Today I want to talk to you about ensuring that your team are properly trained.

Training is an investment and not a cost. 

If you train yourself well and properly it will mean that the customer is getting the same experience every time they visit you. 

Your staff will be able to seize every upselling opportunity, and that will directly affect your bottom line, that will increase your bottom line. 

It will also reduce your waste, and waste is obviously a cost of the business.

It might be front of house or might be bar staff, that know how to pull a real ale properly so they’re not wasting half a point into the drip trays, which you can’t sell, that they are actually making cocktails correctly.

In the kitchen are they putting any waste in the correct bins? Because if they put food in some bins and it’s not a food bin then you will get charged extra by the company who takes your waste away. It’s the way the waste industry has gone.

With the experience you need to be looking at things like making sure your front of house staff, the staff that giving menus to and taking food orders from customers, they know what the specials are, they are taught at the beginning of each session, you have a team meeting they know what what veggie it is, what soup it is and all those sort of things, so that when they’re asked a question they’re not having to say to the customer “sorry I don’t know I will go and find out” 

When I was a restaurant manager in a hotel, it’s exactly what we did before each service, we had a group discussion the head chef or his deputy would come out, he would go through the dishes of the day. 

It’s even worth when you’re designing a new menu, you’re going to launch a new menu to get the chef to make one of everything and let the staff taste it, so they know what it tastes like, what goes with what. 

If you’ve got guest beers, make sure all the staff have a taste so they can explain to the customer what sort of beer it is.

Training is very important. 

In the kitchen if you train your staff well your waste in the kitchen will be reduced, and that will affect you, that will increase your bottom line. 

Staff that feel that they have been trained well are also more likely to stay with you, it’s reckoned that to replace staff in hospitality at the lower level, it’s 700 per pound per person, at the more senior level you’re talking 3000 pounds – those costs are made up of advertising, reduced productivity as they’re being trained and all those costs. 

So training your team will save you money, it’s an investment in their time, in that person that will reap rewards on your bottom line. 

So remember training is an investment and not a cost.