Pizza Today - December 2019 - 28

DRILL THE BASICS

Campbell says restaurant operators are
most often concerned with employees
being proficient with the order flow,
interface and the specific requirements
of their specific restaurant. As such,
these core functions should consume
much of the training. Kravis, for
example, has focused Rad Pizza's POS
training on those core actions.
"We get them comfortable navigating forward and backwards and moving
around the POS to accommodate our
orders," Kravis says.
HAVE TRAINEES SHADOW TOP EMPLOYEES

Having new front-of-the-house hires
follow your best servers helps trainees learn about the job in general, but
especially the POS, says Ryan McSweeney, marketing coordinator at Upserve,
a cloud restaurant POS used by nearly
10,000 restaurants. He recommends
having trainees shadow their mentor
over a variety of different shifts, which
will allow new hires to see how someone
familiar with the POS interacts with the

system throughout the day.
"This will also make [trainees] feel
comfortable using the POS in any environment," McSweeney says.
UTILIZE TRAINING MODE

Most POS systems feature a training
mode - and that can be an operator's
premier training tool. In training mode,
employees can receive guided practice,
input mock orders and tinker with the
POS without unleashing real-world
consequences.
"They can practice navigating the
menu, inputting orders and making
transactions all without any of it being
processed or sent to reporting," McSweeney says.
While in training mode, Kravis has
employees role play, being both customer
and order taker so they can see both
sides of the POS. He instructs staff to
come up with out-of-the-box orders
and to remove and add items after the
fact, which helps a trainee learn how to
troubleshoot various situations.

TURN EMPLOYEES LOOSE

Kravis says most employees are
comfortable using the POS themselves after a day or so of training,
especially given how intuitive many of
today's systems are.
Though operators might be hesitant
to turn employees loose, it's a necessary part of training. Kravis prefers
new employees work their first solo
shifts during slower periods and he
provides ongoing coaching as employees work their way toward independent proficiency.
Of note, Campbell reminds that
many POS systems have permission
and access settings that allow management to configure the accounts of
new employees so that they only have
access to basic POS functions as they
learn the system. After employees
have proven their ability to navigate
the POS, restaurant leadership can
then expand access accordingly.
DON'T PUT POS TRAINING TO BED

Though an employee might have the
POS basics covered, keep the training
going and leverage all the data a POS
can provide to identify opportunities
to retrain individual staff or fuel the
restaurant's performance.
Upserve's server performance
feature, for instance, provides information on the servers who are turning
tables the fastest, upselling products
most frequently and boosting ticket
sizes. With this data in hand, operators can work toward improved efficiency and profitability at the pizzeria.
"Using the POS to see repeat guests
and knowing what their favorite meals
are, having servers look at the analytics behind which menu items are
performing best and utilizing other
integrations of the POS like inventory and tableside payments can make
sure your servers and business are
performing to the best of their ability,"
McSweeney says. n
Chicago-based writer DANIEL P.
SMITH has covered business issues and
best practices for a variety of trade
publications, newspapers, and magazines.

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Pizza Today - December 2019

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