Merely starting a restaurant will not ensure that you will have a booming restaurant business. This is exactly the reason why almost 60% of the restaurants close within the 1st year of operations. Hence, the answer to your eternal question of how to manage a restaurant in Kenya will be the key deciding factor for the success of your restaurant business. You must create a detailed checklist that must be followed diligently in your restaurant every day; this includes right from when your restaurant opens to when the shutters of your restaurant come down at the end of the day. This will ensure that all the operations are done, which will keep your restaurant healthy and profitable.
A Daily Checklist Of How To Manage A Restaurant
There are a few duties, that need to be done in a restaurant on a daily basis. These will keep your restaurant on track and always ready to deliver the best services to all your customers. The list must be checked off, which will indicate that the work has been done and the manager should then review them to ensure proper operations.
1. Manager’s Checklist
A manager plays an important role in managing a restaurant. It is imperative that the manager is present when the restaurant opens and closes for specific reasons. A manager’s daily checklist can be divided into three parts, they are:
(i) Manager’s Opening Checklist
The manager who opens the restaurant will be responsible to open the POS System and for the adding of the opening cash. He should also check the reservations made by the customer for the day and reply to all the emails that the restaurant has received. Checking inventory is another very important activity that a manager must venture into. To effectively manage a restaurant in Kenya, a manager must coordinate with the executive chef to know about the available stock and whether it would suffice for the entire day, similarly the same thing must be done with the bartender as well. According to the previous day’s sales report, the manager must also project the sales of the particular day. In addition to this, a manager should always check the restrooms personally before opening the restaurant.
(ii) Shift Change Checklist
During the shift change of the manager, the previous manager should complete all his tasks so that the next manager can take up the operations of the restaurant smoothly. The first manager should also deliver all the necessary information to the next manager, for example if there is any reservation of 10 plus heads in the restaurant in later in the day, or if the kitchen ran out of a particular item or if, a particular staff has resigned suddenly or is not on floor or some personal reasons. Once all these information is delivered, it will help the next manager in line to make the appropriate decisions that will ensure that the restaurant runs smoothly during the rush hours of the day.
(iii) Manager’s Closing Checklist
Just like managers have to perform certain duties at the starting of the day, they have some likewise duties that they must perform at the end of the day as well as part of their job to manage a restaurant in Kenya. These duties precisely include counting the cash/income and comparing with POS System collections, looking at the detailed sales report at the end of the day, counting tips and allocating them appropriately. Before closing down, the manager should again reach out to the executive chef and the bartender to know about the stock used and the stock available, if the stock available is less and a reorder needs to be requested for the next day. Moreover, since the opening manager has already recorded the opening stock, the closing manager can easily analyze if there are any misappropriations happening in the restaurant from the closing stock and the sales that happened in that particular day.