8.3: How to Train Your Team

If the cost of labor, product, and lost revenue associated with pre-opening training makes you uncomfortable, think about how much money you will spend because of high turnover, botched guest experiences, and bad press -- all of which are the direct result of an underprepared staff.

Start Early

Begin planning staff training when you are building the pro-forma for your business plan. The costs of labor, food, beverage, printed materials, and other expenses associated with classroom training and soft opening events should be a part of your pre-opening budget so you do not find yourself three weeks away from opening with dwindling funds.

Designing an effective pre-opening training program is extremely time consuming, especially if you have never done it before, so make sure you start early and delegate projects appropriately. Gathering all of your employees before you even start generating revenue is a big financial investment, and you cannot afford to squander that by procrastinating on the planning front. Make this a priority ‘months’ in advance of bringing on staff, not ‘weeks’ (and certainly not days).

Classroom Training

Pre-opening training generally divides into two major sections: theory and practice. Classroom training generally takes five to eight days and teaches employees what they need to know about the restaurant, how to perform their specific job, in-depth product knowledge, details of the physical space, and team building.

Start by making a training schedule, which will be your road map through the process. It will help with your training plan organization, setting expectations for your management team, and determining what written materials you need to assemble for your staff. Most restaurant should include ten important topics:

Start with Why

On the very first day of training, discuss your restaurant’s “why” and lay the framework for the culture you hope to grow. Use anecdotes and include the staff in the conversation. Questions like, “What is good service?” and “What are we trying to achieve with this restaurant?” are often part of a focused discussion very early on. Use the same in order in each training session to ensure that ‘everyone’ is on the same page and pushing in the same direction right off the bat.

Stress the importance of starting with “why” and incorporating the company’s values and philosophy into training at every possible moment. That way, each employee is better prepared to make good decisions in unrehearsed situations. If an employee faces a new challenge, they can tie it back to a similar scenario or train of thought and feel comfortable handling it on their own because they understand our overall vision. The only way to build culture is to constantly talk about it and constantly work at it. If you don’t talk about it, it will never exist.”

Introduce Leaders

It seems obvious, but often forgotten: Introduce each member of your leadership team and allow them to speak briefly about themselves – and why they are proud to be a part of your restaurant. Prioritizing engagement, especially early in the game, is critical. Presence is everything. Depending on the size of your staff, giving the rest of your employees the opportunity to do the same sends a positive message and reinforces how much you value what each team member brings to the table.

Clean & Set Up

It is unlikely that your space will look like an operational restaurant on the first day of staff training. That is ok, and depending on how far off you are it can actually be a good thing. Stacks of unwashed plates, glassware, and silverware, storage areas unorganized, , the service stations that are barren with the exception of that box of cereal that you’ve been living off of for a week are all opportunities for your new team to dive in and make your restaurant their functional, beautiful home. Not only does allowing your staff to take on cleaning and organization remove some heavy lifting from your plate, it also creates a strong sense of buy-in and ensures that the location of equipment and service items makes sense to the people who will be using them the most.

Employee Handbook Review

Employees who have a clear understanding of what they should expect to give and to receive from their employer are more comfortable and confident, allowing them to do a better job. Even though it may not be the most stimulating material, an employee handbook is necessary - and simply handing it out and asking staff to read it and sign it isn’t enough to be sure that they are absorbing its contents. This portion of training is not exciting. It is fair to say that almost nobody likes it, but it is important and so I try to do it in the middle of training. My goal is to get them excited, get them eating some food, get them through the dull compliance stuff and then get them excited again before they open a restaurant.”

Product Knowledge

What you cover and how much time you devote to each subject will depend on your restaurant’s concept. All of these topics provide a good opportunity to include the vendors, farmers, and distributors you have been working with; they will appreciate the chance to share their passion for their products, and staff will benefit from learning from different people. It is a good idea to bring in industry experts to train because staff education is at the core of a good operation.

These are the major categories to consider:

• Menu (ingredients, cooking techniques, presentation, allergens, substitutions)
• Cheese
• Wine
• House cocktails
• Classic cocktails
• Spirits
• Beer
• Coffee and tea

Tasting

Academic knowledge is important, but tasting is a key component of training for the entire team. Cooks need to understand how every component of every dish should taste, and your front-of-house team needs to feel excited about the menu and be able to guide guests through their dining experience confidently. Bring your kitchen staff in a week before your front of house because we want to get everyone tasting the food early, have plenty of time to explain it, and get them excited about it. There is no point in doing that if the food coming out of the kitchen is no good.

