Tips for optimizing a restaurant’s service cycle

The service cycle of a restaurant stands out among the most important aspects that a hospitality entrepreneur must take care of. Especially, because the more customers you manage to serve, the more sales you will generate during the day.

However, increasing the profit rate in your hospitality business is not its only benefit. There are other reasons why you need to know the average service cycle time and how to optimize it correctly.

All this and more will be explained in detail in this post.

What is the service cycle of a restaurant?

The life cycle of a restaurant service is all those moments where diners interact directly with the company. Simply put, the cycle starts from the moment the customer enters the premises and ends when he/she decides to leave.

All these interactions are also known as moments of truth. This is because each moment of interaction influences the experience diners will have before, during and after visiting the hospitality establishment.

This means that the quality of service will determine the customer’s attitude towards the brand. If the experience is extraordinary, it will be positive, but if it is not pleasant, the customer will logically assume a negative attitude.

4 reasons to know the average cycle time of services

In any hospitality establishment, time is precious. We are talking about a characteristic that every hotelier needs to optimize to the maximum to improve the profit rate, but without sacrificing the quality of the service.

When we talk about the average service cycle time, we are referring to the time it takes to serve the diner. This is determined by considering the total time, from the moment the customer enters the restaurant until he leaves, as explained above.

1. Knowing the productive capacity of your restaurant

The first step is to know the production capacity of your restaurant business. You must determine how many customers your wait staff serves per service (and average it out by time slots).

2. Choose opening and closing hours

Knowing the volume of customers and their flow during the day in the restaurant business is essential to adjust opening and closing times

If you don’t get customers until 8 a.m., it may not be worth opening an hour earlier, or if you have a full house at 11 p.m. and close at midnight, it may be beneficial to extend your hours beyond that time. Of course, after each change you make, you should continue to measure the impact on productivity.

3. Discovering the variables involved in services

It will help you to know which variables are involved in the performance of your restaurant’s services. With all this information in your possession, you will know which weak points to correct in order to optimize service

4. Improve table rotation

And as if that were not enough, it will also allow you to manage table rotation more effectively. This, in case you want to double them to double the level of productivity in your hospitality business.

How to improve the rotation to be able to offer more services while maintaining quality?

Believe it or not, improving table rotation is important because every catering business has a capacity limit.

That is, there will always be an exact amount of customers that can be received, but if you optimize the rotation of your tables you can increase the profit margin in your restaurant.

• Train your staff: It is important that you guarantee an optimal continuous training in catering to your staff on how to offer a correct customer service. The goal is to have a team that performs their duties quickly, courteously and in a friendly manner. A second benefit of providing training is to reduce staff turnover, which is often encouraged because new staff do not adapt to the rhythm or habits of the team.

• Teamwork: Teamwork is an effective way to improve table turnover. In particular, if a customer needs to change something in his order, he will not have to wait until he sees the waiter who served him again. In this case, any other employee will take their new order, ensuring a quick table turnover.

• Take orders by seat: It is more efficient when waiters take orders by seat. This is because they will be able to know exactly where each dish that was ordered should go, and will not have to waste time guessing the exact location of the diner. Order taking in a restaurant is one of the points that you should reinforce in the training you offer to your team.

• Reduce table visits: Another way to improve turnover is to reduce the number of trips the waiter makes to the table. For example, it is a total waste of time to make one trip to welcome the guest and then make another trip to take note of the drink. Both can be done perfectly well in the same trip, and take advantage of the drink unloading to ask about the food.

• Take advantage of technology: Make the most of technology to speed up the customer service cycle in a restaurant. We recommend resorting to mobile POS systems that will allow waiters to move freely around the restaurant to charge diners. This will avoid queues around the cash register at the bar and speed up the turnover system.

• Promote online reservations: Speaking of technology, it is important to have an online reservation system. This feature will help you achieve better turn times at tables, because customers will have already reviewed your menu online and will know exactly what they are ordering when they arrive at the restaurant. This means faster ordering times.

• Limit the size of your menu: Simplifying your menu will also help you optimize the service cycle. Remember that large menus generate indecisive customers, which means they will take longer to decide which order they want to place.