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Hey all I'm a dinning room manager in a retirement community looking to change the reservation system from paper and pen to something on a tablet with online functionality. We want people to be able to walk in and use the app on the tablet or on their phones. Any suggestions? Anybody worked with the open table app on the restaurant end? Ease of use is key. It's fairly upscale and the residents have a lot of input about opperations. Sometimes that's a good thing but in the case of the reservation system it's pure madness. There's a pre-sign up at seven in the morning policed by the residents, and then residents need to show up at one pm when we put out the reservation book and residents get access to the book in the order they signed up at the pre sign up. I don't know how we got here (new job) but nobody wants to talk about it and everyone hates it. Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated. My boss: "what's up with this post it note that says 'ask the goons?'." 
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Dec 17, 2017 06:13
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 09:11 |
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Hauki posted:Holy poo poo that sounds awful. Maybe I've been working in the nine circles of hell up to this point but I like the job quite a bit. I get to serve the same people every day, makes it easier to get it right. I moved to a new city, got started in the kitchen as a "cook I", took a look around at the talent I was working with and realized it'd be years and years before I moved up. Real wake up call. I'd been supervising a deli in a small town before that, introducing some new ideas here and there, cooking for fun, never worked in a real kitchen before. To paraphrase the mighty monarch "I thought I was hot poo poo in a champagne glass but I was just cold diarrhea in a dixie cup." I worked for nearly a year, learned a lot, and when the dining room manager got fired for harassing teenagers and being dumber than a bag of paint I asked the Chef if I could go for it and she said yes. I'm bridging the gap between FOH and BOH, or trying to. I like where I work and I plan on staying for a while. Brute Squad posted:Thank you for posting my change management nightmare. Olds+Food+Stakeholder Control+Existing Madness. I don't have any experience with app-based reservation systems, but I can tell you whatever you go with will be an absurd and uphill battle to get buy-in from your residents. Any app-based system will cut out their morning self-policing. That's right. Nobody wants to touch the situation with a ten foot pole, but it's corporate so a big list of changes they want to be made this year came down from on high and one of them was "internet based reservation system". Seemed like an opportunity to change things for the better. It's going to happen even if I do nothing, I'd rather be the one making the choice than someone less informed higher up at headquarters. greazeball posted:As someone who once worked in a retirement community dining room, every single element of the dining experience is all about reinforcing the pecking order amongst the residents and nothing else. I would bet a lot of money that the reservation book looks exactly the same every night with the same seating arrangements and times repeating into infinity until one day there's a huge loving row about who got the last profiteroles and the next day Mr Doppler has to sit by himself but he has no idea why. I'm in too deep already! Hoping for a easy to use app that will let people start booking at midnight the night before or something. Sorry Mrs. Smith the app allows access at midnight tonight, so sorry." Disargeria posted:Wait... so these old people have to show up to your restaurant three different times every time they want to eat there? 7am, 1pm and then 6pm or whatever? Yep. It's for the whole week though. So it only happens once a week and there are usually spots left over, and most residents are thoughtful enough to cancel any reservations they can't make it to in enough time for others to use them. It's inside a huge complex so it's less like going into a restaurant and more like stopping by the second floor. Hope that gives a clearer picture, thanks for the interest!
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Dec 19, 2017 06:39
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Anne Whateley posted:What is the competition for? Does everyone want to eat at 5:30, or does everyone want to sit at the special table? Whatever you can do to do a better job of meeting that demand will go a lot farther toward making everyone happy. And you can still try to make a bunch of seniors go online at midnight or whatever. Windows and two tops. Get what you're saying but I can't put more windows in the dining room and if I trade in any more four tops for two tops the tables will be too close together for walkers to pass! Das ist verbotten!
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Dec 20, 2017 16:50
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Carlosologist posted:Hi all, as always I appreciate everything you all do in the day to day life of the restaurant industry (my two years in the industry were enough to tell me this wouldn't be my career path); I have a question: what are your typical interview questions? I'm a teacher and at the beginning of the next quarter I'm teaching a class on career readiness. My students are currently seniors who are most likely joining the work force, and I figure that food is one of the options that will be widely available to them when they graduate in June. As such, I figure that the least I can do for them is to have some knowledge of questions employers will ask them so they can get their foot in the door and start on something. I hire a lot of high school servers and early university students at a upscale retirement home. After summarizing the applicants job experience (so I can try to tell if they're lying before wasting my time calling around) I usually ask if they like food as a jumping off point. Yes it is a dumb question but I use it to gauge their communication skills and ability to be enthusiastic. A one word yes or no tells me they don't care that much about the job or don't have the soft skills to express it. Unless they're trying to be mega respectful (kids from Latin families do this sometimes), which will melt away later in the interview if you make it a conversation. I try to turn it into a conversation from there striking all the bullet points I have in my head. I also have to avoid all the anti discrimination pitfalls. I can't ask "do you have a car" but I can ask "do you anticipate any transportation difficulties in making it to work on time?" This is why corporate conversations are so weird. We want someone who will show up, work well with others and basically give a drat. Any questions about their extra curricular activities (bands, sports, etc) translate to "okay but this job is going to be your priority right? RIIIIIIGHT?!? You may not pay rent yet but you're working alongside people who do and we count on you, GOT IT!?!?!?" Hope that helps.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:34
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Skwirl posted:It's kinda funny to me that restaurant owners and managers generally understand that quality ingredients for their food and good booze for the bar costs more than lower quality ones, but can't accept the same principle applies to labor. I work at a retirement joint and I'm a new manager. We're putting in a new restaurant downstairs where the deli used to be. My boss told me how much it cost to put a door in the wall between the kitchen elevator hallway and the new patio. More than I make in a year. I mutter these words each time I pass it, especially working over eight hours on salary.
