Today, I want to share with you the five core elements
to a restaurant checklist.
Hey, everybody. My name's Ryan Gromfin. I am an author, speaker, chef,
founder of TheRestauTheRestaurantBoss.com, RestaurantProfitAndPerformance.com,
as well as ClickBacon.com
And today, I want to talk to you about the five core elements
of a great restaurant checklist.
First off,
what is a restaurant checklist, or what is a checklist in general?
The definition is complicated and
confusing and everyone wants to make it more complex than it is, but really,
it's a simple tool with some kind of a checkbox
that helps your staff do their job.
It's not a tool to get them in trouble,
it's not a tool for reprimand,
it's just a tool to help your staff do their job better.
A job they already know how to do,
but it helps them not forget things let's say.
There's a great saying or quote that goes something along the lines of,
“the pilot in the 747
knows how to land the airplane,
but doesn't it make you feel a little bit better
to know that he's got a checklist,
so he doesn't forget to put the landing gear down”. Right?
They're trained, they know how to fly that airplane,
they couldn't get into the captain's seat of a 747
unless they've got hundreds, close to thousands of hours of experience.
They are highly qualified,
but they have a checklist for every procedure
because there's a lot of things going on in that cockpit,
there's a lot of bells and whistles and buttons,
and I just want to know that they're not going to forget to drop
the landing gear before we touch down, right?
That's what a checklist is for. So, let's get right into this.
What are the five core elements of a great restaurant checklist?
Well, first. A restaurant checklist has to be clean and professional.
It can't be on scratch paper,
it can't be a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy,
it can't be something that was created ten years ago
and have scratch marks in it. It's got to be clean and professional.
This is when your staff is going to look at it and say,
are my managers are my owners taking this seriously?
Or is this just another thing they're going to do that's
going to make my life more difficult?
And if they don't look great and they don't come out
great and they're not presented to them in a professional manner,
your staff will not take them seriously.
The second core element to a great restaurant checklist
is that they must be dated, not just with the day of the week,
but the actual date.
Now, there are very few exceptions to this rule, but generally speaking,
all restaurant checklists that I train my clients
on and that I used to put out to my restaurants were always dated.
We would reprint sheets every single week
with the new date Monday through Sunday.
This lets your staff know that you're on top of it,
that you're changing them out, that you're fixing them,
that you're making their corrections and that what they have in front of them
is always up to date.
The third core element to a great restaurant checklist
is that they're assigned to a specific station, not to a person.
What I mean by that is that they're assigned to pantry
or they're assigned to grill or to A.M.
server or server 1 or server 2 or server 3.
Not just servers in general. There's a couple of reasons.
1) If someone calls out sick,
everybody else needs to divvy up that checklist and get it done,
or let's say that someone is working a station that they're not that familiar with,
they can just pull down the checklist for that particular station,
but let's go back to the original example.
If let's say server 2 calls out sick,
then server 1 and server 3 are going to have to split
up that checklist because it still has to get done.
Another reason why it's important to have them assigned to a
station and not to a particular person or to a group of people
is that if you just say that all of this has to get done before
servers go home today,
server 1 is going to say, well, I thought server 2 is going to do it;
and server 3 is going to say, well, I thought server 1 was going to do it,
but when server 1 has a server 1 closing checklist,
there's no excuses, there's no questions asked,
server 1 is responsible for everything on this closing checklist
or maybe server-side work as you call it before they go home.
The fourth element is that your checklist are simple and specific.
Now, I know that that might be a little contradictive,
but what I mean by that is that they have to be simple enough
that we don't have 30 words per line,
or that it's not overly complex. This is not a training tool.
It has to be simple enough that someone can look at it quickly
and know exactly what needs to be done,
but they also have to be specific enough
that they know exactly what it means to be done,
what completed looks like.
That can often be done with a par amount,
or it could be in the description,
but again, try to balance simple and specific.
Not too much information that they're going to be reading it for days,
it's not a training document but not
so general that they don't know exactly what a good job,
what completed means.
When they check that checkbox, this task is completed,
exactly how you designed it to be completed.
And then the last element to a great restaurant checklist
is that they're easy to update.
If they're done in Excel or in some complex
piece of software where you have to know how to cut and paste
and insert rows, it gets too hard on your staff,
it gets too hard on you frankly,
and then they don't get updated on a regular enough basis,
plus you're the only one who can do it.
So if someone has changes they need to make and you're not available,
then your staff may not know how to do it.
I suggest using some kind of simple checklist builder,
something that's easy to do like drag-and-drop functionality,
where you can very easily make the changes in the updates yourself,
reprint them on a weekly basis,
so then they come out professional and beautiful
and they have all of the functionality that you need built into them,
but also your cooks or your managers
or other people on your team who may not
have the computer skills that you have
are easy to go in and make the changes and update them,
because checklists are fluid documents, their living-breathing documents.
They don't just go out once, and then like I said,
a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.
They're updated on a very regular weekly basis,
so that way your staff has the best document in front of them
that's always up to date.
If you're interested in learning more about a checklist builder,
below this video, there's a link to our new software called Bacon.
And we have a great checklist builder built into that.
So go ahead and click the button below to learn more.
I hope you enjoyed this video. My name's Ryan Gromfin.
Have an absolutely wonderful day.
Hey, everybody Ryan here.
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Until the next time I see you, go out every day
and improve the lives of your customers,
your employees, your vendors, and of course, your family.