by Abby Henson | 15 Mar, 2017 | Blog, Press & News
Mothers’ Day is almost upon us, and will be swiftly followed by Easter, May’s bank holidays, and the busy summer season. Making the most of these opportunities on an annual basis can be essential to the success of many hospitality businesses. Here are our top tips on how to do just that.
Scope out the year in advance
To ensure the best possible preparation for all the calendar’s biggest dates, proper prior planning is key. It’s a great idea to take some time to think ahead to the next twelve months and scope out all the significant events to come. This applies both in terms of days of national importance, such as Mothers’ Day and bank holidays, as well as more localised events. These could be festivals, local sporting occasions, or even big bookings for weddings you may have taken months in advance. Having a firm grasp on what is happening to affect your business and when it is happening is the first step towards driving bumper sales.
Summer bank holidays drive bumper sales
Dwell on the past
Every hospitality business is different, and an event that may cause a huge sales uplift in one may barely register at another. The best way to predict the impact an event may have on your trading, and therefore guide your staffing levels and offer, is to consider historic data. Sales patterns from the same or a similar occasion in previous years are likely to be repeated. S4Labour gives you crucial insight into historic trading, with reporting considering factors like the day of the week and weather to help managers accurately forecast sales.
S4Labour gives you crucial insight into historic trading, with reporting considering factors like the day of the week and weather to help managers accurately forecast sales.
The human factor
People are at the heart of hospitality. To maximise the potential benefits that special events can bring your business, it is important to get the human side right. Good communication between managers and employees, while always healthy, is even more valuable around key events. Publishing rotas well in advance and briefing both front and back of house teams on what’s expected of them will help the smooth running of the big day.
Happy holidays
There is always value in keeping a close eye on holidays in the context of event planning. There is little worse for a manager than finding themselves caught between the need to not be understaffed and an employee asking for time off that they have accrued and have a legal right to take. This is particularly pertinent for businesses running a January to December holiday year with a likely conflict between holiday requests and the busy festive season.
S4Labour allows you to quickly and easily manage your staff’s holiday allowance, accrual, requests, and payments. This saves you time and effort and keeping employees happy and motivated.
Make the occasion special
Though the potential for increased profits around special events is huge, boosted sales are never guaranteed. Consumers have a lot of choice so making your offering as attractive as possible is critical. Spend some time well ahead of the event to define your offer and invest time and energy in marketing it well. Think about practical factors like how many cover turns you can perform, and whether there may be value in rearranging furniture. The prime table arrangement for Valentine’s Night is likely to be very different to a big sporting event’s perfect layout. You can also release pressure on your busy kitchen team through effective planning of special menus. Dishes that will drive sales but are not labour intensive and can be part-prepared ahead of time are ideal.
Featured image by Nensuria – Freepik.com
by Abby Henson | 1 Mar, 2017 | Blog, Press & News
[pdf-embedder url=”https://www.cattonhospitality.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Comprehensive-Guide-to-User-Access-Levels-Customer-Facing-Version-1.pdf” title=”Comprehensive Guide to User Access Levels (Customer Facing Version)”]
by Abby Henson | 28 Feb, 2017 | Blog, Press & News
As the labour management solution of choice for many first rate operators, we are superbly positioned to provide unique insight into the challenges faced by the industry. Our research into the impact of living and minimum wage increases was recently featured in both Propel and The Morning Advertiser.
by Abby Henson | 15 Feb, 2017 | Blog, Press & News
Reporting is an important aspect of modern hospitality management, with operators benefiting from a wealth of illuminating information. Here are our top tips on how you can make reporting work for your business.
Daily Reporting
To stay on top of their business performance, it is important for site managers to have quick, easy access to key headline figures, and to check them regularly. This includes forecasted and actual sales, as well as data on labour spend. We find that although weekly data can be useful to give an overall picture, data broken down daily is needed to gain true insight. Armed with this information, managers will be far better placed to make the decisions needed to ensure labour costs stay tightly controlled without ever compromising on service, driving long-term success.
Responding to Sales
Albert Einstein once said that “the measure of intelligence is the ability to change”, and flexibility is certainly an important aspect of an intelligent approach to labour management. It is a good idea for managers to adopt an adaptable approach to rota-building, adding in hours at times when takings are higher than expected, and cutting them back when they are lower. Through its flexed budget settings, S4Labour allows its users to be truly fluid, by calculating an optimal labour percentage using an equation driven by the level of sales. We find that our clients who use flexed budgets are among the best at writing optimised rotas.
Planning to Win
Great sales forecasting is a cornerstone of effective hospitality management. However, we often speak to operators who find this challenging. Those with a focus on service may deliberately over-forecast to facilitate higher staffing levels, while those with an eye on the bottom line may low-ball their forecast to save on wages. Although tempting, we would advise managers to avoid succumbing to these pitfalls, as in the long run, truly accurate forecasting, coupled with a good understanding of the level of staffing needed to deliver the sales and service you desire, will give you the best possible chance of success. Honesty really is the best policy.
Of course, forecasting accurately is easier said than done, so we like to give S4Labour users a helping hand. Illuminating historic data covering past sales trends, a location-specific weather forecast, and the ability to easily account for special events are among the system functions that promote the best possible forecasting.
