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Jan

Reasons To Hire A Restaurant Service Consultant For A New Operation

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by Richard Saporito

Often times, I am contacted by people who are opening a new food service establishment interested about restaurant training services for their staff. They are eager
to get their new operation off to a fantastic start with superb restaurant customer service.

Yet, when it comes down to the wire with opening time around the corner, they will settle and pay for a manager only to set up the much needed restaurant service systems and perform the staff training.

Nowadays, of course, budget restrictions may detour an owner away from hiring a

restaurant consultant. But, the honest truth is that most managers do not have the expertise or past experience compared to what a restaurant service consultant can do.

Even though, when interviewed for the position, a manager can convince the owner that they are experienced in opening and running a restaurant. So, what often happens from day one is that there are very few systems, strategies or tools set into place for the dining room service staff to utilize. Plus, there is a lack of proper restaurant staff training— especially for the rookies.

The results are costly mistakes in the dining room, slowed down service resulting in underselling instead of upselling because the waitstaff has so little time. This dining room disorganization translates into a poor restaurant customer service reputation and unnecessary lost revenue—possibly putting a new operation out of business quickly.

I have seen this time and again where hundreds and thousands of dollars are spent on a new restaurant design, décor, kitchen set up etc. Then, when it comes to the crucial part of running the dining room service operations, there is complete breakdown because a lack of attention to front of the house details.

The reasons for hiring established restaurant service consultants are that they have the past start-up experience and knowledge to set up the most proper and productive dining room systems while conducting efficient restaurant service staff training.

An established restaurant service consultant will have all of the general template materials such as employee manuals, job descriptions ready to go plus a general restaurant training curriculum performed many times over from the many previous start-ups. These materials and curriculum need only to be tweaked according to each individual operation as each one is different in nature.

The consultant will need to work with the restaurant for brief time before opening and after opening to make sure all systems are in their proper place and that all staff are performing their job functions efficiently. The restaurant service consultant will need to work with the restaurant owner and/or manager to make sure that they understand and absorb everything that is being implemented so they can run operations effectively in the future.

In summary, if you are going into this highly competitive business where only one out of ten restaurants are successful, don’t be pennywise and dollar foolish by relying on a manager who does not have the past know how or start-up experience.

Remember, the customer is the point of sale for all of the restaurant’s revenue, and it is the utmost attention to detail in the front of the house that will make a restaurant highly successful.

About the Author:

Photo of Richard Saporito

Richard Saporito is the Founder of Topserve Restaurant Consulting, author of “How To Improve Dining Room Service.” If you’d like to improve your restaurants’ reputation and increase sales, contact Richard today for a Free Initial Restaurant Consultation by calling (888) 276-4808 or visiting his Contact Page.

                                                        WAITER TRAINING DVD!!
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                       Highest Quality Waiter Training DVD (Exceeding Expectations)
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Categories : Restaurant Business, Restaurant Consulting, Restaurant Service Improvement

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Jan

Ways to Measure Hotel Kitchen Performance

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What do hotel visitors value most of all? Of course they want to live in good looking rooms, be able to use phone and the Internet, receive additional services as well as be able to enjoy exquisite cuisine. Yes, many people choose hotels just by the cuisine and reputation of hotel restaurants. This especially concerns five star hotels that attract wealthy people who love spending money eating excellent food.

The world famous chefs often work in hotel restaurants. They create excellent reputation and in a certain way become the most effective advertising and promotion tool for hotel owners. If hotel managers want to improve performance and achieve positive financial results they have to pay a proper attention to hotel restaurants or kitchen. This may be as separate evaluation or a part of the huge process to measure efficiency of hotel administration.

Balanced scorecard is being actively used in various industries, including hotel industry. This fantastic performance evaluation and strategic management tool helps put strategy into action. Of course, balanced scorecard will not solve all business problems at once. However, it will help visualize strategy and locate problems and the discrepancies from strategic goals. The principle behind balanced scorecard is quite simple – it uses key performance indicators to measure progress or regress of the company on its way to implement strategic goals.

