To have a successful restaurant, there are several staff positions you will need to fill. The kind of restaurant you decide to open will have an impact on the number and kinds of restaurant staff you will need to hire.

If you open what is essentially a takeout location that has few, if any tables for the customers to eat on the premises, you may only need to hire one or two employees who handle preparing a limited amount of food choices like pizzas or submarine sandwiches. One or both of them should know how to run your cash register in order to ring up any sales during operating hours. You may want to hire someone who can make deliveries off site, and possibly one or two employees to do nothing but handle dishwashing and kitchen cleanup duties to comply with local health ordinances.

For opening a restaurant that is large enough for some tables for dining in, you will also probably need to hire someone who can aid in the daily preparation of some of the components necessary to construct menu selections (i.e. slicing meat and cheeses or cutting up vegetables). Additional duties during slack times might include restocking a beverage cooler or store displays of items like chips, cookies, or pretzels. They might also need to make sure that drink machines are full and functioning (like keeping the ice dispenser full and insuring the hoses to self-serve drink machines are correctly connected) and policing the dining areas to insure that the tables are wiped clean and the floors are clean of any debris or litter like spills or napkins loose on the floor.

As a general rule, the larger the establishment, the more employees you will have to worry about. A full service formal dining type of location will require personnel that fall generally to one of two categories: “front of the house” and “back of the house” staff.

The front of the house people are generally the ones that the customer would normally interact with. These positions include the host or hostess, responsible for seating the patron, taking reservations, and insuring that the tables are prepared for the client. Some establishments have the host give the patrons a menu so that they can begin looking it over until the assigned wait staff can get there to take preliminary drink orders.

This person can also be the manager and would be responsible for handling any issues that might arise with the patron. Other “front of the house” staff would include the wait staff (responsible for taking food and drink orders and bringing the meal to the table), wine sommelier (responsible for making wine or beer recommendations) and cashiers.

“Back of the house” staff can be classified as those employees the patron might not interact with during the dining experience. These include the chefs and prep cooks, bus persons (responsible for removing dirty dishes and preparing the dining environment for the next patron) and cleanup crew (responsible for cleaning the kitchen, dining area after hours, and sometimes keeping the restrooms sanitary for staff and patrons during the hours of operation).

Of course, it is possible that some of the less busy wait staff can be responsible for a few things like busing and preparing the dining area, cleaning up spills or policing the floors and maintaining the bathrooms.

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[tags]restaurant management, restaurant business planning[/tags]