Why staff are the best marketing asset in a restaurant

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How much is a customer worth?

Let your staff know how much each customer means to your business. It’s a value you can roughly calculate. Work out the average spend per head in your restaurant (divide a typical weeks’ takings by the number of covers). If this comes out at, say, £25, that’s £50 for a couple who, if dining once a month, will bring in £600 a year for as long as they keep coming back. Upset just one couple every week and this could mean a staggering £31,200 loss in annual turnover, a figure that few establishments can afford to ignore.

Make it a staff goal to turn every new customer into a regular

New customers should never be regarded as one-off diners. The goal is to get them to return for a second, third and hopefully dozens of times which means it’s worth investing some extra effort to make them feel welcome.

One of the first things floor staff can do is to ensure they make eye contact with guests when they arrive. Taking a few moments to find out a little bit about a customer encourages bonding. What brought them to your restaurant? What sort of things do they like? What will make them come back?

It helps to sound knowledgeable about the food on offer too. Most people like to know about what they’re eating. The more information you have about an item on the menu, the more likely a customer is to order it. If staff take the time to explain about the meal or the wine they’re selling the customer will appreciate the effort and probably trust their judgement.

Customers don’t always realise what you've done for them unless you tell them. If you've reviewed 20 different suppliers for an ingredient you use, make sure your staff let them know

Customers don’t always realise what you've done for them unless you tell them. If you've reviewed 20 different suppliers for an ingredient you use, make sure your staff let them know. It'll impress them that you've screened out products that don't have the quality, taste or dependability you think they deserve. Perhaps some of your food is hand-made, with special herbs or spices, or your meat sourced from the best butcher. It’s a lost marketing opportunity if no-one bothers to point it out.

But for staff to be able to do any of this effectively they need to know about these things themselves. So get them to taste the food and interrogate the chef beforehand. The more searching their questions the better prepared they’ll be to handle even the fussiest of diners. And it will put an end to the mutual embarrassment of a waiter returning to the kitchen half way through taking an order to ask the chef where the lamb comes from. These may be small things but collectively they make a big impact which will enhance the overall dining experience.

Monitoring staff performance

If you’re the owner or manager of a restaurant, you’ll understand the difficulty of keeping a constant eye on your staff, especially during a busy service. Briefing staff beforehand is likely to be more effective. Smile and be positive. Remind everyone what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re relying on them to help you. Let your enthusiasm for maintaining high standards show. Get everyone on your side and they’ll want to do their best.

When you do monitor staff performance make sure it’s discreet. There’s nothing worse than having a meal in a restaurant with the manager hovering in the background, looking over everyone’s shoulder. It conveys a lack of confidence in the staff and makes customers feel anxious. Keep your distance. People come to your restaurant to enjoy themselves and want to relax.

If you can get people to use comments cards to say what they really think about the service, these can provide useful feed-back. The problem is customers tend to ignore them either because they’re embarrassed or can’t be bothered to fill them in.

One way round this is to run a weekly or monthly draw of completed cards with a small prize - perhaps a half-price meal voucher or a free bottle of wine. That way the task will seem more like fun than a chore. Your questions should be simple and brief and take no more than a couple of minutes to answer. Ask your guests how they rated both the food and service on a score of 1 to 5 and if there any improvements they could suggest. Make sure you include a space for their name and e-mail address - comments cards then double up to provide more contacts for your customer database.

When it comes to getting honest feed-back, de-briefing customers after the meal is usually the best approach. The manager stopping by a table to discreetly check that everything has been to the customer’s liking can, if done diplomatically, encourage frank discussion about areas that could be improved. Customer body language, tone of voice and facial expressions tell their own story

Try tracking front-of-house performance with the help of a mystery diner.

There’s no need to hire someone from an agency. Ask a friend or a local business person for their help

Try tracking front-of-house performance with the help of a mystery diner. There’s no need to hire someone from an agency. Ask a friend or a local business person for their help. Offer to pay for their food in return for them acting as a ‘dining detective’ and tell them you’ll be awarding a small prize to the staff member who impresses them the most during their visit. This might be for good service, doing that bit extra to keep the customer happy, having a pleasant attitude and or even just a big smile. It’s up to the mystery diner to decide who and what impressed them most. Be open with your staff. Let them know that this will be happening once a week and watch the performance lift.

Another way to encourage staff is to give local businesses credit at your restaurant in exchange for staff prizes of equal value. For example, give the manager of the local gym a free meal and in exchange, reward your ‘employee of the month’ with a month’s free membership. This costs your business very little and also helps to bring in more customers.

In addition, consider awarding larger prizes for consistently good performance. This lets your staff know that they’re highly valued and encourages long-term loyalty. Imagine offering a luxury weekend hotel break to staff members with consistently good reports at the end of a busy period or season. It might cost you a few hundred pounds but your employees will love it. Staff turnaround will probably drop and your customers will appreciate seeing the same friendly, familiar faces.

Don’t wait for the next complaint before you take action

Good staff don’t just happen, they’re trained. They won’t know how best to look after your customers unless you take the time to show them. Start now with some simple measures to raise their awareness of the importance of their role. Show your commitment to raising the standard. Next time you have a staff meeting, use positive and negative feedback as a training tool and start an incentive program. It’s an investment that will pay handsome returns by improving your bottom line and making your restaurant rise in the ranks of the competition.

Important note re VAT – All our suggestions purposely ignore the effects of tax and VAT, complex topics which vary from one country to another and are outside the scope of a marketing website. Before embarking on any sales promotion, staff incentive scheme or reciprocal arrangement with another business, readers are advised to seek advice from their accountant or local tax and VAT offices. For UK businesses there is some useful information on the HM Revenue & Customs website

Research shows that the vast majority of diners who complain will still go back to a restaurant if their complaint is handled promptly and sympathetically. Most people understand that we can’t always get it right. It’s what we do to remedy the mistakes that counts. When someone feels they’ve been poorly treated they should always be compensated. A heartfelt apology backed up with a gesture of goodwill such as a drink on the house or a reduction on the bill can go a long way towards repairing any damage. Invite the customer to write his complaint on a comments card and assure him it will be shown to the management. It will help appease disgruntled clients to know that their grievances are being taken seriously and encourage staff to learn from their mistakes.

We’ve all shared that depressing experience of going into a place with high expectations only to have them dashed before we even get to the first course. We stand there for ages before being shown to our table by an unenthusiastic waitress. The menu, when it finally arrives, prompts a few questions but the waitress has disappeared so there’s no-one to ask. We start to feel a nuisance for even being there. Do these people want our custom or not? In those crucial opening minutes we form our opinion. The food might be the best in town but we won’t be going back.

No-one can be expected to get it right all the time. Bad things happen even in the classiest of establishments. Sometimes reasons outside our control rebound on the customer – staff shortages, kitchen problems, a busier-than-usual service. We can’t prevent every mistake but there’s a lot we can do to limit the damage.

When someone feels they’ve been poorly treated they should always be compensated. A heartfelt apology backed up with a gesture of goodwill such as a drink on the house or a reduction on the bill can go a long way towards repairing any damage

Your best marketing asset

Dorothy Williams explains how staff can

make or break a restaurant

Staff are the most valuable yet often under-rated marketing asset in any restaurant. They have the power to make or break the dining experience of every person who comes through the door. Ask any discerning customer and they’ll tell you. Good service is every bit as important as good food. Yet it’s a sad fact that almost 15% of customers who boycott a restaurant do so because of poor service - a disturbing statistic that could so easily be put right.