A New Restaurant

Mother’s Day is May 11th in the US.  Are you getting ready

Mother’s Day can either be a huge profit day, or it can be a major disaster.  The choice is yours.  If you are ready for it, you will have a dining room full of happy families spending time together, and giving mom a day off from the kitchen.  If you’re not ready for the day, it can be an afternoon of long lines, impatient customers, and a frustrated staff that has spent the day being yelled at by their customers.

Learn From the Past

There are a few things you can do to make sure you’re ready for the day.  First, look at last year.  Too often we tend to get through a day and then put it behind us without making note of any lessons learned.  We say, “I’ll remember that next year,” but the reality is…we don’t remember.  Unless you make a conscious effort to recall what went on, the lessons learned from last year will be lost.

If you didn’t right notes to yourself about the day, you should talk to your staff that were there and ask for their recollections.  Pull your sales records for last year and see what your sales were.  Anything to get an idea of what to expect.

Make Sure You’re Staffed

Second, make sure you are adequately staffed.  This could be one of the busiest days of the year.  Do not go into the day with a normal Sunday staff.  Make sure you have extra servers, extra busers and dishwashers , and a fully staffed kitchen.  Any shortages will cause delays in getting customers in, fed, and out the door happy.  Table turns means money, and the more efficiently you can keep things moving, the more profitable the day will be.

Adjust Your Menu

It’s not unusual for restaurants to run Mother’s Day specials.  It’s a great way to steer purchases toward what you want the customers to order.  Just make sure that it does not add an additional burden onto the kitchen.  A profitable meal item that requires extra time and labor to prepare can quickly negate the profits of the item.  Instead, go for items that will appeal to Mom that are easy and quick to prepare.  It keeps the food flowing out of the kitchen faster, which makes everyone happy.

Also, be careful not to add items onto your menu that will require special order products that will not be used during your normal production.  any special items that aren’t used will sit on your shelf, or will require more specials to try and use them before they spoil.

Reservations

If you take reservations at your restaurant, be careful not to overbook the dining room.  There comes a point when you have to say “No.”  Don’t get so greedy that you create an intolerable situation for your guests and staff.  Your customers would rather hear that you are full and not able to accommodate them than to be told you will take their reservation only to find out that they still have to wait for a table.  Once you are full stop taking reservations!

Mother’s Day can be one of the best days of your year.  Take the steps ahead of time to make sure that is the case.