Running a restaurant is a painstaking task, especially during weekends. Besides, if you’ve adapted to an online ordering system, things can get messier.
Imagine your restaurant’s website or app buzzing with endless online orders, and you have no clue how to handle this pressure. As a result, you’re losing customers, and your reputation is down.
You must be strategic in handling the rush of orders while ensuring that no customer goes unsatisfied. To take the burden off your shoulders, we’ve provided nine proven tips.
Use these tips to prepare your restaurant for online weekend rush hours.
Keep Your Cool to Start with
Staying calm becomes the most challenging part during rush hours. But you must master this to deal with the tight schedules on weekends.
One of the best ways to keep cool during rush hours is to accept what is coming. If you cordially welcome your customers’ massive online orders during weekends, the rest of the tips will be much easier to follow.
Stay positive, keep your staff motivated, and be prepared to serve your online deliveries or takeaways at your best.
Organise Your Staff
You’ll need your staff to be at their best when planning to beat the weekend rush hours. To get the most out of them, you must organise them depending on their roles, positions, and volumes of duties.
As online orders increase in number on weekends, you may want to appoint additional staff for that period. Some part-time kitchen and packaging employees may be handy.
Besides, splitting dine-in and online delivery staff can effectively save precious time.
Ensure Smooth Communication
Flawless communication is the key to success when your restaurant is buzzing with customers. Make sure your kitchen staff are on the same page with the servers regarding customer orders, table numbers, etc.
To make things smoother, you can provide headsets or wireless earplugs to your staff to communicate about orders. This will reduce confusion during surges in orders and save customers waiting time.
Streamline Deliveries and Takeaways
Some cafes and eateries avoid or reduce taking online orders during weekends. Instead of doing that, you can strengthen your relationship with popular delivery platforms, such as ChefOnline.
Strong communication with these platforms will give your restaurant an edge in ensuring timely delivery and higher customer satisfaction.
Another proven way to ensure smooth delivery and takeaways is preparing ingredients in advance for popular dishes. This will quicken serving on the tables and reduce waiting time.
Apply Tech-Based Workflow in the Kitchen
During weekends, you must ensure a proper alignment between the kitchen operation and online orders. In this case, being tech-savvy can help you a great deal in handling overwhelming customer rush and massive orders.
Many restaurants apply EPoS systems to integrate these two aspects of their restaurant operation seamlessly. Investing in such technology can help prioritise orders while speeding up the delivery process.
Estimate Data-Driven Online Orders
With a proper EPoS system in place, you can collect data on both dine-in and online orders. Such robust data can help you prepare your restaurant for the weekend ahead.
One of the best ways to do this is to analyse data from the past week and prepare for an estimated number of online orders. However, if you’re preparing for the last week of the month, the orders might be slightly less than expected.
Ensure Swift Service During Rush
Do you know what customers love during weekends with high online order traffic? Swift service. Customers may go crazy if they don’t receive their delivery at their doors in time, and the end result is not good for business.
So, to keep things moving, you better ensure swift order processing, packaging, and delivery. Nonetheless, by swift, we don’t emphasise hastening an order. It’s about taking the optimum time to close a delivery, depending on the order.
Enhance Packaging Time
Packaging foods can take a lot of time during weekend rush hours. However, you can tackle this process with a distinct packaging station, adapting to sustainable packaging, etc.
Consider adapting to a smart packaging process to ensure no foods are damaged during delivery. This will keep the foods free from contamination, and your customers will receive fresh foods while giving you top ratings in their reviews.
Maintain a Positive Vibe at Workplace
To end our list, we bring an aspect that’s crucial to executing tasks during heavy workloads—creating and maintaining a positive vibe within the workstation.
Start having short to moderate meetings with them in advance regarding the weekend rush. Start by appreciating their hard work and achievements. Give them the confidence needed to take on the pressure ahead.
Based on recent data, discuss your areas of improvement and delegate necessary tasks to each employee.
Final Words
Preparing your restaurant for online weekend rush hours is challenging, but with the right steps and resources, it can be easier to handle. Remember, tackling rush hours isn’t rushing your service. It’s a process where skills meet efficiency.
Follow our nine tips to deal with those busy weekends effectively. Instead of getting overwhelmed with swarming online orders, take them as an opportunity to increase customer satisfaction, reputation, and profits.
