Have you ever dreamed of expanding your quick-service restaurant? Growing a fast-food concept to multiple locations is no small feat, but it's definitely achievable. But before replicating success across numerous sites, it's essential to understand some key tips for scaling operations like creating effective SOPs, investing in the proper commercial kitchen equipment and finding reliable staff.
Here are three actionable steps that will guide you through this successful process.
An efficient SOP (standard operating procedure) system is the key to taking your restaurant's operations from one site to multiple locations. Think of it as a playbook for every employee, outlining all the rules and standards they need to know so that tasks can be carried out quickly and professionally - even without too much thought!
Setting up these standardised processes will give you confidence knowing everything is running back-of-house smoothly. These usually lay out everything that needs to happen during kitchen opening and closing, to food safety and kitchen cleaning.
We have previously created a Standard Operating Procedures checklist every commercial kitchen should have, which you can check out here .
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Investing in the right restaurant equipment is essential for long-term success. It is especially important if you have multiple sites, as you must ensure every location has the equipment to replicate your dishes perfectly.
RATIONAL's advanced cooking systems are created to produce food more efficiently and consistently than ever. RATIONAL's iCombi Pro and iVario Pro feature the unique iCookingSuite , which is the brain of the systems; it constantly adjusts cooking parameters for you and intelligently makes any recalculations in time or temperature to assure the end product is perfectly cooked to your QSR's defined specifications.
The iCombi Pro also has the iProductionManager , which allows you to streamline production, add dishes to the display, and cook multiple dishes together. This enables you to prepare many different dishes with just one piece of equipment.
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The iVario Pro can boil, sauté, deep-fry and pressure cook (35% faster than standard pressure cookers) all in one appliance, and like the iCombi Pro , you can have pre-programmed functions, and it monitors the cooking process to ensure nothing burns or overcooks.
If you want to operate multiple location restaurants - or any food service operation — the iCombi Pro and iVario Pro from RATIONAL will help you efficiently produce and replicate delicious food again and again.
Building a reliable and consistent team makes all the difference for any restaurant owner looking to grow their business.
It's worth taking time out of your day to explore what potential you already have within current staff members for promotion or new positions in different branches - this will help maintain standards across units while encouraging everyone around them. Remember that experienced employees can set an example as well!
Give it some thought – having top-notch people on board could take your eatery from good to remarkable! But even with a great team, you still need to develop an employee handbook to roll out to all the different properties. This should cover your mission statement, core values, the ideal guest experience, operations manual, equipment manuals and training resources.
Ready to take your quick-service restaurant business to the next level by opening up new sites? The first step is getting those standard operating procedures in place and ensuring everyone sticks by them. Then, invest in reliable, consistent cooking systems that keep operations running smoothly - this will make scaling up much easier when you're ready! Finally, remember a great team around you can help bring it all together.
If you would like to learn more about RATIONAL's range of commercial cooking equipment and how they can help create perfect dishes again and again across all your potential locations, get in touch with the team today.