A pre-shift meeting is something that’s become far more common in restaurants in recent years. What started as something that was generally only done in high-end restaurants has become something of a ritual in restaurants of all types.
What is a Pre-Shift Meeting in a Restaurant?
A pre-shift meeting in a restaurant is a meeting before everyone begins their shift. More accurately, it’s a chance for everyone to discuss important events, reservations, or anything else that might happen during the shift. Beyond that, it allows everyone in the restaurant a chance to voice any issues that they may have and offer solutions to various problems.
Put simply, a pre-shift meeting is one of the best ways to get your team on the same wavelength and solve a few problems in the process.
The Purpose of Pre-Shift Meetings
As mentioned above, pre-shift meetings allow a round-table for everyone that works in your restaurant to voice issues, concerns, or praise. It ensures that your employees feel heard and, importantly, guarantees that nobody is caught off-guard by large reservations, events, or other major happenings.
The two major benefits of restaurant meetings are that your employees can rest easy knowing that they’re all on the same page, and that they all feel heard. It really is that simple — allowing your staff to speak up about things that bother them (or things that they appreciate) ensures that everyone feels heard. Ultimately, this results in a happier, more effective team, and that’s precisely what we want.
How to Structure a Restaurant Pre-Shift Meeting
Restaurant pre-shift meetings are a tricky thing to schedule, especially when compared to traditional meetings in an office. Whereas in an office, everyone can just block that time out of their schedule, in a restaurant, things just aren’t that simple. There’s prep to be done, guests to be served, and cleaning to be marked off the list — which, unfortunately, means that you need to schedule for a pre-shift meeting.
More accurately, you’ll need to accommodate for a meeting in everyone’s schedule. Generally, this means ensuring that everyone has ~10-15 minutes of free time during your slowest hours of the day.
Once that’s done, you’ll want to make sure that you have any major talking points ready to go. After covering any major points, open up the meeting to discussion and allow your employees to speak up about whatever they feel is needed. Once that’s done, it’s back to business as usual.
The Ideal Length of a Pre-Shift Meeting
Ideally, a pre-shift meeting should be short and sweet. The longer the meeting, the more likely we are to have people dozing off and getting distracted — and that defeats the purpose of the meeting in the first place! As mentioned above, it’s best to try and keep your restaurant meeting to roughly 10-15 minutes. It’s long enough to cover any important points and allows 5-10 minutes for discussion as needed.
Topics to Cover in a Pre-Shift Meeting
Daily Specials and Menu Updates
Some of the most common points to discuss during a restaurant meeting are changes to your menu or specials. Whether it’s a new soup du jour, a catch of the day update, or you’re 86 on a menu item, this is where we tell the staff. By doing this, it ensures that your Front and Back of House are on the same page and know what to sell, what not to, and what should be pushed.
Reservations and VIP Guests
Another major point to cover during pre-shift meetings is your reservations. Whether you have a large party or two coming in for the night, or you have a VIP guest (maybe a politician or musician), it’s best to make sure that everyone knows. This way, the host is prepared to seat, your servers are ready for a large table, and your kitchen knows to expect to get hammered (and when).
Staff Assignments and Roles
While this won’t be important for every restaurant, restaurants that have their employees “float” between stations generally use the pre-shift meeting to establish who’s working where. Often, this is done to accommodate for reservations or events in order to allow the strongest member of the team for that position to keep things flowing smoothly.
Promotions or Events
Promotions and events are a great way to bring in business, but they require a good bit of preparation on the part of your staff. If everyone shows up expecting a slow Thursday when you have a large event getting set up, it’s bound to throw people for a loop. By preparing them early and making sure they know what to do, when, and where, you can ensure that your events go off without a hitch.
Addressing Feedback and Challenges
Whether you’ve gotten feedback from guests or from other employees, pre-shift meetings are a great place to voice those issues. While it’s important to avoid naming names and pointing fingers, allowing these concerns to be voiced is important. This is especially important if it’s an issue that isn’t easy to solve at once — and a brainstorm from the team often leads to unique solutions that you might not have thought of yourself.
Tips for Keeping Meetings Productive and Engaging
Below, you’ll find a handful of tips to make sure that your pre-shift meetings are productive, engaging, and generally enjoyable for your staff.
- When addressing issues, address them as a team: There should be no finger pointing or singling out of team members; rather, work to find a solution that helps everyone and acknowledge that a mistake by a team member is a mistake by the team as a whole.
- Keep things concise: We don’t have time to waste in restaurants, so don’t drag out the meeting any longer than necessary. Hit the important points, discuss them, and get back to work.
- Acknowledge the good along with the bad: For every issue that’s brought up, acknowledge something that someone (or everyone) is doing well. For example, are ticket times down? Try saying, “First of all, our plates look great. However, I’ve heard that they’re taking a bit too long to send out — maybe we can see what the sautee chef is doing to keep his times so quick so that we can implement it across the board.” Try to acknowledge the good when you see it. You don’t need to wait for something to go wrong in order to praise a good employee.
- Don’t hold meetings if you have nothing to discuss: Nobody hates “this could have been an email” meetings more than chefs — so don’t hold them. If you genuinely have nothing to discuss for the day, skip the meeting. Your employees (and labor hours) will thank you.
Pre-Shift Meeting Best Practices for Restaurant Managers
Start on Time and Keep it Concise
Being concise is incredibly important for meetings, as it ensures that time isn’t wasted. Beyond that, though, it’s crucial to show your employees that you respect their time. Just as you would be upset if an interviewee was late to their interview, your employees will be miffed if you’re late to the meeting. So, start on time, end on time, and keep things short and sweet.
Use a Consistent Format for Meetings
Every meeting should have the same format. This allows your employees to know what to expect and when, and ensures that nobody feels blindsided. While this may seem like a small point of order, it really does help cement meetings as a regularly-scheduled part of your day.
Encourage Staff Participation and Questions
I’s absolutely crucial that you involve your employees in these meetings. While you certainly can force them to listen to you talk for ~15 minutes, that’s not enjoyable for anyone other than (maybe) you. Instead, bring points of order and questions to the group and allow them to provide input. Believe it or not, they work there too, and they’re likely to have valuable insights to many of the problems surrounding their day-to-day.
End on a Positive and Motivating Note
Restaurant meetings should never end on a bad note. Rather than finishing up with critiques or issues, try to end by finding something or someone to praise. Whether it’s the quality of the food or drinks, ticket and service times, or something else, make sure that your employees feel seen. It helps with morale and, importantly, ensures that nobody shows up dreading your meetings.
Pre-Shift Meeting Template for Restaurants
So, what does a pre-shift meeting look like for restaurants? Take a peek below!
- Introduction:
- Break down any changes to the menu, new specials, or 86d items.
- Discuss major events, reservations, or VIP guests.
- Point out something good or productive that’s been done since the last meeting. (Try to point out something that’s not mandated, like down-time cleaning tasks.)
- Issues:
- Cover any issues that have been caught recently. Whether it’s something large or small, do your best to frame it as an issue for the team to solve, rather than something to be used to place blame.
- Unless there’s a clear solution, open up the discussion to your employees and try to find a solution that works for everyone.
- Round-Table:
- Resolve any issues as a team.
- Allow your team to voice concerns or praise and address them as needed.
- Wrap-up:
- Highlight something cool that your team has done in recent days.
- Point out good performers without blaming others.
- Provide closing motivation.
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