Restaurant Back of House & Front of House Management: What’s the difference?
If you are running a restaurant, you must be aware of the fact that customers don’t just value the quality of the food but also the service and the ambiance of the restaurant. It is not just the kitchen that matters but also the front of the house.
The interior, exterior, table arrangement, staff of the front house, service, etc. The restaurant must make the diners feel special once they enter the premises. A restaurant must do everything to make them feel special.
On the other hand, one has to also make sure that the back house of the restaurant is efficient enough to take care of the customer’s demands. Efficiency does not only come with the use of technologies or organized kitchens; it also has to come from the will of the staff too. This can happen only when the staff is happy, safe, and satisfied.
This article will help you understand how you can manage the front and back of the house.
What is the definition of Front of the House?
The FOH of the restaurant (Front of House) is the area of the restaurant where customers can go to hang around or eat. The front of the house is an area where customers actually experience their dine-in moments.
Usually, the front of the house of any restaurant is distinct from the back of the house; the stockroom office and full kitchen stop back of the house is usually accessible only to the staff.
The connection between the Front of House and Back of House
If you wish to run a successful restaurant business, then there has to be smooth and hassle-free communication between the FOH & BOH of your restaurant. A seamless communication channel between two houses means no data goes unheard or un-implemented. The staff of both the houses are given their respective job and responsibilities to perform efficiently to run the restaurant smoothly and meet every order demand as expected.
Tips To Improve the Front of House?
As the front house is the restaurant’s visible area where your diners sit and enjoy the meal, you can take certain measures to ensure a better dining experience.
Greeting guest
It starts the moment your diners enter the premises of your restaurant. They must be welcome well. This is the first interaction they are going to have with the restaurant; hence it is recommended to greet them with a smile and make them feel positive about the restaurant. This will set a tone for the dining experience at your restaurant.
A perfect welcome of greeting will include eye contact, understanding the mood or personality of the customer and approaching them comfortably, having an amicable body language, etc. Plus, it is crucial that the welcome professional/staff understands where to take the customers to meet their dining expectations in terms of ambiance and privacy.
Wait Times
Irrespective of how fresh and tasty your menu is, how vibrant your menu is and how upbeat the ambiance is, if the waiting time is not managed well, your customers’ perspective about the dining at your restaurant will be negative. As a professional restaurant, you need to manage the walk-ins, table-turning, training, and professionalism of the host, etc.
Proper assignment of roles and responsibilities to each staff member will help in organizing an efficient front of the house.
Online Reservations
Restaurants that know how to harness the power of the internet can get benefited from it hugely. If your restaurant is open to take reservations and booking from multiple online platforms, it will save time and boost the productivity of the front house staff. The staff can pay more attention to serving the diners than taking care of bookings through phone calls.
The online reservation system feature in the restaurant POS also helps the front house to stay organized by assigning tables automatically to the guests. If the restaurant is full, the booking system will inform the customers, saving their time and making them feel good about the restaurant for valuing the time.
How to Make Back of House Operation More Efficient?
Restaurant team meetings
It is recommended to hold regular meetings with your staff, both front house and back house, to discuss issues, share crucial information or updates, and brainstorming in order to build and maintain a transparent environment in the restaurant and ensuring the staff their issues are worth considering and would be taken care of. During such meetings, staff can be motivated to come up with new ideas to increase the footfall of the customer and to serve them well.
Acknowledge Employees Efforts
Front of the house staff usually gets appreciated more for the obvious reason in the form of a tip or direct compliment. Such direct communication and rewards keep the front house staff motivated to perform better. However, the back of the house staff is hardly in direct touch with customers. Hence, restaurants must acknowledge the efforts of the back of house staff often. You can design a reward or acknowledgment system to take care of the kitchen staff.
Be Transparent
Back of the house improvements and operational efficiency starts with the back of the house staff. Imbibing more transparency, hassle-free communication, and smoothness in the transfer of information is crucial to make sure that the back of the house functions effectively to cater to the front of the house demands. Back of the house is half of your restaurant, and hence, it is important to take care of their satisfaction and professionalism too.
A successful restaurant always finds a way to keep the front of the house and back of the house on the same page to achieve the common goal.
