Optimal Ways to Manage Your Restaurant Staff 

The recipe for a great restaurant manager starts with this foundation: managing restaurant staff. Whether you’re thinking about accepting a promotion to a management position, or if you’re already a manager and would like to learn innovative ways on how to manage restaurant staff, the following restaurant management tips can help anyone lead, inspire, and ensure the entire operation runs efficiently. 

While some restaurant employee management skills come with experience, others are a bit more nuanced. Take restaurant staff management support, for instance. Even the best managers can’t do it alone; they require an intuitive, forward-thinking structure around them, especially with issues related to accounting, compliance, and the rest.

RASI’s extensive experience in helping with restaurant employee management starts with our full-service accounting platform, which supplies the considerable resources to ensure restaurants maintain an effective management culture, all while keeping the bottom line in full view.

Female restaurant general manager holding notebook and pen, BOH staff in background

Building Blocks of How to Manage your Restaurant Staff 

As you might expect, restaurant employee management is built around practical people skills. This list of attributes helps any manager (either in a fixed role or transitioning into management) with restaurant employee management.

  1. Communication. One of the biggest hang-ups that hinders managers from effective leadership is poor communication. Clarity and clear communication aren’t nice-to-haves with restaurant staff management – it’s absolutely essential. Employees regularly cite subpar communication as the most obvious flaw with restaurant management.
  2. Adaptability. Everything is changing all the time in a restaurant. From sudden labor issues to supply chain mishaps, it’s imperative for every manager to adapt and adjust on the fly – at a moment’s notice.
  3. Organization. Admittedly, this isn’t every manager’s strong suit. But a baseline-level of organization goes a long way, boosting everything from regular supply chain processes to shift scheduling and much more. A well-organized financial reporting system, for example, eliminates many would-be problems and issues at the outset, and also avoids common compliance hurdles.

What’s more, RASI’s Management Checklists promote better organization and oversight with daily, weekly, and submit day tasks, and we review regular reports to help coach your team on accurate, on-time submittals. This targeted reporting helps your staff control what they can control —  a key element of having a well-run, organized restaurant.

  1.     Setting an example. Of all the best restaurant management tips, here’s one to remember: be a leader on multiple levels. In other words, the best restaurant employee management methods involve “getting in the trenches” when needed – helping out when someone calls off, doing tasks when they’re needed most. But this also means leading by example with morals, ethics and integrity. Honesty is always the best policy.

For a more in-depth discussion of restaurant staff management skills, make sure to read our blog post on this topic!

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Restaurant Management Tips 

Now that you’re aware of some critical restaurant employee management characteristics, it’s time to put these skills into action. We’ve helped literally thousands of restaurant managers over the years, and here are some tried and true ways to implement a practical, on-point leadership strategy:

Reward excellence – promotions, employee of the month recognition, etc. It’s always a good idea to recognize and reward those employees who go the extra mile for your customers – and your restaurant. Whether it’s putting in OT when required, handling customer issues, or providing flexibility, make sure you reward your best workers with gift cards, an extra day off, formal recognition, and more. 

Roll with the punches – we touched on this earlier…here’s where that adaptability comes into play. Nothing can prepare you for restaurant staff management. It’s a hectic job, there are plenty of ups and downs, and it takes that innate ability to remain calm in the midst of a storm to get your staff through a hectic shift – and well beyond. The very best restaurant managers are that rock everyone can lean on in a crisis. 

Put your support system in place – some managers think they can do everything by themselves. But we’re here to tell you that some daily and weekly tasks – like managing payroll, to cite just one example – are too much to handle for even the best-organized, optimistic managers. If there’s one constant in how to manage restaurant staff, it’s realizing where and when to utilize the tools that make the job easier. That’s what we’ve been doing at RASI for years!

Restaurant server with a plate of French fries and burger

Let RASI Help with Restaurant Employee Management

There’s always going to be on-the-job training associated with restaurant staff management. You never know that the next hour, shift, or week will bring. But RASI helps with the financial variables that surround the question of how to manage restaurant staff.

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Our accounting platform is used by individual eateries, franchisees, caterers and other food service professionals, and we’re confident we have the plans and pricing to help ease all the challenges associated with restaurant employee management. 

Contact us today, or request a demo of our services. Expert, innovative accounting help is right around the corner. Thanks for visiting RASI, and we look forward to hearing from you soon!