New year, new ways to optimize your FOH

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Well, 2023 is already here! Another year gone by at what feels like the speed of light.

Look back over the year with your restaurant in mind. Did it bring challenges? Were your goals achieved? Was it a year of growth? Whatever your answers are, we’re sure you agree that there’s always room for improvement. Every facet of a restaurant can grow, from the skills of your servers to the type of dish soap your dishwasher uses.

In this article, we’ll focus on how you can improve the quality of service your front-of-house provides. We’ll look at ways to optimize the way your FOH runs, including how you can future-proof it for 2023 and beyond.

How to optimize your FOH

Optimizing your FOH isn’t just about creating a better customer experience. It’s also about looking after your staff by creating a better working environment. Developing positive experiences for both key parties will hopefully create a cycle of positivity.

Give your guests the VIP treatment

“Am I right in thinking it’s your birthday today? Would you like to start with your usual mimosa?”

Yelp Guest Manager is arguably the best FOH solution on the market. It integrates with 8+ POS systems. It can share data about guests via app interactions with the POS system. This wealth of knowledge gives your servers details of order history, personal preferences, and annual milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries.

They can quickly check this information before serving each party, creating a personal touch that your customers will experience without expecting your servers to remember hundreds of details. This is great for restaurants with many different servers working shifts where the personal touch may have been lost.  Job satisfaction of your FOH staff will improve as well as the likelihood of them staying in their roles for a longer period of time.

Digitize your maître d’

Technology has sped up society massively, and now people expect to get what they want quicker and will take the trade-off of less human interaction for this experience. Many restaurants have replaced their maître d’ with a self-checkout tablet.

Kiosk from Yelp has brought this concept forward leaps and bounds with a collection of clever features:

• Guests can enter their information during check-in, giving your servers a heads-up before they reach the table.
• Kiosk works alongside Waitlist, which means if guests need to wait to be seated, they get an accurate waittime that’s dynamic, allowing them to wait wherever they want before they receive a text telling them their table is ready.
• Wait times are accurate and fluctuate in real time, giving your diners more confidence to make an impromptu booking.

Kiosk can free up your current maître d’, meaning you have another pair of hands on deck for turning tables and optimizing your FOH operations even more. Some restaurateurs find that using a virtual maître d’ means that they can actually get by without an extra member of staff, giving them the equivalent of a yearly salary back in their budget.

How to future-proof your FOH

The world is constantly changing, and while the basics of the restaurant industry will remain the same, changes in the way society and technology coincide are affecting how the service industry works. But, if we keep an eye on trends, we can keep one step ahead of major shifts in FOH culture.

Implement contactless dining

Love it or hate it, contactless dining has become very popular since its implementation during the pandemic. It may take some of the personal experience out of dining, but it is usually an optional experience, and it takes pressure off your FOH staff and allows them to turn tables faster.

If you want to go ahead with contactless dining, you will have to arm your tables with spill-proof QR codes and find a software solution that allows diners to scan the codes and enter an online menu. If you already have a POS system in place, it will probably offer this feature.

Contactless dining is a much faster solution, guests don’t have to work to get their server’s attention, and there’s no back and forth with the bill. Also, because diners pay as they order, it means no more dine and dash!

Use virtual waitlists

Waitlist abandonment is no joke. It means your potential customer has given up on your business, and it means one less sale for you. Nobody likes waiting when they’re hungry, but if we give diners the option to wait in their own way, the chances of them abandoning the ‘line’ go down.

Setting yourself up with Yelp Guest Manager gives you and your customers the option to use Waitlist. First, this will encourage them to make reservations as they can see dynamic waiting times on their Yelp app.

Second, once a user has made a reservation, they enter the virtual waitlist. This allows them to wait whichever way they want without being stuck in a queue that may move at the speed of molasses. This could be in a cab on the way to your restaurant, in a bar next door, or simply in their house. Whenever they choose, your business isn’t cutting into their free time.

With regular text message updates, diners are much less likely to abandon their reservation and should turn up to your restaurant in a better mood than if they were stuck in a queue. This also supports your FOH staff as they will likely deal with customers who aren’t stressed out before they even begin to order.

Good luck with your future FOH

Getting things optimized and prepared could do wonders for the future of FOH operations in your restaurant. We’ll always enjoy the satisfaction of serving our customers, but the way we do it will inevitably change as technology and society evolve.

Remember that using POS systems to record customer trends and information can help to personalize the experience. Kiosk can free up your maître d’ and get diners to their table faster. Contactless dining lets your FOH staff turn tables more quickly. Use Waitlist to drastically cut down on waitlist abandonment and create a better experience for your diners.

Technology has eliminated a lot of the headaches of running a successful restaurant. Sidestep future issues and take charge of your FOH management with Yelp Guest Manager. Not only will you improve your customer experience, but you’ll also support your team by handling reservations and waitlists, allowing customers to check themselves in, and much more.

Reach out to us and get a demo to start the new year off on the right foot. After all, restaurants that start using Guest Manager experience up to 2X the traffic on their Yelp Business Page.*