By Greg McGuire

For generations Americans have had a fairly straightforward approach to cocktails – gin and tonic, highball, rum and coke – without ever giving a second thought to the possibilities a true bartender genius is capable of when given the space.  Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, specialty cocktails were commonplace, featuring interesting flavor pairings and even more interesting names.

Those days are starting to come back as the craft cocktail movement gains momentum in big cities like New York and Los Angeles.  American tastes started evolving 25 years ago when wine was rediscovered in a big way.  That was followed by an extensive love affair with craft beer and the rise of the microbrewery across the U.S.  Now it’s finally the cocktail’s turn, and bars and restaurants that have tapped into the trend have flourished.

So what makes a craft cocktail a craft cocktail? Some key attributes include:

• Fresh ingredients, preferably locally sourced
• In-house additives with unique flavors like bitters and syrups
• Interesting flavor pairings, like sweet and nutty or lemons and bacon
• Seasonal offerings like cider flavors in winter and mint in summer

Introducing a menu of your own craft cocktails is not only an adventure, it livens up your happy hour and grabs customer attention.  Some tips on how to craft your own cocktails:

Think outside the box when you’re developing your drinks.  Interesting twists is the name of this game.  Intrigue your customers with exotic flavors and weird pairings.

Make it fresh as much as possible. Flavorings made in-house and fresh ingredients help give your cocktails a flavor that can’t be captured in anything you get from the liquor distributor and helps your craft cocktail menu stand out.

Train bar staff well. A proper craft cocktail menu will take some significant creative effort to create and perfect.  Nothing will lead those efforts to waste faster than a busy bar staff that doesn’t have the time or the training to get these cocktails just right.  This isn’t time for soda gun slinging.  Each cocktail should be made carefully and to specific standards to ensure a level of quality that allows you to charge that high price you should be asking.

Get some witty names. The tradition of branding cocktails with clever double entendres, famous songs or people, and off-color puns is as old as the cocktail itself.  Engage your customer with some great names for your creations on the menu.

A quality menu of craft cocktails can be a great way to create some buzz around your restaurant or bar and get the word-of-mouth going.  It can also be a great outlet for your natural culinary inventiveness.  Done right, craft cocktails can be an outlet for your creative juices as well as a booster for your bottom line.

Greg McGuire blogs about restaurant marketing at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant supplies and food service equipment.

By Greg McGuire
Guest Blogger

A common misconception in the food service business is that booking live music takes more time and effort than it’s worth.  The process of finding bands, paying them, and providing enough space for them to perform can be a distraction at best and a downright money loser at worst, or so the theory goes.

Yet many establishments have proven time and again over the years that bringing in local bands is a great way to connect with local customers, and if done right, live music can become a lucrative marketing technique for any restaurant.

Denver based Smashburger, an emerging fast casual chain, has shown just how effective tapping into the local music scene can be for a new restaurant.  The company’s Rock Your City program encourages local bands to submit their videos via YouTube prior to the grand opening of a new location.  Smashburger then selects the best applicants and posts their videos to the company website so that fans can vote on the best one.  The winners get to play at the new location on opening day in exchange for free burgers, plus a local radio broadcast.

Free burgers may not draw the next U2, but Rock Your City events definitely do draw crowds of young people coming out to see their favorite bands.  And because Smashburger engages this audience beforehand by encouraging votes for the winning gig, they ensure a dedicated and reliable local audience on opening day.

Boosting engagement among younger customers is a goal any restaurant would like to accomplish.  If you’ve got the space and an inclination for live music, keep these tips in mind before you rock out your own establishment:

Take advantage of the band’s existing marketing efforts. A good band plays good music, obviously.  But in an age of social media and the internet, any band even remotely serious about their prospects will have at least a preliminary marketing effort online.  And since both you and the band want people to show up for their gig in your restaurant, this is a great opportunity for you to advertise to the band’s fans through their existing marketing infrastructure.

Have the band post a link to your website on their site, their Facebook, and their Twitter account, and get them to email their fan list about the gig with some more information about your business.