In terms of hotel industry, these key performance indicators are related to everything happening inside and outside of a hotel. Evaluation of hotel kitchen performance is a very important process. Much money is spent to maintain kitchen and offer visitors breakfasts and dinners. This money may be spent in efficiently or hotel visitors do not like what they are served. Balanced scorecard can certainly help find out problematic areas in a hotel kitchen as well as solve problems in order to achieve strategic goals. Every hotel owner is dreaming of having an excellent reputation due to its world famous cuisine.

Key performance indicators for hotel kitchen evaluation fall into four categories: financial, customer, internal processes, learning and growth. In fact, these are universal balanced scorecard categories used in various industries. Thus, let’s analyze each category in the context of hotel kitchen performance evaluation.

Financial category covers all key performance indicators related to expenses and revenues of the hotel kitchen. The hotel spends some money to buy food, maintain restaurant and kitchen, pay waiters and chefs. In return, customers either by dinners or dinner costs are included to the room fee. Evaluation of financial indicators will help examine profitability of kitchen.

Customer key performance indicators cover satisfaction of customers with existing cuisine, their preferences and demands. Customer satisfaction is all important since everything done by the hotel staff is done for customers. Such indicators as new dishes and drinks per 100 customers or time spent by one customer in a hotel restaurant can help learn additional knowledge on hotel customers and their preferences in cuisine.

Internal processes and learning and growth categories refer to personnel of the hotel kitchen. Here one can use such indicators as number of training sessions per employee, average amount spent to educate one waiter etc.

If you are interested in hotel kitchen performance, check this web-site to learn more about hotel kitchen performance.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sam_Miller

                                                         WAITER TRAINING DVD!!
                                Culinary Institute of America, Cornell University, NY
                       Highest Quality Waiter Training DVD (Exceeding Expectations)
                                                  Spanish Sub-titled DVD Available
                                                $97 - Order Now -  (888) 276-4808

Categories : General, Restaurant Business, Restaurant Consulting

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Dec

Restaurant Marketing With a Blog: 11 Restaurant Blog Tips

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I find it’s a shame few restaurants take advantage of blogging as part of marketing a restaurant.

Marketing a restaurant with a blog serves several purposes such as:

informing your prospective guests
entertaining your prospective guests
improving your search engine optimization (by publishing a lot of content – much of which is optimized for local searches).

Think beyond blogging about what’s happening in your restaurant. Start thinking about your town or city. Think about what might interest prospective guests.

Here are 11 Blogging Ideas and Topics for Restaurants:

1. Events – You can blog about events in your establishment, in your town/city/state/province, and in your industry. I particularly like the approach to blogging about events in your town because you’ll automatically optimize blog posts for local searches.

2. Food – You can have a ton of fun here. Write about the food you use – the history, where it’s from, why you use it, etc.

3. Wine, Beer, and Liquor – Like food, you could write extensively on wine, beer, and liquor in your blog. Don’t aim that your blog be to serve prospective diners. Instead blog to be acknowledged as an expert in the food and drink your serve.You could write about the brands you serve, how the drinks are made, how the alcohol is made, etc.

4. Places – Write about your town/city/state/province. These posts will help with your local search engine rankings. Every town has a ton of information to write about. Try to come up with interesting facts, events, happenings, etc.

5. Neighbourhood – This is related to places, but you can take this concept a step further by writing about your neighbourhood. Neighbourhoods can have an interesting history, events, and happenings as well

6. Profile Employe – Write interesting information abut your employees. Get their consent first. At the very least you could blog and profile the key players in your establishment such as your chef and/or general manager

7. History of your Restaurant – Some restaurants have a fascinating history. Even if your restaurant didn’t serve some famous person in the 19th century, there’s sure to be some form of story behind your establishment. Blog about this.

8. Cooking Techniques – Some very popular blogs are cooking and recipe blogs. Why not join the fray and blog about cooking techniques your chef and cooks use. You don’t have to give away all the secrets, but I bet some of your guests will enjoy you sharing some of your professional techniques.

9. Blog About Other Local Businesses – Here’s an opportunity for your restaurant to get some online publicity. Approach local businesses and offer a joint venture. You’ll profile them if they profile you. You each get links and more publicity.

10. Details About Your Restaurant – size, # of seats, etc. You’d be surprised how many people are interested in facts. Share some facts about your restaurant such as square footage, the number of seats, stereo system used, music played, how many forks you have, number of wine glasses, etc. Be creative with this. I suspect guests would be curious to find out all the details about your restaurant.

