Considering adding counter service?

By Iain Woessner

OLYMPIA — It’s the year 2020, and for Washington’s hospitality industry that means one thing more than others – the next minimum wage increase has now taken effect. The labor cost pinch is being felt, and some restaurants are looking at converting their service model to increase their margin.

Should you change your model?

In dining, you have full-service, traditional sit-down dining models and you have quick-service, drive-thru and fast-food models. Straddling the increasingly blurry line between those models is the limited service model, which incorporates the efficiency of quick service and the quality of full service … at least, ideally.

Rick Braa, principal, owner of AMP Services LLC, said that the lines are blurring when it comes to defining the point where a quick-service dining service becomes a limited-service model.

“I’ve advised limited service restaurants for about two decades now,” Braa said. “On the limited service side, the ones that are most successful are the ones that looked at a full-service restaurant and said ‘what is really hard about this restaurant, how do I take complexity out of it?’”

The exact form a limited service restaurant varies. Braa said good examples are seen in the likes of Panera Bread, which provides quick service, doesn’t have serving staff but also provides seating and a dining room.

Determining whether your restaurant would benefit from a service conversion should be your first step. Braa said restaurants that have talented serving staff, that have a functioning business plan and are making ends meet aren’t going to change their model. Those who are, like many, sharing in the hardship of finding good help in their location, may benefit.

“If the talent pool is not where it needs to be and you have a great concept, good food but a hard time attracting talent, keeping talent and you have a good space for it … it would make sense,” Braa said. “But it will take time and a lot of planning. This cannot be herky-jerky. This cannot be ‘we thought of this today, tomorrow we’ll do it.’”

From the outside, the biggest difference between full and limited service comes to the actual service. It will be front-o- house staff who are most likely to vanish or be greatly diminished in the transition, and that may be the deciding factor for whether this change is right for you.

“You shouldn’t change it if you’re known for your service,” Braa said. “If you are known for your service, don’t even entertain it.”

Go with the flow

Braa emphasized three big considerations when approaching a service conversion, perhaps the most critical of which being your restaurant’s flow.

“A lot of times you go into restaurants, you have to look at chokepoints in the restaurant, that’s where the guests will be flowing over themselves,” Braa said. “You want a flow that is very smooth to the guests … it’s all got to work together, it’s all got to be smooth.”

He urges restaurant owners look at establishments like Chipotle, Panera Bread or Starbucks and take note of how they differentiate their approaches. Understanding how your customers will flow may enable you to incorporate that into your service and the design of your restaurant.

“Look at those (established, national) concepts and how well they are constructed because they’ve been doing it for decades,” Braa said. “They know what works and what doesn’t work.”

Some dramatic changes may be needed to improve flow, particularly if you are converting from full to limited service, such as taking down walls and possibly installing counters and other designs. Braa urged members to visualize their experience at counter-like services.

“Guests won’t tolerate being jerked around,” he said.

Keep it simple, be transparent

There’s a beauty to simplicity – and a flexibility too, particularly for restaurants considering moving from a full-service model to a more limited service one.

Just like with delivery, some food does better with a quicker turnaround than others. The menu should be designed to be simple on the kitchen staff, and executable with speed in mind.

“Speed is the most important aspect of restaurants in my opinion, depending on the concept,” Braa said. “You go to a high-end steakhouse, you want to have a more relaxed experience, but you still want that service to be sharp, to be fast.”

While you consider your restaurant’s efficiency, the simplicity of its menu and what changes you’d make to improve both, never forget to include a very important person in those considerations – the guest. Braa said that the guest must be given ample and advanced notice of changes you intend to make to your service model.

For Mike Cavanaugh, owner of the Skagit River Brewery in Mount Vernon, this transition is one he has been considering, and one that he intends to undertake at a slow and gradual pace for the sake of his customer base.

“I think the obvious question is – should I just go to counter service? For us, for Skagit River Brewery, we’ve been in business 30 years,” he said. “I think the customer sees us as a full-service restaurant. So I think that transition has to be done very carefully.”

Cavanaugh has already taken some steps to prepare for the change, including streamlining his menu.

“That’s a hard process, people have an expectation level when they come to your place, and now they can’t get certain things and they want to know why,” He said. “We can’t afford stuff that goes to waste, so we have gone to burgers, pizza and barbecue… and some sandwiches and salads, just a pub menu, and streamlined that and then tried to make all of those items better.”

Without those expectations established, though, Cavanaugh said he may have approached his service model differently were he opening today.

“If I was opening a restaurant today, I would open it with counter service,” Cavanaugh said. “Full service is great, people love it, but you have to provide a menu and a product that can afford to pay a person $13.50 an hour.”

Braa was also clear: Whatever change to your service model you make, it must increase sales.

“When you take the complexity out of the concept, improve it at the same time,” he said.

Technically speaking

Technology is the secret that makes a limited service alternative to full service appealing, particularly if the goal is maximizing sales, according to? Correctly implementing technology into your service model can prevent lost sales opportunities and can empower the guest to become the leader of their dining experience.

“You’re really there to execute the guest experience, they go in, order at the counter, they take their food, you bus their table and they’re gone,” Braa said. “It really removes the servers from the equation. Something that is a weakness … could very easily be fixed with the limited service, provided your menu can be converted.”

Braa said that handheld card readers and apps that connect to POS systems, like Toast, are growing more popular and allow employees to be more versatile and more able to act quickly to requests.

“With the popularity of the handhelds, you can have people roaming the floor, clearing tables and actually place orders in the bar and the kitchen and be able to grab that food,” Braa said. “I think that’s going to be very very helpful.”

Braa said the technology must be a part of your service change, and handhelds can play a big role in that. He said that once upon a time, restaurants would design their own apps for customers to use, but current consumer trends don’t see people loading their phones with so many smaller apps. Today, mobile apps that connect to popular POS services used in a variety of restaurants, strike that middle ground.

Braa described some of the restaurants that would benefit from considering a service conversion – highly seasonal businesses that see large sales losses in off-seasons are one, as are restaurants whose value is in something besides their service, like a café with a really nice patio viewshed or a seaside bistro.

If service isn’t your strong point, then your concept may stand to improve by reducing it.

When in doubt, the best way to learn is to look and listen – that’s what Cavanaugh’s been doing.

“One of the best ways to learn is to eat at other people’s restaurants. I see the struggles, I see what happens when staff is not very knowledgeable, I see when the kitchen is running around with their head cut off and there’s too many people in there and the functionality of their layout isn’t correct,” Cavanaugh said. “I’ve gone and watched what other people are doing, watched them mess up, watched what they did well. It’s amazing … great service is immediately noticeable.”