Tips on how to hold an effective restaurant staff meeting to improve service

Is it time to hold a staff meeting at your restaurant? Do you want to learn how to get your employees to implement the goals of that meeting? Here are some tips for holding crew meetings that will; stick with your staff, deliver desired results, and improve your service!

Some restaurants hold too many meetings. The staff can generally predict what is coming, and are usually busy socializing, bored, or working out shift changes amongst themselves, instead of focusing on what is being discussed. Hold too many, and you will have a high absentee rate also! For the most part, holding too many meetings is nothing more than a big waste of time, and money!

Some restaurants don't ever hold staff meetings. This can result in poor communications between staff, a lack of direction, and can undermine goal setting! With a lack on focus, and no real priorities, you show a general lack of interest, and the staff will also do the same. A staff will work only to the standards you set. To set these standards, there needs to be communication on a regular basis.

Meetings, for the sake of having a meeting, is a poor use of your time, and that of your employees. Save your big stuff for these your employee meetings! Make a plan, and set goals for what you want to accomplish! Only conduct full staff meetings when there is a real need, and you have clear objectives.

For example: you want to set up a staff meeting to introduce your new menu. This is a critical need for a meeting. You can prepare the new menu items, and let the staff experience these new dishes. They will have the ability to taste, ask, critique, and gain the tools they need to convey this information to their guests. This will also allow your kitchen to get that important practice they need, to prepare these new menus items, so that on the roll out of your menu day, they will have the kinks worked out! Nothing gets a staffs attention more than free food, and the employee will likely retain the information you are trying to convey.

Make your staff meetings interactive! If your goal is to reduce food costs, play a game! Take the staff and split them into two teams. Ask a series of 50 questions all related to food costs and quality control. For instance, how much does one bottle of catsup cost the restaurant? How many croutons go on a dinner salad? How many ounces of fries come with each dinner? What does it cost the restaurant for a walk out? These questions will certainly throw them for a loop, and at the first meeting, most won't know the answers! However, the idea here is to make them aware of what things cost, that food cost is a priority, and that lowering food costs, is everyone's goal! It will also be fun, interactive, informative, and most of all memorable!

Remember always be training! Conduct daily staff meetings, or huddles, to reinforce communications on a regular basis. They should be very short, 2-3 minutes every day at the start of each shift. This will repeatedly express your standards in an ongoing manner, and will help establish consistency!

It is not what you say, it is really how you say it! Get your staff involved, make them look forward to coming to your meetings! Encourage them to be active participants, and empowered stakeholders! Following these easy tips will help you attain your goals faster and more efficiently, with a well trained, well informed staff, that will ultimately improve your service!

Learn more about this author, Erica Michaelson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Tips for improving restaurant service?
We want to hear your view. Write now!