In 2016, the national turnover rate for restaurants was 72.9%. For Full-Service restaurants towards the end of 2017, their hourly staff turnover rate was a whopping 102.8%.
The average number of employees per restaurant in 2018 was 18. This means that if you started the year with 18 employees, you would hire between 15-19 employees throughout the rest of the year.
That’s a lot of new employees that need to be trained, and a lot of money you’re spending on training. So how can you reduce training costs?
Restaurant Employee Turnover is Inevitable
Employee turnover in the restaurant industry is unavoidable. The industry employs a high number of students, who only work part of the year and have frequent schedule changes. Many restaurants have seasonal business that makes retaining employees difficult. And because every community has multiple restaurants, career employees can easily move to another restaurant as they seek better opportunities and upward mobility.
While reducing the amount of turnover is extremely challenging, there are parts of the training process you can optimize to save money. One of the easiest and impactful ways is to use a restaurant POS system that requires little to no training. Almost every POS system currently requires a significant amount of training time.
Reduce the training time and you’ll reduce your expenses. Simple.
The Cost of Restaurant Employee Training
Let’s break it down.
The average training pay for servers & bartenders is $10/hr.
You need a trainer for the trainee, so you are actually paying $20/hr (2 employees x $10/hr).
The average amount of time spent training on the POS is 4-8 hours (1/2 a day to 1 full day).
If you have 10 employees, you will spend $800 – $1,600 per year on POS training.
If you have 20 employees, you will spend $1,600 – $3,200 per year on POS training.
The average restaurant will spend $170 per month, $2,040 per year, on POS training. If you can reduce POS training time to 30 minutes or less, you can save $156 per month, $1,870 per year.
It should be pointed out that this figure only represents the immediate direct costs and savings from POS training. There is an additional cost, that while difficult to quantify, is equally significant: mistakes made by new employees that haven’t adequately learned the system.
These mistakes take the form in accidentally ringing in wrong items (product waste), spending an excessive amount time ringing in orders (lost revenue, poor customer service), and feeling the extra pressure that leads to other mistakes (all of the above).
Is Minimal Training Possible?
Instantly saving thousands of dollars per year just by choosing a restaurant POS system that requires minimal training sounds great, but does that type of system exist?
Yes…but there aren’t many.
The key factor in minimizing POS training time is how intuitive the system is. To shorten the learning curve, Adobe defines the four principles for exceptional User Interface (UI):
Place users in control of the interface. (Make actions easily reversible. Create easy to navigate screens with minimal steps. Accommodate users with vastly different skill levels.)
Make it comfortable to interact with a product. (Simplify interfaces. Less is more. Prevent problems from occurring.)
Reduce cognitive load. (Don’t make users work too hard to use the system. Make functions easily accessible. Promote clarity.)
Make user interfaces consistent. (Don’t create surprises. Create visual consistency. Make updates synergistic.)
In order to create an intuitive, easy to use restaurant POS system that reduces training time to 30 min or less for new users, it’s almost necessary for the developers to have had extensive restaurant experience.
Who Built Your Restaurant POS System, Developers or Restaurateurs?
Without an intimate understanding of how servers, bartenders, and managers think and work, it’s impossible to create a flow for the user to follow. They have to possess the knowledge of a chess master that’s able to see seven steps ahead, anticipating the user’s next move. If not, the user experience feels jarring.
In most POS systems for restaurants, there is no rhyme or reason why functions are located where they are which requires a lot of memorization that leads to a slow learning curve.
Systems with the best UI are ruthless in their pursuit of minimal touches, scrolling, and screen changes, so servers/bartenders can spend less time on the POS and more time with their guests. You can’t create incredible experiences for the user if you don’t know how the user needs to use the system. Choose a system that was designed by restaurant minds.
Contact us today to learn how a restaurant POS with an intuitive user interface can take your restaurant from chaos to clarity.