10 things a successful restaurant manager does every day

📌 What makes a successful restaurant manager? What kind of superpowers does someone need to keep a restaurant functioning perfectly?
Being a bad manager is very easy— so much that it isn’t unusual to encounter yourself with one. These occasional supervisors who leave their employees to work by themselves are a threat to any company’s plans for growth and success. The truth is, a manager should work just as much as their subordinates, or even more so! Their responsibilities are so high that one bad move could jeopardize the entire restaurant. But, don’t worry! We cracked the code into knowing exactly what makes a manager good.
Here is a list of 10 things to become one:

1. Be an early bird

To be aware of everything happening in a restaurant, you should be the first one to come and the last one to go.
Get to work an hour earlier to:

1. Make sure the restaurant and workplaces are all clean and ready to go;
2. Identify latecomers;
3. Check the appearance of employees.

There will be some days that will make it harder for you to wake up in the morning. While it’s true that physical visits to the workplace are important, you don’t really need to be there all the time in order to supervise your team. Management platforms like Mr. Tomato make it fairly easy to check on your staff from the comfort of your phone. Just picture yourself calmly having breakfast while checking your employee’s checklists, schedules, and progress with attached live pictures that evidence their work – no forgetting, no cheating, all pure facts. Wouldn’t you like that?

2. Check reports

During this “early” hour, you should generate reports for the previous shift and study them:

1. Yesterday’s restaurant profit (cash, terminal, and cashless payments)
2. Discount reports
3. Reports on plan fulfillment, average bill, new products sales
4. Payment cancellation

You can also upload all of your documents in the Mr. Tomato app! Make it comfortable and accessible, as you ensure that nothing will ever get lost.

3. Conduct meetings with the Heads of the Department

During the meeting, you should:

1. Sum up the results of the previous day’s work and briefly voice the key figures of the reports;
2. Analyze difficult situations, analyze any inaccuracies;
3. Set every department’s goals and objectives for the day;
4. Get feedback from the head managers on the work for the past day and their plans for the current one.

Notify your employees about urgent meetings in your own restaurant’s Smart Feed from Mr. Tomato!

4. Agree on product purchase

Always check on:

1. The volume of sales;
2. Amount of product residues;
3. Planned quantity of product to purchase.

Note that it is necessary to monitor how the amount of purchases correspond to the established food cost. If the food cost is set at 30%, then the amount of purchases should not significantly exceed 30% of the proceeds, excluding holidays, banquets, and other special occasions. It is important to check the actual balances in the storage in order to not freeze the working capital and not allow write-offs of expired products.

5. Check shipping manifests

Pay attention to these points:

1. Route;
2. Time and place of stops;
3. Fuel paychecks availability.

6. Control the restaurant’s social media networks

Now your restaurant’s presence on social media is more important than ever. Take some time to check if your SMM does it right (you could also share this checklist with him):

1. Control the regularity of posts and their compliance with the approved content plan;
2. Make sure all posts have the same tone of voice and a design based on the brand book;
3. Pay attention to questions from guests and their feedback. Make sure that answers to guests’ questions are given as quickly as possible;
4. Positive reviews should all have feedback, so guests feel that their opinion and attention is important to the restaurant;
5. If your restaurant received a negative review, do not rush to delete it (be sure to give feedback, whether it is objective or not).

7. Monitor the reservation and event logbook

All events should be under the personnel manager’s control. Find out when the event will take place, how many people will be there, who is the organizer, what the menu is going to be, the interval of serving, and special preferences of the client. Also, never forget to receive feedback from guests after the event.

8. Communicate with guests

One of the main manager’s tasks is communication with guests. Greet and have a friendly dialogue with guests, solving any possible issues or even serving. This way the manager can get valuable feedback from the guests on the quality of employee’s service.

9. Supervise the kitchen, hall, and bar

1. Track for at least twice a day of how many tables are open and occupied;
2. Control the time it takes for the waiter to serve the dishes;
3. Selectively weight the dishes to check if the number resonates with the output indicated in the menu;
4. Monitor the implementation of the guest service standards (greeting, service, handling objections, settlement).

It’s tricky to learn all the restaurant’s policies at once! With Mr. Tomato  you can set up reminders for the employees to relearn the materials they examined a long time ago. You can also run tests to see if the whole team is on the same page!

10. Conduct a brief employee survey

The team has to keep up with every change in the restaurant’s policies, menu, and dish specials, so this procedure must be carried out daily in different departments. Monitor waiters and bartenders for their knowledge on food and drinks, storage conditions and serving rules.

People tend to forget everything they don’t get reminded of constantly. Mr. Tomato uses micro-learning and gamification techniques to ensure the learning process is 3x more efficient and truly joyful!

Let the smart app keep all documentation safe, collect the data about your employee’s performance and make your life easy like Sunday morning!