Loaded has released its Hospitality Industry 2020 Resilience and Readiness Report and has highlighted four key recommendations for hospitality businesses in 2021.
- Simplify Your Offering
Less is more for 2021. A number of highly successful operators Loaded deals with have already significantly reduced the size of both their food and beverage menus and offerings since re-opening post-Covid.
This means that they are now carrying less inventory which generates cash, they are spending less labour time on the ordering and monitoring of their stock and in some cases, they have been able to reduce the numbers required in the kitchen during service because the menu doesn’t require the same level of labour.
The unexpected upside to simplifying your offering is that it focuses your attention on what your core product and brand is, who your best customers are and how you can produce more revenue with fewer stock items and labour time. Simplifying your offering while still delivering a high-quality experience is efficiency at its best.
- Lock in Communication and Planning Sessions
Every high performing hospitality business Loaded has worked with has a regularly scheduled meeting with key managers and team members. This has never been more important than right now.
In a constantly changing business environment, a solid weekly planning and communication session is your opportunity to keep everyone on the same page and ensure the entire team is laser-focused on your key priorities.
Laser-focused means your organisation should never have more than three key priorities that your team is focused on improving. Good communication and planning sessions have:
- The key people in the business
- Zero distractions (phones off)
- Actions and accountability
- Lots of energy
- Set Clear Targets and Share Financial Information with Your Team
In a world where change will be the constant for the foreseeable future, it is extremely important that your team understands the financial performance of the business and how they can help.
Loaded has always believed in financial transparency to achieve success, but turbulence in your financial performance is even more of a reason to ensure your team understands the key financial levers in your business and how they can affect them.
While 43 percent of survey respondents identified that increasing revenue is their highest priority, having a well-rounded focus on all key areas of financial leverage is very important for hospitality business success. The starting point is to set a clear budget and financial targets for your labour cost and percentages, and your stock cost and cost of goods percentages.
If this is an area in which you are not comfortable with your ability to achieve accuracy, then Loaded recommends an initial chat with its partners at The Hospitality Company. They have studied and regularly meet with the world’s best hospitality groups to understand their operating processes, then coach hospitality operators to introduce these processes into their own business. If you want to get transparency and accurate financial targets implemented in your business rapidly, this is the way to achieve it.
- Implement Mental Health Check-Ins for Your Team
You and your team have been through a significant amount of stress and anxiety in 2020. Some of the effects of this will have already surfaced, however, research suggests that the negative effects will continue to be felt by your staff for some time to come.
Send a specific communication to all your team or have an informal catchup over coffee acknowledging what you have all been through over the last year. Ideally, select a manager or senior member of your team that any of your staff can reach out to if they are suffering any negative mental health issues and they feel they need support.
It’s obviously important that this person is very approachable and has a strong empathy with the rest of the team. This is a significant responsibility to ask one of your management to undertake so you will want to ensure they are also supported. Loaded has provided some good places to start this process in its resources section.
To read the full report and access resources, click here.