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Sep 21, 2018 16:27
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Discendo Vox posted:Uh, what kind of door is this? Are they putting it through structural support, plumbing and AC, running power and lighting to it, attaching alarms, a pneumatic ADA entry system, and plating it in silver? Doors, even exterior commercial doors, are not all that expensive. Its a regular door in what used to be a wall leading to the outside of the building. It's big its metal its nice. Something about fire safety stuff in California. Maybe the guy who told me was full of doo doo.
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Sep 23, 2018 10:53
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The General posted:I'd argue it does matter what you say. I'm listening for 'Corner', 'Behind', 'Hot' and 'Sharp'. I'm big and tall so people were always asking me to move vats of boiling pasta and soup for them. I'd always yell "hot and heavy!". I'm writing a research paper on the future of age discrimination in the food service industry. Any thoughts?
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Feb 20, 2020 20:01
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I run a dining room in a retirement community!  Nothing like a captive audience. We've always been good about sending sick people home but now we're keeping them away much longer. Probably all regular flu but I'm not an epidemiologist. There is a resident here who was an epidemiologist though, and according to him although it's good to be safe we really don't know enough about the coronavirus to formulate focused strategies. He kept talking about "a lack of surveillance." Always gloves up and gets his food from the buffet to go as soon as we open.
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Mar 7, 2020 21:49
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Shooting Blanks posted:I'd imagine the drop in travel in general (both business and pleasure) is hurt you in particular. Good luck dude. Thanks for the info! However, he hasn't been stopping to chat like he usually does. Weird.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:28
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Shooting Blanks posted:Opening bars is insane. I understand opening restaurants at 25% capacity, especially if they have a patio and prioritize service there but bars are designed to negate social distancing. Wow I never thought of that but ... yes.
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May 19, 2020 07:46
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Also, I had bird remove my restaurant ASK thread for fear of doxxing from a bunch of offsite chuds that I fought with yesterday. What a time to be alive lol That's too bad Sandwich Anarchist. I loved that thread, you really cared about your coworkers and all the crap they had to take from TSA and single businessmen. Also that story about how you can eject one customer for harassing staff and that jerk can turn around with his friends and trash your restaurant's online rep. Don't get me wrong you gotta protect yourself. Just saying I'll miss that thread.
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Jul 3, 2020 01:55
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I'm an FOH manager at a CCRC, we used to charge employees $2 a box for a big boxed meal with whatever was left over. It's been free since COVID started, which is awesome, but a few people have been taking too much . . . they're saving it from the garbage, times are tough, some folks recently lost homes in the fires... The Chef and I know if the wrong person sees someone leaving with too much food upper management will at minimum start charging people again. We're doing all we can to keep it going, and we've both turned a blind eye now and then.
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Oct 7, 2020 22:08
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nudejedi posted:Oh you sweet summer child... I was interviewing a server to work at a retirement home dining room, it's not challenging and the environment is safe so it's a good first job for lots of high schoolers, even late middle schoolers. This young woman started out the interview very enthusiastically and then got quiet and distant. I asked if anything was wrong and she said her parents didn't want her working in any kind of a restaurant in any capacity because "It's a place where you meet bad people and learn to do drugs." I opened my mouth to protest, then thought for a minute and closed it. I thought about all the times I'd had to cover for coworkers with serious drug problems, how frequently I'd been offered hard drugs, encouraged to drunk drive, or do other stupid criminal activities. Never happened at school, or at my bank job, or at my film job, or even working at the liquor store. It always happened at food service jobs. Learned to smoke working at restaurants too. "Your parents have real a point," I admitted, "They care about you and there is real truth to that concern." I talked about how working in dining at a CCRC is a little different, which is why I like it more. People stick around longer, there are background checks (which if you pass just means you never got caught). Never heard back from her, and I wanted to hire her. Maybe I went too far, but it just felt like I couldn't sugarcoat that aspect when asked about it straight out.
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Aug 5, 2021 19:08
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Shooting Blanks posted:OTOH, maybe you did her a favor in nudging her towards a different job. Given the attitude of most people in this thread.... Yeah but another part of me thinks everyone should work in the food service industry for a little while. Makes you appreciate the effort that goes into food, work with all sorts of people (age, class, race etc), combines technical skills with soft skills, teamwork is key. I tried to write a sci-fi short story about a near-future where you can not eat out at a restaurant unless you've worked in one for a year. Consequentially, children are not allowed into restaurants so dining out takes on a desirable mystique and 99% of children get a dining job at the earliest legal age. Eating out for the first time with parents becomes an important right of passage. This has a positive societal impact from generation to generation. Eventually leads to a truly meritocratic, if flawed society with environmental protection born out of food ingredient appreciation and respect for human dignity born from mutual service. Couldn't come up with a rationale for such a directive. Food shortage made eateries have to limit their clientele and they all chose to serve their own? Maybe Foodservice workers started poisoning the rich in large numbers so the wealthy made the law to humanize themselves?
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Aug 5, 2021 22:35
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 09:11 |
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:The brittish show chef was fun but idk where to find it anymore Serious. Serious profession.
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Sep 14, 2022 04:15
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