Location, Location, Location

It's (past) Football Time!

It's almost here - that time of year when your business picks up again naturally.  So do you have your game plan?  Do you know what promotions you'll be running for the local Friday Night Football pre and after game crowd?  How about your college and pro football fans?  Why should they frequent your restaurant during the games over your competition?

With only a few weeks left you don't want to loose a potentially strong weekly customer base or the opportunity to host Fantasy Football draft parties.  Your successful season this year will build upon itself following years too.

Once you have your plan make sure your staff and customers are all aware that you are excited for the season and want their loyalty each week for the next 4 month!  

It's time now to plan for your Halloween promotion!

 

 

Beggars CAN be Choosers

by Ronna O'Toole  

What if you could capture an audience of patrons that would literally beg others to take them to your restaurant?  Beg I tell you!  Wouldn’t you be crazy not to want that?  (You should soooo want that.)  What if these people are highly influential people?  People who are relentless until they get their way?  People who are not afraid to throw themselves on the ground and use tears to get what they want?  We are not talking about spoiled CEOs here…we are talking about the ever influential, relentless, won’t stop till they get what they want…child.  Don’t ever think they don’t matter when it comes to the bottom line because they really, really do.  Kids know what they want and aren’t afraid to let their parents know it and as you know, when the kids are happy the parents are happy.

The children’s menu is important sure, but it may not be the driving force behind getting children to beg to come to your restaurant.  Kids will eat what they will eat.  It is embarrassing, but my child begs to “go to that place that serves the spaghetti with cut up hotdogs in it and ketchup squirted all over it”, not for the food (I hope) but rather for the fish tank in the back and the way the server treats him where we are there…catering to his every tiny whim. 

If offering balloons, a treasure chest, a candy dish at reception or random party hats can fit into your concept then just do it!  No questions asked…everyone is happy.  You might even go as far as bring a free “appetizer tray” to the table with popcorn, Cheerios and apple slices on it.   Even if you are not the type of place that normally caters to children there are still things you can do to make the dining experience memorable for the ever important tiny person.  Get yourself some crayons and paper and bring them to the table right away for gosh sakes!  It costs nothing and saves that nine year old the hassle of tracking down your busy servers, begging for scraps of paper and their precious pens. 

 Upscale places where a “family fun corner” is not a suitable option can also benefit by the capturing “kid” audience.   You don’t even have to have a children’s menu if your staff is trained to guide the child on appetizers that could make a meal or are willing to say “yes” without hesitation to scaled down portion sizes.  There is even room for innovation at really upscale places, like a “Tiny Tot’s Tasting Menu”.  One of my children’s favorite fine dining restaurants brings out a tableside “S’mores” station at the end of the meal, complete with their own little flames for roasting marshmallows.  The set up is a small price to pay to gain a loyal customer base.

 So yes, kids can be demanding and at times high maintenance but if you treat them like any other highly influential guest by respectfully anticipating their needs, you can rest easy knowing that there are small people everywhere  throwing themselves on the ground begging to eat at your restaurant!

5 Tips to Sell More Drinks

Your bar or nightclub may be falling short in selling additional drinks and at a higher price point, which means loss of revenue and loss of tips. Nightclub & Bar spoke to Tim Kirkland, author of The Renegade Server, and CEO of Renegade Hospitality Group and he shared these five tips for selling more drinks and selling more expensive drinks:

1. Identify the Premium Purchaser

Servers often approach a table and ask “Can I get you something to drink?” which is a mistake, says Kirkland. If the first and second people order an iced tea, the chances are the other people at the table will order the same thing—even if they’d been thinking of a premium beverage, he explains.

Instead, says Kirkland, “approach the table and allow the premium purchaser to identify themselves.” Ask the table, for example, ‘It’s hot outside, who could use an ice cold beer?” That premium purchaser will place his or her order for a higher priced drink, and the trend will continue around the table.

