Selling more with less, the art of managing with minimal staffing

Since the pandemic, the problems of hiring experienced restaurant staff have become a acute problem and restaurants are forced to limit opening hours or risk long waiting times for their guests.

Those who do seek the jobs often have no industry experience or difficulty with the language.

For Christer, Hans, Jonas, Lars, and many other restaurant owners, QR orders became a lifesaver, both for the guests and for upselling.

This is what they say about how their recruitment has changed since they started using WEIQ's ordering solution for table service.

Christer Sahlsten

T.h. Chief Operating Officer at Badkrukan and several other popular restaurants in Båstad and in the mountains

Before we had WEIQ, we required at least a couple of years of work experience, but now good social skills are enough. This makes it much easier for us to hire.

– It's still not an easy job because they need to handle our guests well, regardless of whether there are self-orders or not. But we have a much larger group of applicants to choose from who we know will be able to handle it. 

- It's the future, no doubt about it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to handle the number of guests we have.

Hans Hallberg

Restaurant Manager at Restaurant Rustique in Skellefteå

– There's no experienced staff to be found, so without WEIQ, we would have had to quickly train inexperienced people, let them do a trial work a couple of times, and then hope for the best and put out the fires that arise.

– Now we can instead hire more runners, or guest support as we call them, who don't need experience or training. It's enough that they are service-minded and ready to work hard when needed.

That's enough now with one experienced waiter per station responsible for the guest experience.

Jonas Asplund

Restaurant owner at Strandvägen 35 in Nacka

With WEIQ, I can hire staff who have no industry experience, and it still only takes me 2 hours to train them. They just need to have the right personality and be able to greet and explain to guests how to order.

"WEIQ is a real labor saver, especially for us, as we're very weather-dependent. We can cope even if the sun comes out and we suddenly get 100 extra guests.".

Lars Knutsson

Restaurant owner at Sjöbris in Umeå

When we let guests order via WEIQ, we can reduce the need for extra staff a bit and can handle all walk-in guests even when many more show up than we anticipated. This probably saves 1-4 staff members depending on how many guests we have.

We can also hire significantly more people without experience. We've gone from a roughly 50/50 to a 30/70 split between experienced and new hires. Last year, for example, we had to hire everyone who applied just to have the capacity to receive all our guests, and thanks to WEIQ, we managed it.

- Even when serving guests who have ordered and paid themselves, customer contact is still required, so our staff enjoys it and learns a lot. It's also a good entry point for learning to work with traditional serving later on.

The trend of self-ordering is here to stay

It does not look like it will be easier to recruit serving staff in the coming years because it is Continued interest in vocational training programs.

The trend of QR code ordering seems to be here to stay. Not only because staffing shortages are likely to continue, but also because more and more guests are getting used to ordering themselves and appreciate it.

On average, restaurants that allow guests to order and pay by mobile have a profitability of 14%compared to the industry's 3%. If you want to offer personal service, it's also important to staff up properly with experienced personnel to handle the demand. Otherwise, personal service will just remain an ambition, and in reality, you'll have waiting times and stressed staff with no time for service. Therefore, using QR codes in combination with personal service is the next best thing for service and perhaps the very best for profitability.