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Having manager’s perform SMART Pre-Shift Inspections every meal period refocuses them on what is important to running a successful operation. The benefit of focus is something that I had to rediscover recently, but it makes so much sense.

We don’t do enough as an industry to focus and ground our manager’s every single shift on what is important to running a profitable business, and it is a gigantic missed opportunity. Managers are expected to be multi-tasking omnipotent robots that can instantly shift between their different responsibilities, and that is just not always the case.

I was a floor manager at one of the busier Changs in the early 2000’s when it was not uncommon for us to be on a 1:45-minute wait on a Monday night. I remember it as a very chaotic job that could go from 0 to 60 to 30 to 90 to 120 back to 0 in a single shift.

I remember scrambling to work on projects and deal with putting out fires in that two-hour window between lunch and dinner. Then getting back into the driver seat again for the dinner rush.

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I have also managed at slower restaurants, and I found myself fighting boredom and apathy. Trying to stay motivated and keep my team motivated to give great service.

Manager’s make restaurants successful. We have all seen a manager who got a location rocking and rolling: high sales, good profits, great service. They leave, and the next guy comes in and this location goes from hero to zero in 3 months. There were no major changes in the area driving the decline, it was just that the new manager couldn’t keep the staff on point, service up, and customers reacted.

It is the nature of this industry that we have customers in our building for large portions of our day. There is a ton of moving pieces that need to be dealt with every single shift. It is easy to get caught up in fire fighting and then stumble into your next shift without having the opportunity to focus yourself and your team on what is important.

Two tools that I have seen implemented with a lot of success are SMART pre-shift Inspections that manager’s conduct before each meal period and pre-shift meetings with each department.

SMART Pre-shift inspections get your managers walking around your restaurant looking at your critical safety and operational readiness items ensuring that you are ready to handle the rush. Performing this inspection reminds managers what is important and helps them catch things that they might have missed if they hadn’t done the inspection.

Pre-shift meetings with service and kitchen teams give us an opportunity to communicate shift info to the team and get them focused on serving guests.

Both tools have the same effect on your restaurant, they focus your staff on what is important, and that focus cascades through your operations.

We have recently created a free ebook on SMART Pre-shifts you can get a copy by clicking here.

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Tommy Yionoulis

I've been in the restaurant industry for most of my adult life. I have a BSBA from University of Denver Hotel Restaurant school and an MBA from the same. When I wasn't working in restaurants I was either doing stand-up comedy, for 10 years, or large enterprise software consulting. I'm currently the Managing Director of OpsAnalitica and our Inspector platform was originally conceived when I worked for one of the largest sandwich franchisors in the country. You can reach out to me through LinkedIn.

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2 Comments

  1. in my opinion it is difficult to know previously to the possible rush shift the total number of staff you may need
    Perhaps it is common to need extra employees for these days which are not so good as the permanent staff and their commitment is different

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