2. Start High

“Servers often cheat themselves out of premium purchases,” Kirkland says. “If a diner asks ‘What kind of beers do you have?’ they’re into expensive beers.” When asked this question, most servers will start at the bottom with Miller and Bud, but this is a mistake, he says.

Instead, servers should say the bar has an impressive beer list and start at the top with the imported craft brews. When they’ve heard the prices of the most expensive drinks, it makes the mid-range ones sound inexpensive. If servers start with the least expensive, those drinks then seem pricey.

3. Two For The Price of One

Do not promote two-for-one marketing once a customer is inside your bar. “This kind of marketing is designed to drive traffic through your doors,” Kirkland says. “Once someone is in the bar that special has already done its job and it’s the server’s job to sell something else.”

Two-for-one offers also mean smaller tips, since customers tip on the check amount (one drink), not on the work the server does (two drinks).

4. Timing Is Everything

Bartenders and servers typically offer the second drink at the wrong time, Kirkland says, and it shouldn’t be when someone’s drink is half or a third full.

Drinkers decide whether to have a second drink by looking at how much their companion still has left. They then make a quick calculation as to whether they can drink another one in the time it will take their companion to finish it. “Then the law of diminishing returns means the second one doesn’t go down as fast so the server can ask the other person if they’d like a second drink,” Kirkland says.

“Sell to the empty glass when the companion glass is as full as possible. It’s all about timing.”

With groups it’s a mistake to ask ‘Are you guys ready for another round?’ Kirkland says, because that means a time commitment for everyone. Instead ask one person with an empty glass if s/he wants another drink. That person will see if there’s a full glass at the table, and if there is, will typically order another drink, and this can lead to an entire new round.

5. Female Followers

Men typically know what they’re going to drink before they enter a bar but most women don’t, says Kirkland. So, when you design a specialty beverage, you should design it to appeal to women.

“The way to do that is with color, garnish and glassware. It should look fun, funky, frivolous, fruity. Even a wheat beer gets an orange slice if it’s going to a lady.”

Most bars order product like it's 1899

by Ian Foster
Vice-President, National Accounts for Sculpture Hospitality

Most bars don't give much thought to ordering. It's seen as one more boring chore that they need to do every week. As a result, ordering is usually poorly done. When we first start working with a new client, we find that they have $10,000+ in dead-stock that will just be sitting on their shelves for months or years - and some of which will never sell. And yet, despite the huge amount of over-stock, most bars run out of something every other week and have to borrow it or buy it at the supermarket (which is not only a hassle but a license violation in most states/provinces).

Let's look at the most common ways that bars order, from dumbest to smartest:

A no-no: Letting your liquor rep order for you

When I first understood that some managers just let their sales reps do their order, I couldn't believe it. Sales reps are paid mainly on commission and bonuses. The more you order, the more money they make. So of course they are going to err on the side of over-ordering. We've also seen that at the end of a quarterly bonus cycle, clients who let their rep order end up with gigantic orders obviously designed to help the rep meet a bonus sales goal.

Liquor reps also get a "spiff" from a liquor company when they get a bar to order a new brand. So, guess what, if your liquor rep decides what you order, you will get every new product that comes along. Most of these bottles end up on a "dead-stock" stockroom shelf and our auditing team is told "don't count this shelf." Those bottles, which the bar paid for, generally sit on that dead-stock shelf for years until one day the owner gets tired of looking at them and throws them all away - more money wasted.

Slightly better: Your manager guesses what to order

In most establishments, the bar manager walks around the stockroom with a clipboard and estimates what should be on the order. A conscientious manager who is paying attention can do a reasonable job.

The problem, though, is that there is no way for the manager to really know how much of each brand they are using. The manager just doesn't have the data. Occasionally, the manager is going to get the order wrong.

