handful of money and just throw it out the front door?
Here are some simple but important concepts to help improve customer service for restaurants. There are too many operations that do not implement these concepts causing many unnecessary errors. This results in lost revenue and a bad reputation for service that will repel repeat business.
Is that how it works:
The dining room floor diagrams, correctly numbered for each table and position point (explained below), should be clearly printed and given to all dining room service personnel, with additional hard copies available for any future waiter who may be. hired. These essential diagrams should be placed in strategic locations for easy viewing by all staff, preferably out of the customer’s sight.
Establishing standing points is critical if trying to improve restaurant customer service. Basically any diner in the restaurant can be identified by a table number and a particular seat number. Keeping up with position points will not be a problem for a waiter as long as all dining service staff know about the arrangement in advance. It is very important to set the # 1 position point for each table. The easiest way to determine position point n. # 1 is to have the customer’s back directly in line (or as close as possible) to a particular location in the restaurant, such as the kitchen, the front / back door, or perhaps a particularly visible item of decor.
Each client whose back is closest to this particular location is position # 1. Once established, rotate clockwise around the table, identifying each client as position # 2, 3 , and so on. If a seat is empty, it must be assigned a position number anyway, as a guest may be late. If customer position points are not used, a waiter, holding hot and heavy plates, will be calling customers plates because they do not know the exact position locations. This wastes precious time and energy, not to mention how unprofessional it sounds. Additionally, customers, often in the middle of a conversation or a laugh, will be unnecessarily interrupted.
Position points should be clearly explained in every bartender training program. The main goal is for the waiter to serve food and drink accurately, safely and cleanly. This is more likely to happen when there is prior knowledge of the table and seat numbers well in advance.
The above concepts give the dining room service staff “an idea of where they are,” which is extremely important, especially if the restaurant is new or the staff is new to the restaurant. It improves the ability to communicate, which in turn, will improve the restaurant’s customer service for everyone.