Posts in category: Management

If there is one thing that should never be overlooked on your business, that is your team’s learning. A company can only grow if their employees grow, and your employees will only grow with you if they’re provided with the right tools for their development and motivation.

During this modern technological uproar, company’s are investing much more in learning platforms than they ever have. Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) are being developed on the daily, eager to fit the necessities of various kinds of businesses. But, what do these actually do? What is an LMS, exactly? What is an LXP? And most importantly, how beneficial can their acquisition be for your company?

An LMS or learning management system is a software that facilitates administration functions, analytics, and data collection throughout an entire educational path. It is being used by companies to digitalize staff training and therefore make employee onboarding and team building more effective.

Having an LMS implemented to the workplace has a bunch of benefits, from allowing HR managers to create courses, supervise and analyze their staff’s progress more easily, reduce overall training costs, and save lots and lots of time.

Learning management systems were created with business managers’ needs in mind, with features specially designed to simplify staff management tasks and teamwork duties. On the other hand, Learning Experiences Platforms, their latest predecessors, have recently risen with a new purpose in sight: the employees’ needs.

Learning Experiences Platforms or LXP are everything a LMS can be and more. Firstly, they are AI driven, meaning they learn from the user’s results in order to customize individual learning paths for each. That way, employees are involved in software that actually attends their specific needs, creating effective development and real growth for their professional careers.

Secondly, they exist in vast variety. There are LXPs for EVERY type of business. For example, let’s say you run a restaurant and need a platform to control the high turnover issue. Well, there’s an exact app for that! Mr. Tomato is a sophisticated yet user friendly LXP specialized for restaurant training and team building. Apps like Mr. Tomato are highly accessible, literally, a button click away from transforming HR management as we know it.

LMS was also very focused on top-down management style, whereas LXPs pretend to shift that with a more autonomous and independent style of learning for employees. It helps them feel motivated about their own growth and actually compromise to it for their own good instead of the company’s. That way, it’s beneficial for employees, their employers, and, in the end, society itself.

Because a company should care about their employees first, no matter if they stay with you forever or leave. If you prepare an employee well, they leave your company feeling satisfied, mature, and ready to talk about you.

So, are you ready to evolve your company’s learning? Start looking for the LXP or LMS that will suit you best!

This season is to be jolly, merry, glittery, and – if you work at a restaurant – stressed. The last two weeks of December seem to have everyone on a festive frenzy. It can either drive you crazy or, if you prepare well enough for it, it can be extremely profitable for your business.

Here are 5 things every restaurant should do to prepare for Christmas and the New Year!

• #1 Make a seasonal menu

Your restaurant needs to exude holiday spirit all around, from your decorations, to the music, all the way to what you serve your customers. Curate a special menu with unique seasonal dishes and lure your customers with fantastic smells of peppermint, cinnamon, ginger, and cranberries, as you give them a taste of Christmas with every bite!

• #2 Optimize your labor

December is a month like no other and it can get quite overwhelming for your staff. Make sure you are preparing them properly for the high season, arranging their schedules accordingly, paying extra hours, hiring more employees to prevent understaffing, and training them well for all the changes.

Using a staff management software can save you from a lot of chaos in times like this. Apps like Mr. Tomato offer a digital scheduling platform, interactive checklists, and even a training system for your employees to learn your menu, cocktails, and policies easily and fast while increasing their productivity.

• #3 Offer catering services

Christmas is not Christmas without gigantic plates of food. Among so many hugs and gifts, everyone’s biggest wish really is to fill their bellies with deliciousness.

Fortunately for us restauranteurs, many people can’t cook at all. Expanding your cuisine services by catering for holiday events is an excellent idea for increasing your restaurant’s income and generating more jobs!

• #4 Throw special promos

Even if we all feel like big spenders in December, there’s nothing that makes people’s eyes sparkle more than the chance to save some bucks.

Offering special meal packages, limited time offers, and 2×1 discounts are always infallible to draw traffic to your restaurant. It may seem like an obvious tip, but it’s worth remembering for such a high and profitable season!

• #5 Celebrate with your team!

Never forget to thank and reward the people who always have your back during simple and tough times! Shut down your restaurant for a night and throw a staff party with a delicious meal, presents, team bonding activities, and wrap it all up with a motivational speech to get people in the spirit for an exciting new year together!

📌 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!