No business is safe from crises, especially in the food industry. Even if you take all the necessary steps to ensure your food respects safety norms and your service is top-notch, something unexpected can happen that will affect your reputation.
The key here is how you react in dire times. This restaurant crisis management guide will show you how to prepare for most unfortunate incidents, how to act while they are happening, and how to repair your business afterward.
What is a restaurant crisis?
A restaurant crisis is any situation that negatively affects your business. It can be an online reputation problem, a food safety issue, or a global pandemic as we have encountered in the past. Here are a couple of restaurant crisis examples:
- Food safety problems: these are one the most common and hard-to-control restaurant crises. A customer getting sick from eating at your restaurant will deter other customers from ever visiting your business;
- Incidents related to customer experience: wrong orders, rude employees, and dirty premises can easily read to negative reviews that can hurt your online reputation;
- Marketing stunts: while promoting your restaurant is a must, every online post should be treated with the utmost care or you risk creating a scandal if your tactics are viewed as insensitive or offensive. Not all publicity is good publicity;
- Misinformation: there are cases of coordinated attacks against a restaurant that spread false information and add fake reviews to destroy a business’s online presence;
- Unprecedented economic situations: like a global pandemic or an economic crisis that severely inflates the price of raw ingredients.
Why do you need to have a restaurant crisis management plan?
You can’t run a restaurant with the fear of an imminent crisis always on your mind because it will stop you from focusing on other important tasks like growing your profit.
Instead, what you can do is create a plan so it will be easier to manage your restaurant during a crisis. Being prepared will help you:
- Come up with solutions faster: instead of panicking and scrambling to come up with a plan on the spot, you can rely on already established protocols;
- Take control of your online reputation: if you take the time to proactively build a community around your restaurant, people will be more open to hear your apologies and forget your mistakes;
- Keep calm and work toward rebuilding your brand: when you follow the procedures from your restaurant crisis management plan, you can have a clear head and focus on getting out of the crisis, while still maintaining an operational establishment.
Restaurant crisis management plan example
Efficient restaurant crisis management starts way before an incident occurs. Check out this easy-to-follow list that will help you face any type of incident:
What to do before a crisis
If you have a strong base of loyal customers, it will be easier to overcome problems as they are more likely to keep your business afloat even in times of crisis.
Set up Google alerts for mentions of your restaurant
If an incident happens, you don’t want to be the last one to find out about it. The longer it takes you to react, the more inflamed the problem becomes and the harder it is to solve.
Therefore, you should set up Google alerts so you can be notified of new mentions of your restaurant online. All you have to do is go to Google alerts, choose the topic you want to follow and set up some options, like frequency, language, and the accounts that get the alert.
Make it a habit to check it at the end of the day so you can identify eventual issues.
Moreover, you should also track:
- Your reviews: on every platform where you have an account, be it Google, Facebook or TripAdvisor;
- Your restaurant’s data: by using an effective tool like the Reports module from GloriaFood, you can constantly track the number of orders, number of new and returning clients, and number of visitors on your website and notice if there is a drastic change.
Grow your reputation with positive reviews
94% of US clients base their dining decisions on online reviews. If your score is very low, many people will not give your restaurant a chance.
If you encounter a crisis when your business is flooded with bad reviews, it will be helpful to have a variety of positive ones to counteract them.
Therefore, make it a goal to motivate clients to leave good reviews for your business. You can even offer them a small incentive like a free dessert for proof of review.
Read more: The Importance of Online Reviews for Restaurants & How to Get More
Identify potential restaurant crises
To create an efficient restaurant crisis management plan, you must first identify the potential issues you may be faced with. Get inspired by the restaurant crisis examples above and create your list, adapted to location and type of business. Your list may include:
- Foodborne illnesses;
- Staff controversies;
- Viral social media posts gone wrong;
- Service inaccuracies;
- Conflicts on premise.
Create a restaurant crisis management team
Instead of having all your team members trying to solve a problem and risking making it worse, establish a team and assign responsibilities in case of crisis.
