Tag Archives: restaurant
If you own or manage a restaurant, you undoubtedly have to deal with one of the most annoying and disruptive phenomena of the industry: customers who don’t honor their reservations and simply fail to show up with no warning. For restaurants in general, and small establishments in particular, a no-show represents a missed opportunity to seat other guests – or a tableful of other guests – which is a painful blow, particularly if it happens night after night.
For many people – and many restaurants – food and drinks go together. And when we say “drinks,” we mean alcohol. Restaurants that want to offer a complete dining experience have bars that are stocked with the latest spirits and manned by the most knowledgeable and skilled bartenders. However, word on the culinary street is that there is a trend afoot that might alter the food-drink synergy.
Although you may not realize it – and you may not even know what “it” is – your restaurant can definitely use an expeditor. If you find that the service in your restaurant is sluggish and the kitchen-to-dining process isn’t flowing smoothly, an expeditor can help alleviate the problem and turn your restaurant into the efficient establishment it has the potential to be.
In a restaurant, where the price of every item can make a difference to the bottom line, weighing food can provide accuracy when measuring ingredients for recipes. A restaurant food scale can also help in maintaining consistent portion sizes to control costs, and it can let a restaurant owner know how much to charge a customer when selling items by weight.
Much has been written about how competitive the restaurant business is and how hard it is to get to the top of the heap – and to stay there. Even more than your chef’s signature dish or the investment you made in décor and ambiance, the way you market your restaurant will have a huge impact on whether your business will succeed or fail.
When it comes to marketing a restaurant the bottom line is: You can never rest on your laurels. You must always assume that the next best thing is right around the corner or that your loyal customer base is not as devoted as you hope it is. Even if you are everyone’s go-to dining establishment right now, success can be fleeting unless you nurture it – through advertising, promotion, and marketing.
Although the tasting-menu trend may have peaked, this multi-dish approach to serving is still the calling card of many an upscale restaurant. And, while tasting menus sound great on paper – which hungry customer wouldn’t want to dispense with the painstaking task of choosing one dish out of so many when he or she can try almost all of them – they are not for everyone.
Owning and operating a successful restaurant requires attention to many things – and food is just one of them. Your restaurant’s staff is a key component of your success; their job satisfaction should be a top priority. Nonetheless, not everything that passes for absolute truth is accurate and reliable information. In the restaurant industry, myths abound, particularly when it comes to employment.
Although the restaurant industry in the United States is struggling, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that Americans eat and drink about one-third of their calories away from home. Other surveys show that more than half of the money spent on food goes to restaurants and convenient on-the-go meals — rather than to groceries cooked at home.
If you’re considering opening a restaurant, a good business plan is one of the most important steps of the process. A well-constructed business plan will serve you from the moment you hatch the idea, through the search for financing and staff, and on to the day-to-day processes of running the restaurant.