Franchise Restaurant

How to manage a Franchise Restaurant

[antonpepushaj]

Hello blog world!

My name is Anton Pepushaj, my blog will be about some of the key things in managing a franchise restaurant, it is not necessarily limited to just franchise, as most restaurants are ran the same way, those things are.

Staff

Reputation

Proper scheduling

Stock

I will try my best to explain those 4 things, I have done research as well just to get a better understanding of how other restaurants are run. Most of the things that I talk about is from experience, when I used to run a McDonald’s, so it should be more world accurate then just Googling it, hope you learn something. 

[antonpepushaj]

The importance of staff

The people run the business, without the crew, shift managers, a restaurant will not function, everyone is important, and hiring is one of the things that you have to be very cautious with, because hiring the right people will save you a lot of money, with training, uniforms, paying the trainers, there’s a lot of money involved when it comes to hiring people and having them work as part of the team, a survey showed that 46% of restaurant managers said hiring, training is their number one challenge (Campbell, 2017). From my experience with running a restaurant, I learnt that having loyal crew who will be there to help you serve the customers is an important asset, I think that a lot of companies treat their employees as liabilities, and as replaceable, but its hard to replace a crew who will come in everyday and do their job properly. I also believe that a lot of young people are discouraged from getting certain jobs and moving up in company because they are “young” but sometimes having new blood, can bring you great ideas, for example. When I first started working at McDonald’s I was told that I am way to young to be an assistant restaurant manager but that same year I proved to them; by coming in and putting 110% into my work, that I can do it, so I was offered to run an entire restaurant by myself, and I improved the restaurants sales, surveys, food cost, etc, drastically, that I was eventually sent from restaurant to restaurant to help them out. So my point in this is that showing your staff that they matter, will make a change, valuing your crew members is not a bad thing, it’s actually a good thing in my opinion.

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Don’t let poor customer service ruin the company’s reputation

McDonald’s. As soon as you see that name, a number of things will come to mind, the big “M” that has basically become a religion to some people, the food, the customer service, and that is all possible because of the managers that work day and night… literally, to run the restaurant. Reputation has a big effect when it comes to restaurants, whether its good, or bad, 78% of Americans between the ages of 18-44 said that online reviews help them decide whether to go to a restaurant or not (Nitzberg, 2016). So building and maintaining a good reputation is a key factor in how well a restaurant will do, like McDonald’s reputation got damaged a little bit when they were accused of having meat that were injected with chemicals, and the nuggets that used “pink meat”, but that was just people not doing their research, because if meat is raw on the inside, its…pink. So even though they couldn’t do anything, and it wasn’t their fault, their image still did get slightly damaged by those allegations. I think that maintaining a good reputation is hard these days with social media and the ”cancel culture”, a lot of the time these so called journalists don’t even do research, they just hear something and write about it based on what they think, which could turn bad because they can be sued for defamation. A good reputation will bring in loyal customers and keep the ones you currently have, so one of the ways that you can control how customers feel is with customer surveys, the written ones are usually bad reviews but it still does help improve the business.

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[antonpepushaj]

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Be right on schedule

I think that one of the top things that managers must focus on is scheduling, you have to make sure that the restaurant is always properly staffed, because otherwise the shift will be dreadful. Flexibility should always be considered whenever possible, because helping them will come back to help you, maybe another day, you will need someone to come in and they’ll do that for you, so it helps build a good relationship with your staff (Mega, 2019). Some of the things that managers have to look out for when they are doing their schedules for the week/month is events happening around the area, like if there is a baseball game in the park next to your restaurant, best believe that you will be way busier than a regular Tuesday night for example. Holidays are also very important to look out for, a lot of restaurants have a blackout period during certain holidays because that’s when everyone decides to travel and take days off, but they also can’t deny time off from everyone and sometimes its your key people that want it off, so they have to have a back-up plan for situations like that otherwise, you’ll have mediocre crew working and the restaurant won’t run as smoothly as it usually does, which results in sales going down, unsatisfied customers, you might also lose customers in the process, sometimes people quit going to a certain restaurant just because of one bad experience. I think that keeping the relationship with the customers is very important, but this all just goes back to making sure that you keep an eye on what’s happening in the area, and what’s happening in the near future. The thing with using scheduling programs that people sometimes forget is if you put for example, Jimmy 4:00pm – 12:00am every Monday, then it will stay like that until it is changed, and it’s technically a time saver because you won’t have to do that every week, but when someone books a day off, they won’t change it, so if Jimmy decides to take next Monday off, the program will still schedule him and then you will be left with a shift that’s not properly staffed and in turn, the customers will be the ones who pay the price, so I think that keeping an eye on scheduling is very crucial.

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[antonpepushaj]

Watch your stock level

Without it, you literally cannot run your restaurant, if you can’t supply the product then you won’t have a business, so making sure that your restaurant is fully stocked and ready for the day’s trading is very important. Demands in stock change with holidays and special events as well, sometimes restaurants will go through 2-3x the regular amount of stock on special occasions, especially if there are coupons being sent out or special promotions, like McDonalds’ $0.67 hamburger, we went through around 5-6 boxes of meat on that day, when on a regular day we will go through a max of 2, so the volume of the customers was unpredictable but because we ordered way more than usual, we had enough stock for the whole day without having to go to another store for stock. Some restaurants however did run low on meat so it was very tough to leave the restaurant at such a busy time to get stock, which in the end hurt everyone, the general manager had to go get stock so she couldn’t help manage the floor, which in the end slowed down the times of when a customer orders, and when they get their food. So I think that stock is the most important thing, without it, you don’t have anything to sell, your demand will be high but your supply will be none, which brings no money in for the establishment, and to pay the salaries of the crew people. So all of these things go hand-in-hand, they all have to work simultaneously in order to have a functional restaurant, doesn’t necessarily have to be a franchise, there are plenty of McDonald’s that are not franchises, that are run the same exact way, it’s just their reporting bosses who are different.

[antonpepushaj]

[antonpepushaj]

None of Us is as Good as All of Us

Ray Kroc