How to Run Multiple Restaurants Locations Successfully

Some people are ambitious enough to grow their business in multiple locations. Many restaurant owners know how to run, grow and expand their first restaurant location. When they succeed in the first place, they dream of branching out. But restaurant owners struggle with their multiple restaurant locations operations. Many of them do not know how to manage multiple restaurant locations effectively. In this article, we will discuss how to run multiple restaurants so that you can handle this challenging situation.

When should you consider running multiple restaurant locations?

Before we talk about how to run multiple restaurants successfully, check the below points when to expand your restaurant business.

1. If your restaurant business has higher customer demand than your serving capacity.

2. If you have a supportive team to help you grow your restaurant.

3. If your revenue generation has constantly increased for the past three or five years.

4. If you are financially prepared enough to handle investment risk.

5. If you get a good partnership offer to expand your business.

6. If the demand for a restaurant in a location is so much but underserved.

You can go for your restaurant business expansion plan if the above situation is fulfilled.

Are you using the same restaurant concept or a new one?

When you are successful with your current restaurant, you can expand with new locations. You can start with the same concept that has given you success or use a new concept for your new restaurants. You can also open your restaurants in a different area of the same city or a different city. Whatever it is, it is not an easy task. Starting with new restaurant locations is a very challenging task but a good one.

If you are opening your second restaurant with the same concept in the same area, try to choose enough distance location so that customers do not deplete. If you open new restaurants in the new city, customers will not deplete, which will help your brand exposure. When your existing customers visit another city and find your same niche restaurant, there is more chance of visiting that place.

It will help if you expand your network to get suppliers to ensure food ingredients for all your locations. It isn't easy to be present at all your restaurants if they are in different locations. You have to do proper time management so that all the restaurants get the same success as your first one.

You can explore various niches when you open restaurants in new locations to find the most profitable one for you. You can not use all the formulas from the first one for the different concept restaurants, but you will get a chance to explore new trends. A new concept restaurant can help you get out of your existing competitive market. You can also start selling your food online from your new restaurant locations. You can reach the different tastes of customers.

Before choosing your restaurant concept, know your customers' volume in the new area. Then, to be successful, research the audience distribution and concept for your new restaurant location carefully.

What are the benefits of managing multiple restaurant locations?

Multiple restaurant locations can offer several benefits to owners and operators. Benefits may include increased revenue, happier customers, and less stress overall. 

Increased Revenue: Multiple restaurant locations can generate more revenue than a single location. This is because each location can operate as its own business with its own policies and procedures. This can result in increased profits for the owner and better customer service and satisfaction rates.

Happier Customers: Multiple restaurant locations can create a more upbeat atmosphere for customers. When customers are happy, they are more likely to return in the future. Additionally, this may lead to word-of-mouth advertising that helps promote the business. 

Less Stress: Owning multiple restaurants and managing them can be less stressful than managing just one. Restaurant managers have to face their own challenges and tasks that need to be completed. Your overall tasks become easy when you have talented managers to manage your restaurant.

Communication for managing multiple restaurants

It is crucial to keep in communication with all the restaurant team members. You should keep in communication with all the managers of your restaurants to run your restaurant smoothly. Your other employees should be able to communicate with you whenever they need.

Some good communication processes:

1. All the team members should keep the phone numbers of others so that they can communicate with each other.

2. Provide your email address to your team members so they can email you. Then, you can read the email at your convenient period.

3. Do a follow-up meeting at the middle and end of the day to keep track of daily work. By doing so, you can solve the daily issue as fast as possible.

4. Do a weekly survey so you never run out of ideas. Your employees can give you good ideas for running and expanding your restaurant business.

5. Visit every branch physically and arrange a meeting there. Listen to your employees.

6. You can create an online forum where your customers can give feedback. You can use that feedback to improve the quality of your restaurant service.

Challenges for running multiple restaurants

It is challenging to go from a single restaurant to multiple restaurant locations. But you can face the challenges if you have a proper guide on how to run multiple restaurants. So, do not lose hope and control; you can surely face the challenging moment.

1. Delegate Jobs: You must hire trusted managers and other employees for your new restaurant branches. If you are running a successful restaurant business, you already may have some trustworthy employees who can manage your restaurant as you do. Appoint them for the new one or your primary restaurant location to get the best performance. Rely on them for day-to-day tasks. But keep tracking the task report so you can measure their working capability and where to improve. Give recognition to your employees to motivate them for better performance.

2. Operating Procedures: Create standard working procedures for all the employees of all restaurant locations. You can establish the protocols to get your desired environment. Creating the protocols will take time. But if everything is written and well defined, it becomes easy to understand how to operate the restaurants.

