Preventing Takeout Mistakes
Posted by estiator at 10 January, at 08 : 15 AM Print
MANAGING FOR SUCCESS By CONSTANTINE N. KOLITSAS Business Coach
Any restaurant manager who does a good amount of takeout will tell you that mistakes cost you business. Whereas a mistake in the dining room can very often be fixed within minutes, the only way to fix a mistake with a takeout order is to remake the order and have the customer come back, or to send a driver to the customer’s house (or workplace). To understand the frustration on the part of the customer, put yourself in his or her shoes: You’ve just finished a 12-hour shift at work, stopped at your favorite restaurant to pick up an order of BBQ wings, got home, and when you opened your meal, you discovered the wings were coated with buffalo sauce. It’s no surprise, then, that this customer will lose confidence. The fact is, you’ve lost this customer until the next two or three restaurants get his order wrong. You may not even realize you’ve made the mistake (most people won’t bother to call) and just assume this customer moved away or got bored. The good news is that there are very few restaurants that have good systems or training in place to prevent mistakes, much less a culture that is built around a “zero mistake” philosophy. Eventually he’ll be back, but you’ve lost lots of his business in the interim.
Mistakes are a part of life. But in the world of hyper communication, where every mistake has the potential to be broadcast to the world by an irate customer, we want to make as very few as possible.
To start, let’s take the position that no mistake is acceptable. Set a high bar, even if it’s unachievable. By beginning with the assumption that some mistakes are unavoidable and, as such, acceptable, we are conceding the loss before we’ve even suited up for the contest. So, then, we are on a “zero mistakes” mission. Let’s get analytical. Make a list of all the mistakes made in the last two weeks and beside each, write the name of the individuals responsible for them. In a third column, put the position of each individual whose name appears in the second column.
Now you can begin to see how many of the mistakes are position-based and how many are due to a specific person. If the mistake is “items missing from orders” and you have five people who work the takeout expo position and only one is making the mistakes, then you have good systems in place, but one individual is careless. If all five names appear with regularity on your list, it’s probably because your systems need to be improved.
To start, let’s take the position that no mistake is acceptable. Set a high bar, even if it’s unachievable.
In this case, you need to do a deep dive into how expo functions. Work the position for a few shifts with the crew and see if there are ways to “bulletproof” your processes. Maybe it’s as simple as keeping the ketchup packets closer to the expo window. Maybe you need a laminated list of sides that go with specific menu items. Maybe you need to have a sign-off before the bag is conveyed to the customer. Systems are critical in preventing mistakes before they happen.
In the next instance, you need to know the mistakes your individual team members are likely to make and find a way to prevent them. For example, the POS system I use puts the quantity of an item on the line below the item name in a font that is small and difficult to read. I know that when it’s busy, the line cooks will often not see it. It’s not their fault; they’re working quickly and the flaw is in the POS. The solution was to make sure the expo person looks at that line, and when he sees that there is more than one item needed on an order, he will communicate it to the line cook.
In another scenario, if you have a counter person with the habit of “listening too fast” (assuming they know what the customer is saying before the customer is done talking), you want to have them read the order back to the customer.
Finally, look for the “land mines” on your menu. If you have chicken salad sandwiches, Caesar salad with chicken, and an Asian chicken salad, you want to coach your team to clarify what the guest wants when they simply order “chicken salad,” because the customer may think they’ve ordered one thing and the counter person understood something different.
At the end of the day, we need to understand that our operations have evolved. Taking proactive measures to ensure that we can provide the requisite level of service to our customers to enable our success is necessary to our survival in the new normal. Finding where the mistakes will happen and taking an analytical approach to addressing systems and persons is the first and most important step in eliminating mistakes.
Constantine Kolitsas is the president of CNK Consulting, a restaurant consultant and coaching business. he can be reached at 203-947-6234 or at ckolitsas@gmail.com.