Let your customers tell you who they want to hear. Smashburger’s strategy of taking submissions then allowing fans to vote for the winning gig is the perfect way to get the most mileage out of a live music gig before the band ever steps foot on the stage.  Besides, you don’t want to trust your personal music tastes, which may or may not jibe with those of your customers.

Incorporate live music into your own marketing efforts. Include links to YouTube clips of the bands that are going to perform in your establishment on your website.  Post live music schedules throughout your restaurant and email your customers when their favorite bands have a gig.  If you’ve got a newer band playing, promote drink specials to get people in the door, where (hopefully) they’ll turn into new fans.

Live music is a great way to connect with your customers and turn them into regulars.  It doesn’t take nearly as much work as you might think, and the payoff in new business can make it more than a worthwhile endeavor.

Greg McGuire blogs about the foodservice industry at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment and food service supplies. 

By Greg McGuire
Guest Blogger

Hard times make it easy for small businesses like restaurants forget about the things that make their operation successful.  Revenues are down, customers are spending less, and costs only seem to be rising.  The problem is, we are entering an era when the customer expects maximum value for their dollar, and at the same time, they expect to spend less. 

That means most restaurants are engaged in heavy discounting to get customers in the door.  But are you nailing your customer’s new expectations when it comes to bang for their buck?  That’s the second half of the equation, and if you don’t have a dedicated, passionate staff, you’re going to lose customers fast, no matter where you set prices. 

A constant headache for managers in the food service industry is employee turnover.  Every time you lose one person and start another, your customer experience suffers.  And while a good employee training program is key to effectively incorporating new staff, in general your preferred option would be to keep the employees you have. 

Easier said than done, right? Fazoli’s, an Italian fast-casual chain, started taking employee retention very seriously a couple years ago.  Recognizing that people tend to like their jobs more if they feel like they’re part of the organization they work for, Fazoli’s took it upon themselves to engage their staff, including holding an annual Pasta Bowl, which tests employee knowledge about their jobs and rewards the winner with company-wide recognition and an all-expenses paid vacation. 

As a result, turnover at Fazoli’s has fallen over the past five years, and dropped 24% last year alone.  Customer complaints have also dropped.  So what are some strategies you can use to keep your best employees engaged? 

Some ideas: 

Listen and recognize. Every day your staff experiences something while doing their job they realize could be done better.  And more than likely they have their own opinion on how to improve those daily glitches. 

Listening to employee feedback has two huge advantages: first, you can tap into a well of in-the-trenches experience that will help you improve your experience, and second, you create employee engagement and a sense of responsibility when you listen to what your staff is saying and then recognize those who offer an idea for improvement that is implemented.  You’ll be surprised how much your employees appreciate it when their ideas are used, and how that sense of ownership will improve service and reduce turnover. 

Reward top performers. Nothing motivates like a little friendly competition.  The most important thing here is to avoid the cliché “employee of the month” approach, which can come off as playing favorites. 

Instead, tie rewards to numbers that are indisputable.  For example, reward the server with the highest sales, the kitchen employee with the least number of sick days, etc.  Make sure these numbers are transparent and clearly posted to encourage competition and minimize conflict. 

Also make sure you recognize second and third place and make the prizes meaningful ( a $10 gift card to your restaurant is NOT an acceptable prize!). 

Plan an event. At least once a year, treat your employees to an event outside of work that makes them feel appreciated and allows them to relax and interact with each other outside of the normally stressful work environment.  This is a simple and easy way to strengthen your ties to your employees and help relieve the strain created from working with the same people every day. 

Embody your culture. First, decide what kind of culture you want to promote in your restaurant.  More than likely this is going to be a culture of “customer first” service.  Whatever your culture, write it down in a mission statement, communicate it clearly to your employees, and then become the living example of that culture. 

Nothing reinforces the values you want your employees to follow every day at work like a strong culture, and nothing tears that culture down more effectively than the perception that management talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.  Leadership is most effective by example, and if you follow that simple credo, your employees will stick with you through thick and thin. 

