Delivering Perfect Restaurant Service: 5 Key Factors

Great restaurant service is paramount in delivering a wonderful dining experience, leaving a lasting impression on diners and retaining customers. Restaurant owners, managers and staff all play an important role in providing clientele with excellent service. To help you ensure customers leave your venue feeling 100% satisfied, we’ve put together a list of 5 key factors that contribute to epic restaurant service. 

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The 5 key factors

Below, you can explore the factors that can encourage customers to not only return to your venue but also tell their friends and loved ones about their great experience: 

A warm welcome

It might seem too simple, and perhaps not even worth being on this list. But it’s super important to not underestimate the power of a warm welcome. Welcoming customers to your venue is one of the first interactions you’re likely to have with them. Not only does this interaction create their initial impression of your restaurant, but it also sets their expectations of things to come. A warm welcome can comprise many aspects, such as greeting customers within a reasonable timeframe, being genuine, making eye contact and smiling. 

Table essentials

A good way to deliver great restaurant service is to provide your diners with what they need for a good dining experience without them having to ask for it. A table that’s set with all the essentials, for example, knives, forks, spoons, napkins and drinking water, can highlight your restaurant’s efficiency and attention to detail. Having waitpersons designated to certain areas or tables can ensure that, if guests require something extra, there’s someone nearby ready and able to help them with minimum fuss and waiting.

Food service etiquette

Whether your venue is an elegant fine dining establishment or a casual milkshake bar, there’s a general level of food service etiquette most diners expect and appreciate. Ensuring every service team member at your venue is aware of this etiquette is an important step in delivering perfect restaurant service. This etiquette includes things like servicing and clearing food from a diner’s left and refilling their drinks from their right, being polite and not interrupting and remembering who ordered what when placing plates at their table. It’s also important that finished food and drinks are cleared in a timely manner. 

Family-friendly 

If families make up a large portion of your customers, it’s important that you cater to them appropriately to keep them coming back. Dining out with children can be challenging at the best of times, so families commonly favor venues that make it that little bit easier for them. Consider things like seating families at large tables where they can spread out and park up a pram, for example. It’s a great idea for waitpersons to address children directly, where possible, and a special kids' menu designed just for picky palettes usually works a treat.

Innovative payment methods

The digital age has bought about a world of conveniences surrounding payment methods, and most people expect to ‌enjoy them when they go out for food or drinks, too. A modern POS system goes a long way in providing a quick, transparent and user-friendly way for diners to pay for their meal. Contactless payment methods are popular and likely here to stay, so it’s helpful if you can cater to these types of payments. 

And then there’s the Liven app, which opens up a world of rewarding dining opportunities and the ability to pay for food and drinks with Liven’s digital currency. Being a Liven merchant not only provides extra rewarding dining experiences for your clientele but also showcases your innovation in the industry.

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