Placing proper floor plans with position points in strategic areas of a restaurant is critical to providing excellent dining service. You also cannot rely on the fact that the floor plans are in the computer system.

Case in point #1: What happens when a new server, carrying 3 hot plates of pasta, walks alone from the kitchen to a busy dining room and can’t tell which is the correct table where the food should arrive? Does the waiter put the 3 plates of hot pasta somewhere and then log on to the computer to see which table is correct? I do not think. The waiter is going to guess possibly resulting in a costly mistake of the food going to the wrong table. If the floor plan was properly placed in an inconspicuous place so the waiter can take a quick look at it, then the food gets to the table quickly and without a hitch.

Case in point #2: I recently had a situation at a restaurant where the owner was changing the dining room table numbers during actual shift, spelling mess. His explanation was that he needed to keep track of the coupons being distributed for the restaurant’s marketing campaign, which used a separate numbered table for each individual coupon.

The owner did not realize that there was no way to provide excellent restaurant customer service by using this system. It was no wonder that delicious and delicately prepared food was often delivered to the wrong table by the dining room service staff. How many times does this happen in a night, a week, a month? Why not take a handful of money and just throw it out the front door?

Here are some simple but important concepts to help improve restaurant customer service. There are too many operations that do not implement these concepts, which causes many unnecessary errors. This translates to lost revenue and a poor service reputation that will prevent repeat business.

Is that how it works:

Dining room floor diagrams, with the correct numbering for each table and position point (explained below), must be clearly printed and provided to all dining room service personnel, with additional printouts available to any prospective servers hire. These essential diagrams should be placed in strategic locations for easy viewing by all staff, preferably out of sight of the customer.

It is essential that position points be established if you are trying to improve your restaurant’s customer service. Basically, any diner in the restaurant can be identified by a particular table number and seat number. Keeping up with position points will not be a problem for a server as long as all dining service personnel know of the arrangement in advance. It is very important to set position point #1 for each table. The easiest way to determine position point #1 is to have the customer’s back directly aligned (or as close as possible) to a particular location in the restaurant, such as the kitchen, front/back door, or perhaps a particularly visible element. decor.

Every customer whose back is closest to this particular location is position #1. Once established, go clockwise around the table, identifying each customer as position #2, 3, and so on. If a seat is empty, it should still be assigned a position number, as a guest may be late. If customer position points are not used, a waiter, holding hot, heavy plates, will call out the plates to customers because they do not know the exact positions. This wastes valuable time and energy, not to mention how unprofessional it looks. Also, customers, often in the middle of a conversation or a laugh, will be interrupted unnecessarily.

Position points should be clearly explained in every server training program. The main goal is for the waiter to serve food and drink accurately, safely and cleanly. This is more likely to happen when there is prior knowledge of table and seat numbers well in advance.

The above concepts give dining service staff “an idea of ​​where they are,” which is extremely important, especially if the restaurant is new or if the staff are new to the restaurant. It improves the ability to communicate, which in turn will improve the restaurant’s customer service for everyone.