Expanding a restaurant is an exciting venture, but it comes with the challenge of maintaining the quality and standards that earned your initial success. Here are some strategies to help you navigate this critical phase effectively:
- Empower Your Team with Decision-Making Authority: As your restaurant grows, it’s crucial to empower your team to make decisions autonomously. This fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility, resulting in high standards being upheld even when you are not present. Provide clear guidelines and trust your team to handle the day-to-day operations effectively. If you’d like help drafting those guidelines, you know who to call!
- Focus on Customer Feedback: Customer feedback is a valuable tool for maintaining high standards. Regularly solicit feedback through surveys, comment cards, and online reviews. Analyze this feedback to identify areas for improvement and implement changes that enhance a guest’s experience. By prioritizing customer satisfaction, you ensure that your standards remain high. While reviews are extremely important, they tend to be written when a guest is unhappy. That is why mystery shopping is so important – this service provides an unbiased report of the guest experience, allows for more accurate discovery of what is going well, and identifies problem areas. For more than 20 years, we have been a leader in guest experience and service reporting, using Secret Shoppers to capture an unbiased view of your operations and provide valuable insights to enhance every customer visit. Our proprietary reporting system offers pre-created forms or customizable options to gather the exact information you need, allowing you to stipulate evaluation criteria and experience your business as your customers do. EyeSpy’s evaluations focus not only on service points but also on the overall customer experience, with reports including over 50 data collection points. This comprehensive feedback helps owners and operators understand details like whether an appetizer was offered, the frequency of table touches, and missed up-sell opportunities. Our account managers provide personalized service, supporting scheduling, questionnaire development, and analytics, and you can log into your account to compare multiple stores, track progress, and more. Learn more here.
- Streamline Communication Channels: Efficient communication is vital during expansion. Establish clear and streamlined communication channels to ensure that leadership and the entire team are on the same page. Utilize technology such as communication apps and project management tools to facilitate real-time updates and collaboration among your team members. Need help setting this up? We do this for clients all the time.
- Tailor Your Approach to Individual Strengths: Recognize and nurture the unique strengths of each team member. Personalized leadership coaching and development plans can significantly boost morale and performance. When each individual feels valued and supported, they are more likely to contribute positively to the team and uphold high standards.
- Incorporate Technology for Consistency: Innovation can play a vital role in maintaining standards during expansion. We are developing a tool that is really going to help. AEyeCheck is our AI-driven quality control system designed to ensure food quality, temperature, portioning, and presentation consistency. Currently, in beta testing, AEyeCheck uses machine learning to analyze photos and data for each dish, ensuring uniform standards are met. This technology reduces human error and ensures consistency, setting a new benchmark for quality control in the restaurant industry. If you’d like to beta-test AEyeCheck, let us know by emailing [email protected].
Elevating Excellence with EyeSpy
At EyeSpy, we are dedicated to helping restaurants achieve and sustain excellence, especially during periods of growth. Our services range from mystery shopping and operational development to team training and innovative solutions like AEyeCheck, all designed to enhance guest experiences and operational efficiency.
We believe that happy employees create happy guests. By investing in your team, clearly defining standards, implementing robust systems, personalizing your approach, and embracing technological advancements, you can maintain high standards and exceed expectations as your restaurant expands.