If they under-order, it is a major problem. You can't be out of Fireball or Crown Royal or Grey Goose on a Saturday night! So the owner or manager has to rush out to buy or borrow some bottles to get through the weekend. And when that happens the bar manager is surely going to hear about it when he deals with angry guests, angry bartenders, and an angry owner.

If the bar manager over-orders, on the other hand, nobody really notices. The owner has shelled out more money than necessary but it's buried on the balance sheet so it goes unnoticed. Few owners spend any time in the stockroom questioning why they have 9 bottles of Makers Mark - so over-ordering doesn't cause any pain to the bar manager.

Because of the incentives (pain for under-ordering, no pain for over-ordering) most bars have way too much stock on-hand. Yet because the manager doesn't have the data, they still sometimes run out of product. We see it every week.

Definitely better: Setting par levels

The best way to figure out an order is to have a par for every brand. The par is calculated by figuring out how much of each brand is used each week and then adding a "buffer" or safety margin. For example, if a bar uses 2-1/2 bottles of Jack Daniels in the average week, the par might be set at 5 bottles. On ordering day, the bar manager just needs to see if they are less than 5 bottles. If they only have 3 bottles on-hand, then the manager would order 2 more to bring the stock level up to "par."

This is the right way to determine what to order. But in practice there is a flaw: the manager doesn't have reliable data to set a par and, even worse, the usage patterns change continuously. For example, most bars use a lot more tequila in the summer than the winter so the par should rise as the weather improves and the par should drop in the fall.

But recalculating pars for every brand is a lot of work. And how does the bar manager even know the exact amount of usage on all those brands every week? Because of those limitations, the par is usually set once and left alone - until, that is, the bar runs out of something. At that point, the par is raised by a bottle or two.

What we really have is a system designed to fail. The pars only improve when the system "fails" by running out of a product.

And there is no mechanism at all for lowering the pars. So if the par on Galliano was set at two full bottles in 1985 (when Harvey Wallbangers were popular), the bar will order a new bottle whenever they fall below that two-bottle par - even though two bottles will last them another decade!

 

Pink Boots

Have you heard that women in the beer business are banding together to advance female involvement in their industry?  The beer industry is historically a male dominated one, but women are starting to make names for themselves and they have formed an organization called The Pink Boots Society.

They are the female movers and shakers of the beer industry. They get the beer brewed and fermented with the highest possible quality. They also own breweries, package the beer, design beers, serve beers, write about beer, and cover just about any aspect of beer, and they are all women. Most importantly, they teach each other what they know through own seminar programs, and help each other advance their careers by raising money for educational scholarships.  For more details you can visit their website at  http://pinkbootssociety.org

 

 

Why taglines are important

Tagline: def. A slogan or phrase that visually conveys the most important product attribute or benefit that the advertiser wishes to convey. 

Your tagline should also be highly relevant to your customers as well as a bit clever.  

The best way to start to shape one is to first figure out what segment(s) of the market you're going after, base it on what these segments really care about, and then determine your positioning statement. Then use your positioning statement as the basis for your tagline. 

Here are a few that tell their potential customer a bit about their concept pretty well:

 

Mob Bar - Quiet conversations and strong martinis

TAO - Asian Bistro & Nightclub

Atlantic Grill - Seafood and Sushi Restaurant

Moonshine Grill - Back to a simpler time. 

Pubbelly - Asian Inspired Gastropub

Nick & Joie's - Fine Dining.  Gourmet Pizza.

Judge Beans - The Best BBQ in Brentwood!

Pigs Feet are my Favorite!

by Ronna O'Toole

Every once in a while it is a good idea to shake things up and change your menu.  No one is suggesting that you have to revamp the entire thing or take off a great selling item, but I think we could agree that there are some items that are just on the menu because they have always been on the menu or because they are easy or cheap or maybe it’s just because the owner really likes pickled pigs feet with sauerkraut.  Change is good.  Pickled pig’s feet---not so much.

