Management Tools: Manager’s Log
The manager’s log is an essential tool for any restaurant looking to improve their business year on year; so that’s all of us! A manager’s log has a multitude of benefits for you and your establishment and is especially helpful come any legal challenges your restaurant may face. The managers log should be filled out at the end of every day by the manager on duty, and possibly even twice a day if you have two managers running two separate shifts in your location. What should it record and why are covered by the following points.
Essentail Information
The managers log should, at minimum, contain the following information:
- The days sales, broken down into food and alcohol sales
- The amount of covers served that day
- The staffing levels for the day and how service went, including any good and any bad points
- Any events or parties which were taking place that day, inside or outside of your location; be them birthday or wedding parties at your place or national holidays. It should also include what events, entertainment or specials you put on to draw in guests
- Any incidence which happened that day, no matter how minor i.e. cutting off a customer for being drunk and belligerent, or that an employee cut them self whilst working.
All of this information will help the scheduling manager in the years that follow. It will help them project forward and forecast the sales and staffing levels for each particular day of the year, knowing exactly what it was like last year.
Incident Reports
Keeping logs of incidence i.e. trips, slips, falls, food poisonings, is exceptionally necessary in the current climate. Not only is this often mandated by the local government or health board it is also an excellent tool should anyone try and press legal charges against your venue or company. For, keeping a detailed record of events, will help you to prove that you follow proper procedure in caring for people and react appropriately to ensure that such an incidence never happens again. This point concerns both staff and customer incidences. You need to take excellent care of both of these parties and the up-to-date keeping of a managers log helps to show that you are not negligent in either of these areas.
Events and Parties
Having a record of events and parties which have happened in your location will help you pick out anomalies in the sales record along with allowing you to plan for the same time period next year. For instance, the turning of the New Year is a big event, which many people head out to celebrate and it is often that bars and restaurants will run specials and special menus to entice customers in through the door. Keeping a detailed record of how these events proceeded will help you when it comes to planning for the same event next year. You can see what worked and what didn’t and plan to do even better this year!
Private!
The most important part of the manager’s log is to keep it private. It contains sensitive information about incidences which happen with guests and employees. It could even contain information about formal discussions you’ve had with employees. More than that it also contains some of the financial information of your business. For this reason it should be kept in a safe spot in your office, sometimes it’s kept on a computer, but not on the host stand or anywhere an idle minded -or mischievous- employee could flick through it.
The many benefits of a manager’s log in helping your business grow and evolve have here been made clear. You may have a basic one already at your establishment but hopefully this has helped to convince you that it may need to be even more detailed. It can’t really be over detailed as all details will help your business in the future!
