Maintaining Cleanliness and Order at Every Station
One of the things which really gets on everyone’s nerves in the bar and restaurant industry is overall disorganization and a lack of cleanliness. Bars and restaurants need to be clean and are designed to operate in a logical, organized fashion, and any diversion from this spells trouble. The benefits of keeping your front-of-house and back-of-house areas clean and organized are huge! Proper Organization and cleanliness can mean reduced loses, reduced stress, increased efficiency, happier staff, and, as a result, happier customers! Organization and cleanliness are not only crucial on your books and for your thoughts but are also necessary at the many stations dotted around your restaurant.
Designated Spots
Every item that is used in your restaurant should have a designated “home” so everyone knows where to find it when they need it. Open or in-use items may have a different, easily accessible, location to those that are just backup. Ensure that all the employees who need to know know where both of these locations are. This is especially important for the in-use location, as this will prevent spoilage and wastage of time sensitive products, such as open bottles of wine.
Opening and Closing Checklists
These are highly important because they ensure that every station is always set up as need and stocked with all the necessary items for the staff operating at that station to make it through a shift. Opening and closing checklists, at a bare minimum, should include daily cleaning tasks and daily stocking tasks. If you run more than one shift a day you should consider also having a “changeover” checklist, which means your morning shift will know what to do to ensure that the evening shift have everything they need.
Deep Cleaning Schedule
Cleanliness is a very important part of operating a restaurant. A lack of cleanliness sends a bad sign to customers and, if it’s terribly unclean, your location can get shut down! This is the reason why we complete cleaning tasks every day, but we can’t clean everything every day; nor is it necessary to. You should have an agreed on “deep cleaning schedule” for every section of your location. This way things like the inside of fridges, stockrooms, and table bases, will always be kept clean.
Proper Training and Culture of Ideas
Ensuring that the above is foolproof requires proper training for all of your staff so that they know where everything is meant to be, and who is responsible for keeping things stocked and cleaned. Furthermore, you should let your employees know that ideas are welcome in your establishment and that any suggestions they have for the improvement of the stocking and cleaning processes -or indeed anything else in the restaurant- are welcomed by management, who will work with the employee to integrate their idea, if it’s viable.
The organization and cleanliness of your restaurant is a team effort, and if everyone takes part their workload will be light, their stress will drop and their job satisfaction will rise. All of this will help lead to happier guests, which can only be good for the image of your establishment!
