A New Restaurant

When everything is going well in your restaurant, this can be a fun job.  You know the kind of days I’m talking about; food is coming out on time, everyone that was scheduled actually showed up, and the customers are happy.  On those days, it’s easy to feel relaxed and able to joke with your staff, and in general, have a good time.  On days like that, being a restaurant manager is a good job

What about those other days?

Anyone who’s been in this business for more than a day knows that no matter how good things are right now, that high pressure situation may be just a moment away.  How do you handle that pressure?

I have seen otherwise pleasant managers turn evil when the pressure is turned up.  They turn their venomous tongue loose on unsuspecting staff, causing a stressful situation to get even worse  I’ve seen good employees who really enjoyed restaurant work turn in their notice and quit because their relationship with the manager was never the same after one of these attacks.

If you are that evil manager, you need to take a step back and think about what you’re doing to your restaurant.  If the pots getting ready to boil over, turning up the heat is the last thing you want to do.

Before you go off on your crew, take a deep breath and think about how you need to handle the situation.  Remember, your team is trying to do the best they can.  Even if their best isn’t good enough, they’re probably not trying to mess up on purpose.  The best thing you can do is to try to calm your staff down.  If you don’t do that, the mistakes will just get worse, and the customers will start to feel the stress from the servers.

If you can help the situation by lending a hand, do so.  If not, give your staff the chance to work through it.  That may mean running interference and acting as a buffer between the servers and the the customers.  Anything you can do to help reduce the stress will help.

Your job as a manager and a leader is to help your staff do their jobs better.  After the moment has passed you can go back and look at what went wrong, and come up with a game plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but that comes later.

Encourage your staff.  Help them through the hard times.  In the long run, you will build a more loyal staff that will work extra hard not to let you down.  If you just add more heat, the pot will boil over.