You may be a veteran restaurant owner, but you should always be reassessing your operation to ensure you are staying up to date with guest trends and efficient front-of-house solutions.
Your front-of-house includes everything from your restaurant décor and POS system to your servers, bussers, and hostess.
It’s essential to prioritize your front-of-house operations since that is heart of the guest experience.
Providing a positive guest experience is what keeps your restaurant open, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to make sure that happens.
Instead of rebuilding your kitchen at great expense or redesigning your dining room to attract more customers, why not aim to make customers happier with an improved FOH experience?
Here are four tips to transforming your front-of-house and creating the best guest experience:
1. Adopt Contactless Dining
From digital ordering and payment to minimizing the number of shared surfaces and objects, touchless technology represents a new way of dining – while also providing exceptional service. Consumers have clear expectations about what will make them feel safe when ordering from or dining at a restaurant. By removing the need to share menus, touch receipts, and hand over credit cards, you can keep your staff and guests both safe and happy.
2. Create a FOH Training Manual for Staff
By creating a document where staff can turn to when they have questions or need help, having a front-of-house training manual can be a guide for employees during busy dayparts when management is busy during service. Make sure to keep it updated with new policies and best practices. Address frequently asked questions that new staff may have and include steps to providing exceptional guest service.
3. Make The Reservation Process Simple
Have you ever had a crowded lobby full of hungry diners waiting hours to get seated? Let’s face it, hangry is a real thing! When a restaurant doesn’t have a simple reservation process, it can make the wait time long and keep your guests starving. By using a virtual waitlist, you can make the reservation process easy and smooth for guests so they don’t have to wait long and can get updates on their place in line. Virtual waitlists streamline your FOH operations and help the hostess assign tables for guests being seated.
4. Add Televisions To Your Lobby To Keep Guests Entertained While They Wait
Not only can you put food network on while guests wait, but you can also use TV’s to display your menu so guests can get an idea of what they might order before they are seated. Displaying your restaurant menu on your TV is more efficient, is engaging, and is a resource to help you grow your business.
A restaurant’s front-of-house is the center focus of each guest. When you encourage virtual reservations, implement contactless dining, and add entertainment, your front-of-house can be a source of high-quality service and maximized efficiently.
