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In the world of multi-unit restaurants, where every plate of food should taste the same whether you're in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, consistency is king. Whether it's your famous burger, signature cocktail, or the warmth of your restaurant's hospitality, customers return because they know what to expect. But achieving that consistency is no small feat, especially when it comes to employee onboarding.
Employee onboarding is the first step in building a team that can deliver a consistent experience across all your restaurant locations. It's the process of getting new hires up to speed, familiarizing them with your brand, and ensuring they are well-equipped to provide the exceptional service your customers expect.
In this blog, we'll explore the critical aspects of maintaining consistency in employee onboarding within multi-unit restaurants. We'll delve into the challenges specific to this industry, why consistency is crucial, and, most importantly, how to achieve it.
Picture this: You're a loyal customer of a popular multi-unit restaurant chain. You live in City A, where you visit one of their locations every weekend, and you absolutely love their signature dish. The flavors, the presentation, the overall experience—it's all consistently exceptional. Now, imagine you're on a business trip to City B and decide to dine at the same restaurant chain there. You order the same dish with high expectations, but to your disappointment, it tastes nothing like what you're used to. The service is subpar, and the atmosphere doesn't quite match up. You leave feeling let down.
This scenario highlights why consistency matters so much in the restaurant industry, especially for multi-unit chains. Customers build expectations based on previous experiences, and when those expectations aren't met, it can lead to disappointment, customer churn, and damage to your brand's reputation.
Consistency isn't just about the taste of the food; it extends to every aspect of the dining experience, including service, ambiance, cleanliness, and adherence to company policies. Inconsistent experiences can confuse and frustrate customers, ultimately leading them to seek alternatives.
Consistency isn't just a nice-to-have—it's a must-have. It directly impacts the customer experience, which, in turn, affects your brand's reputation and bottom line.
To achieve and maintain consistency in multi-unit restaurant chains, it's crucial to start at the very beginning: employee onboarding. Here are some key benefits of having a consistent onboarding process:
Now that we've established why consistency is paramount, let's delve into how you can create and implement a standardized onboarding program that ensures every employee starts their journey with the same foundation. To do so, we need to understand the barriers in existing onboarding methods.
Consistency is a prized asset in the restaurant industry, but achieving it in the realm of employee onboarding can be challenging, especially when using traditional methods. Here are some of the common barriers that restaurant chains face:
In a multi-unit restaurant chain, training materials can vary greatly between locations. Each branch might develop its own set of training manuals, checklists, and procedures. This variation makes it difficult to ensure that employees are receiving consistent information and training across all units.
The consequence of this inconsistency is that employees at one location may learn different techniques, policies, or service standards compared to their counterparts at another site. As a result, the customer experience can become uneven, leading to confusion and frustration among patrons.
Another hurdle to consistency in traditional onboarding methods is the varying quality of training delivered at different locations. Without centralized oversight and standardization, the effectiveness of training programs can fluctuate widely.
For instance, shadowing is a popular method of onboarding. Some branches may have more enthusiastic seniors who excel at conveying information and engaging new hires, resulting in well-prepared employees. In contrast, other locations may struggle with less engaging, less informative training sessions, leading to employees who are ill-prepared to meet your brand's standards.
Traditional onboarding methods often rely on printed training manuals and physical documents. This static approach makes it challenging to provide real-time updates and keep training materials current. As a result, employees may be working with outdated information, unaware of changes in policies, procedures, or menu offerings.
Imagine a situation where a new menu item is introduced, but some locations continue to train employees using old materials. Inconsistent knowledge can lead to menu inconsistencies and, in turn, a subpar customer experience.
Traditional onboarding methods can be resource-intensive and time-consuming. Printing and distributing physical training manuals, scheduling in-person training sessions, and managing paperwork are all labor-intensive tasks.
This approach not only consumes valuable time but also requires significant resources, such as printing costs, travel expenses for trainers, and physical storage space for training materials. These resources could be better allocated elsewhere to enhance the overall customer experience.
Even if a multi-unit has comprehensive training manuals that ensure consistent materials across locations, it can be very difficult to engage employees with these lengthy word-based documents. These documents then become dormant knowledge, stored away in shared drives and dusty shelves which no one really reads.
There are three steps to creating a consistent onboarding program:
A well-organized onboarding checklist is your roadmap to consistency. It ensures that every new employee goes through the same essential steps and receives the same information. Here are some basic points to cover:
Only uniform and consistent training materials aren’t enough, however. It must be ensured that the employees are learning and retaining the training contents. It is even more challenging with youth-driven workforces who are constantly exposed to engaging contents from various social media. The best way to make sure your training is engaging is to incorporate technology that helps you integrate elements like microlearning and gamification. The training should be:
Consistency shouldn’t be a consideration only at the onboarding, but it should be a crucial factor beyond onboarding as well. According to a TalentLMS survey, 52% of restaurant employees report that onboarding is the only form of training they have received in their establishment. This shouldn’t be the case, and training should be continuous.
To ensure consistency beyond onboarding, communication is key. Some steps that can be taken to ensure consistent communication are:
Consistency is a challenging but crucial element, and it may seem overwhelming to incorporate this into your operations. After all, you are a busy restaurant operator, already bogged down with a thousand other issues. But worry not, this is where spoon.tech comes in!
Whether you already have training manuals or want to start from scratch, spoon.tech’s intuitive tool can help you create uniform, engaging training materials that employees will enjoy, with very little time investment.
Employees across every location can access the same contents from their mobile phones and learn your processes and policies while playing games. In case of any change in process, you can make the changes from the admin interface, and employees will be notified instantly of the changes and prompted to learn the changes.
In conclusion, maintaining consistency in employee onboarding is not just a challenge; it's a necessity for multi-unit restaurants. Consistency is the secret ingredient that ensures every customer who walks into any of your locations receives the same high-quality dining experience, from the food on their plate to the warmth of the hospitality they receive.
In this blog, we've explored the significance of consistency in multi-unit restaurants, the essential elements of a standardized onboarding program, and the role of technology like spoon.tech in enhancing the onboarding process.
Consistency is not a one-time achievement—it's an ongoing commitment. It requires dedication, resources, and a willingness to adapt while staying true to your brand's values. Multi-unit restaurant chains that invest in their onboarding processes are better equipped to navigate challenges, retain customers, and maintain a stellar reputation in an ever-evolving industry.
As you move forward, remember that consistency is not just a goal; it's the recipe for success in the world of multi-unit restaurants.
If you want a one-stop solution to incorporating consistency in your employee training, get in touch with spoon.tech by filling out our contact form. Alternatively, you can write to us at hello@spoon.tech or call us at +43 670 655 56 82.
Hi, I'm Audri, a Master's student in Digital Economy at Vienna University of Economics and Business, and an enthusiast of the food and hospitality sector. Digital transformation in the hospitality sector is an intersection of my practice and passion, and I love to write on that topic. Let's connect on LinkedIn to chat more!
Hi, I'm Audri, a Master's student in Digital Economy at Vienna University of Economics and Business, and an enthusiast of the food and hospitality sector. Digital transformation in the hospitality sector is an intersection of my practice and passion, and I love to write on that topic. Let's connect on LinkedIn to chat more!
