Operations: Be Prepared
Posted by estiator at 11 June, at 10 : 14 AM Print
Post-mortem your holidays to plan for next year.
By CONSTANTINE N. KOLITSAS
They say that proper planning prevents poor performance. And if this alliterative aphorism sounds clichéd, it is no less true, particularly going into a special day like Mother’s Day, which as you read this issue, is still a vivid memory. So, with details from the day still accessible to your memory banks, it’s a good time to do a post-mortem and capture what went right, what went wrong, and what didn’t go at all.
This page, then, is a checklist of sorts. Get out your pens!
The best way to plan for a special day like Mother’s Day is to put together a folder with as much information that can be gleaned from the most recent Mother’s Day.
The first thing to put in the folder is the menu. Very often, restaurants will go with a limited version of their regular menu (often with prices increased) or with a prix fixe menu. A product mix report from your restaurant POS should also be printed and placed alongside the menu, helping you to identify items that moved and items that didn’t move. Before putting it into the folder, do a qualitative analysis. Did the lower-priced items move more than the higher-priced ones? Did chicken move better than steak? Were customers skipping dessert? What was the alcohol-to-food mix? Did mimosas and bloody Marys sell as much as you anticipated?
Your POS should also be able to produce an hour-by-hour report that will identify how much sales you did (and, hopefully, covers) for each of the hour intervals that you were open.
If you use a reservation app, you should be able to download a report that will tell you how many covers you did; what times those covers came in; number of no shows and cancellations; and names (and other data) of people who came (as well as of those who didn’t show up or canceled at the last minute). It should also be able to tell you how long each party stayed (as long as your host was checking them in and out in the app). This will enable you to pace the customers next time.
It would also be good to include a floor plan. Did you add tables? Was outdoor seating used? How many seats did you have set up for the day? How many groups of six did you have? How many groups of eight? Of ten? Of more than ten?
Notes on the day should be fairly detailed and include the weather, any special circumstances. For instance, was Covid an issue? Was there long-term construction on your road that made customers averse to driving in the area? Were gas prices keeping people from spending as much as you had anticipated? Among your notes, you should also include some commentary about the crowd that came in. Were there more infants than usual? Older people? Families? Couples?
What type of marketing did you do for the event? If you have analytics from those marketing efforts, include those (Facebook, Instagram, etc).
Script a staffing plan. How many servers were on? How many support staff? How many cooks on the line? Dishwashers?
On the food side, keep a list of any items that were 86’d and what time they ran out. Also, how prepared were you with your plateware, flatware, and glassware? Did you run out of coffee cups at the last seating?
All of this information will not only help you to be better prepared for the next holiday, it will also relieve a good amount of work, as well as limit your frustration at a time when you need to focus.
Hopefully everything went smoothly for your restaurant’s Mother’s Day last month. And even if it did, it’s still a great idea to put together your folder for next year. As the Boy Scouts motto goes, “Be prepared”!