11. Deals and Discounts – Publicize your deals and discounts on your blog. Don’t forget to include expiration dates.

Get website visitors to sign up to your e-newsletter by promising exclusive deals. Having people on your e-newsletter list is a fantastic marketing a restaurant opportunity. You can communicate regularly. Be sure to send out the type of information your subscribers are interested in – which is deals. If you send out too much garbage, your subscribers will stop opening your e-mail messages.

Next, get this this Local Business Marketing Guide to learn how to radically ramp up your local restaurant marketing online.Peter Lawlor is a contributing author to B2Web blog.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peter_Lawlor

                                                       WAITER TRAINING DVD!!
                                Culinary Institute of America, Cornell University, NY
                       Highest Quality Waiter Training DVD (Exceeding Expectations)
                                                 Spanish Sub-titled DVD Available
                                               $97 - Order Now -  (888) 276-4808

Categories : General, Restaurant Business, Restaurant Consulting

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Dec

A Key To Restaurant and Bar Success: Balance The Look and Functionality Evenly

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by Richard Saporito

Recently, I performed a restaurant service consulting job for an interesting restaurant/bar/lounge operation here in NYC. The design was unique and artistic from every standpoint ranging from the wooded exterior to the inside walls to the bar, tables and lounged seating. It was a small operation though quite busy–and I mean wall to wall people between Thursday and Sunday nights.

From the outside walk-by and drive-by view, it made one want to get inside and have a great time drinking and dining. But once inside, the lack of functionality took hold and detracted from the total experience. Since the designer had no previous restaurant experience, he could not foresee the many restaurant service problems that would arise when the staff tried to create the products and get them delivered to the customer.

When I first entered the operation, I quickly noticed that the kitchen exit to the dining room floor, the service bar and the POS system were all within 3 feet of each other making for an annoying bottle neck. This traffic flow obstruction basically poured a substantial amount of service reputation and easy revenue down the drain.

How? Food was getting backed up in the kitchen because waitstaff could not get to the kitchen slide area. Waitstaff could not get through to the POS system to place orders. Waitstaff could not easily pass to and from the service bar to deliver drinks to the customers. The restaurant service was slowed down immeasurably to the point where I had to be called in to help remedy the situation. My conclusion? No matter how much waiter training, there would still be restaurant service problems because of this bottleneck.

******************

What was missing in the restaurant design? An even balance between the look and functionality of the business. The Restaurant/Bar business is one half an art form (look) and one-half a business form (functionality). One concept can rarely override the other concept for a successful operation.

If you are going to have a restaurant or bar designed and constructed, make sure that your designer has previous restaurant experience. If not, get someone who has previous restaurant experience to work alongside your restaurant designer or you may have to fiercely back peddle. In the meantime, restaurant service reputation and sales are seriously hurt, and you can be put out of business if the road has already closed behind you.

About the Author:

Photo of Richard Saporito

Categories : Restaurant Business, Restaurant Consulting, Restaurant Service Improvement

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Dec

Fans or Revenue? How To Measure The Success of a Facebook Campaign

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Every social media marketing service provider has an opinion on this topic. Why? Mainly because acquiring fans through a social media marketing campaign is a whole lot easier than generating revenue…and, nine times out of ten, their customers eventually grow dissatisfied with just growing their respective fan bases. After all, marketing (whether via social media, SEO, paid search, or whatever other method) is about making more money, right?

Absolutely. However, how you quickly you generate revenue off of a given marketing campaign can vary dramatically depending on which marketing method you choose to employ. It’s tough to see immediate results on SEO–ranking for certain keywords in your industry can be a constant battle. Conversely, generating traffic and eventually revenue via PPC can be almost immediate. So where does social media marketing fit into the mix? How long should a business have to wait before consistent social media marketing actually pays off in the form of increased revenue?

I for one, believe that a company’s “social” team (whether in-house or outsourced consultants) needs to stick to one thing…social! In order to maximize revenue potential, social media marketing campaigns need to tie into other sales and marketing efforts within your business.