Service Standards

Pre-opening training is your best opportunity to define what is right and wrong when it comes to technical service. How do you want tables cleared? What is the proper way to transfer a bar check? It may feel tedious, but on your first busy night, you will be grateful that you are not wasting time explaining the same thing to 20 different people and being frustrated that they do not already know the “right” way of doing things. Your managers and employees will also be more comfortable if they have a clear understanding of your expectations.

POS Training

Sure, most of us have used every POS system under the sun, but none of these experiences has been in your restaurant. You do not want servers searching for a tomato salad button for five minutes in the middle of the first night of service, only to find that it was never initially included in the menu selections. Give your team time to familiarize themselves with the locations of functions and menu items in your POS. Make sure every menu item is in the computer in the right place at the correct price and printing where it’s supposed to.

Staff-on-Staff Service

Before you dive into preview events, do some dress rehearsals just with your staff to work out some of the bigger kinks. Would you rather find out your expediting printer does not work before you have guests of any variety in your house? Organizing some “staff-on-staff” exercises in which one group serves while the other dines is a great way to make some early improvements and discoveries. What is the best place for trays to go in the service stations? How should the service bartender organize their tickets? These exercises should include the whole team — a well-practiced service team is useless without a well-practiced kitchen team.

Additional Considerations

Prioritize training around elements of your restaurant that are uniquely yours or that may be new to your team. To prepare his team for the opening, one restauranteur hired a tutor. Given the restaurant’s focuses on French concepts, he wanted to be sure that his team was completely confident with French cooking techniques and pronunciation. Another restauranteur installed a number of large, eye- catching pieces of artwork throughout the restaurant dining room that each had an engaging story. She shared details of each piece in the restaurant’s service manual and brought one of the artists on site during training to speak to the staff directly about his installation. She also trained her team to explain the restaurant’s artwork confidently to guests who might want to know more.

Prepare Written Materials

Having a vision of what service should ‘look’ and ‘feel’ like is one thing, but being able to put that vision on paper and teach it to others is something else entirely. Creating written standards for your team implements one solid point of reference that can serve as a ‘North Star’ for all. By taking the time to write documents like a comprehensive service manual, you will give yourself an opportunity to edit your thoughts before teaching them to others and make sure they are cohesive. This exercise will also make new hire training dramatically more consistent and efficient before and after you open.

Training materials that you will want to consider putting in writing include:

Employee handbook

Regardless of your concept, you need one. An attorney with experience in labor law and restaurant operations should build this with you and review it before you give it to employees.

Service manual

This document should outline the restaurant’s concept and the story behind it, bios of key players such as pertinent information about important partners like your designer or major vendors, and a detailed outline of steps of service. It is also helpful to include a quick summary of how to deal with guest complaints and a dedicated section for hosts and front door policies.

Menu descriptions

These should include menu item ingredients, allergens (and feasible modifications), preparation techniques, and a photo.

Beverage descriptions

These will vary depending on your concept and teaching style. Consider building templates that include the name of a cocktail or wine by the glass and then leaving specific fields (like ingredients or tasting notes) blank for your team to fill in during training classes.

Floorplan

Your front-of-house team will need to commit table and seat numbers to memory immediately. Give them a tool to start practicing on day one.

Build in Performance Measurement

Pre-opening training is a big investment, so it is critical that you are holding your team accountable for learning and retaining everything you are teaching them throughout the process. Daily written quizzes will ensure that employees are committing important information to memory and send a clear message about the level of dedication you expect. Incorporate verbal testing into daily training exercises and get everyone involved in hands-on training. It is incredibly important to weed people out. You have a responsibility to create the best team possible, so when you know that someone does not fit with your culture, be quick to fire.

Preview Events

Pre-opening events serve three essential functions: they are dress rehearsals for your entire team, they provide an exclusive first look of your restaurant to key players in your community, and they give you an opportunity to receive critical feedback and make changes before you open your doors to paying customers.

Your first few weeks of service are the most important ones you’ll ever have, and losing the trust of your “early adopters,” receiving negative reviews on social media, lacking support from the press, and discouraging your staff early in the game are all surefire ways of damaging your short- and long-term success. Giving your team as many practical opportunities to interact, learn the voice of the restaurant, retain menu items and steps of service prevents your first paying guests from being your guinea pigs. You want to be your own ‘guinea pig’.

