5 Tips for Making Your Café Efficient

A café can be a fun and exciting restaurant to own and operate, but these establishments can also be quite chaotic. Because customers often visit a café when they want to eat quickly or grab something to go, it's important for a café to be an efficient and smoothly operating machine.

Employ the Right Staff

Of course, the most important thing you can do to make your café run smoothly and efficiently is to hire the right people to help you staff your restaurant. Choosing the right employees can be difficult, but it is important to select self-starters who are able to identify tasks that need to be done and who can complete these tasks in a timely fashion. It is also important to choose responsible and professional people who can communicate well. Experience working in a café is a definite plus.

Create Job Stations

Because a café is a combination delicatessen and coffee shop, it can be difficult to effectively assign duties to your employees. Often, employees that have to handle several different types of tasks will be unable to learn how to do these tasks in a high quality manner. This is why it is a good idea to create job stations and train employees to manage the tasks at those individual stations. For example, you can train some employees to be baristas, some to wait tables, and other to bus tables. Dividing the jobs of your café into different categories will dramatically improve the efficiency of your café as a whole.

Create a Clear Menu

If your café seems chaotic and confusing for consumers, the problem may lie with your menu. Many customers, especially those who are visiting a café-type eatery for the first time, or a particular café for the first time, will have trouble deciding between a variety of choices for sandwiches, sides, and coffee beverages. This is why it is crucial for your menu to be clear and easy to understand. Offering a build-your-own sandwich option for customers is a great way to make ordering simpler. Customers can select from your offered breads, meats, cheeses, toppings, and sauces to create the exact sandwich they want.

It may also be helpful to give your clients printed menus as soon as they walk in the door, and post your menu in a prominent place within your café. When customers can see what you have to offer while they are waiting in line, the process will go much more smoothly.

Separate Coffee and Food

Some café owners decide to separate the ordering process for food items and coffee beverages within their cafes. This is beneficial because many customers will come to your café just to order lunch or just to grab a coffee to go. When you separate these two areas, customers will be able to get what they need more quickly.

Designate a Food Pick-Up Area

One final way to improve the efficiency of your café is to designate a specific area where orders can be picked up either by wait staff or by customers. This will eliminate traffic flow problems, which can contribute to the chaotic feel of a café.