Front of house staff such as waiters and servers have been an integral part of restaurant businesses over the years. They are the face and voice of your brand, and the aspect that adds a human touch to your business. Servers and waiters help guests, answer questions, serve food and beverages, and overall work hard to ensure that customers have a memorable experience while at the restaurant.
However, with modern technological advancements and new management concepts, restaurant owners are looking at new ways to operate their businesses, which includes running restaurants without servers and wait staff. This has become quite popular because such concepts have helped reduce labor cost and other expenses such as uniforms, since there will be no need to get server aprons, waist aprons, shirts etc for staff.
With the global Covid-19 pandemic calling for social distancing and less interactions, concepts such as these have become even more popular, and more and more restaurateurs are investing their funds in innovative new methods. In most cases the customers themselves seem to prefer using technology or other methods rather than having close interactions.
Here are a few trends that seem to be developing in the restaurant and food service business, where servers and wait staff have been replaced by other more radical methods:
- Self-service – Some restaurants have found a niche in making the customer actually do their own work. While the food is ordered via an online system through a tab, the food is brought to the table by a runner. However other tasks such as getting water, getting more drinks, finding a seat etc are left to the customers themselves. This method has eliminated those occasions where customers may have to face rude servers, or have issues with mixed up orders etc, creating greater customer satisfaction.
- Kitchen staff work as servers – Some restaurants have also started getting their kitchen staff to not only prepare the food, but greet and serve customers as well. This has proved to be very successful since the cooks are well versed in the making of the food, and hence are able to better explain and answer food related questions by customers.
- Robotics – Many restaurants around the world have turned to artificial intelligence to form their front of house brigade. While there is less error in this method, it is quite an expensive one in terms of initial investment as well as on-going maintenance. However, it does create a hype and appeal for the restaurant, since robotics seem to have a very futuristic appeal to many.
- Owners – There are some small businesses where the owner himself is the entire operation, from purchasing ingredients to cooking to serving to cleaning. Some are family run businesses where other family members help out in the operations, but what this type of business creates is a personal touch. The owner is always available and he or she is able to give an exceptional and very personalized service to customers.
- No dine in – In the extreme level the pandemic has changed the business modules of many restaurants, where they have resorted to take out and delivery of food rather than have dine in’s, eliminating the need for servers and waiters. In fact, with only the very minimum kitchen staff they are able to run their operations, which has reduced their labor costs by a huge amount. In addition to labor costs, they have also been able to eliminate high rents, utilities and other costs involved with operating a dine-in restaurant.
Even though changing times and situations have brought in many new innovative ideas for reducing on labor in the hospitality industry, it is certainly not the ideal business module. Many people have lost employment, and many establishments are unable to employ people with reducing revenue and profits. Most businesses are just barely keeping open, trying to break even to keep going until better times come.
Whether service staff at the front of house are necessary or not is somewhat of a sensitive topic, since many still believe that there is a need for the human element in any business, which is what makes an experience special and memorable for customers. Let’s admit it, when you walk into a restaurant, you love seeing the smiling faces of the wait staff as they greet you in their elegant uniforms and server aprons, and their magical and inviting smiles, and the thought of being met and greeted by either an expressionless robot or being assisted with your order and serving by high-end AI assisted apps, is surely a bit unappealing to most of us.
