Friday, May 8, 2009

Use A Restaurant Daily Logbook To Track Incidents

A customer complains. A cook cuts himself in the kitchen. A busboy slips on a wet floor and is injured. How can a restaurant manager track these incidents effectively? The answer is with a daily logbook. There may be other paperwork involved, depending on the restaurant, but a daily logbook can allow a manager to record many details that may have contributed to the incident.
Tracking personnel issues is just one of the functions of a daily logbook for restaurant managers that the folks at www.reservationbooks.com came up with. If an employee comes to work after having a fight with his/her significant other, this person may be distracted enough to not pay attention to what is happening.
Other factors can lead to incidents. If the restaurant is experiencing an exceptionally busy time, cooks may be rushing too much to meet the demand and allow quality to suffer, leading to customer complaints or injuries.
There are many different factors in a restaurant that can lead to an incident. Keeping a daily logbook can allow a manager to look at what else was happening leading up to an incident to better manage things and prevent future similar occurrences. Often, without the benefit of a logbook, the only information available to a manager is who and what happened. Why gets lost, which can prove to be a tragic loss as it can have a serious impact on future managing of similar situations.
A manager's daily logbook is an invaluable tool for reducing the chaos associated with running a restaurant and making a manager more effective in carrying out his duties. Having information and notes about all of the different events taking place at a given time can help to determine if there is a problem with personnel, service, or simply that more staff is needed in such situations to avoid the chance of an incident.