How to Staff a Restaurant: Breakdown by Position

Consider each hourly hire as an opportunity to drive growth. According to Harris Interactive survey, 86% of people say they're stopped doing business with a company after just one bad customer service experience. Hiring respectful, friendly and engaging people will help define the face of your operation and deliver the memorable customer experience you want.

Having a staff that can live up to or exceed your sales forecast can reduce shrinkage and spoilage, both of which accounts for between 0.5% and 3% of lost sales for most restaurants.

Hence, if you hire to simply fill open positions, your're missing an opportunity to strategically build your workforce to drive growth.


Now let's move to breaking down what to look for when hiring for each position. The positions we will be evaluating includes:

• Cooks
• Wait staff
• Host
• Bartender
• Dishwasher
• Busboy

Cooks

The most important factor to consider when hiring a cook is experience in the style of food that your have decided as specialty in the menu.

You ideal candidate should demonstrate enthusiasm for the foods that you hope to serve, be able to handle pressure and the speed of a busy kitchen while consistently delivering delicious dishes and reducing wastage.

A good hire would be a professionally trained chef well-versed in food safety and hygiene, a Serve Safe certifications is a plus.

Wait Staff

You need someone who can move fast and be able to handle the high paced, quick turnover rate each day.

This obviously depends on the current season, but a long-term hire will be one that can up her/his game and handle multiple customer orders without affecting customer service.

Once you have evaluated for cultural fit, evaluate them for their strengths and knowledge of the business.

For example:
When interviewing for wait staff positions, a server should be knowledgeable about your menu and the types of food you serve. A basic familiarity with mixed drinks and wine is preferable.

Host

Meet, greet, and seat customers. That is the general job of a restaurant host.

For character traits, a host should be an organized person who is comfortable multi-tasking, should be friendly and courteous, and should know how to handle rushes and waiting lines.

Bartender

This is literally the front-of-the-house job, and you must only hire a great bartender.

A great bartender is able to offer quality, attentive service to customers, while still getting the staff their drinks.

Such a person would have a wide knowledge of mixed drinks.

Personality wise he/she should be a good listener and friendly towards both customers and staff.

Furthermore, bartenders are meant to handle a lot of cash at each shift, which means honesty is another important requirement that you must be looking after.

Dishwasher

It may seem unimportant (read undersirable) at first, but dishwashing is one of the most important back-end jobs, for keeping your restaurant afloat.

No evaluation can inform you if the employee will stick and now walk off during the middle of a shift (leaving the boss/manager to do them in his/her free time).

Which means that it's always a good idea to be a little nicer to your dishwashers (read free meal or a tip after a particularly busy night).

Busser

The busboy is a gopher of sorts and your ideal candidate for this position is a high school student.

Your candidate should be able to multi-task and be able to interact with multiple people over through the day.

The main job description of the person is to bus the dining room tables, but can be conscripted by the cooks to keep the ingredients flowing, or the wait staff for helping them with making desserts or salads.

The restaurant business is one of the hardest bsuinesses to staff. It all boils down to the fact that you might be hiring the wrong people from the start!