Three of these four tips involve your business making an investment, which, understandably, can be a difficult proposition in an environment of reduced sales and dropping revenues.  However, I would argue that it’s an investment that must be made. 

The new watchword in the restaurant business is value, and after a year of discounting, value doesn’t mean low prices anymore.  You have to give your customers an experience that goes beyond price and addresses their desire for a great experience. 

The only way to do that is through your people. 

And the only way to keep great people is to make an investment in them. 

Fazoli’s has proven, on a fairly large scale, that a few simple steps can dramatically reduce turnover and improve customer service.  Use the strategies I mentioned in this post to replicate their success in your own business, no matter how small. 

Greg McGuire blogs about the foodservice industry at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment and food service supplies. 

authored by Darren S. Denington
President, Service With Style

When you think about all the buzz words floating around the Hospitality industry right now, it seems like there should be a new focus every single week. “Implement SMART Systems”, Deploy New Strategies” “Primary Vendor”, “Local Fresh Ingredients”, “Trading Down”……… Where do you start?

Start and finish every day with VALUE.

The single most important moment of the dining experience right now is when the guest receives the check. They ask themselves – “Was that worth it?”

So why is this so important? Obviously the economy turned and diners are either slowing down the frequency of dining out, trading down in the level of establishment they typically visit or watch how much they spend when they are out. It is also the beginning of summer. Kids are out of school, people are on vacation and the average families expenses increase during this time of year.

Numerous experts are predicting a 1.5% to 3% increase in same store sales in restaurants over the next few months based on the stimulus check program so this is the perfect time to stop and evaluate the value of the entire experience you provide.

Value is not just food portions or menu prices, it’s the entire package of everything your guests see, taste, touch, smell, hear and yes, feel, while they are dining with you.

When they open their wallet to pay the check, they want a pleasant feeling of paying for something that was worth the price.

Value has now taken on a whole new meaning because this includes how friendly your staff is, the cleanliness of tables, how hot the food was, the level of your music, your bathrooms, how quickly they received the food and on and on. Everything comes into play when the guests evaluate you to see if there was VALUE in their experience.

Good portions at a fair price are still a part of value but with everything that is now looked at to evaluate if the price was worth the experience, how could the word VALUE possibly get over used right now?

Darren S. Denington is president of Service With Style, a guest service review company that includes secret shoppers and customer surveys. More information about the company can be found at www.ServiceWithStyle.com.

The Restaurant Expert blog is a place for sharing ideas and strategies for independent restaurant owners. From time to time, David Scott Peters, restaurant expert, asks for outside representatives with helpful information to post on his blog. Thank you to Darren for his customer service insights that can help every independent restaurant owner improve customer service and restaurant profits. For systems that improve customer service, contact David today or visit him on the restaurant network.

Authored by Linda Peters-Getchell

I was recently going through files on my computer and clearing out what I no longer needed when I came upon a story I had received in an email at some point in time. I stopped to re-read it and immediately remembered why I had kept it, and would continue to keep it. It also made me think of how we affect people in our lives, including our guests in our restaurants. It is truly how we make them feel while they are with us that keeps them coming back.

Read this story at pre-shift to help everyone understand the impact they can have on their guests and they never know just how much at times.

THE CAB RIDE
(Source unknown)

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window.

Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, and then drive away.

But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself.

So I walked to the door and knocked.

“Just a minute,” answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said.

I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness.

“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”

“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said.

When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.”

I looked in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were glistening.

“I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I don’t have very long.”

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

“What route would you like me to take?” I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”

We drove in silence to the address she had given me.

It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You have to make a living,” she answered.

“There are other passengers,” I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you.”

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light.

Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.
We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

People may not remember
Exactly what you did, or what you said,
But they will always remember
HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.

Linda Peters-Getchell has 20 years in restaurant management and food and beverage customer service. She has owned her own restaurant and catering service, developed unique training programs and won two Key Player Awards for her customer service programs at Showboat Casino Hotel. She is currently a powerful creative force for restaurant expert David Scott Peters and his company, Smile Button Enterprises, serving as Fairy Godmother.