Training new café staff without repeating yourself every week

Hospitality has high staff turnover, and every new starter asks the same questions. How much syrup goes in a large latte? Which bakes have nuts in? What do I do if the card machine goes down? If the answer lives only in your head, you’ll be answering it again next month.

Start with the questions you get asked most

Don’t try to write a full staff handbook in one go. For the next two weeks, jot down every question a team member asks you. That list is your first set of articles, in order of how much time they’ll save.

Keep recipes short and visual

A drink or dish spec should fit on one phone screen: the quantities, the order of steps, and a photo of what it should look like when it’s done. A photo of the finished drink does more for consistency than a paragraph of description.

Worked example: teach the opening till check

An example procedure might be titled “Check the opening till float”. The manager fills in the shop’s approved float amount and cash-handling rules before sharing it. The staff-facing steps can then stay short:

1. Use the authorised starting balance and follow the shop’s cash-counting procedure.
2. Record the actual amount, date, time and your initials in the approved record.
3. If the amount differs, ask the shift lead to review it and record the resolution.
4. Finish the opening till task once the check and any required follow-up are recorded.

Keep alarm codes, passwords and sensitive cash-storage details out of general training articles. Show the new starter the process, let them practise under supervision, then ask them to find the procedure and explain what they would do if the amount did not match. Reading an article alone does not establish that someone can carry out the task.

Treat allergen information as its own thing

Allergen information needs to be accurate, current and easy to find when a customer asks. Keep it in one place, update it whenever a recipe or supplier changes, and make sure staff know where to look rather than guessing. The Food Standards Agency publishes guidance on the 14 allergens UK food businesses must be able to provide information about.

Write procedures for the things that go wrong

The everyday jobs are easy to learn by watching. The rare ones aren’t: the card machine is offline, the dishwasher floods, a customer reports an allergic reaction. These are worth a short, clear article each, with approved actions, escalation contacts and a clear point to stop and get help. Emergency procedures should direct staff to appropriate immediate help; a knowledge article does not replace emergency training.

Put it where staff already are

A binder in the office doesn’t get opened. Answers need to be on the phone in their pocket or the tablet on the counter, searchable by a word they’d actually type.

Give each procedure an owner and a review trigger

Put the owner, last review date and next review date at the top. Review sooner when equipment, suppliers, recipes or working methods change. Withdraw obsolete copies and tell the team what changed. During a new starter’s first week, note questions they could not answer from the guide and use those gaps to improve it.

How Unpickle handles it

Unpickle includes a house knowledge section where managers write articles with photos, sorted into recipes, allergens, procedures and policies. Staff can read and search them from the same app they use for deliveries and daily jobs, so there’s nothing extra to install.

See how house knowledge fits into café management software, then connect recurring tasks to digital checklists so staff can find both the job and its instructions.

Start your free trial and write your first article today.