Slack & Stress
We like to think about labour levels in terms of time spent with spot-on, slack, and stress conditions. Naturally, spot-on is the ideal, with team members working briskly and efficiently to deliver great service. Slack hours account for the times when too many staff are working, and employees may be standing around idle, and are a waste of wages. Stress hours are the opposite – times when too few staff are on shift, and those who are working are rushed off their feet. Quality of service is likely to suffer, and crucially, you could be missing out on hundreds or even thousands of pounds in sales opportunities by being unable to serve customers efficiently.
Minimising slack and stress hours is a great way to promote overall business health, but often we speak to operators who have no way of monitoring these conditions. S4 provides truly insightful reporting on slack, stress, and spot-on time, driven by metrics that can be customised to suit your business. This allows the best possible rotas to be written.
Percentage to Sales
Although the industry is changing fast, labour spend as a percentage of sales is still by far the most commonly used measure of labour management performance. It’s undoubtedly useful to know just how much you are spending, but it can be more useful to know how effectively money is being spent. It’s helpful to keep track of exactly when you’re spending your labour budget, and in what areas of the business, as having and acting on this information will lead to reductions in stress and slack, improvements in service and staff motivation, and increased overall profitability.
S4Labour helps you grasp not just how much you are spending on staffing, but how well you are spending it, all in an intuitive, user-friendly format.
Featured image by Mrsiraphol – Freepik.com
by Abby Henson | 1 Feb, 2017 | Blog, Press & News
With January behind us, the hospitality industry is looking forward to brighter times ahead. This time of year brings several events that for most pubs and restaurants ensure some of the busiest days of the year. First among them comes Valentine’s Day, a time for amorous pampering that tends to spread into a week-long festival of romantic meals for two and bumper champagne sales. March then brings Mothers’ day, another chance for inventive special menus, and for many the year’s best Sunday in terms of driving sales.
The days themselves can be relentless. The first wave of guests arrives early in the day, and while you are intent on delivering great service and food, you’re also worrying about whether you can turn tables around in time for the next sitting. Whether you have couples whispering sweet-nothings, or mothers basking in the glow of familial affection, customers are likely to linger over their meals, making you hard-pushed to stay on top. Weariness kicks in, and staying as good at 8PM as you were at noon is not an easy fight.
Preparation is Key
Events like these can test most of the processes in the businesses, all the way from prep to pot wash. Being fully prepared and 100% ready to swing into action is crucial to the successful running of your busiest days. That doesn’t just mean having a tidy kitchen ready to go. It means having a kitchen cooking in advance of tickets. It means having cold starters and deserts plated. It means having enough lemons chopped for the whole day and every detergent bottle filled.
Special Occasions as Opportunities & Examples
Many sites recognise special occasions are essential to their business, and therefore treat them as special cases, preparing especially well. But why shouldn’t this happen every day when you expect to be busy, like sunny Saturdays, payday weekends, or big sporting nights? What about every weekend? How much easier would every Sunday be if we treated it like Mothers’ Day? How much better would we cope with a full house on a Friday night if we prepared for it as well as we did for Valentine’s night? The actions we have no choice but to employ if we are to succeed on special occasions should be habits we choose to adopt the whole year round.
With these habits made the norm, many businesses would soon find themselves delivering better service at lower cost, and then maybe every Sunday would be like Mothers’ Day, every night like Valentine’s. A full house would cease to be an exception because we’re so good at what we do that we’re always full. Walt Disney once said, “If you can dream it, you can do it”, so let’s use this season’s big events as a golden opportunity to embed the key practices that will help us not just imagine success, but achieve it.
Valentine’s Day is a chance for bumper food and drink sales
Our top tips for Special Occasion Success
1 – Create prep lists well in advance of the big day and tick off items as you do them. Prepare food items that won’t deteriorate as early as you can to get them out of the way.
2 – Plan the pre-staging process and space for cold starters and desserts. Have enough food plated and ready to go, allowing you to deliver at speed and wow your guests with an efficient kitchen, even at the busiest times.
3 – This is the perfect time of year to order in any crockery, cutlery, and other items you need. You shouldn’t then need to order again until next year.
4 – Figure out the pot wash process and don’t let it be a block. Make sure there is an organised way to put the crockery and cutlery down and install shelving if you need to.
5 – Map the flow of your bookings very carefully, allowing longer for bigger tables. Don’t be afraid to max out on bookings, as cancellations are always likely.
6 – Stagger your bookings to relieve the pressure on the kitchen.
7 – Task a team member with floating front of house, charged with processing bills, setting tables, and any other odd jobs that arise.
8 – Be flexible. It is essential that the manager doesn’t get stuck in one place, but can see the whole building, reacting to pressure points by either adjusting staff or stepping in themselves.
9 – Brief your team as thoroughly as you can. Make sure everyone fully knows their role, set targets and encourage upselling; people in a festive mood are the most likely to splash out on extras.
10 – Keep your team fresh. For those working long shifts the fatigue is real and they need drinks and food. Be generous with your praise, as after all, that’s the biggest energiser there is.
by Abby Henson | 27 Jan, 2017 | Blog, Press & News
[pdf-embedder url=”https://www.cattonhospitality.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/january-top-tips-1.pdf” title=”january top tips”]
Featured image by Peoplecreations – Freepik.com
