Making the Most of Your Dishroom Staff

The labor headwinds are still strong for restaurants. According to research from the National Restaurant Association, 45% of operators expect competition from other restaurants to be more intense this year. And an equal number (45%) say they will need more employees to support customer demand. Add to that rising wages and continued fighting for labor with other industries.

With tough competition and a shortage of available employees, each staff member has to pull their own weight. You help your staff be more productive when you give them the right tools and training. Here are some ideas on how to effectively equip your dishroom crew.

Proper Training

There are many things that factor into staff retention, but one of the most important is effective training. Employees who are unsure of what their tasks entail or how to do those tasks are more likely to be unhappy and less productive. And a new employee can’t just be handed a manual and told to “figure it out.” Effective training starts with management, and management has to make time for training. Setting aside time for a few days at the beginning of the shift before everyone gets busy is one effective technique. It also keeps the new employee from feeling overloaded with the barrage of information that can come from a single-day training session.

Another idea to consider is the concept of mentoring. Having a more experienced employee (not necessarily a supervisor) guiding a new employee through training and keeping a watchful eye on performance can help them quickly learn procedures and become productive, while at the same time being less threatening to the new employee.

Training aids are a great way for both new hires and experienced staff to learn equipment and stay proficient, which further boosts productivity. Wall charts, like those that come with Hobart dishmachines, should be posted near the dishwasher to reinforce the daily start-up and cleaning procedures; and QR codes on the wall charts and machine link to training videos, providing a good reference point for times when new employees may be unsure of correct procedures.

Doing More with Dishmachines

Since labor shortages don’t show any signs of easing in the near future, it makes sense to utilize existing staff as effectively as possible — in other words, do more with the staff that you have. An automated commercial dishwasher is a great way to do this, especially if you’re still manually washing in a 3 compartment sink. Here are three big advantages:

• Throughput and Capacity: Simply put, the number of dishes, or racks, that can go through a dishmachine in an hour is far more than any single person could wash manually in the same time. As an example, compare the time it takes to wash 200 plates in a commercial dishwasher as compared with manual dishwashing in a three-compartment sink. It may take up to an hour to wash those plates by hand, but only 30 minutes (or even less) in a dishmachine. Hobart dishmachines save at least 50% of the time it takes to do similarly sized loads in a 3-comp sink. And options like two-level racking on the LXn and AMTL boost the racks per hour to wash even more in less time. That’s time an employee can spend doing other tasks across your operation. 
• Wash as You Go: Automated dishmachines also help employees wash as they go. Many operations let dirty dishes pile up and eventually a crew member has to spend an hour or two washing them in a sink. That means they may not be able to do anything else. With a dishmachine, dishware can be loaded into a rack as it’s used. When the rack is filled up, the load can easily be done by just about anyone; they just push it in and start the cycle — no single person is tied to dishwashing. That gives you more flexibility in your labor usage and keeps a constant stream of clean dishware ready to go.
• Less Manual Prescrapping: No matter how they’re being washed, all dirty dishes need some pre scrapping. And with a busy dishmachine, if you get too much food soil in the wash water, you’ll need to occasionally change the wash water throughout the day. But most Hobart dishmachines have their exclusive Automatic Soil Removal feature. With Automatic Soil Removal, more food debris can go into the machine’s wash tank, which gets pumped out into an external scrap basket. That extends the life of the wash water, which means less pre-scrapping and less frequent wash water changing. It also helps cover for less-experienced crew members who might not otherwise prescrap properly.

Cleaning Up

While cleaning a dishmachine is a task that no one really loves to do, Hobart helps make it easier and more efficient. Hobart commercial dishwashers include many technologies like Autoclean, capless wash arms and the Complete Delime™ with Booster Guard™ system, all of which save both time and labor in the dishroom. And training aids — like those mentioned earlier — help new crew members establish correct procedures and avoid problems.

So while the labor problems may not ease up anytime soon, proper techniques and the advanced technology found on Hobart dishmachines can help you utilize your staff more efficiently, make them more productive in the dishroom and boost their overall productivity.