How to Manage Your Restaurant Front of House

How to Manage Your Restaurant Front of House
From restaurant staff training to floor plans, here are some best practices to keep your front of house in top shape and manage your restaurant effectively.
by Colleen Egan Mar 12, 2018 — 3 min read
How to Manage Your Restaurant Front of House

If you own a restaurant, you understand the importance of your front of house. The front of house represents what customers experience at your restaurant, and customers’ impressions are key when it comes to garnering recommendations and loyalty for your business. From staff training to floor plans, here’s what it takes to keep your front of house restaurant staff in top shape and manage your restaurant effectively.

What is the ‘front of house’ in a restaurant?

Your front of house is the part of the restaurant where your customers order and dine. It includes everything from the host stand and waiting area to the dining room, bar, outdoor seating, and restrooms.

Your front-of-house staff might include a host or hostess, waiters, bartenders, and the general manager — basically anyone who might interact with customers.

What are key areas to manage the Front of House Works?

There are various areas that you need to be across when managing the front of house, include the following but not limited to:

Front-of-house staff

Front-of-house responsibilities can be split up among the staff you hire, but below are the key roles and their usual front-of-house restaurant duties.

The general manager (GM) runs the restaurant, ensuring service goes smoothly; hiring, training, and managing front-of-house staff; and setting the bar for customer service. The GM oversees front-of-house staff and sometimes back of house, if the head chef does not.

A GM often plays a role in designing the floor plan of a restaurant—giving input on everything, from wall colour and scents to noise level and lighting, that might affect customers’ appetite and comfort. They may also plan restaurant promotions and other company events.

The host or hostess is the first front of house restaurant staff member to interact with guests and therefore imparts that all-important first impression. They greet guests and show them to their table. They also take reservations and, if a table is not ready when guests arrive, estimate the wait time. The host or hostess, to the best of their ability, keeps things running on schedule.

Waiters explain and answer any questions about the menu, take food and drink orders, serve customers, and, at the end of the visit, give them their check and process payments.

Bartenders greet customers, take drink orders, and then mix and serve drinks. They might also wash glasses and manage bar inventory with Square’s bar point of sale.

While waiters take customers’ orders, in some restaurants it is the job of the food runner to transport meals from the kitchen to diners. Food runners might also assemble appetisers, refill water glasses, and clear plates when diners are finished eating.

Hiring front of house staffs

People might think working in a restaurant means serving food to customers, which is easy. Customers come to the restaurant not only for food but also for the experience so the waitstaffs require special skill sets to run the food service smoothly, wait tables, tend bar and host events. The characteristics to look for in a front of house staff are friendliness, organisational skills, and ability to think on their feet. Experience would definitely help in this environment but the right person can quickly adapt and learn from on-the-job training.

Best practices for managing your front of house

Managing front-of-house operations requires strong leadership, effective team management, attention to detail, and the right technology. Here are some ways to manage your restaurant effectively and make things run smoothly:

Colleen Egan
Colleen Egan writes for Square, where she covers everything from how aspiring entrepreneurs can turn their passion into a career to the best marketing strategies for small businesses who are ready to take their enterprise to the next level.

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