You can include this information in your restaurant’s standard operating procedures so every person knows what to do if a problematic situation arises. You should have roles assigned for:
- Legal: a person that immediately jumps to action to protect your business;
- Operational: to manage the team and keep the restaurant functioning efficiently even in dire times;
- HR: if the issue was caused by staff, the responsible HR person will start investigating and solving the issue;
- Marketing and PR: to create a clear and unified message across all platforms to let the audience know you are on top of the situation.
Establish protocols for each situation
After you’ve identified all likely emergency scenarios, you will need to create a protocol for each one. The protocol must include:
- Goals for the restaurant crisis management plan: such as getting back to business, reducing and eliminating the negative impact of the crisis, and ensuring your brand image and reputation are intact;
- Hierarchy: with clear responsibilities for each member of the team, communication info, and methods to get out the response as fast as possible;
- Response playbook: what each person will do, how will they do it, and when they will do it. Moreover, it will also be helpful to include things to avoid, like not starting social media wars.
Ideally, you should train your employees and run tests for different situations to ensure everyone will be prepared to act.
What to do during a crisis
The good news is that you already know what to do when the crisis hits, just follow the restaurant crisis management plan you’ve created. Here are more tips on how to successfully come out of an unfortunate situation:
Gather information and identify the problems
Before you take any type of action, your restaurant’s crisis management team must gather all the available information and get to the root of the problem. Have them answer these questions:
- When did the problem start and how long has it been going for?
- What caused everything? For example, a food allergen that got in the wrong plate.
- Who was responsible for the problem?
- What is the backlash? Is there a legal recourse? Is the problem only online? How many posts are there regarding the issue and what does each of them say?
Address the issue and share actionable steps
If you wait too long to face a problem, it can go viral, and the audience may get a false narrative that will be hard to fight. That is why it is important to be one of the first ones to come out with the story because it gives you more control over the whole situation.
Check out these tips on how to communicate and act during a restaurant crisis:
- Keep calm and use kindness: never respond with anger because this will only trigger the same response from the audience. Instead, show understanding, empathy, and compassion when issuing a public response;
- Share your improvement plan: don’t offer a vague response that doesn’t mean anything. Tell your followers exactly what steps you are taking to solve the issue and prevent it from happening again;
- Only allow a select few to communicate with clients: while solving the issue, train servers on what answer they should give interested customers, to not risk making the problem worse;
- Offer incentives: if a customer complains in online reviews about the service, consider offering them a small promotion so you can get them to give your restaurant another chance. You can set up customer coupon codes for this using the Promotions module from GloriaFood in just a couple of seconds.
Apologize and try to move the conversation offline
If your restaurant is in the wrong in the crisis, you must offer a heartfelt apology for the wrongdoing. Always consult with your legal team before you formulate a response to ensure you protect your business in the process.
In the case of social media complaints or negative online reviews, always try to move the conversation offline or in private, with fewer spectators. This gives you the opportunity to learn more about the issue and solve it without impacting your online reputation.
Read more: How to Respond to Negative Restaurant Reviews to Increase Brand Loyalty
What to do after the crisis
After the spirits have calmed, and your business is almost back to normal, both legally, and operationally, you have one more step of your restaurant crisis management plan. You have to build your reputation back up and get customers to trust you again.
Rebuild trust with consistency
These tips will help you erase all the negative effects of the crisis and build a stronger business:
- Constantly communicate your improvement measures: such as more training for your staff members or enhanced food safety testing;
- Showcase positives: it is time to divert the attention from the past to new menu items or charitable causes you are helping;
- Organize events to get people to visit your restaurant: an irresistible live music night or trivia dinner date will persuade clients to make a reservation;
- Offer promotions to show appreciation for loyalty: 10% off the whole cart or free delivery will get people ordering from your restaurant again. Set up any of these and more in no time with GloriaFood.
Final words
You can’t prevent unfortunate incidents from happening, but you can be prepared to deal with them. By creating a restaurant crisis management plan, you will be able to rely on protocols to face any type of situation, avoiding momentary panic.
