Motivating Staff in a Small Restaurant

Kate Williams Food Service Organisation Unit 9

Motivation and highly qualified staff are key assets towards a welcoming and successful restaurant. For a small restaurant to have both will potentially lead to this company to grow and become very successful and generate more profits. With pleasant staff who have high standards will impress customers and lead to the restaurant’s reputation increasing. So how is this completed? Well firstly to have highly qualified staff they have to be trained very well. This can be completed through the staff participating in courses within hospitality. For example Silver Service Waiting is a qualification that many reputable restaurants set as a minimum expectation to apply for a job within their company. However for a small restaurant that may not be able to fund for such training, they themselves will have to teach from capable staff already working for them. For example for an new waiter to be taken on without any qualifications an experienced waiter should show them how to go about approaching a table, take food orders, take food out, take drinks out and collect any unwanted glasses or plates etc. The inexperienced waiter should simply, to start off, observe and then get used to the routine. Then when they’re confident to practice first of all where there is minimal pressure on the worker to take and order so they won’t be rushing around and getting stressed. Other training such as bar work again should take a very similar approach to the training of new staff. Have an experienced member of bar staff to teach and instruct the new member of staff on tips and hints within their job. The new member of staff should observe and once again when there isn’t much pressure they should try it out. But this is where confidence is key for a successful team of staff. And a key asset towards confidence is motivation. Motivation can be a hard for some people to