Below is a simplified framework to make your yearly plan. I use one that’s more detailed with my clients but this is a good place to get you started.
Using this plan and meeting will help you reduce risks and uncertainty in your business and help you and your team reach goals faster with more consistency.
Pre-meeting Preparation
Get the following items ready before your meeting
- P and L 2023
- Gather the following employee data
- Total number of people hired.
- How many of them were retained till Dec 31, 2023.
- From total hired – how many of them quit?
- Gather a list of 2023 marketing efforts and analyze which worked and didn’t.
- Gather all 2023 customer feedback information.
Who Should Attend
Your executive and management team (Head of HR, Operations, Marketing, Finance, GMs, Chef). If you don’t have a large team, then the key leaders in your restaurant that you want involved with planning and execution of your big picture plans.
Sample Agenda
- Welcome and appreciation for a great year
- Financial Planning
- Review 2023 P and L and targets
- Discuss 2024 projections
- HR Planning
- Operational Planning
- Customer Experience & Satisfaction
- Marketing
- End with closing remarks
If you want to make the meeting a little more interesting and fun and not all about work, here are a few things you can add in:
♦ Personal Development Training of Your Choice
♦ A Fun Activity
♦ Breaks with some Fun Food and Drinks
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FINANCIAL PLANNING:
Main objective: Assess the previous year to learn from its performance so we can fine-tune projections going forward.
First you’ll assess the previous year (2023).
- Congratulate everyone for meeting targets for the months they were met.
- Highlight the months where targets were missed and ask the team the following:
In the months, we didn’t meet the targets, what could we have done differently to meet them? Take time here to discuss this and document any action steps you need to apply forward to 2024.
Looking forward to 2024.
3. After discussing 2023 targets, if there are any tweaks you’d like to make to your 2024 targets and budgets, now is the time. This will help you have a clear line of sight on what needs to be done to meet as many targets as possible going forward.
4. Assign targets to managers.
5. Ask them how you can support them to achieve their targets throughout the year. (most likely you’ll hear no, but probe it and they’ll begin to share where you can support them)
2. HR PLANNING:
Main objective: Pre-empt potential HR issues so that operations have enough of the right people to meet revenue and profit targets.
Review 2023 Employee data
- How many employees were hired in 2023 and how many were retained by the end of the year?
- How many quit?
- Next assess ‘why they quit’ (this is very important)
**Don’t rush this. Spend time here and dive deep into asking questions. Look at some exit interviews to understand why they left, so tweaks can be made to hiring, onboarding, and retention processes to retain them longer.
Plan for 2024
- Identify your hiring goals.
- How many people you need per department.
- Do you need to create any new positions to meet your 2024 goals.
2. Ask your HR manager/GM, what steps they will take to hire the right employees at the required times.
Probe them and discuss last year’s hiring wins and mistakes. Incorporate what you learn into making a better hiring plan for this year.
3. Identify possible promotions and timelines.
3. OPERATIONAL PLANNING:
Main Objective: Make operations more efficient and aim for excellence and consistency in day-to-day operations.
Looking back at 2023
- Ask your Operations Manager/GM’s
– What were the obstacles that prevented you from meeting 2023 financial targets?
(This might sound repetitive, but it’s by design. Asking again helps the team go deeper into operational problems in particular which are at the heart of the business)
– What could have been done differently to meet your targets if we could go back in time?
Looking forward to 2024
2. Ask your team – What problems do you see that could make it harder to meet targets and what can we do about them now before they occur?
4. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE & SATISFACTION:
Main objective: Discuss and integrate any customer feedback that will help increase repeats
- Ask your team, look at customer feedbacks, skim online reviews and answer the following questions
(a) What specifically did our customers like the most last year?
(b) What specifically didn’t they like about their experience last year?
(c) What are the majority of customers saying to incorporate in our menus?
(d) What don’t they like in our menus?
(e) What can we do to improve our customers’ experience?
2. Using the above data see how you can tweak the following areas to meet your targets better
- Menu planning
- Menu costing
- Vendor selection
- Day-to-day operations
- Planning events, weddings, etc.
- Marketing approach and budgets
- Among other areas of the business
**If you don’t have a customer feedback system, I highly recommend you implement this asap. It’s one of the most powerful ways you can stay on top of what hurts your revenues and bottom line as well as illuminate where your customer experience is dropping. I have a system I share with my private clients. If you’d like to learn more, set up a discovery call to learn more about sessions.
5. MARKETING:
Main objective: Assess and improve marketing efforts
Looking back at 2023
- Share with the entire team what marketing efforts worked well and what didn’t for 2023
Plan for 2024
- Brainstorm marketing ideas for 2024 as a group
If you are short on time, need support planning your yearly plan, or want to go further into detail, I offer a three-session coaching package ($990) tailored to getting you ready for your Yearly Plan and Meeting.
It’s a seasonal package that’s available for a limited time. Offer is available to purchase until Feb 16th.
Schedule a quick discovery call to ask any questions and book your 3-session package.
Cheers
Nand Awatramani
Growth Coach & Business Advisor
Helping Restaurants Accelerate Growth
