RESTAURANT HOSTESS TRAINING POINTS

We often think of host or hostess as a relatively simple job—greet customers as they come in, seat them when a table is available and return to their station. The truth is, however, that hosting involves many unique behind-the-scenes skills and a lot of finesse to make the whole of your restaurant function efficiently. Unbeknownst to most customers, and sometimes even employees, hostesses are in charge of:

• • Memorizing the restaurant’s floor plan
  • Greeting customers
  • Managing tables
  • Taking reservations
  • Memorizing server sections
  • Tracking additional seating accommodations (high chairs, etc.)

Despite having all of these responsibilities, training a hostess is often overlooked in the restaurant. Instead, managers tend to focus on kitchen and wait staff, incorrectly seeing their roles as being more important. In fact, hostesses serve as the initial phase of your restaurant; they’re the first thing that customers see when entering through your front door and the last thing they see as they leave. Having a talented host/hostess can make the difference between a positive or negative review online after customers depart.

This article examines ways to make the training process easier for both the hostess themselves and the managers evaluating them. These features primarily include:

• • Table mapping
  • Labor management integrations

 

Table mapping

Apart from greeting customers as they enter the restaurant, the primary responsibility of a hostess is tracking table turnover. You want to know how long a party has been seated to get an accurate idea of wait times, especially for large tables. POS systems simplify this process by offering digital table mapping, which lays out the restaurant on your tablet display.

Having options for table mapping means using color coding to easily track the turnover rate of tables and displaying how long parties have been seated, which allows hosts/hostesses to estimate when tables will become available. This does the heavy lifting for one of the major responsibilities typically assigned to a new hostess.

 

Labor management integrations

One of the most common ways to train a new hostess (or any employee, for that matter) is to partner them with a seasoned veteran. The idea is that this will show them the ropes, facilitating their graduation from trainee to employee. This can be a risky process that ties up the time and energy of both the new employee and the veteran.

POS integrations with labor management software (for example, Homebase) simplify the process by offering:

• • In-office communication through custom chat rooms
  • Coordinating employee shifts
  • Requesting time off
  • Trading shifts

Labor management integrations also help managers, providing them with reports for employee schedule adherence  This gives them a good idea of whether or not the new employee is taking the job seriously. More importantly, the software connects your new employee to the rest of the staff. Connecting them to one or more staff members gets them working together to complete company objectives.

 

Consolidate your restaurant hostess training points

Businesses have a lot of reasons to want a talented host or hostess in their roster. Having a talented host improves your bottom line and:

• • Streamlines daily operations
  • Improves staff morale
  • Improves the customer experience

Therefore, businesses should consider investing in tools that make the hosts life easier. The more efficiently they do their jobs, the smoother everything is for everyone else.

Sometimes the best tools for training new hostesses come with the help of a trusted partner. POS companies like talech have been providing tailored solutions for restaurants for more than a decade. Our products are designed for every size, type and industry and are made to grow with you as you do. Reach out today about a free demo or for more information on what our technology can bring to your table.