Restaurants Are Both An Art Form & A Business:the Kitchen, The Dining Room, The Bar, & The Office
Running a restaurant is a combination of an art form and a business
. Achieving success calls for more than being able to serve great food. It also requires the ability to strike a balance between the four main components of the restaurant. These components: the kitchen, dining room, bar and the administrative office are all intertwined and must function in tandem effectively for a successful restaurant operation.Anyone experienced in the operations of a restaurant understands the importance of balance and consistency in all of these key areas--the lifeblood of a restaurant's success. Getting all four areas to work together in a restaurant also requires a great managerial team, staff and dedication.
The Kitchen:
The main theme of an art form and a business holds very true here as this is where food is prepared and plated. Menu development is the genesis of a new restaurant that involves an unbelievable amount of creativity and food cost knowledge to be successful.
The Chef works extremely hard to balance the ingredients for the taste, texture, and temperature of each dish that eventually arrives at the table. Hopefully, this effort of excellent ingredients, mixing and cooking results in that "to die for" experience which makes for a repeat customer. Preparing one dish is truly an art in itself, but to prepare many dishes for many customers runs directly into the business category too.
The Chef must know just how much food to order for the restaurant each week, so there will be enough to cover all of the menu items without a lot of waste (money lost). If the Chef is in charge of payroll, that is certainly the business side of restaurants as the exact amount of staff must be hired to handle the kitchen workload.
The Dining Room:
Serving tables is a mix of an art form and a business as well. Spontaneity and flexibility of the dining room staff are basic concepts of customer service. Since restaurants are always dealing with human beings, an infinite number of situations can arise where the staff must anticipate and react (improvise) so as to please and satisfy the customer. Ever wonder why so many waitstaff are actors and vice versa?
An example of the business end of restaurant service are when drink and food orders are received by the waitstaff, and then delivered to the bar and kitchen. These orders must be exact with respect to each table and customer's position---timed properly with military like precision. And, at the end of each meal, the check must be delivered to the table with the method of payment executed properly.
If there are any cracks in the business operation of restaurant service, the customers will notice. Without a seamless flow, their opinion of the restaurant service will be poor.
One big mistake that can cause disaster in a restaurant's dining room is improper scheduling when there is too few waitstaff for a heavy load of hungry diners. Business forecasting must be done properly, especially in those peak periods where enough staff must be deployed for those occasions.
The management must ensure at all times that there is an adequate number of staff on hand to meet the potential incoming customer demand. This may call for employing temporary or on-call restaurant service staff for these busy times. At the same time, if too many staff are scheduled for slow shifts, then money will be lost through payroll, and staff morale can be depleted.
The Bar:
Knowing how to mix cocktails is an art form and extremely vital to the success of the bar. This concept falls in line with the kitchen concept of preparing excellent dishes as an art form. Taste, temperature, balance of ingredients and mixing all goes into how well a cocktail is made.
On the business side, the bartender has to collect money for drinks that have been served and tally up at the end of the night. The bartender must serve bar patrons, but may also have to serve waitstaff who will be constantly ordering drinks throughout the shift. Since many cocktails are prepared in a short amount of time, the bartender must operate in a very business-like manner, yet keeping an affable attitude for customers at the same time. (Service is a performance!)
The Office:
The Office area does not need much explaining when it comes to the business side of restaurants. Dining staff and bar cash reports must match, credit card machines must batch out evenly, payroll must be controlled, invoices must be paid and much more.
Though, there is actually some room for creativity in the office such as dealing with the staff on certain issues. There needs to be a balance when handling with restaurant staff so as to make sure the numbers match, but not to offend the staff to the point where they may quit the job--unless the mistakes are happening way too often.
There is also creativity with vendors when the office does purchasing. Knowing where, how, and when to purchase certain items from certain vendors, who are people, can involve an infinite number of workable situations.
Also, if the office happens to do the staff scheduling, then creativity will arise again since people's everyday lives are involved.
So basically, no area of a restaurant is immune to being an art form and a business at the same time.
Many owners/operators make the mistake thinking that just because they were previously successful in certain business ventures, running restaurants are just another business. Unfortunately, this is one of the major reasons why 8-9 out of 10 restaurants fail within the first year.
Please reread this article if you don't believe me!
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