The culture of a restaurant is important for both staff satisfaction and guest experience. Good restaurant culture enables restaurant employees to work well together, which keeps restaurant operations running smoothly and motivates employees to create positive dining experiences for guests.
Communication, proper scheduling, purpose, and prioritizing well-being are some ways to encourage a positive restaurant culture. We explore more tips in detail and delve into key advantages below.
Key Takeaways:
- A positive restaurant culture creates a space where guests and employees want to spend time, driving sales and employee retention.
- A positive culture is easy to create with a few strategies.
- A little recognition goes a long way.
What Is Restaurant Culture?
Restaurant culture is the workplace atmosphere of your restaurant. It includes your restaurant’s core values, systems, and operational methods. Restaurant culture is also how and why you do things the way you do. It’s important for overall business operations; it can lead to either customer and employee satisfaction or discord.
Why the Culture of a Restaurant Is Important
Restaurant culture is important for your guest and employee happiness. A positive culture enables guests and employees to feel cared for, happy, and included. Taking care of your staff helps them look forward to coming to work every day and encourages them to stay employed with your restaurant longer. Satisfied employees are also more likely to go above and beyond for guests.
On the flip side, a negative culture can leave feelings of anger, jealousy, and general unhappiness at work, leading to employee turnover. A negative atmosphere leads to poor service and spiteful employees, which inevitably affects your guests’ dining experience in detrimental ways.
Negative Culture Pitfalls
A negative restaurant culture can have a real impact on your restaurant business. Beyond simply making it an unpleasant workplace, a negative culture can affect your bottom line.
- When guests feel the impact of a negative environment, they often respond by writing negative reviews hurting the sales and reputation of your company.
- When employees are unhappy, they often lash out at guests with a negative attitude, inattentiveness, and disengagement.
- Poor workplace culture leads to burnout. In a survey of 140 chefs, 70% said they experienced anxiety, 38% suffered from depression and 49% had sleeping disorders.
- Unhappiness at work leads to higher job turnover and elevated hiring and training costs for employers leading to time loss for management. Turnover rates are sometimes staggering—in 2022, only 54% of fast food employees worked over 90 days before quitting.
- Unhappy staff leads to poor productivity, affecting your revenue and return customers.
- Rebuilding a damaged brand is costly, difficult, and can be irreparable.
Mental Health America conducted a study across 19 industries and 17,000 employees. They found that the food and beverage industry was among the top three unhealthiest workplaces. Restaurant employees in the survey felt underpaid, unrecognized for their achievements, unsupported, stressed, and afraid to miss work for fear of being replaced. These employees are more likely to have diminished health and suffer negative effects in their personal lives.
The study also found that 50% of food and beverage employees were “always” or “often” actively looking for a new job. However, the study found that when employees are actively engaged, organizations see 21% higher productivity and 22% higher profitability.
These statistics continue into almost every aspect of restaurant worker experiences. Chefs and other back-of-house employees complain of a toxic culture and backlash for speaking out about it. These workers fear a loss of their status in the kitchen and cut hours if they raise an alarm about their poor treatment and working conditions. This treatment creates a cycle of negativity reaching into their home lives and mental health and often leads to substance abuse.
Positive Culture Advantages
Conversely, promoting a positive culture in a restaurant can give you several benefits.
- Engaged employees engage customers. Improving employee engagement reduces turnover and fosters better customer experiences.
- A positive culture encourages motivated, competent, and skilled applicants. About 57% of restaurant workers cite “co-workers and team” as among the top motivators for working in the industry.
- Positive reviews and word of mouth bring revenue. Nearly 70% of consumers would use a business if its reviews describe positive experiences.
Some restaurant owners are flipping the script—they’re changing the culture of their kitchens for the better and creating a positive environment for their employees. Negative mental health surveys are raising awareness of the severity of the problems in the industry. Modern restaurant owners are working to change these issues by creating a more inclusive and healthy workplace for their workers.
On a Reddit thread about toxic kitchen culture, one user writes of her amazing experience as a woman in the back of the house. She speaks about how lucky she was to have found a job where she feels safe and happy in a place that’s healthy and supportive of her. Some feel that the culture is changing, with the younger generation shouting less and giving more respect to their counterparts. Former kitchen staff are going out on their own, buying restaurants, and changing their own culture for the better.
Tips for a Positive Restaurant Culture
A positive restaurant culture is obtainable—a few simple steps will change the way your employees feel about coming to work each day. This shift in perspective will pay off with friendlier staff and increased sales.
