Determining section sizes can be a tricky line to walk. You want to make sure that you have enough staff on the floor to take excellent care of your customers. But each additional server comes with an hourly wage, and your servers are going to want more tables so that they can make more tips. So what’s the perfect balance?

As always, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Not just from restaurant to restaurant, but even within your restaurant, it might depend by the day, or the server. For most, the sweet spot is in 3-6 tables for best use of resources (at my peak I was in charge of a section of 14 tables – 4 x 4pax, 1 x 3pax and 5 x 2pax.) Your more proficient servers can and should have larger sections than your new hires. During the shoulders, the section size will increase as staff take breaks, assuming that all tables won’t be sat. During the peaks, the section size will decrease. Holidays or special events will impact this as well. Maybe you took on a large party with a set menu, so despite the size of the party, you don’t need to increase the number of servers assigned to it. Or maybe it’s a holiday (Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, etc.) and you want to decrease the section size to let servers focus on their tables.

Is there a secret to allowing servers to have more tables? Yes! Schedule a food runner or server’s assistant to help with the tasks outside of their section. Taking tasks away from the servers such as food delivery or drink ordering, allows them to spend more time in their section, meaning you may be able to staff less, saving on wages and increasing their tips.

Story

I was working as a waiter in a fine dining restaurant. It had already been an adjustment to go from having 7-8 table sections in my previous job to having 3-5, depending on the night. I was super excited for New Year’s Eve knowing that we were fully booked, meaning I could make a lot of money. When I arrived for my shift and checked out my section, I couldn’t have been more disappointed. 2 tables. TWO TABLES? You mean I’m going to come in on a holiday to work and I’m only going to make tips from TWO TABLES?

The good news is, I was wrong. That night we were fully staffed, everyone with 2 table sections (a few servers even had a one table section because of the party size). We had on a few food runners who helped get food out and with the miscellaneous tasks. We were beyond busy – fully booked, but also taking walk-ins. On a night that could have been a disaster because of how many guests we were taking care of, everything went so smoothly because we were all focused on our, very small, areas. Because of this, we did a record high guest count, with a record high check average and, even in my two table section, I made the most in tips I ever had or would at that restaurant.

By identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your staff you are able to provide the appropriate amount of tables for each staff member. By doing this you are getting the best of them and providing the best for your customer.

You know some variant of the old quote by philosopher George Santayana “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Well the fortunate thing about this in the restaurant industry is that we aren’t doomed to repeat it, but lucky to do so. Our past and history give us so much information about how to prepare for the future that if used correctly, it can only help make us wildly successful. Fact!

The restaurant industry can be volatile and unpredictable, but also surprisingly steady and predictable over the longer term. Many of the keys to success lie in our past. Aside from the one-off scenarios (a bus pulled up to your restaurant an unloaded and unexpected tour group), the traffic patterns in your restaurant are just that – patterns. The more you study these patterns, the better you’ll learn to use them.

When looking at the past to plan the future, you need to understand 4 key areas hours of the day, days of the week, events and season. Understanding how these factors impact your traffic will allow you to much more accurately plan staff schedules and set prep and ordering pars. Make note of not only how these effect your traffic, but ordering habits (for example you’re likely to see increased beer sales on Father’s Day and increased dessert sales on Mother’s Day). There is no one-size-fits-all solution to forecasting because every restaurant is unique, so every restaurant is impacted differently by events and seasons.

Hours of the day: what are your peaks and what do the shoulders of the shift look like? Understanding this curve is essential for staffing – just because you need 10 servers on for peak does NOT mean that you need 10 servers on when you open the door.

Days of the week: compounding the hours of the day, how do your patterns vary depending on days of the week? Are you near an office area, so you’re driven by the Monday to Friday crowd? Weekend nights? Saturday and Sunday brunch/lunch?

Events: what events impact your business and how? If you’re located outside of a concert venue, this is easy to sort out. But if you aren’t, it can be a little tougher to identify these events. So how do you do it?

Talk with your local schools – when are they in and out of session? Do they have any big events (sports, etc.) that you should know about?

Communicate with your landlord’s management team – are an events scheduled on property?

Sign up for alerts from your community – will a marathon bring in heaps of customers? Or are you on an unfortunate part of the route that will be blocked from traffic?

Holidays – if your forecasting and planning tools do not automatically include holidays, be sure to add them all in.

Got surprised by one? Track it in your forecasting tool of choice. You may not have known that your community would be doing a fundraiser basketball tournament this year. But now you do, and you’ll have it tracked to check in advance next year.

Seasons: how do different seasons impact your business? Seasons could be winter and summer. They could be Christmas and Easter. They could be sports-related. You need to understand what changes you see. For example, most restaurants will see, of course, increased traffic during Christmas season. The successful ones see that not only does their volume increase, but their traffic pattern changes. Rather than having short peaks during the week, people are taking off time with their families, so the traffic spreads out across the shift. When you used to need to schedule only 20% of your servers and cooks in at open, you may need to increase that to 50%.

Read more strategies in the Cost Analysis chapter in How to Run a Successful Restaurant and check out the Wage Forecasting Tool on the website. This tool was my favourite in the operations game purely because of its real time tracking ability allowing me to adjust shift times and hours on a daily basis. It enabled my to effectively hit my wage percentages every week.

Story

John was the GM of a restaurant in a mixed office and suburban area. His weekday lunch shifts were high volume and short with his customers needing to get back to work, while his evening and weekend shifts were more spread out and weighted to the weekends, where his customers spent more time with their families. Add in being located next to a movie theater and concert venue. John was a forecasting ninja. If you needed to know something that would be coming up in the community, you could find out from him faster than you could Google it. He worked hard to create relationships and find the right sources of information, but it paid off.

