ENSURING PROFITABILITY IN THE SHOULDER SEASONS
Well, as much as we love summer. For some, it’s a bump in sales and for others, it’s a chance to breathe before the winter rush. All good things must come to an end. It’s almost over and there are only a few weeks of hot weather left.
What does that mean for restaurants?
For some of you that don’t have patios, you may be gearing up for your busy season. That means increased sales and hiring. Others, however, are looking at a few more weeks of great sales and then the inevitable slump prior to the holiday season. Often, this results in lost profits and catch up over the holidays.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Follow these few tips to help you stay profitable over the shoulder season.
1. Forecasting Your Fall Staffing Needs.
Track your sales history. If you haven’t been doing this - start today. If you are using a Point of Sales (POS) system or cash register, you should be able to get this information quite easily. If you are using a manual system, log the information into a spreadsheet, or an accounting program.
Break the sales up into smaller, usable time chunks. Ensure you are tracking them by days, weeks and months.
Typically, you will see a lull right into mid to late November. This is the best time to slow down operations and plan. Plan for holiday programs, menus and any physical improvements to be executed in January to April.
2. Make Sure to Have Exit Interviews with All Summer Staff.
The summer students that you hired, may be great additions to your holiday schedule, so sit down with each of them before they head off to school and find out what they thought of their summer season and ask them to keep in touch. Get their email addresses so you can keep them in the loop and let them know of potential start times and refresher training.
3. Assess the Remaining Team.
Assess the current staff. You are in transition, and there is a tendency to make do when the staffing levels get lean. If you have a few weak links, better to spend the slow time of year hiring and training their replacements.
You hired them because they were bright, well presented, team players, etc. Are they still demonstrating those qualities?
However, you can’t just stop there. Look at things like leadership and job skills. Do they have what it takes to fill the more advanced spots that you may need for the coming season?
Once you know how many weak links you have, you can map out all the required hiring and training you need to do.
4. Plan Your Training
Decide what positions are the most important and how much time you will need to spend to ensure they have all the tools they need to do well in their new positions.
Training usually suffers because someone leaves and you drop everything to train their replacement. This solves the problem, or so you think. Of course, because it was last minute, you are distracted by all the other tasks you have, so you do a mediocre job. You are throwing your new trainee to the wolves and it is your customers that will suffer.
Take a calendar and literally map out all the training you need to do. The plan will change, there is no doubt, as people will come and go, but it is all part of your roadmap.
5. Plan a Vacation.
You need to get out of dodge for a little while. You have been swamped since March. You have been running yourself hard.
Get your planning done and assign someone to manage the day to day activities while you are away. Find some way to get all the information you need while you are away so you don’t feel too disconnected.
Make sure you take some time for yourself. If you don’t, once the December parties and holiday spending excitement hits, your opportunity will have passed. You need to recharge and get some balance back.
6. Renovations
If there are any major structural or equipment changes to do, this is the best time. Plan to do them before Christmas, so you can be sure you are firing on all cylinders when you get busy.
7. Prep and Ordering Levels
Review all your prep and ordering levels to reflect your planned lower sales.
8. Menu Planning
If you are thinking of changing up the menu, this is the time to do it. Better now than in the middle of the holiday season.
Plan to introduce new menus in late October or early November, so you have a few weeks to work out the kinks prior to large parties.
As well, use this time to plan your Christmas party menus and procedures at the same time. Better to button it down earlier than later.
9. Review with Your Team, Set Tasks, and Expectations
Now you have a roadmap. Meet with your key people to review it and tweak it where needed.
Don’t plan to do it all yourself. Share the load. Assign some of your people ownership and responsibilities of some of the tasks to assist you. Maybe someone is a better trainer in one area than you are. Or perhaps, you can get someone to get quotes on some work that is required, etc.
Then present the rough plan to your whole team. Tell them everything is subject to change. That is just the nature of the business, but this is the fall and holiday plan.
They will love being informed and a part of the process.
10. Review Regularly
Ensure that you revisit your plan during your regular management meetings. Tweak the goals and milestones as things inevitably come up. Whatever you do, make sure that your plan doesn’t end up in a filing cabinet or on your computer somewhere, never to be seen again.
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Now you can head out on your vacation with a clear head because you have a roadmap as to where you are going. You won’t be flying blind and spending your time worrying about your “to do” list.
It’s handled. It’s scheduled.
And best of all, the questions from your team will be focused on how to make it happen, not what is happening?