Start with a look at the hard numbers and see what is actually selling.  If you have a point of sale system that does this work for you then run those numbers.  If you aren’t as fancy schmancy as that, then keep a tally for a few weeks and you will surely see a pattern of good sellers and pickled pigs feet type sellers.  Keep the good ones and make a list of the rest.

Now is the time to taste your list of menu items.  Gather your staff and spend some time really tasting your menu.  Be honest with yourself and let your staff be honest as well.  Nix the items that for whatever reason are not good and never will be and then keep a list of the items that have hope…where there is room for improvement.  

Once you have your list of menu items that you feel that you can improve, the fun begins!  Brainstorm with your chef as to what can be done to sparkle up these items.  If your pickled pigs feet have somehow made the cut and are on the list then really think about what they might need…a dash of cayenne?...dried thyme?...more/less vinegar?

After your menu edits you will have some room for some new items.  Your chef may have some great new ideas and before you go for an all out change you can try these out by running specials for a few weeks to see what clicks.

Changing your menu is a great thing.  It allows you to keep what works, toss what doesn’t and fix what is fixable while breathing new life into your offerings with innovative ideas from your chef.  Let people know of your new exciting changes through social media, fresh signage and inviting the food bloggers for a taste.  Create a buzz and bring em in!  Your Pickled Pigs Feet Ragout with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes, Purple Heirloom Carrots and Smoked Sea Salt is something you just can’t get down the street. 

 

Skip the food coloring! Sip on REAL green beer this St. Patrick's Day!

 

St. Patrick’s Day is here once again, and that means people will flock to bars across America to drink green beer.

If the idea of throwing back a few pints of mass-produced light lager with green food coloring doesn’t get your Irish eyes a’ smiling, try one of these craft beers created by breweries that are striving to minimalize their impact on the planet. Each is a perfect choice to enjoy on St. Paddy’s Day, and each is crafted by a brewery that gives “green” beer a wholesome new meaning.

New Belgium 1554 Dark Lager

New Belgium has put sustainability at the center of their business model. They reuse or recycle 99 percent of their waste, sending just 1 percent to landfills, and they sought out a previously developed industrial site in need of clean up for their new Asheville, N.C., brewery so they could return it back to use instead of spoiling undeveloped lands.

While New Belgium makes plenty of lovely beers, their 5.6 percent ABV 1554 Dark Lager is perhaps the best choice for St. Patrick’s Day, as it’s ruby-black body and toasted maltiness are a great fit for a day when dark beers are celebrated.

A sip of 1554 Blac k Lager treats your taste buds to sweet notes of caramel, chocolate and coffee, followed by an earthy nuttiness and just a hint of hop bitterness on the back end — a great Earth-friendly alternative to Guinness Stout.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Chico, Calif.’s Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has made a name for themselves as a model of eco-friendly brewing. They generate about 76 percent of the energy needed to power their brewing operations on site, using non-combustible energy sources like hydrogen fuel cells and one of the largest privately owned arrays of solar panels in the country.

Drinking a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on St. Paddy’s Day will make people who ordered a Harp or a Smithwick’s green with envy. Smooth, sweet and sublimely balanced, this 5.6 percent ABV ale starts with a pucker of citrusy hops, which gives way to earthy malts in the middle, and peppery pop of piney hops on the finish. This venerable beer continues to be a standard bearer of American pale ales.

Great Lakes Brewing Company Edmund Fitzgerald Porter

Cleveland, Ohio’s Great Lakes Brewing Company has a number of sustainability initiatives aimed at lessening their company’s impact on the environment while working to raise awareness of environmental issues facing Great Lakes region. They have a sustainable farming initiative to provide earth-friendly ingredients to their brew pub, they sponsor the Burning River Fest to help protect the ecosystem around the Cuyahoga River which famously burned in 1969, and they reuse, recycle and conserve energy whenever possible.