Never was John caught on a concert night short staffed, or losing weekday customers because slow service caused them to come back from their lunch breaks late. John was able to steadily grow his sales year after year, often by double digits, because of his keen ability to use the past to plan his future, ensuring that he was always prepared to deliver quality service and food.

The ability to forecast is a learned skill. It is one that will eventually come as second nature and will enable you to drive revenue in even the worst months.

Waste. It is perfectly named, because it’s a waste. Every ounce of waste in your business from food stuffs to over pours and spillages comes at a cost. While it would be unrealistic to eliminate all waste in the business, it’s significantly worth your while to find and address areas of waste. Waste can also often be like playing a game of Whack-A-Mole, once you have one area under control, another one pops up!

Ultimately waste increases your cost of goods, so you want it as low as possible. Here are the key areas and tips to reduce waste:

Menu design – do your recipes call for a too diverse list of ingredients or too many specialized sauces that you can’t move?

Over-prepping/thawing – are your par levels for your prep and freezer pulls tight enough? If you are prepping or thawing more of something than you can use before it expires, you are just throwing that product, literally, in the trash. (NEVER consider extending product past its shelf life because you are afraid of waste – serving product that can get people sick is going to be much more trouble than over-prep.) If a product sells out, that’s OK. Its better to have a sold out dish than wasted profit.

Over-ordering – ordering product well can be tough, especially if you spread the responsibility for it amongst several managers; the key to ordering well is to have set pars, make sure to forecast your sales and needs, be cautious of deals from your vendors (yes, it may be cheaper to get a whole case, but if you throw half the case away, you lost money), and keep following up. By instilling an ordering system such as the one I have designed, you can significantly minimize wastage and set par levels suited to your business that anyone can follow.

Product quality – loss in quality typically comes through produce; you need to have a consistent check-in process when your produce is delivered and a good relationship with the vendor. Once you accept sub-par produce, you are likely going to waste it when it rots. By doing this you are also setting a precedent that it’s OK for the vendor to offload rubbish to you as no one checks it. Be stringent and if something slips by be sure to hold the vendor accountable over the phone.

Mistakes – mistakes are going to happen, but can be minimized through constant training and education. Everything takes effort and constant monitoring here but with diligence comes profit. By using your teams strengths and making them accountable can go a long way to making this happen. Read my accountability blog for more.

Adherence to recipes – similar to mistakes, but harder to spot is adherence to recipes. Does a drink from the bar call for 2 ounces of strawberries, but one of your bartenders consistently uses 3 ounces? Do your salads call for 7 ounces of lettuce, but they often go out with 9? Waste. It’s small, but it adds up. Address recipe adherence by putting tools in place in advance (correct size ladles, scoops, etc.) and make observations throughout the shift. This above all else lets the staff know that you are watching and that nothing get by!!

Pack size – work with your vendors to ensure you’re purchasing product in pack sizes that you can use before their expiration. Don’t forget about the bar – if you really want to carry a particular beer, for example, but don’t have the sales to sell a full keg before its expiration, you may be better off bringing it in bottles or cans, or not at all.

Theft – this one is an obvious no-no, but not always as easy to spot. Consider where you store items and how accessible they are to sticky fingers. Also consider how desirable the item is (napkins may not be as tempting as wine).

Returned items – you are going to have customers send food back that isn’t really a mistake, but they just don’t like it; track these because ultimately they impact your inventory and if there’s a pattern, you may need to address a recipe.

One-offs (promotions) – when considering special events or recipes, keep waste in mind. The events and recipes are great for variety in the restaurant, but don’t get yourself stuck with product you can’t use. For example, having a killer Candy Cane martini might be great for the Christmas season, but if the pack size on the syrup is too big, you’ll be left with product that will be essentially worthless on January 1^st.

It’s ok to run out! – by selling out of a items on the menu you are forcing other products to move reducing potential waste issues. This is good practice in a business that closes over the weekend or has 2 days/ 3 days down time due to season. Having the other products move creates turnover of lesser products therefore lowering your food cost and driving bottom line numbers and ultimately profit for the business.

You should have a system in place to track your waste. Not only to keep your inventory and P&L tracking straight, but this will allow you to identify trends and address them quickly. This may mean having a waste sheet in the kitchen and bar for staff to track anything. Track and analyze (but to get good data here, make sure that the staff know it’s ok to make mistakes, otherwise it won’t get logged and you won’t know about it).

See the chapters on Cost Analysis and Specials in How to Manage a Successful Restaurant for additional tips on managing costs in your business.

Story

A colleague of mine once recited this to me when we were planning and event.

A large restaurant chain decided to have an event day with a one-day-only recipe to increase sales on historically one of the slowest Tuesdays of the year. The innovation team came up with a great recipe and marketing came up with fun ways to promote it. The day itself was a smashing success.

But the following week, the restaurant GMs started to reach out, asking what they should do with the sauce they had to purchase for the item. There was significant left-over in the restaurant and no other recipes called for it. The finance team ran an analysis and a promotion that, excluding waste, was a hands-down success increasing sales by over 20% in most locations, would be considered a loss if they had to write off all the sauce that had been unused.
The marketing and innovation teams scrambled and were able to get a menu item in place before the sauce expired, saving the profitability from the event day. The next year, the same promotion was run, but the pack size on the sauce was reduced and the backup plan was already in place to ensure that the sauce would be used in the next 8 week promotion, allowing the restaurants time to use through it.

The bottom line: always manage your wastage. If you do not it can and will undermine your ability to run a successful and profitable restaurant.