Restaurant Staff Incentives: 10 Efficient Tips to Motivate Employees

The high turnover in the restaurant industry is surely no surprise to you. Employees in the food business are often unhappy with their jobs and tend to spend little at a job where they do not feel appreciated.

This has a negative impact on your restaurant because you can often be understaffed and have to spend a lot of money to hire new staff. Therefore, what can you do to make your employees happy and have them working for you for a long time?

Offer restaurant staff incentives! Get inspired by the creative ideas from this article and you will soon reap the benefits:

Why you must implement restaurant employee incentive ideas

Running a restaurant is not just about creating great food and attracting customers, it is also about managing your team. Here are the benefits you will enjoy if you start offering restaurant staff incentives:

• Happier employees: if you constantly show your staff appreciation, you will help employees be more satisfied with their jobs. What’s more, you will also notice an increase in productivity;
• Increase staff retention: employees leave when they have a negative experience at their job. Nobody wants to work hard for no reward. If you offer incentives, you lower the restaurant turnover rate;
• Improve restaurant efficiency: employees will work harder if, at the end of the line, there is a reward waiting for them. Therefore, you will notice your restaurant running more smoothly;
• Enhance customers’ experience: happy employees make happy customers. As your staff interacts with clients daily, if you improve your team’s experience, they will offer customers an amazing service.

Read more: 7 Tips to Create the Utmost Restaurant Food Delivery Experience

10 restaurant staff incentives to try

Restaurant staff incentives don't always have to have a big monetary value. Even a simple verbal positive reinforcement such as "Good job! I see and appreciate all the hard work you are doing" can motivate employees to be the best at their jobs.

Check out these efficient ideas:

1. Have an employee of the month award

A little competition can incentivize all employees to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Don't make employee of the month just an honorific award, pair it with a great bonus to encourage every staff member to participate.

You should also make it clear what the prize is for. For example:

• Who servers the biggest number of clients in a month
• Whose orders added up to the biggest amount of money
• Which workers had the biggest number of positive online reviews
• Which worker was never late and never left early

2. Offer team bonuses

In a restaurant, it is not enough for an employee to do their job perfectly, they must also be able to work well in a team. Cooperation is a must for a seamless operation from the kitchen to the front. Therefore, you need some restaurant staff incentives that encourage teamwork.

The easiest way to do so is to pair staff into shifts. Whichever team has the smallest number of complaints and brings in the biggest amount of money, gets to enjoy a hefty bonus.

3. Offer a salary increase for each year worked at the restaurant

This is a common practice for most businesses. If you want to persuade employees to work for you for a long period of time, you must guarantee them they will experience a salary increase each time a year passes.

You can even celebrate the milestones to keep people engaged with the job. For example, each time an employee spends six months with the team, they get a gift card and a reminder that they only need six more months to earn more money.

4. Make their work easier with technology

Employees can often get overwhelmed when they have too many tasks and may not perform them as well as you expect. You can also offer restaurant staff incentives in the form of technology that takes a load of them and allows them to focus on more important tasks.

Here are some must-have pieces of technology:

• An online ordering system: forget about taking orders by phone and risking staff noting down an order wrong which can lead to disgruntled customers. With the free online ordering system from GloriaFood, employees can accept orders with a simple touch on an app;
• A kitchen management system: if you don’t want staff running to the kitchen with order receipts, integrate your online ordering system with a kitchen management one, so the orders get automatically transmitted to the kitchen staff;
• A restaurant table reservation system: no more waiting by the phone, with the free table reservation system from GloriaFood, employees can accept online reservations from the same app they accept online orders.

Read more: How to Increase Your Restaurant's Profit with an Online Table Booking System

5. Offer them discounts for the restaurant

Not all restaurant staff incentives have to be big bonuses, you can also offer them discounts for your restaurant. You can give them according to the positive behavior you want to reinforce, such as:

• A server that efficiently managed a client's complaints;
• An employee who replied to a negative review and changed the client's opinion;
• A staff member who offered to cover for a colleague who couldn’t come to work.

6. Organize a match-the-tip competition

If you want to encourage employees to offer better customer service, choose some days when you organize a match-the-tip competition. Practically, you have all your servers go head to head to get the best tips and, the one who gathers the most, will have their sum matched by you.

7. Throw a reward party

If you run a healthy restaurant, you surely have goals and KPIs you monitor to ensure you are continuously growing. When one of the goals is reached it is because all the team worked hard towards it.

Therefore, they deserve a reward. You can organize a party where all your staff can get to relax, with all food and beverage expenses paid.

8. Organize team buildings

Team building is one of the classic restaurant staff incentives because it is not only a reward but an opportunity for your team to connect. Employees may have a hard time getting to know each other in the fast-paced environment of a restaurant.

Team building allows them to build a connection that will help them communicate better and cooperate when they face work tasks.

9. Throw an award show for the staff

Once a year, treat your employees like Hollywood stars! Organize an award ceremony where you offer each employee a prize, ranging from serious ones like “Best customer service” to silly ones like “Funniest Employee”.

Don’t forget to get some trophies you can hand out to make the celebration more special.

10. Reward performance with gift cards

One of the most popular incentives for restaurant staff is a simple gift card. Make sure you get to know your employees so you offer them gift cards they would appreciate such as:

• Grocery stores
• Local attractions
• Spas
• Stores

Final words

Don’t treat restaurant staff incentives like a chore because employees can tell if your words of appreciation are forced. Instead, view them as an opportunity to get your team to perform better with the goal of making your restaurant a success for years to come.

You might also like:

• How to Counter the Restaurant Employee Shortage by Leveraging Technology
• How to Ace the Restaurant Hiring Process and Get the Best Employees
• 21 Restaurant Competition Ideas to Gain Visibility and Attract Customers