A sports coach’s pre-game meeting often determines the quality of the team’s played and the numbers on the final scoreboard. By the same measure,  pre-shift meetings influence the quality of each shift in the restaurant.

The truth is, many restaurants don't have pre-shift meetings, and some that do still don't have a solid system or strategy around how they do it. Many restaurant managers think of pre-shift meetings as a necessary evil. They make it boring and glum by merely talking about new specials, 86’d items, and pointing out the negatives, like wrong uniform or schedule issues. Some even use this opportunity to reprimand their team in front of their peers, which flies in the face of the purpose pre-shift meetings.

Here are some strategies and practices to make your pre-shift meetings more profitable, organized, and purposeful, rather than dreadful and disengaging for you and your team.

With so many moving parts and balls in the air, running a restaurant is a constant challenge. Effective owners and managers that practice consistent and constant training enjoy a true competitive advantage. This is what separates the best restaurants with a loyal following from those spinning their wheels wondering why their seats aren’t full. 

If your team provides customers with better service and amazing dining experiences, your restaurant will be rewarded with repeat business and five star online reviews. But to achieve this lofty goal, it's not enough to simply have an orientation or “on-boarding” program in the basics of the job. Continually testing and engaging staff in their learning are what will keep them on top of their game, and ensure the success of your business.

Here's how to get your team involved in a learning culture:

A hype-man is a person whose main purpose is to bring the energy. They support the lead artist on stage by – as their title suggests – hyping up the crowd by dancing, rhyming, and pumping as much energy into the venue as possible.

If you’re wondering where you get one of these restaurant hype-men, look no further than your restaurant staff. As the face of your brand to customers and prospective employees, your staff are in the perfect position to excite others about your restaurant, more specifically your mission and purpose.

Investing the time and energy today that’s needed to transform your restaurant staff into effective hype men – in professional circles, we call them brand advocates – will yield huge benefits both in the short and long term. Here's how:

Whether you’re a hotel housekeeper, barista, bartender, chef, supervisor, manager or owner, workplace harassment and bullying is something you should know about. It’s an issue that’s been steadily on the rise and sadly, the hospitality industry is known to have one of the highest incident rates compared to every other industry, globally.

Unfortunately, this means that many staff in the hospitality industry will have already experienced or witnessed bullying or harassment at some point during their career, and if they haven’t, there’s a good chance they will soon.

Everyday factors can lead to misunderstandings, personality conflicts, and various types of misconduct, including harassment and bullying. This is why understanding the topic is so important and key to working in the hospitality industry, so let’s go through it so you know what to do if you or someone you know is in this situation and how to prevent it from happening in the first place.

When it comes to recruitment in the restaurant industry, you want to attract the most qualified persons to ensure customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. Restaurant servers make up a large share of hospitality staff and play a vital role in the success of any restaurant.

Good service delivered by restaurant servers is one of the main reasons why people return and become regular customers. Naturally, poor service causes customers to choose another place to dine at. Therefore, it’s important to get an edge in luring the best restaurant servers to your business, which is something that quality job ads can help you with.

To attract attention, a job ad should be memorable and stand out so that applicants can’t ignore it. To achieve that, it should list what good candidates look for - essentially they are the key audience here and should be top of mind. Let’s see how you can do that!