Great Lakes Brewing Co.’s 5.8 percent ABV Edmund Fitzgerald Porter is a delight any day of the year, and a perfect sipping companion for March 17. Big notes of roasted chocolate, toffee, caramel and espresso glide smoothly over your palate with every sip, delivering a rich and smoky flavor that seems impossibly robust for a beer with such a reasonable ABV.

Brooklyn Brewery Dry Irish Stout

Brooklyn Brewery gets all of its operating energy from sustainable wind power, which, short of running on a team of hipsters pedaling stationary “fixie” bikes, makes their beers very green indeed. The energy they use comes from a wind farm in Upstate New York and costs Brooklyn Brewery about 10 percent more than using standard electricity, but keeps 335,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year, according to their website.

Brooklyn’s Dry Irish Stout is the obvious choice for St. Paddy’s Day, and its low 4.7 percent ABV will help make March 18 a little less trying as well. This is a beer you want to drink near room temperature, as its subtle flavors are diminished when it’s chilled. Sweet and herbal at the start, Dry Irish Stout becomes rich and roasty in the middle of its flavor, with notes of coffee and bittersweet chocolate taking center stage. Overall more of a mild child than a party animal, this beer is a sensible and serene way to sip through St. Patrick’s Day.

Do yourself a favor this St. Paddy’s Day — stay away from those green-colored beers, and instead say “slainte!” with one crafted by a “green” brewery.  

 

 

by: Jim Galligan

TODAY Contributor 

http://www.today.com/food/skip-food-coloring-4-green-beers-sip-st-patricks-day-2D79368164

How to Hire the Best Staff for Your Restaurant

We recently came across an article on Open Table's Open For Business Blog and we thought we would share it with you all! We recently published a post about how to obtain a serving job. But what if you are on the other side of the hiring process? Who are the best individuals to bring into your business? Who can you trust to best represent you while you are out of the restaurant? Alison Arth gives 10 tips on how to hire the right people for your business. 

----------------------------------------------------

How to Hire the Best Staff for Your Restaurant

by: Alison Arth

If you don’t hire the right people, you won’t be successful. It really is that simple. Your people are your biggest asset, and in our industry they’re often the scarcest resource, so you need to have a strategy in place for identifying them before you begin the hiring process.

Developing and executing a hiring strategy requires a significant investment of time and energy, but skipping it will cost you big time in the long run through frequent turnover, negative guest experiences, and brand inconsistency. This article outlines 10 keys to bringing on the best opening team for your new restaurant.

 

1. Define greatness. Never assume that all of your managers have the same definition of what makes a good employee. Sit down with them before conducting the first interview to collectively establish the core values that all employees will need to possess.

2. Post specific and informative job ads. The ads that you post should include keywords describing your company culture as well as your restaurant’s concept, style of service, projected opening date, and any relevant specifics regarding job description and schedule requirements. Ads should be professionally presented and shared through multiple channels (online, word of mouth, and social media).

3. Have at least two managers interview every candidate. Passing over a great candidate can be as big of a loss as hiring a bad one, so make sure that you’re taking more than one person’s opinion into account. Managers should sync up between interviews to highlight any areas of concern for others to further investigate. This practice also ensures hiring managers all have buy-in, so no staff members are brought on board because one manager lobbied for them.

4. Develop a core set of interview questions. Assembling a thoughtful list of questions designed to determine whether a candidate shares your values and uncover details of their professional experiences will eliminate haphazard interviewing and keep the process objective. It will also ensure that your interviews are efficient and will immediately demonstrate your level of professionalism to the applicant.

5. Take notes. This is particularly important when you’re interviewing for an opening team because you’ll be meeting with applicants constantly. It is very easy to forget how you felt about someone or mix them up with a different person when you’re in the throes of pre-opening onboarding.

6. Attitude is king. Skills and information can be taught, but a person’s attitude usually cannot be altered. Don’t let yourself be wooed by an impressive resume if the applicant is missing any of the core values your team has collectively established as critical. Remember that an interview is a controlled, deliberate presentation of a person; if they are not projecting positively in this setting, how will they behave under pressure?

