- Bad Seating Arrangements
Some restaurants have bad seating arrangements. Many of us may have seen restaurants with tables right at the entrance where new guests are queueing up and consistently walking past or tables that are placed in awkward positions, sandwiched or facing other diners. You can rearrange your restaurant’s seating arrangements to ensure that it is appropriate and comfortable according to the majority of customers’ liking and to your knowledge.
Some seating arrangements can hardly feel the air-conditioning or in contrast, some of them can feel the full blast of the aircon. You should take this into consideration and adjust your air-conditioning to accommodate the comfort of your guests.
- Dirty, Bad-smelling Restrooms
Dirty or bad-smelling restrooms can put away one’s appetite easily. Hygiene is the most important concern in F&B Restaurants and customers would generally assume that your restaurant is not hygienic overall if they spot one factor that you did not meet the mark. This will turn away potential customers and deter the decision of future guests from dining in your restaurants due to word-of-mouth, bad ratings or negative feedback that are published online.
You can hire one cleaner or assign one of your staff members to ensure that the restrooms are always clean and neat. You can also come up with an hourly timesheet card and ask the respective staff to sign his/her name on the card so that they would not dare to slack off and do their job properly. By doing so, you would feel rest assured that your restroom hygiene would be in good hands.
- Inadequate Sauces or Condiments Available
Customers may have a wide variety of preferences on the sauces or condiments . Thus, you can actually bring in the most widely and commonly used by customers such as balsamic vinegar, olive oil, tartar sauce, chilli flakes, cheese sauce, black pepper and mustard. By having varieties of sauces and condiments, it gives your customers the flexibility to choose what they want to add in their dish for a better taste.
- Communications with customers
Staff members should always be alert to not annoy the customers too much by trying hard to come up with casual conversations or jokes when the latter just want to spend time chit chatting with their friends and family. That doesn’t mean that you should appear cold and unfriendly. Staff members should have their own judgement and assess the situation such as observing customers’ tone, mood and reaction when taking their orders. From there, you should know best on how to approach the customers for a casual topic and come off as friendly.
During busy times, try to minimise the conversations if you know the restaurant is short-handed and there are many things to do at the moment. Kindly let the customers know that, and they will be more than happy to talk to you afterwards. This also gives them the impression that you are responsible and take pride in your work. Who knows, you may be getting a tip from them afterwards!
- Slow Service
I am sure mostly everyone will get upset if they have to wait a long time for plain water or condiments they requested. During restaurant operations, especially peak hours, every staff member would be busy multitasking. As a team, all staff members should communicate with each other and help each other out when needed. For instance, you can ask your colleague if he/she is free to help you and serve the plain water to the table that you were attending to if you have many things to do on hand at the moment such as keying in an order.
This will ensure a fast and smooth service by you and your team which would please the customers as they do not have to wait too long for what they requested to be served.
- Staff talking bad about other customers to each other
It is understandable that some customers are hard to handle and make unreasonable demands. But, staff should never talk bad about other customers in front of other customers. This shows the unprofessionalism of the staff members and it reflects badly on the reputation of the restaurant. Furthermore, it will lead to complaints and customers would question the standard of service and staff’s manners and professionalism, elevating the issue.
Staff should always keep in mind that they are working in their uniform attire. They should display top level of professionalism and serve customers to the best of their ability. If a staff cannot handle certain situations or customers, he/she should inform the manager on duty and let them take over the situation.
