Blog

Having a variety of different food items available on your menu will allow you to draw in more customers to your café. If you are worried about it complicating your day, here’s how to introduce these foods to your café menu so that it will go as smoothly as possible.

Don't Introduce Too Many New Foods at Once

Many café owners make the mistake of introducing too many foods at once. They get so excited about their new menu offerings that they forget that a lot of work goes into utilizing new foods in their café. This can slow down service times, increase employee confusion, and decrease overall quality. This is why it’s best to only introduce one or two new foods at a time. Let everyone adjust to smaller changes rather than blow them over with sudden changes.

Get Bread Delivery

The food you might want to introduce for your café probably uses a lot of bread. After all, sandwiches and toast are common café offerings, and bread is also offered on the side of salads and soups, which might make up your lunch menu. Using fresh bread can give your food a great boost, but making bread is time consuming. 

If you are worried about how you will find the time to bake bread every single day, you can utilize fresh bread delivery. This will allow you to have fresh bread whenever you need it without having to complicate things by trying to make it yourself.

Prepare What You Can The Night Before

Many people likely visit your café first thing in the morning for coffee and breakfast. However, delays in food prep can make them late for work or appointments, leaving your customers upset and unlikely to return. To prevent long wait times, do as much food prep as possible ahead of time. This might include cutting up fruits and vegetables, marinating ingredients, or preparing condiments. So that you don’t have to get to work too early in the morning, try to do food prep the evening before.

Talk to Your Staff First

One of the biggest struggles that a lot of café owners face when introducing new foods is their staff not being sure how to prepare these new items. This is why you should talk to them about these new offerings beforehand. Show them how to prepare each item, and make sure they have the chance to make these dishes on their own as well. You can also provide recipe cards for the kitchen for any new employees or anyone who might need a reminder.

While introducing new foods to your café menu can make it more diverse, you may find they also can make your day more complicated if you aren’t thoroughly prepared ahead of time. Fortunately, there are some things that you can do beforehand that will save you time and will allow your staff to be fully prepared to work with these new food offerings.

These days, more and more people are using the drive-thru instead of eating indoors to minimize contact with other people. This means the drive-thru will be more crowded than ever. It's important to keep things moving. Here are 4 tips on how to improve high traffic drive-thru efficiency.

Utilize Your Fastest Employees

Monitor different employees on the drive-thru. Use metrics to determine who the fastest employees are, and schedule these employees on the drive-thru as often as possible. You should also pick managers who emphasize speed and have the best numbers. These managers have proven that they know how to get things done quickly. Continue training everyone on ways to be faster.

Easy to Read Menus Early in the Drive-Thru

One of the biggest hold ups in the drive-thru is waiting for customers to decide what they want. Make it easy for them by showing them the menu well in advance. Provide multiple menus up to the point where someone orders. This way, they can look at the menu while waiting and be ready to order when it's their turn. No more waiting for the customer to decide what to order once they pull up to the window.

Prep in Advance

You should prepare yourself as well as possible. Anticipate the most common orders and have these items ready to go. For example, you can probably get a second pot of coffee ready during the morning rush since you know many people will be ordering coffee. You don't need to wait for the first pot to be used up. You can also utilize a used stainless steel three-door commercial freezer to keep frozen things on ice till your customers order them.

Minimize Errors

When something goes wrong with a person's order in the drive-thru, it can hold up the line. You should do everything you can to minimize mistakes. First, you should have a clear speaker system so that everyone can hear each other properly. You should also provide a screen for the person in the drive-thru to see the order. After taking an order, have the employee verify the order to the customer. These simple steps can save a lot of time in fixing errors.

People who go through the drive-thru want to get there order and get on with their day as quickly as possible. They are probably on their way to work or school. It's your job to help get them there on time (and with delicious coffee and breakfast). These tips can help you accomplish this.

