A New Restaurant

As a restaurant owner, you have to remember that when it comes to staff performance, you reap what you sow. You are the leader of your organization, and it is up to you to set the tone and the expectations for how your staff performs.

This puts a lot of pressure on you. Your staffs behavior and their performance is your responsibility. If meals aren’t coming out of the kitchen correctly, or your servers aren’t delivering excellent customer service, guess who’s to blame. And don’t try playing the “You can’t find good help these days!” card. There are plenty of restaurants that are doing it right, and they’re drawing from the same talent pool that you’re drawing from. In truth, the problem usually isn’t the people that are available.

I know that there are some people that are truly bad employees, but they should be the exception and not the rule. If the rest of your staff is performing as they should, the bad apples are easy to sort out and replace. The problem is, how do you seed out poor performers when they’re all poor performers?

The key is to not let things reach that point.

One well-worn cliché became well-worn because it works: “INSPECT what you EXPECT.” What that means is, if you have expectation about the way your staff is performing (if you don’t have expectations, you should), you need to watch them to make sure they are doing things the way you want them done. If they are not performing to your standards, you need to do whatever it takes to make them accountable.

Two truths you need to keep in mind:

1.) Most of your employees want to do a good job.

2.) Some of your employees are still kids trapped in a grownups body.

What that means for you is, 1.) most of your employees will do what you want them to do if you make it clear what you want them to do, and 2.) if you don’t hold them accountable, they will do what they want to do.

Once you get a crew that is living up to your expectations, handling the bad apples is a lot easier.