A New Service Model for Restaurants
How to lower labor costs, mitigate the labor shortage, and improve the guest experience in table service restaurants
Restaurants are usually slow to innovate. For established restaurants, especially successful ones, operators are hesitant to try new things even if it would increase profitability and sales. For new restaurants, operators often learn from “experts” who have been in the business for a long time. If those experts have been successful, why not listen to them? I’m not suggesting ignoring what has worked in the past, but it’s foolish to assume that old ways of doing things are the best way to do things.
If Covid taught us anything, it’s that restaurant operations are far more fragile, labor is more finicky, and inflation is a real threat. Rethinking the restaurant service model can be a huge competitive advantage. Even if you don’t use all of these ideas or if you roll them out slowly, just thinking about your service model can help you discover areas in which you can improve your efficiency, operations, and profitability.
The Old Model of Restaurant Service
Guest arrives. Host seats them and provides a menu.
Server eventually arrives, makes an introduction, takes drink order.
Server enters drink order into POS. If it’s a bar drink, the bartender receives the order at the bar and begins making the drinks.
Guests continue to look at the menu.
Server goes to bar to pick up drinks. Returns to table to serve drinks.
Server answers food questions, takes food order.
Server walks to the POS to enter the order.
The kitchen gets the order and begins preparation.
When the food is ready, the server picks up the food from the expo and delivers it to the table.
A few minutes later, the server returns to the table to check on the food.
When the meal is complete, the server brings the check. The server leaves to handle other tables while the customer inspects the bill and takes out their credit card.
The server eventually returns to collect the card.
The server goes to the POS to charge the card.
The server returns to the table with the processed charge.
The guest signs the receipt, adds a tip and leaves.
That’s how it’s always worked for a long time. If that was tedious to read, imagine how tedious it is to actually execute. The guest spends multiple portions of the meal experience simply waiting for a server to return. The entire transaction is reliant on the speed at which the server can move from place to place — it’s also a guessing game: if the server returns too soon, the guest might not be ready to order. If they return too late, the guest is upset for waiting to order. The kitchen is also held hostage because the bottleneck in their workflow comes from waiting for the order to be entered by the server and again when waiting for the food to be picked up from the expo. During the rush, having servers waiting in line to enter orders into the POS is frustrating.
The other problem with this model of service is that it requires more labor. A table of 6 people might take 3-5 minutes to simply place the order. If there are questions, modifiers, or special requests, it can take even longer. When a server is standing there taking an order do you know what they aren’t doing? Running food. Getting drinks. Maintaining the table. That means that a good server might only be able to cover 4-6 tables otherwise the guest experience would suffer.
31 tables requires about 7 servers in the traditional server model.
Is there a better way?
The New Service Model for Restaurants
Here’s the new way.
Guest is seated by a floor captain who introduces specials and explains the ordering process.
Guest browses menu from a QR code.
Guest orders drinks using their device. Bar begins making those drinks.
Drinks are delivered to the table by a food runner.
Guest orders their food from their device; it’s immediately transmitted to the kitchen.
Food is ready and delivered by a food runner.
Guest orders more items as they want and the food is delivered via runner.
Floor captain does a table touch, perhaps taking additional orders (such as a dessert) from a handheld.
Runner brings extra rounds of drinks or food.
When the guest is ready to leave, they pay the bill directly on their device.
Much easier right? Under this new model, 31 tables can be served by 3 floor captains.
Toast, the POS company did extensive research on these service models and they discovered that for a 31 table restaurant, the average check size for the old style was $34, using the new service model, that increased to $38. And the labor cost was lower and customer satisfaction higher. And, the most exciting part is that table turns increased by 12%! If you could increase your average check size by almost 12% while increasing table turns by 12% while reducing labor costs would you do it? All day long right?
Problems and Solutions for the New Service Model
While research has shown that a majority of restaurant guest prefer digital order and pay, there are going to be many guests that insist or prefer a paper menu. Paper menus could still be provided and the floor captain can serve those tables in the traditional style. However, when the floor captain has a handheld device, there is still an improvement in the service speed. Paper menus could be printed daily and provided to guests on request. Daily printing needn’t be expensive, simply print a few copies on card stock using a laser printer. This way if you run out of an item or have a special, your daily menu can be more accurate. This also gives you the flexibility to adjust pricing as often as required without having to print expensive permanent menus. Ultra-fine dining establishments already do this. They print on card stock each day and use a menu holder.
The days of paper menus are numbered however. Even those holdouts that insist on paper will eventually prefer the digital experience because it makes it much easier on them. They don’t have to wait as long. They can order more food and drinks without trying to flag down a server. And, they can pay and leave on their schedule — not that of the server.
During Covid we also saw “digital menus” using QR codes. And mostly they were terrible. Nothing more than a scanned PDF. However, using a good system results in interactive menus that are optimized for mobile devices. If you’ve ever used Uber Eats, you’ve seen this done in a better way. This type of system is great, especially for picky eaters — they can modify to their hearts content. You can also upsell very easily (for example, adding chicken to a salad, or substituting a more expensive upgrade.) Don’t let the scanned PDF digital menu sour you on digital ordering! You won’t be using scanned PDFs in the new service mode.
Where to go next?
Hopefully this is a thought-provoking article that gets you thinking about how you can modernize your operation, increase guest satisfaction, and lower costs. The folks at Toast have written a really great article going into deep detail on the new service model. Be sure to check it out! (Disclaimer: I do not work for Toast, nor do I get referral fees, nor do I care if you use Toast or not. However, they have excellent information on this topic.)
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