Do you own a café? Do you want to stop wasting so much time? Do you want your employees to show up close to opening and not have to prep for hours beforehand? Everyone wants fresh. Having good quality fresh ingredients can put your place on the map, but it takes forever to prepare. Below are some options to consider to help make your café more efficient.

Sharp Knives

It seems like common sense, but sometimes we forget that having a nice cutting knife can make things go faster. Start by training your employees in the proper way to sharpen a blade. Provide them the tools to do so. They will thank you. Chopping herbs for egg sandwiches. Dicing tomatoes for sandwiches. Cutting those muffins in half now became a breeze. Depending on the size of your café this could save a few minutes to an hour of fast chopping saved. Take a lesson from professional chefs who use this tip to save time.

Standardize Recipes

Recipes can confusing. You want customers to have the same experience they did last time they came to your café. This is why it’s important to have clear instructions.  You want to make sure that the food is consistent for allergy reasons and for flavor consistency. Having pre-made items they can assemble and utensils that measure the correct serving size will take any guesswork and make an assembly line move fast for the lunch rush crowd.

Ready-Made Items

Sure, you may have daily fresh scones you serve with the coffee, but that doesn’t mean everything needs to be baked in-store.   Not dedicating days of prep time to foods like kaiser buns for sandwiches or fries for sides can give fresh tasting food for less time prepping. Many other foods out there can be prepped ahead of time and can last the week.

We can make him better stronger faster?

In a café, your employees are walking all over each other. They zip back and forth from the front of the counter to the machines used. Positioning can save an immense amount of time. Place everything your employees need within reach. This may mean having many stations. Reduce obstructing traffic and you’ll have grateful employees.

Efficiency is key. What you as a café employee or owner can do for the business is to provide time saving methods. Take a step back and check the business by watching how things work. Many of these improvements can be done without spending extra funds. When fancy machinery that may speed up a process can cost thousands, start simple and work up from there.

Cleanup duties may seem like mundane chore, but they are still an issue of tremendous importance. Restaurants that fail to keep their kitchen and food prep areas squeaky clean could run into any number of problems which they would have done well to avoid. From minimizing labor and overhead costs to avoiding the headaches associated with a health-code violation, making sure your commercial kitchen is being properly run, clean and maintained is not a matter to be taken lightly.

Create Established Cleanup Procedures

Having a set way for cleaning everything eliminates any uncertainty regarding cleanup. Creating a manual detailing the steps that need to be taken when closing and cleaning the kitchen ensures more consistent and dependable results. Training all existing and future kitchen staff to follow the same procedures can allow them to work more efficiently which may save on labor and help to lower overhead costs.

Ovens and Deep Fryers

Cafe's have fries, sandwiches, baked goods, and lots of other delicious sides to great Joe. A deep fryer that has been in continuous operation for hours on end can be a far greater challenge to clean than a sink, bus tub or food prep station. Contracting with a commercial grease trap cleaning helps to ensure that the job is able to be done to your satisfaction. Outsourcing key aspects of cleanup and waste disposal can free your staff to concentrate on other responsibilities.

Opening and Closing Shift Duties

The kitchen needs to be kept as clean as possible in between shifts in order to ensure superior sanitation and efficiency. Tasking each shift with additional duties or scheduling deep-cleaning tasks on a rotating daily or weekly basis helps to ensure that your commercial kitchen is being properly maintained. Clearly outlined shift duties pertaining to a specific time and day of the week can help you to better direct the efforts and energies of your staff.

Sanitizing Food Prep and Storage Areas

Any area where food may come into contact with a potential contaminant needs to be sanitized as often as possible. An outbreak of food poisoning or other health issue that originated within your kitchen can be disastrous. Taking extra care to keep food handling, prep and storage stations as clean as you possibly can be well worth a little extra time or effort.

Trying to do much on their own is a common mistake that many restaurant owners tend to make. When it comes to kitchen cleaning, make sure that your staff has been properly trained and that your shift supervisors and managers understand their role. Never forget that keeping the kitchen squeaky clean is a team effort.