How to Prioritize Your Restaurant Responsibilities

As a restaurant owner or manager you have a million tasks that you need to take care of, every day, every hour...

In fact, there are not enough hours in the day to take care of all of them: food and drinks inventory, staffing issues, maintenance, paperwork, marketing, and sales, promotions, taking care of your clients...

So what can you do, poor restaurateur, to make sure that you spend your time wisely and focus on what is really important to your business?

The first thing that you need to remember is the 80/20 rule. In most of the businesses, 20% of the efforts bring 80% of the results. As a restaurant owner, you need to prioritize your tasks and see which ones give you the most return for your time investment.

Let's go quickly over what it is really important for your business to be successful:

• Your clients.

• • Without them, anything else matters

• Your food.

• • Great food is a must in a restaurant; after all, it is the core of the business.

• Your service.

• • Your clients deserve the best service you can provide them with.

• Your ambience.

• • Your clients deserve a clean and attractive place to enjoy your great food and service

• Your operations.

• • Your processes need to be efficient. Your reservation process, food preparation, food ordering and delivery need to work like a clock. All the appliances, heater, air conditioning, ambience music, etc. need to be operational and working.

Of course, there are a thousand more things that you need to manage: employees get sick, things break down, your accounting needs to be kept in order and your books updated, etc. but the listed points are your main priority.Now, as an owner/manager, there are things more important for you to focus than others. As an owner, you should focus mainly in creating efficient processes and in training your people to follow them. Then you can delegate many tasks and focus on what's really important, and nobody else can do for you: filling in your restaurant with happy clients who will come again and again to your place.

People like to be greeted by the restaurant owners or managers. Nobody else can do this job for you. Also, nobody else can supervise the smoothly running of a restaurant. Being there, shaking hands with your clients, making sure that everybody leaves your restaurant happy and setting up marketing programs that let people know how great your places is should be your main priorities.

Ah, and another thing; you should also learn how to delegate. Hire the best people you can find and train them the best you can, then let them take care of the tasks that you can't do. This will assure you that you spend your time focusing on the 20% of the tasks that will bring you 80% of your business and profit.

Happy prioritizing,

Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriesco
http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com