The benefits to streamlining your kitchen operations are endless. Not only are you offering a better work environment for your employees, but will also offer better customer service to those dining in or picking up an order from your restaurant. It is important to look at some of your key performance indicators to get an idea of how well you are doing. Looking at your restaurant’s speed, accuracy, consistency, and quality output is a great place to start. Mistakes are going to happen, but when you have a system in place to help everything run smoother, you will greatly reduce the amount of mistakes made. Here are 4 tips to help you better streamline your kitchen and be on your way to a happier, healthier business!
- Increased Communication
Communication is key in just about every aspect of life, and it’s no different when it comes to your kitchen operations. A great way to improve your communication is by ensuring all staff have received adequate training. You want them to know how the restaurant operates and everyone should have very clear instructions on how to utilize the technology that your restaurant has invested in. Your front-of-house staff needs to have seamless communication with the back-of-house staff in order for each part of the restaurant to run smoothly and efficiently. The kitchen area can be chaotic with orders being prepared, new tickets in the line-up, and people running back and forth, so it is vital to have top notch communication.
- Digital Kitchen Order Tickets
Every restaurant wants satisfied customers and does not want to see orders returned to the kitchen. Investing in a POS system that can communicate with back-of-house will greatly improve efficiency. Kitchen staff will not have to decode what was written down and can easily see what has been added or removed from an order without having to confirm with whoever took the order. Digital kitchen order tickets make the entire process run with more speed and accuracy, leaving less room for human error.
- Smart Menu Management
While you want to offer a wide range of menu items, more often than not, it’s going to hinder your restaurant rather than help it. Inventory is harder to track, you end up with too much of one item and not enough of the other, leaving you with a lot of food waste. We’re not saying that this happens to every restaurant, but it’s more likely to happen when you have a wider variety of menu items. When you choose food items that can be used across multiple items on the menu, you are simplifying the process of ordering and also making it easier for kitchen staff to create each dish.
- Kitchen Safety
You might be wondering how kitchen safety has anything to do with streamlining your kitchen operations, but it’s very important and should be a top priority. Ensuring your staff knows the correct way to use kitchen tools and equipment can mean less accidents, which results in less lost time and lower liability. There are hot surfaces and sharp objects everywhere in a kitchen, and while it may seem obvious, adequate training is still a must. Regularly inspecting all vital equipment will also help reduce replacement costs and potential injuries caused by faulty equipment. It’s better to be proactive than reactive.
There are so many ways to streamline your kitchen operations. Take a look at what your restaurant is already doing, examine what areas of your kitchen operations could be improved, and implement change. Your business will run more efficiently, your employees will be thankful for the structure and your customers will be satisfied with the speed and quality of the service they are experiencing. It’s a win win!
