Do you own a restaurant? If yes, does your restaurant fall under a state out of 22 states which recently increased their minimum wage? Well, you may be busting your brain thinking of ways to avoid revenue loss. Thankfully, there’s a key to that door!

Maintaining a consistent high-profit margin is the key to success of any business however, with the rising wage rages of employees paid by hour, this seems hard to swallow. Being a restaurateur isn’t all that easy, you need to consider all employees are treated equally and for this, you need to bump your quota for the more experienced staff. This doubles your cost! That’s not the only thing, you also need to pay attention to the predictive scheduling laws which will have an impact on your staff roster.

The situation is quite critical, but with technology, automation and evolving staffing strategies, it’s not so difficult to combat the continually scaling minimum wage rates.

If you can relate to this, consider these ideas to ensure you have sufficient man power and big returns.

Lay off workers

Sounds scary? It most definitely is, but this is the most effective solution for a restaurant owner at this point. It is important to retain the best employees and cut down on the extra money spent on staff you don’t really depend on. Identify the employees contributing towards your restaurant growth and put them on a scale. You can afford to lay-off the ones who you think wouldn’t create a big impact on the team if they are no longer available. Make sure you do not compromise on quality of food and risk losing the all-rounders!

Not only do you need to reduce your staff cost but you should always focus on happy customers so, don’t risk losing your skilled staff.

What else?

Smart work hours

Having a consistent staff roster which is an alternative to laying off your staff, will help you utilize your staff strategically and efficiently. The smarter way of doing this is, identifying the peak and off-peak hours of your restaurant and allocating your resources accordingly, putting forth effort during peak times and less effort during slow hours. This way, you can manage with a few employees at a time. It’s the smart way out!

Then again, make sure you allocate your best talent during the peak times so they can keep up with the rush and allocate your less-experienced staff during the slow times. This will also help you train your staff to be efficient at all times by managing work amongst the few of them.

Raise product prices

Although this might cause a risk of losing some of your customers, introducing a new pricing strategy to tactically increase the prices of menu items can help you increase your restaurant’s profit.

The smart way out is to monitor, analyze and identify customer buying patterns to ensure your pricing strategy suits your loyal customers. Especially items in high demand or the add-ons purchased with commonly bought items, should have slight changes in price. You can also design your menu in such a way that customers would feel like the price they are paying is fully worth it. A mouth-watering picture can do the trick. Another tactic is to have anchor prices where the first menu item has a comparatively higher price than the rest of the items below it causing a person to psychologically think that the items below are cheaper and may opt to getting a cheaper item – they won’t buy the expensive one but they’d still buy something and this can actually increase your profit!

The introduction of the new minimum wage structure is the new buzzword in the restaurant industry and it’s definitely something all restaurateurs are stressing about. However, this challenge can be converted into an opportunity to identify ways to improve your restaurant systematically, rather than cut corners.

The ever-evolving modern world technology always solves critical practical issues. In this case, technology can be utilized to cut down on the staffing cost by simply replacing labor with digital smart devices.

Introduce a kiosk

Replacing restaurant staff with new tech devices such as kiosks, will reduce labor cost and increase your overall profit. A Kiosk gives a stress-free, self-ordering experience to customers and staff.

With the addition of a kiosk, even a short-staffed team can certainly streamline their process. Self-ordering kiosks also allow you to change menu prices daily, so you can capitalize on increasing demand.

“Panera claims 60% of lunchtime transactions are done on touch-screen kiosks. At 01 bustling, Boston-area store near Fenway Park. That same 60% is really somewhat of the savviest fast-food restaurants do daily out of their drive-thru windows”. (Kiosk Industry,2016)

Kiosks help customers to do an activity at their own convenience and pace, leading to higher order volume. It’s something that you might have to consider when you have a few staff members. A self-ordering option at a restaurant can also increase the ticket size because the system allows prompting additional items tempting people to buy more, this calls for more revenue!

A few advantages of having a kiosk are:

• Easy management of resources
• Less employees required
• Reduces long lines
• Increases ticket size

With a kiosk in place, managing your resources will be much easier and the efficiency of your restaurant will be optimum.

If you plan accordingly, minimum wage increases don't have to be an obstacle; they can instead be a benefit for both your business and your employees.

Here are the minimum wage increases in the relevant state.

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