One big challenge restaurant owners and managers face is of knowing when to hire permanent and seasonal staff.
There are certain areas of restaurant operations that need to be dealt with throughout the year. Also, there are activities like servicing the floor and managing inventory that require more or less staff in different seasons.
To be sure when to prepare to hire seasonal staff and when to actually hire such staff, you need to go by facts and data.
You can use your restaurant POS software that offers data on sales, order volume, etc. to evaluate the requirement of staff to deliver and fulfil orders efficiently.
Here are a few aspects which your POS software can help you assess while inferring the number of staff members you need in each department at all times:
Daily orders placed per table
With the help of a POS software, you can assess the number of orders you are getting per table and in the restaurant overall. You can use this information to ascertain the number of staff members you need to cater to such number of orders in an efficient manner. If the orders placed are consistently high, then you can hire permanent staff, while if the number of orders fluctuate between months, then it is wise to hire seasonal or contractual staff to begin with.
Forecasting demand as per previous year data
Your restaurant POS software also helps you study sales data from the same season in the previous year and the years before that. This is a good metric to estimate the demand or rush you will see at the restaurant in the current year. Accordingly, you can plan your staff and hiring well in advance for a season depending upon that season’s historical data.
Trending demand
Combine the past data from your POS software in hand with the effect of the present and future offerings and marketing activities to ascertain the kind of demand you will face in a given period of time. If your marketing activities have permanently moved to the next level, then you can equip your restaurant kitchen and floor also by hiring permanent staff to cater to the increase in demand expected from your marketing results.
Assessing employee efficiency
Your POS software can give information about how much time it takes to deliver an order. This helps assess time required to fulfil orders including special or regular menu items. Such comprehensive data, combined with the demand data gathered in the above points, helps managers assess the number of staff members they need in the kitchen and on the floor.
Do away with seasonal staff with mobile POS
You can even cut down your staff requirement by automating ordering of items. You can install a mobile POS system with Loyera POS software. This will include placing POS tablets on each table, which can be used by patrons to place orders. These orders will go directly to the kitchen with the help of cloud-based, real-time data flow between departments through POS software like Loyera.
With the above advantages offered to you by your restaurant POS software, you can always stay ahead of your competition by competitively and aptly staffing all your departments. Base your staffing decisions on facts and data collected by your POS software like Loyera.