Restaurant Training Manual

light bulb idea | Culinary Business Strategy
photo credit: Deagon Williams

A restaurant training manual is far more important than it seems at first glance. So often a restaurant training manual does little more take up many hours of someone’s time and when it is done, it just collects dust in a small crowded back office. But a restaurant training manual serves two very important purposes.  The first is to help the owner or management to establish what is important for all employees to know. The second purpose is to establish legal and critical human resource issues, such as the sexual harassment policy. It is the responsibility of the owner to state clearly that sexual harassment will not be tolerated. Not just advisable, but an actual legal requirement. Along those lines, there are many other human resources requirements that must be clearly stated. For this reason, I recommend a two-pronged approach to a restaurant training manual. First, write out everything that is important to you. Clearly define the brand, the culture, the expectations of job performance, and how it will be measured, along with the level of customer service expected. Then, I’d recommend taking that draft to a HR manual writing service. In a field where the laws and requirements vary by state as well as by year, they know the critical components and can add those in far more efficiently.