A New Restaurant

Many times the difference between restaurant success and restaurant failure is in the small details.  Your restaurant can have a very talented chef that consistently puts out excellent meals, but if that meal is served on a dirty plate, your potential success becomes a failure in the eyes of your guests.

I’ll admit, one job I have never held in my food service career is dishwasher.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t washed my share of plates and scrubbed more pots and pans than I care to remember.  Even in management and chef positions I have always been willing to step in and work through a pile of dirty dishes.

In most operations the dishwasher is the lowest of low on the pecking order.  Every crap job that needs to be done seems to fall to them.  It is your basic entry-level, low skill position.

That being said, in many ways your restaurants success rides on the back of these kitchen drones.  If they don’t embrace the importance of their jobs and have enough pride in their work to turn out clean dishes, your operation is sunk.

Many restaurants take time to train their staff on doing an excellent job.  However, that training is usually focused on food quality and presentation or customer service.

If you want your restaurant to be a success you need to encourage your dishwashers to take ownership if their area.  This means taking the time to make sure every dish or pot or pan that comes through gets the attention to making sure it is clean and sanitized before it gets back out into circulation.

While a customer may be forgiving if a fork was not completely clean, they ware far less tolerant when there are several pieces that were not cleaned correctly.  They start to wonder about the cleanliness and sanitation of your restaurant, and they will begin to look for other things that are wrong.

Your restaurants success or failure is a matter of your tending to the details.  Take the time to make sure your dishwashers understand their importance to your restaurants success.  Once they start taking pride in what they are doing, you will see a marked improvement in the quality of their work.

It’s these little steps that can help you avert restaurant failure, and enjoy restaurant success.