Inspire Your Staff with Predictive Knowledge and Goals
Prep - Using Proactive Insights through Data to Setup For Success
Being informed and prepared allows you to focus on inspiring your team, setting attainable goals, and creating a healthy work environment that will reflect both in dollars and happy repeat guests. When you speak to your team and appear both knowledgeable and confident, you build a trust that is mutually beneficial in driving revenue for the establishment and your staff. We are here to have fun and make money so what makes the top operators successful?
Determine Current Initiatives
As you dive into becoming a data driven manager, you should begin with some easy wins where you can cut costs such as overtime pay or increase your establishments PPA with a beverage incentive program. Track your progress over time and build on to each initiative. Find out what other successful operators are using Avero reports for through some of our best practice Guides:
- Tips & Tricks - Manage Labor Costs During Slow Seasons
- Tips & Tricks - Manage Costs During Slow Seasons
- Beverage Sales Insights to Protect Profits
- Preventing Promotion and Void Abuse Scams
FOH Prep
A trend report is used to identify how something is changing over time. Forecast reporting through trends allows you to foresee how today's shifts should run. By tracking your trended data for specific week days, you can anticipate the amount of guests that walk through your door, what times to expect high volumes, and your top selling items. This way, you can staff accordingly and have items prepared ahead of time.
Recommended Reports for Your Shift Prep Dashboard
- Item Sales Report (Available in: All subscription levels)
- Hourly Sales Report (Available in: Essentials and Professional subscriptions)
- Overtime Report (Available in: Professional subscriptions only)
BOH Prep
Use the Prep Calculator to determine what your team should be expecting to sell for the day with trend data. (Available in: Essentials and Professional subscriptions)
- If you are expecting more guests than the average day of the week based on reservations or a large party, you can update the forecasted covers with the forecasted prep quantity option.
- Check out your top selling items and make sure you have the expected counts on hand and ready to serve.
Pre-Shift Logbook Prep
Creating a logbook section for pre-shift is a great way to prepare for the shift, track goals and initiatives, and for historical documentation that can be referenced later. While Reviewing your dashboard and emailed reports, you can use your pre-shift template to prepare for the day.
To begin, confirm you have access to the logbook special role in your settings. If you do not have this role, you can request that your Avero admin user adds it to your account. You can then review how how to guide Creating & Managing Logbook Templates. You can create a single pre-shift template or create separate ones for FOH and BOH if pre-shift is handled separately.
Suggested Logbook Fields for Pre-Shift
- Dashboard / Email Reviewed Check Box - Management should be reviewing daily emails and dashboards before each shift. As confirmation, they can check this box once this step is completed. The time stamp offers insight on how long this step is taking to complete once the manager has started their shift.
- Dashboard / Email Highlights - While management reviews their daily reports, they should be noting any important changes in data regarding their goals and any additional feedback based on their findings. EXAMPLE: We are working to increase beverage percent by 10% in Q1 and we are currently seeing a 6% increase as of week 7.
- Pre-Shift Theme - For consistency and focus, it is recommended to keep a theme for a week or more that is in line with your current goals and initiatives. EXAMPLE: As we are working on beverage %, this week our focus is on cocktail service.
- Inspirational Quote - Pre-shift meetings set the tone for the shift. Including a fun inspirational quote is a quick win in getting the team excited to work together and make money! This can be a quick google find or a relevant quote taking from a current show the team has shown interest in.
- Focus Item(s) - Knowledge is the biggest tool in your belt. Having a focus item that the team discusses the before the shift allows you to continue educating your team daily. Sharing the items tasting notes, interesting facts, and/or upsell tips will help your staff tremendously. Having the item to taste (if local laws allow) and discuss as a team is always a best practice. Running a contest with the staff to sell the focus item with a small reward such as receiving that item after the shift will empower your competitive team members. This can be a continued activity that can be tracked as part of your incentives through a Contest Report that can be included with your dashboard and/or emails.
- Focus Service Step - Initiatives are not just about increasing sales. You should be driving your team on turning tickets and providing great guest experiences. This can be done with a service step focus for both your FOH and BOH team. EXAMPLE: Decreasing ticket times (this can be overall or on an area such as appetizers.) Getting out appetizers quickly along with the FOH teams focus on getting in an early round of drinks encourages customers to get started quickly, allowing them an extra round to increase ticket average without increasing table times negatively.
- Recognition and Celebrations - Recognizing your team is crucial in developing a positive and healthy work environment for your team and guests. Nothing is more detrimental to a business than an unappreciated staff. Praise your current contest leader, highlight sales goals, acknowledge birthdays and work anniversaries.
"Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough to they don't want to"
- Sir Richard Branson
- Post Pre-Shift Feedback - Get your teams feedback!
- What is working, what isn't.
- Take-aways - what they learned from the pre-shift.
- How they feel incentives are working. Did anyone contribute any ideas for improvement.
- Tasting notes if an item was sampled with the team.
- Homework - A solid F&B program requires ongoing education. Assign each server a wine on your menu to research before the next shift. This should include both tasting notes and fun facts about the vineyard, the grape varietal, and/or the owners. There can be a rotation in presenting their wine during pre-shift and the notes can be stored near the bottles so they can be quickly referenced and used in the presentation for the wine.