1. Maintain Open Lines of Communication
Employees want to be heard. Periodic surveys or a suggestion box left in an inconspicuous location will give staff members a voice even if they want to remain anonymous. Alternatively, at the end of the night, managers should ask employees before they leave how they felt about their shift. Ask if they want to talk about anything that could’ve gone better. Did anyone stand out for having done a great job that night?
Acknowledging feelings and giving credit to employees go a long way for employee job satisfaction. Talking about grievances with a caring manager will leave staff members feeling good about their day as opposed to creating a negative company culture with angry gossip among staff.
Listen and act on their ideas. Staff members are in the trenches working their stations, they’ll have the best ideas for innovation, what’s working and what’s not. Sometimes tiny changes can cut labor costs and staff frustrations.
Family meals together before or after a shift is a great way to encourage camaraderie and friendship. Eating together not only creates a closer relationship among staff but also gives them an intimate knowledge of the food they’re serving. This, in turn, lets them pick favorites so they can guide guests in the right direction for their own personal preferences, leaving customers satisfied and happy with their experience.
2. Schedule Around What Matters
During the hiring process and periodically after, ask your staff which schedules work best for them. Restaurant schedules are famously difficult for families and personal lives, with staff required to work late nights, weekends, and holidays. Giving them the option to work either Thanksgiving or Christmas and take important days off, like kids’ soccer games and birthdays, will go far in keeping your employees feeling valued.
Give employees their schedule at least a week in advance (two weeks is better if you can swing it). Alternatively, predictive scheduling is the use of a set schedule. These changes help hourly team members plan their lives around work.
Often, restaurants give out late schedules, leaving staff to scramble to cover childcare or cancel events they hoped to attend. A little notice goes a long way to ensuring they can predict and plan for their shifts and personal lives, leading to fewer call-outs and disgruntled employees. Set schedules also streamline the scheduling process leaving management with more time to focus on other tasks.
3. Offer Perks
Offering perks has a significant effect on employee satisfaction. Professional development opportunities give staff an investment in the company and the feeling that they have the opportunity to move up. A company’s investment in employees’ future leads them to feel valued and motivated for productivity. Offering management opportunities to service staff who go the extra mile, or sous chef to hardworking line cooks, will create a strong team of staff trying to do better in the restaurant.
Other high payoff perks include flexible schedules for parents to utilize childcare, English language classes for non-English speakers, health insurance, sick leave, paid time off, 401K, and opportunities for learning and professional growth, like wine education classes, cooking classes, or opportunities to stage in a new position.
4. Give Recognition
Recognize employees who do a great job by mentioning good reviews they received online during the shift meeting. Friendly sales games among servers are fun and build healthy competition.
Whoever sells the most Super Tuscan on a Friday night wins a bottle. Present the staff member who constantly gets great guest reviews with a $20 gift card for an employee meal for a neighboring restaurant. Acknowledge and celebrate work anniversaries and birthdays with a dessert. These go a long way in showing appreciation that your company cares and values employees’ hard work and dedication. It pays off with happier staff and employee retention. A little gift goes a long way.
5. Encourage Staff to Take Time Off
Companies that offer paid leave but then admonish or shame employees for taking it might be better off not offering it at all. The same goes for giving staff the feeling that they’re replaceable. These negative cultures breed insecurity and resentment from employees.
On the flip side, if employees see management taking their own vacation time and are periodically asked to put in time for leave when they need it, they’ll feel a sense of stability.
6. Build an Ethical Brand with Purpose
Show your employees a sense of what the company stands for. Giving extra food to those in need, donating money to a dog rescue mission, hiring veterans or the formerly incarcerated, or participating in an annual cancer run are only a few of the thousands of ways the restaurant can give back to the community. Those can create a culture of employees who care about the company they’re working for and are proud to be a part of it.
Positive Restaurant Culture: A Case Study
Owner Stephanie Izard of the Girl and Goat restaurants has created an enviable restaurant culture by putting her staff first. Izard makes it a point to connect with her employees, helping them when they need it and asking about their personal lives.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, she gave groceries to her staff and encouraged them to develop and share recipes from home, connecting them and their Facebook following. She also offers staff appreciation nights with activities outside the restaurant, like workout classes and an Iron Goat cooking competition.
She offers opportunities to move up within the company and allows staff members to move into new positions when new restaurants open. This positive restaurant culture has paid off; Izard’s company has grown to six restaurants in major metropolitan cities across the US. She maintains a stellar staff retention rate, and customers love the friendly, familial environment.
FAQs
Expand the sections below to learn more about restaurant culture.
ALSO READ
