Every restaurant owner is familiar with this situation: you’re having a slow day, and your employees seem to have nothing to do. Wondering what you can do to ensure that this time doesn’t go to waste? The team at Marketing 360 Payments has put together a few ideas to take advantage of downtime and put your employees to work in a fun, productive way!

Employee Recognition

Do you have stand-out employees who have yet to be recognized? Perhaps an employee did a great job handling a difficult customer or maybe someone has greatly improved her sales. Social media strategy for restaurants can include employee recognition. Create several posts and then schedule them to run over the course of a few days. Customers love to see that your employees have fun at work, and posting photos on social media is a great way to send that message. Call out your employees accomplishments online, create a hashtag for the restaurant and add a more common one like #lovemyjob or #employeeofthemonth to gain traction.

Customer Engagement

When you take the time to engage your customers after they’ve left your restaurant it shows them that you really care and puts a human face on your business. Run a trivia or photo contest and offer prizes for customers to participate. If you’re anticipating a slow night in the bar why not throw out a call for a reverse happy hour to your social media followers who mention a password of the night. Don’t forget to put current information about your social media accounts and hashtags on signage in bathrooms and other conspicuous places in your restaurant to boost the success of this type of viral marketing.

Cross Training

Having employees that can fulfill multiple roles is a real advantage when you are busy. Set up a go-to list of procedures and tasks that employees can cross train one-another on. Nowadays, so many people are tech and social media savvy, so don’t be afraid to train them on the apps included in your point of sale system so they can spend downtime setting up marketing campaigns or updating customer info.

Gather Feedback

Your employees know your business and your customers best. Ask them to document comments from customers, make suggestions to improve policies or procedures and present that feedback in a positive, solutions based way. You can do this by just having a simple suggestion box or set up a google form online where they can input info anonymously. Be sure and give regular and timely feedback about the suggestions made so that employees know you’re really listening and value their opinions.

Are you ready to learn how your POS system can help make your restaurant run more efficiently, then contact a Marketing 360 Payments representative for an appointment. We’ll help you maximize the capability of your POS system so you can focus on growing your business. We are ready to help make your business richer!