Generally, schedule should start Sunday; therefore it needs to be posted by Thurs. or Fri. of previous week. Excel spreadsheet formats are great for scheduling organization. The schedule should be posted in an easily viewable location with enough copies available for all staff. Staff phone lists should be printed, copied and made readily available to all. This improves communication especially for work shift substitutions.

This leads to substitution process for staff work shifts. There needs to be a Substitution Book readily available with blank spaces for names, upcoming dates and work shifts for next 1 to 2 months. If a substitution made, information must be recorded with date and shift time a.m/p.m. etc. It must be initialed by both parties involved in substitution and finally initialed by a manager ensuring no mistakes in communication. A substitution mishap may result in a shift not being covered.

Scheduling may look great for payroll cost control, but it must be remembered that dining room service staff are real people with real lives whose cheerful and efficient service is what restaurants are dependant upon. The schedule maker needs to be understanding towards staff’s schedule requests, but should not roll over and play dead (again, balance). It is impossible to please everyone 100% all of time, but a proper scheduling balance will truly have a positive effect on restaurant dining room customer service and staff.

*** It is better for a manager or service consultant to handle schedule at initial phases of a new operation and should be monitored by a second or third person especially if restaurant has just opened. Some mature restaurants may let a senior member of service staff handle schedule because there is better communiqué’ with schedule concerns. Please use whichever system works best for establishment for staff schedule is a strong part of customer service and should not be taken lightly.

Before large restaurants existed, waiter would complete process of order taking and delivering of food. Today, food runner can be implemented (additional middle man) relieving waiter of this time consuming and sometimes painstaking process. The waiter must share a percentage of his tip with runner, but in return his job is eased because food is delivered for him- allowing extra time to work more tables and up sell to customers thereby increasing sales. Though, it does remain waiter’s responsibility to check table for additional diner needs-- either while food is being placed by runner or shortly thereafter. The tip-out to runner is usually 10-15% depending on service system, but well worth it if waiter sales can increase by 20-30 %.

The main point is food runner addition improves delivery service efficiency while being cost-effective (if sales increase outweighs payroll increase). Properly integrating employees into dining room with exact middle man connections always makes for smooth service flow. It’s not a matter of just blindly throwing extra employees at a service problem, but organizing best system possible with minimal amount of labor.

Adding middle man can sometimes streamline operations in such way that it becomes irresistible and impossible to ignore. Always, demand arises when delivery routes of a service system become overloaded.

>Richard Saporito, President, Topserve Inc. www.topserveconsulting.com info@topserveconsulting.com 888-276-4808