Every restaurant owner wants to provide exceptional service to every guest who comes in walking through the door: from friendly hosts who greet new guests with a smile to servers who provide exceptional customer service to cooks who prepare mouth-watering meals. As with any industry, restaurant owners want every business day to be as flawless as possible with little to no incidents. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, and there will be times when things go terribly wrong. Fortunately for restaurant owners, CCTV cameras can do a lot more to help their business thrive in addition to keeping an eye on things.
What Can CCTV Cameras Do for My Restaurant?
One of the obvious reasons for having CCTV cameras is to ensure the safety of both guests and staff, especially when there is a dispute or an altercation taking place. Since different witnesses will often provide different accounts of the same events, important information can be easily lost or inconsistent during an investigation. Footage from CCTV cameras are an excellent safeguard against faulty witness testimonies.
Raw CCTV camera footage provides completely unbiased accounts of events that take place on restaurant premises. It shows where everyone was at any given time and shows who was involved in specific incidents at the time that they happened. Even if the footage is altered in any capacity, both the video and timestamp will still show a sudden “jump” in time. This will not only inform investigators that someone attempted to alter the footage, but it will give significant clues as to who might’ve tried to alter the footage as few staff would have access to the restaurant’s security system.
Can CCTV Cameras Help Restaurant Staff?
There’s a lot CCTV cameras can do for restaurant staff, beginning with the fact they can help prevent employee harassment and avert criminal activity. Like in any other workplace, harassment can happen between staff members or between employees and guests. Workplace harassment can include sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, psychological and verbal harassment, even online harassment. Criminal activity can include theft, break-ins, burglary, vandalism and drug use.
No employer wants to be subjected to legal prosecution as a result of any of these case scenarios playing out and the presence of CCTV cameras can help avert the occurrence of both harassment and criminal activity. In the event that either takes place, CCTV camera footage provides airtight evidence of the individuals involved, the time and place the harassment or criminal activity took place, and can even be used to dispute claims.
Another less obvious way CCTV cameras can serve restaurant staff is by helping identify areas for improvement. Since CCTV cameras capture everything happening on restaurant premises, it can easily identify recurring patterns of behavior that may be making the business less efficient. If staff need better training, CCTV camera footage can help identify the areas of employee performance that need to be addressed in future training. CCTV camera footage can even provide evidence of results from new training programs to determine if employee performance has improved, leading stronger business efficiency overall.
Can CCTV Cameras Help With Problematic Restaurant Guests?
In addition to helping restaurants create a safe work environment for staff, CCTV cameras can also help provide guests with a pleasant dining experience. One way it does this is by identifying problematic guests who disrupt this experience. Problematic guests can include individuals who participate in disruptive and potentially unsafe behavior. These can also be guests who harass other guests and staff, and can even include guests who leave the restaurant without paying for their meal or steal dinnerware.
With CCTV camera footage, restaurant owners can protect themselves from liability as a result of problematic guest behavior. It can even be used as evidence for pursuing legal action against a problematic guest if necessary. In cases where guests have been harmed by other guests or restaurant staff, CCTV camera footage can also be used as evidence for supporting and/or refuting conflicting testimonies during an ongoing investigation. In non-problematic scenarios, CCTV cameras can also be used to identify recurring patterns in guest experience that can also lead to improvements of service and safety of guests.
Sentry Surveillance Inc provides custom-design security systems and CCTV cameras to restaurants, diners, bars, and other businesses in the food service industry. To learn more about how Sentry Surveillance Inc can service your business, contact us today for a consultation.