Friends & Family Meals

This type of pre-opening event should happen as close to opening day as possible and serve as a comprehensive dry run. Invite friends and family of the restaurant to dine in exchange for critical feedback and the right to make mistakes sans judgement. Typically, all or most of the food served at these meals is complimentary. This is the most important opportunity your staff will have to practice cooking your menu, mixing your cocktails, talking about your wine list, and going through steps of service before opening day, so structure it exactly the way you would a normal service.

Typically, invitations to these meals are pretty coveted, and you will have no shortage of volunteers. Above all, invite people you trust to be honest and whose opinions you respect. Another thing to keep in mind: If you have a few big hiccups on your first night, will the people you have invited understand and forgive or send a snide tweet to their 5,000 followers? Make sure it is the former.

Tips for getting the most out of it

Host at least two days of friends and family meals, but three or four days is ideal. You want the opportunity to receive critical feedback, make mistakes, and correct them before you open.

Control your cover counts. It is surprising how many friends and family members you have all of the sudden when you give away free meals at a hot new restaurant. Decide how many people you want to serve each night based on your budget and your operational capabilities, then stick to those numbers.

Involve your entire staff. This may mean giving servers smaller sections or having more cooks in the kitchen than you normally would, but the primary purpose is for everyone on your team to get some hands-on, real-time experience so they’re comfortable and confident going into day one.

Make feedback cards for your guests. Honest, critical feedback is a significant portion of your ROI for this type of event so getting your guests’ thoughts on paper and reviewing comments with your team every night is an absolute must.

Press Preview

Generate buzz by hosting a small event to give the press a first look at the restaurant when it is still a few weeks away from opening day. You can do ‘hard hat’ nights to allow the press to see the venue before it is fully completed. This gets them excited and gives them the chance to leak the story before anyone else knows details.” Going ‘above and beyond’ to show that they are important to you will help keep your restaurant’s name top of mind as others continue to open. Invite all of the major food writers in your community— magazines, newspapers, websites, and widely followed bloggers. For press events, focus on quality, not quantity. If you have too many people in your space, you will lose the feeling of exclusivity and lessen the likelihood of making a personal connection with everyone in attendance.

Tips for getting the most out of it

Make the invite personal. Depending on how many people you have on your list, sending a well-branded, thoughtful paper invite or making individual phone calls are the most appropriate ways of getting your press preview on their busy calendars.

Don’t mind the dust. An unfinished interior makes the experience feel a bit more exclusive. In addition, there will still be an element of surprise the next time they come in.

Provide some tastes of your menu and cocktails during the event. Taking a tour of the space is an essential part of the experience, but getting your future supporters and critics excited about the product you will be serving is just as important. Keep it simple — three perfect bites are better than 10 imperfect ones.

Work the room. Having a group of media heavy hitters in the same place at the same time is a tremendous opportunity. Embrace it! Your entire management team should be on the floor getting to know each person - and enter his or her information into your reservation system. That way you will know to take extra-special care of them when they come in to eat.

Send them home with something unique. A sweet treat with a branded recipe card or a bottled cocktail are examples of items that will make a lasting impression. Skip things like printed menus that are liable to continue to change as opening day approaches.

Other Pre-Opening Events to Consider

Opening Party. The best opening parties have a greater purpose than solely celebrating your restaurant’s opening. Host a fundraiser for your favorite local charity, or turn your opening event into an appreciation party for the many people who helped build your restaurant.

Offer a Discount. After hosting friends and family meals, Will plans a period where regular guests (i.e. the public) dine at the restaurant with a 50% discount in order to give his team one last grace period to work out kinks before normal operations begin.

Guest Previews. Offer your future guests an exclusive preview of the restaurant. Sell tickets to VIPs, giving them a first peek at the restaurant, the opportunity to have a drink with you and members of his team, and a chance to book a table before reservations opened to the public. The outcome? Guests love it and bookings will begin before you even open the phone lines.

Key Takeaways

1. Start planning staff training and pre-opening events early. These big investments are critical to your restaurant’s success, so build the expense into your capital requirements budget and plan them early to get the most out of them.
2. Create a comprehensive training schedule that starts with company culture. Other topics to include are product knowledge, steps of service, POS training, and tasting.
3. Prepare written materials like an employee handbook, a service manual, food and beverage descriptions, and a floorplan to provide your team with the tools they need to be successful.
4. Plan pre-opening events like friends and family dinners to give your entire team the opportunity to get comfortable, work through kinks, and practice what they have learned so that they go into opening day with confidence.
5. Host a pre-opening event exclusively for key members of the press to help build buzz before you open to the public.