Moreover, your managers and employees will understand what you want from them and how they can meet your expectations. If consistency exists in all your restaurant locations, your customers will get the satisfaction that they look in your brand.

3. Time Management: It is evident that working on a new restaurant location will require more of your time. If you are owning multiple restaurants, they will all need more time than your primary one. Therefore, you must give more attention to every aspect of restaurant operations.

Schedule your time to manage visits to every restaurant branch. Learn how the managers and staff feel about their work. Get feedback from your customers about the service and location. You must maintain your time wisely to give attention to the new branches.

4. Performance Management: Restaurant business performance depends on everyday operation. As your business is no longer in a single location, your business performance is not dependent only on that location. As you have multiple restaurant locations, your overall business depends on these branches too.

If your revenue target is not reached, consider the possible adjustment. Be careful shifting your experienced employee from the first location to a new one. Calculate the individual performance of all locations and how they impact overall performance. Train your workers to provide the best customer service. Simplify the complicated work so that staff can manage their work efficiently.

5. Consistent Service: Providing consistent service in all the restaurant locations is very challenging when you grow from a single restaurant. Customers always expect the same best quality from your restaurant. So, it is essential to maintain that quality across the multiple units of restaurants to give customers their expected experience.

Do not focus or prioritize on the new restaurant unit only. Instead, try to give consistent customer service to all your restaurant units.

Using Technology to Run Multiple Restaurants

Restaurant owners can use modern technology to operate multiple units of restaurants efficiently. Many tools help an owner manage all restaurants from a single device and a single place. Your employees and customers will get a simpler life from your restaurants if you know how to run multiple restaurants with the proper technology.

Hiring is a continuous process for multi-unit restaurants as you regularly expand your restaurant. Many workers may shift to another place, or you may need more expert people to provide better service quality. It becomes pretty difficult to find the right person by spending less time.

You can create a Career section on your restaurant website, where you can regularly publish the vacancy. You can put the requirements and qualifications you need and what benefits you will provide new employees on the website. You can also put an automated online exam to create a qualified shortlist for an interview. This hiring process will save time and help you find the eligible employee you need.

Having a website is a great advantage for businesses nowadays. If you have the same items in multi-unit restaurants, then use a single website, or for different food items restaurants, you can use different websites or subdomains of your primary restaurant website. It helps to reach many people and gives customers the flexibility to order food online or reserve a table at a restaurant for their important moments.

Introduce POS software in every restaurant location. Your managers can easily track orders and sales and get customer information using cloud base POS software. POS software also helps to communicate with employees faster. Give access to the restaurant POS software according to employee roles like branch permission to the manager, delivery option for the delivery man, and kitchen option for the chef.

Customers get a better transaction experience when you use POS software in your restaurant. In addition, customers can use many types of payment options within a short period and get their billing documents. This payment flexibility helps to improve customer satisfaction.

An online dashboard of your restaurant POS software can help you get real-time updates from all the restaurants. Ensure the dashboard also supports report generation in various templates per your need. You can get information about all counters' dashboards, managerial activities, employees' entry and exit times, and much more from the dashboard in a quick view.

Shortage of ingredients hampers food item production. So, it is necessary always to keep enough stock of ingredients to ensure continuous food delivery to customers. You can get inventory updates for every restaurant unit and manage supplies according to that information. You can also do waste tracking by using a POS system.

Marketing is an essential part when you have multiple locations. To promote your new branches and increase your brand identity, you need to do marketing strategically. An intelligent POS software helps to do marketing work. You can reach old customers by email or SMS, offer a new item, attractive price, or special occasion offer. You can also do email or SMS marketing by using a POS system like 

You can arrange online training sessions for your employees. For example, restaurants can operate live training sessions and update a recorded version on the website, so those who miss live sessions can see the videos later. Thus using technology, you can make your team more knowledgeable and updated, which helps in performance delivery.

You can use CCTV cameras to monitor your cash counters, employees, and customers from a single place. Now IP cameras enable us to monitor from anywhere. You can use those if you are on travel or abroad. Install the CCTV cameras to cover all the areas of your restaurants. This installation also helps managers to ensure security and a good service environment.

Conclusion

It is more challenging to manage a business than to own, especially if you have a restaurant where continuous customer satisfaction is the primary key to running a business. Therefore, use the same software and protocol for all your restaurant units to successfully run your multiple restaurant locations. If you follow the above guide on how to run multiple restaurants, hope that no matter how many restaurant locations, you can run all of them with a handsome profit.