7. Train managers to assess physical cues. If an interviewee is describing how friendly and warm their service style is, but they’ve barely cracked a smile since walking through the door, don’t assume that they will suddenly change when they are on the floor. When you ask why they left their last position and they avoid eye contact, dig deeper.

8. Make interviewing a two-way street. Interviews are, of course, about identifying great candidates, but you can never overlook that candidates are also evaluating you. This means being on time, reading their resume beforehand, and dressing appropriately; it will go a long way to creating a strong impression of what can be expected if they come on board. You’ll want your managers to always be putting their best foot forward to ensure that when you come across great candidates, you’re able to hire them.

9. Check references without exception. Ask every candidate you’re seriously considering to provide you with three professional references. Let the applicant know up front that you will need to hear back from at least two of them in order to move forward with the hiring process. No matter how great someone seems or how strongly you connected with them, do not skip this step. You don’t want to learn this lesson the hard way…trust me!

10. Aim for balance. When it comes to assembling a team, diversity is your friend; this applies to knowledge, skill set, past experience, and personality. Pay attention to balance as you bring people on board, as a diverse and dynamic staff helps everyone to learn from one another. Be wary of hiring too many people from the same restaurant or company. You want to develop your own culture, not adopt someone else’s.

In order to select great people, you must first decide what essential qualities an employee should have to deliver the best iteration of your brand experience and positively contribute to your company culture. Restaurant openings are a rare and valuable opportunity to hire a group of aligned people from the get-go, so it’s crucial that your leaders are using an organized process to determine which candidates are the right fit for your opening team.

Photos courtesy of Bonjwing Photography.

 

 

When it comes to opening a restaurant smoothly and running it successfully, Alison Arth is a pro. She held leadership positions on the opening teams of multiple restaurants within Daniel Boulud’s prestigious Dinex Group in New York before working as General Manager ofLocanda and Director of Food and Beverage at The Battery in San Francisco. Now, as the founder and principal of hospitality consulting firm Salt & Roe, she partners with restaurants to create consistent, genuine guest experiences and build long-term success. To date, she’s been involved in 13 restaurant openings; most recently, she has consulted on the opening of Gavin Kaysen’s Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis. At Open for Business, we’re thrilled to partner with Alison for a new series on starting and growing a restaurant business, step by step. 

Improving Your Service in 2015

    Improving Your Service in 2015:

        

    Now that 2015 is well under way, we wanted to post a few customer service reminders to help improve your serving staff in the coming year. It is easy to fall into certain habits when serving at a restaurant. Having monthly refresher meetings for your staff can help break bad habits & establish good habits. This will result in returning customers & new customers which will eventually turn into more profits. Remember: Your servers are the backbone of your restaurant. They will be the first and last impression a customer has of your restaurant so it is important to invest into your staff.

 

Serving Tips:

• Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.

• Tables should be level without anyone asking. Fix it before guests are seated.

• Do not touch the rim of a water glass. Or any other glass.

• Make sure the glasses are clean. Inspect them before placing them on the table. 

• Never say “I don’t know” to any question without following with, “I’ll find out.”

• Do not eat or drink in plain view of guests.

• Do not turn on the charm when it’s tip time. Be consistent throughout.

• Never insist that a guest settle up at the bar before sitting down; transfer the tab.

• Do not ask if a guest needs change. Just bring the change.

• Do not show frustration. Your only mission is to serve. Be patient.

• Handle wine glasses by their stems, silverware by their handles.

• When offering utensils to anyone, always point it with the handle towards them.

• Fill glasses at the table often, do not let them sit empty. Change to a new glass with each cocktail. Those identification trinkets on glasses, never use them.

• Do not be so hurried that you bang into chairs or tables. Be aware of the furniture, and burning candles.