7 Factors Besides Food That Makes A Restaurant Great
There are so many things to consider and review when trying to estimate how great the restaurant is. There is more to the restaurant than only a menu and the quality of food and in this post, we will go through the 7 areas in addition to the food that makes a restaurant what it is.
Contents
1. Staff
Motivated employees are the heart of every restaurant. Without waiters, chefs, and other staff members the customers wouldn’t be served food, no one would be there to attend to them, no one would be cashing in and greeting the customers.
It is really important to the restaurant’s reputation and overall comfort to have trained waiters that treat the customers with respect and have a professional touch for everything. Of course when a waiter is working in a new place that isn’t expected right away but you can always spot a newbie and an untrained rude staff member.
Imagine being in the customer’s shoes and you walk into a restaurant. If the waiter is rude to you and doesn’t seem to care about anything, it would just make you feel the worst and you would never ever go back to that restaurant. So yes, having the right, warm, and overall nice human beings as staff will get the restaurant a really long way!
2. Location
Location is one of the determining factors whether the restaurant has great traffic or not. No matter how good the restaurant is, if it is located in the middle of nowhere you won’t get enough customers that It would be beneficial to run such a respected restaurant.
If a restaurant is doing well and they are in the original spot where they started, it can be a good idea to move to a better location to really get that traffic and customers in. Location plays a huge role in the overall reputation as well.
3. Decor
The decor is one of the big ones as well. Let’s think of a scenario that the food is amazing, waiters and the staff are super welcoming, nice, and professional and everything is going well, but the tables, chairs, curtains, countertops, serving area, plates, and cutlery is super old, in a bad shape, or just from different worlds together. It will diminish the overall look of the restaurant and there goes a bit of the restaurant’s greatness as well.
Nice decor doesn’t necessarily mean the most expensive, not at all. A nice decor can be matching chairs and tables to the brand, matching cutlery sets with the plates, not being too bright and sparkly but not be a boring restaurant that will just blend in the crowd. The best thing is to get a nice decor that will fit together well that gives cozy but professional vibes. Lighting and outdoor seating can do wonders as well with the right decor!
4. Beverage List
A memorable wine, beer, and beverage list will make a huge difference especially for those who are passionate about those things. And with the people that come into quality restaurants, it usually is somewhat a big deal what the beverage selection is!
You can spice up the list with some not-so-known brands and manufacturers, for example, order from someone that you know that offers a great vine selection and haves a small vineyard in a specific part of a town. When displaying this in the beverage menu the customers will be astonished and happy that the restaurant offers something out of the ordinary and something exciting to try.
5. Cleanliness
If there is something above all that can mess everything up that will give a restaurant a bad reputation, it is the absence of hygiene and cleanliness.
Imagine walking into a restaurant, sitting on a chair that you nearly get stuck on, the floor is all sticky, and there is someone’s gum stuck in the table, that would just make you wanna run as fast as you can. When the dining area is dirty, one can only imagine what might be in the food.
This doesn’t mean that there can’t be occasional mistakes here and there because we are all humans despite what someones seem to think when working in a restaurant business. However, the overall cleanliness should be in order at all times.
What comes to the kitchen and food part of the cleanliness this applies as much as it does in other areas. When the customers find hair in the food or sees a chef walking in the dining hall with clothes that haven’t been cleaned in ages, it will also give an unpleasant mood.
Overall cleanliness can be easily handled with a staff meeting with the topic of cleaning and hygiene, determining daily, weekly, and monthly lists about cleaning tasks, and common sense about restaurant hygiene, if all these are in order cleanliness will be more than great!
6. Something Unique
This is required if a restaurants want to be truly great. There are many more than good restaurants where it would be a treat to eat, but in order to become truly great, a unique and innovative factor is needed.
Something unique doesn’t mean something hard, and it doesn’t need to be something from the wildest dreams that nobody would ever see coming.
It can be as simple as a specific recipe as the main cuisine of the restaurant, a special vine collection from distant vineyards, or even if it is a theme restaurant such as a sports bar, you could try to get some rare item to display as a decoration that will get people with those interests super excited, and make them feel that they truly are in a quality place.
7. Quality-Price Ratio
This is a really important factor as well. In order to be successful in the restaurant business and even being a great restaurant, you should always thrive to give a more pleasant experience that the customers are paying for.
Of course, the restaurant is a business like any other, and this doesn’t mean that if a meal costs $30, you should invest $45 worth of ingredients in that single meal. This would mean that the restaurant would be out of business by the end of the day.
The price-quality ratio means that the overall service, food, beverages, and all the factors listed above combined, will result in customers leaving with the mindset that they didn’t waste their money, rather than they will gladly pay for the great food, drinks, entertainment, and service.
Conclusion
The above 7 factors truly are all the main ones that will determine whether the restaurant is great, good, or not worth going to. Every restaurant has the ingredients within to become great.
The most important factor of all is great communication with every single person of the staff, and that there are warm vibes where no one would feel that they aren’t welcome there. If this is in order the only way is up and that is where it certainly is going!