Contests for Your Restaurant Kitchen Staff
Contests for the heart of the house can be hard to find. Here’s one designed exclusively for cooks. It’s easy to implement and can help stimulate creativity and pride among your kitchen staff. It will also benefit your menu merchandising efforts.
To pull this off, all you’ll need is a little creativity from your cooks and a prize that every cook would want. Here are the steps to put “Special Effects” into action:
- Challenge each of your cooks to create one special per week. Encourage them to be cost-effective, but allow them to be imaginative. That way they’ll put a lot of pride in the dishes they prepare.
- Run the Special Effects contest for as many weeks as you have cooks, keeping track of whose special sold the most. Announce the winner after every cook has taken a turn, with the cooks and their specials scheduled in a rotation.
- Ask your cooks what kind of prize would please them the most (within reason, of course), and award the winning cook that prize.
Waitstaff Training Incentive Earns Big Tips
To sell is to serve. To serve is to sell. If your servers and bartenders can grasp this concept, they’ll go far in this business. Once they get the hang of it, they’ll be ready for the Big Tips contest.
All you’ll need to get started is a notepad to keep track of running tip totals and prizes for those who receive the most 20% tips.
To get started, use a pre-shift team meeting to explain to your staff how exceptional service naturally leads to higher sales and more cash in their pockets. Seek feedback on this subject, bouncing ideas back and forth on how to better serve your guests. Afterward, announce the Big Tips contest.
The rules are simple: The servers and bartenders who show the most 20% tips on credit-card slips at the end of the shift win. Structure the contest so there are several winners. You might have first-, second- and third-place finishers. You could even give out a special prize for the person who earns the biggest tip.
For a more waitstaff training and incentive ideas, click here to check out Playing Games at Work: 52 Best Incentives, Contests and Rewards for the Hospitality Industry.
Making the Grade: Reward Student Employees
It’s a fact of restaurant life that a large number of employees are working their way through school. So why not use their academic goals to enhance your service and sales goals? The Making the Grade incentive is a good place to start. Here’s all you need to do:
- If you don’t know already, find out which of your employees are going to school — high school, trade school, college, anything.
- Meet with your student/employees and propose a bonus of $0.25 for every hour worked during the semester — provided they maintain a specific GPA.
- Draw up an agreement for those who want to participate and have each person sign it.
- At the end of the semester, present student/employees with their bonus checks and certificates of achievement — and do it with some fanfare at an all-staff meeting. Consider making the checks payable to the school they attend (or plan to attend in the case of high schoolers heading off to college).
Excerpted from Playing Games at Work: 52 Best Incentives, Contests and Rewards for the Hospitality Industry. Click here to read more.