Even though most of the country has returned to normal, putting the pandemic in the rearview mirror, there’s no doubt that there is still lingering fallout from the lockdowns. One of the hardest-hit industries has been restaurants, many of which were forced to lay off most of their staff and switch to curbside pickup or delivery. Even with this pivot, many thousands of restaurants closed their doors forever.
Grim Reality
To put a number to that, CNN Business writer Danielle Wiener-Bronner tells us, “Last year, there were about 631,000 restaurants in the United States, according to data from Technomic, a restaurant research firm. That’s roughly 72,000 fewer than in 2019, when there were 703,000 restaurants in the country.” That’s more than one out of every ten restaurants has closed its doors since 2020. Worse yet, “[Technomic] doesn’t foresee the number of restaurants in the US returning to pre-Covid levels even by 2026.”
Wiener-Bronner continues, “Meanwhile, restaurant operators are seeing their own costs, like rent and ingredients, rise, and say it’s hard to hire staff.” Indeed, the labor market remains difficult, so many restauranteurs can’t keep up with the return of customers, leading to extended wait times, overstressed employees, and declining standards of quality. And inflation and supply-chain problems have driven up costs everywhere, which always rolls downhill to the customers, further aggravating the situation.
While we appear to have moved beyond mask mandates and social distancing, those aforementioned challenges remain. So, what can we do?
Keep Your Standards High
The first and most important goal is to ensure that customers want to come to your restaurant. While money is a factor, there’s no point in chasing price, as cost-conscious customers will always be able to make food for less money at home. But few home cooks are able to match the skills of a professional chef. Moreover, you can deliver a better customer experience that large mass-manufactured food can’t match.
The realities of understaffing and supply-chain frustrations remain even so, so there are compromises to be made. Reduced menus make sense, of course, as you can’t serve what you don’t have. But even beyond that, it’s better to do a dozen dishes really well than a few dozen okay. Avoid the trap of believing you need large variety to attract diners. Variety is a luxury. Quality is a must.
Here are some other considerations:
- Hiring and Retaining Staff: Your restaurant needs to hire and retain staff by offering competitive wages, benefits, and a positive working environment. Additionally, offering training and advancement opportunities can help keep your employees motivated and engaged.
- Pricing Concessions: Prices must reflect the increased costs of ingredients and labor. Yes, there will be customers who choose not to dine at your restaurant as a consequence, but the alternative is understaffing and lower quality ingredients. That’s not how you achieve a superior customer experience.
- Transparency: Honesty remains the best policy. Customers ought to know about the challenges restaurants are facing and how they are addressing them. This openness can help customers understand, which helps build loyalty.
We Can Help
There’s a circle of life aspect to making this all work. You can’t have happy customers without happy employees, and vice versa. Knowing everyone’s mind is its own challenge, and it’s a project we’re ready to help you with.
The Brandt Group has been a customer-service consultancy for over 30 years, and in that time, we’ve aided hundreds of businesses—many of them restaurants—to improve their customer experience, build their company culture, and help to ensure their continued growth. We’re able to accomplish this through our world-class mystery shopping and employee development services.
It’s not enough to know there’s a problem. You have to know why there’s a problem, and what you can do about it. If you’re ready to ask the hard questions and receive actionable answers, contact us today. We’d love to hear about your business, the challenges you face, and what you hope to accomplish in the months and years to come. Together we’ll overcome the challenges of today—and what may come tomorrow.
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