Think of it as an assembly line…social media can be a traffic driving machine if used properly. The “social” team needs to work tirelessly to (1) increase Facebook fans/likes, Twitter followers, YouTube channel subscribers, etc. and (2) drive those fans/followers/subscribers to a highly-optimized webpage, to a physical location/retail store, or wherever else the ultimate, “ideal” location might be.

At this point, the “social” team has done its job by growing fans/followers/subscribers and getting them to leave the comfort of Facebook/Twitter/YouTube, etc. and visit your website/restaurant/retail store, etc. Now it’s up to the online marketing team to do their job with conversion optimization…or store management to create the ideal ambiance for the increased foot traffic sourced courtesy of the “social” team’s efforts.

The Worth of a Fan

Likes, fans, followers, and the like are hugely valuable. If you are a business owner that is dissatisfied with your social media marketing provider or team, as long as they’re either (1) driving traffic and/or (2) driving revenue, they’re probably doing at least a decent job. Now it’s your job to do something with the social assets that they’ve created for you.

Think of it this way. Businesses pay oodles of dough for leads. A lead might consist of a name and an email address and/or phone number, address, or other personal/business information. Some businesses pay loads of money just for a name and an email address. So how valuable is an email address, really? Have you ever done any email marketing before? If so, you know that email addresses can be valuable, but conversion rates are usually pretty low. Generally speaking, you need a boat load of email addresses to see a major revenue impact on your email marketing efforts.

Why is this the case?

How often do you open unsolicited emails? How often do those emails even make it past your spam filters? Even if you open a salesy email, how often do you actually read it through and respond to the call-to-action? I think that I can speak for all of us when I say that the answer to each of these questions is not very often.

The same issues exist with collecting phone numbers in your lead generation efforts. How often do you answer your phone if the call is unsolicited? Let’s say you accidentally (or intentionally) answer a phone call from an unidentified caller…how excited are you when they open the conversation with a bogus introduction and sales pitch? That guy/gal that called you, whether he/she is a wonderful person or not, is subconsciously perceived by many people to be a little bit slimey. It’s the unfortunate nature of the beast for businesses with telemarketing based sales efforts.

How does, for example, a fan on your Facebook business page stack up against an email address or phone number? Well, communicating with Facebook fans is easy. You can do it every day via frequent status updates. Try calling or emailing someone that isn’t a friend or family member every single day for a couple of weeks. Not cool. Also, people login to Facebook daily and they spend almost an hour goofing around on Facebook, so the chances of your status updates actually being seen is pretty good. Lastly, status updates are viewed in their entirety (unless your update is way too long) in the News Feed, compared to emails, where you’ll see just the name or email address of the sender and the subject line. Not as cool.

Accountability

So is it right to punish your “social” team for consistently adding fans and followers? Would you punish them for generating traffic to your website or visitors to your retail store? I hope not. I’d hope that you are holding yourself and/or the individuals “in-house” at your organization accountable for not doing anything with that traffic. If I bring you 100 leads (via social media or anywhere else) and your sales team can’t close them, the problem might be your sales team. If I bring you 10,000 new visitors to your website and nobody buys, the problem may very well be your website.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that your “social” guys are responsible for just generating any and all traffic possible. It certainly is on them to make sure that the traffic is balanced, good, quality traffic. But the accountability needs to be shared. Ultimately, if your “social” guys are consistently acquiring new fans and followers, they’re doing their job. Not every campaign needs to have an immediately measurable ROI attached to it. Leads generated from social media marketing campaigns tend to be of a different breed. Closing cycles tend to be longer. Relationships of trust are built over weeks and sometimes months rather than 30-60 minute telephone sales pitches. However, in our experience, customer loyalty is exceptional.

In summary, fans are awesome. Revenue is awesome-er. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that generating an immediate ROI from a social media marketing campaign is “the whole point”. It is important, but realize that the campaign efforts are often times just one step in a much longer sales process and the effects of a campaign may not be evident for several months. Don’t treat it as its own, separate campaign that does not or will not tie into other aspects of your company’s sales and marketing efforts.

For businesses that are good at marketing, fans will turn into revenue. The speed at which your fans turn into revenue is almost always directly related to the skill and competency of the team responsible for doing something with those fans.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Kirkland

Categories : Restaurant Business, Restaurant Consulting

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