Hi, I’m Claire from Delaget.  With a new year approaching, we find time to reflect on our business and operational successes, and perhaps our misses as well. As you think about resolutions for the coming year for your restaurant, consider these six critical operational systems.

#1 – Sales forecasting and scheduling

Operational success starts here—and this is often the bottleneck between your team and great results. Resolve to:

Create an accurate forecast week in and week out by using all the data available to you. Your sales history, marketing calendars and local calendars are critical tools to master accurate day-part, full day, and weekly forecasts, especially during the challenging first quarter.

The more accurate your sales forecast, the more likely you are to enjoy success in managing labor costs and food costs.

And be sure to keep your employees’ availability up-to-date.

#2 – Deployment

Resolve to:

Build your deployment plan as you write your schedule

Focus on putting the right people, on the right task, at the right time.

Focus on cashier deployment, limiting the amount of hands in the tills, and keeping your cashiers fresh for outstanding guest experiences.

#3 Product Ordering or Build to Order System

Resolve to:

Ensure you have enough product to last through the next order day with no product shortages.

Check the order to be 100% certain you have received everything you’ve paid for.

Eliminate the need to borrow and loan product back and forth between restaurants.

#4 Prep guide or prep schedule

Preparing food requires more attention than you might think. Executing across your preparation guidelines and prep cycles will help you improve in a number of areas, including:

Your Ideal or Targeted Cost of Sales – get the ingredient portion right, reducing waste and improving product yield.

Your speed of service – have the product available and easily accessible by employees during peak periods. Timely food prep means that employees can focus their attention on quality service for guests.

Your labor costs – improving your speed of service improves your labor costs and preparing food only when scheduled, which helps optimize employee productivity.

And, customer satisfaction – consistently preparing and serving great tasting food is why your guests are loyal to your brand in the first place.  Nearly every customer win or loss can be attributed to the quality of your food in some way.

#5 – Open, close, and pre-rush checklists

Resolve to:

Be ready for revenue and great guest experiences by physically checking every area in your restaurant.

Clean and complete closes, ensuring tasks are done that will support the next day’s opening shift.

Clean, stock, and fully prep your restaurant to support the shift change to the dinner and evening teams.

Double-check your preparation, pre-rush, to make sure the team is ready to serve guests.

Use checklists, which are great developmental tools that foster improved accountability for your entire team. A checklist will teach your teams to value consistency and high standards in all they do.

# 6 – Manager walks

Resolve to:

And finally, pull it all together by regularly “walking your store” at least every 30 minutes.

Visit with guests, and role model your customer-relations skills for your team.

Talk to, coach, encourage, and recognize your team along the way. Acknowledge and reward your top performers.

Stay on top of the condition of your restaurant; from the parking lot to the back door, make sure everything is clean, neat, organized, stocked, prepped, safe, policies are followed, and the entire team is on task!

There you have it, the six critical operational systems which can help you develop your team to run great restaurants, earn great customer scores, and improve your margins.

For more info on how to capture the data across ALL your critical operational systems, visit Delaget.com/ today. Happy New Year!