Tips On Hiring Front-of-House Restaurant Staff!

The hiring process in the restaurant business can get challenging at times due to the presence of a large number of roles to be handled & managed. These include your back & front-of-house restaurant staff. You might need to hire various servers, chefs, bussers, managers, hosts, expos, food runners, etc.

Understanding the differences between these roles and their job requirements based on the size of your restaurant will be highly beneficial in investing in the hiring & training process. This blog will provide you with a road map for hiring your front-of-house restaurant staff, which is essentially a reflection of your restaurant’s operations.

While back-of-house staff manages kitchen operations, front-of-the-house restaurant staff focuses on catering to customers & enhancing their experience.

To know more about the front-of-house restaurant staff, keep reading this blog!

Importance Of Front-of-house Restaurant Staff

Your front-of-house staff is made up of those who directly manage, serve & deal with your customers. The experience your customers have at your restaurant will be influenced by their behaviour, service, and interpersonal skills.

With competent front-of-house personnel, you can be sure that your guests will be pleased with your menu, customer service & overall dining experience. This staff is essential in earning customer loyalty!

For instance, even if your customers receive delicious food, they are less likely to return to your restaurant if one of your front-line staff members keeps them waiting for a long time or does not proactively respond to their requests. Everything happened as a result of the servers’ or manager’s neglect of that one table.

Now that you know the importance of hiring the best frontline team for your restaurant, let us understand what are the types of roles in the front-of-house staff.

Various Front-of-house Restaurant Staff Roles

The first line of staff has so many different kinds of duties. However, you must determine how many employees you can afford to hire and how many you actually require. Understaffing your workforce to reduce costs is never a good idea, but if you’re just starting out, you can have a few employees filling multiple roles. Cross-training your restaurant staff becomes important here!

1. Manager 

Restaurant managers see to the efficient and effective operation of restaurants. They strive to offer clients satisfying eating experiences that uphold their brand values. In the end, they work to protect the restaurant’s revenue through initiatives like smart workforce management.

2. Servers

A server also referred to as a waiter, is one of the key elements of the customer-facing staff. They take orders, respond to inquiries about the menu and dishes, sell the restaurant’s food and beverages, collect payments, convey orders to the kitchen staff, seat guests, and assist with cleaning. 

3. Bartender

By blending and fulfilling drink orders, bartenders engage directly with consumers. They are responsible for checking age restrictions, understanding alcohol pairings and tastes, curating bar menus, collecting payments, controlling inventory, and maintaining bar supplies.

4. Bus Person

In order to guarantee complete customer satisfaction, a bus person is in charge of setting and clearing restaurant tables, stocking all service stations, and assisting food servers with table service.

5. Runner

The primary duty of the food runner is to quickly and accurately carry food orders from the kitchen to customers’ tables. 

6. Host

As guests enter a restaurant, the host welcomes them, takes their reservations or adds them to a waiting list, provides menus, and directs them to their seats.

7. Cashier

Front-of-house staff also includes a cashier. He/she will interact with the customers in order to manage the billing and accept payments for the services provided by the restaurant. 

Qualities To Look For While Hiring Front-of-house Staff

It is always advisable to focus on the applicant’s personality when you are employing someone for your company. Employees can learn hard skills through training, but soft skills and a sociable persona take a long time to develop and cannot be taught during a training period. Because they will be engaging with many visitors throughout the day, choose employees that have a friendly & likeable nature. 

Here are some other key traits to should look for:

1. Teamwork

How well they work in a team will determine how their chemistry is with his / her fellow servers, bussers and other employees of the restaurant. It is crucial to have good coordination among the front-line staff in order to successfully carry out every task from taking the order to giving the bill. 

2. Presentation Skills

The way your team represents the restaurant and themselves in front of guests will have a significant impact on your restaurant’s reputation.

3. Multi-tasking

At some point or another, roles in restaurants commonly cross one another. The client experience will be harmed if the customer-facing staff can’t successfully juggle several jobs at once without making any errors.

4. Efficiency

One of the most important aspects of client satisfaction is time. Nobody wants to be kept waiting for their order.  So, the staff must be efficient in carrying out their tasks which means finding the quickest ways of doing something without compromising the quality of output.

5. Hospitality

To give the diners a fantastic dining experience, the personnel should be eager to cater to all their needs. For this, they need to be trained well & well-versed with the menu, restaurant policies, & ways of hospitality.

Look for these qualities in the employees next time you start interviewing people for your restaurant. Having an excellent front-of-house team will, without a doubt, get you great results in the future. If you are wondering how to efficiently manage & retain your restaurant staff, we have the blog just for you. Click here to know more!

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