Archive for the Training Category
By David Scott Peters
When foam is OK and when it’s not
I’m a beer guy, so talking about beer gets me excited! But nothing peeves me more than watching a bartender pour good beer down the drain in the form of foam. It screams profit loss.
A great beer is much like a good wine; it has bouquet, aroma, flavors and all these different characteristics, imperfections and so on. Then there are beers that aren’t meant for taste, but are meant to specifically quench your thirst.
Either way, every good beer comes with a little foam, and while just the right amount of foam is good, too much foam is your nemesis.
What is foam?
It’s beer!
What’s beer?
Your product!
Where do you make profit?
Selling your product!
Do you have the bartender who swears he has to open up all the tap handles and run off the foam? Stop! That’s money that could be in your pocket instead of down the drain.
Don’t let your bartenders pour your profits down the drain. Find the problem, solve it and educate your staff.
When foam is bad
If your bartenders seem to be pouring more foam down the drain than they are manaHere are the three main causes of foam:
- Incorrect pressure – too much or too little.
- Interrupted flow in the lines caused by something such as ice or kinks in the line.
- Temperature – if it varies somewhere in the lines, you’ll get foam.
These things are correctable and since it’s like liquid gold for you, call your distributor and ask them to come check it out. They will only check out their lines, what their kegs are on, but call them all in and ask them to take a look. A good distributor should be cleaning your lines at least once a month, if not every other week. They want you to put out the best product possible, and they don’t want too much foam. So they’ll take care of you.
When foam is good
Write down the three ‘Ps’, the reasons why you should have one inch of head on every beer you serve.
- Presentation. You want it to look good.
- Protection. It’s going to keep the carbonation in, the temperature right and the flavors in.
- Profit. An inch of foam is two ounces of beer in most glassware.
Draft beer is a great profit maker for most independent restaurants. But there are ways to leak profit in your beer service if you aren’t well acquainted with your equipment and products you offer. Don’t take this liquid gold for granted — make every ounce count!
David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.
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By David Scott Peters
Restaurant Tip of the Week
Something to make your very own
Are you doing this in your restaurant? It could be one way to differentiate your from your competition.
Answer the phone within two rings and do so with a smile on your face. Make sure everyone in your restaurant answers the phone this way. The customer can hear the smile over the phone.
David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.
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By David Scott Peters
Structuring a bonus program in your independent restaurant is actually not that difficult. The bigger challenge is having the right systems in place to build it properly. Without the right systems, many management bonus programs are what I call management “entitlement” programs, where managers expect a bonus just for showing up.
Here are the six systems you need to have in place to write a useful management bonus program that will encourage your managers to earn their bonus:
- Job Description: This is often overlooked when we talk about management. Without a detailed job description for each level of management in place, you have managers on the floor who have no real clue of what their job is or how well you expect them to do it. The beautiful part about a well-laid out manager job description is it becomes your paint-by-numbers outline when you start to write your bonus program because your minimum expectations are already outlined in black and white.
- Budgets: Budgets give you, the operator, the ability to set targets, measure progress, evaluate performance and ensure you run profitably. As a part of the budgetary process you have to create realistic targets such as food cost, pour cost and labor cost percentages you want management to achieve. Honestly, without a budget and targets in place there is no structure for any reasonable bonus program. You might as well run a charity.
- Prime Cost Control Systems: When you have budgets in place for your restaurant, you have cost of goods sold and labor targets (together they make up what is called your prime cost), but do you have systems in place to help management achieve those targets? For example, just giving your management team a 30 percent labor cost percentage to shoot for isn’t enough. You must give them a road map of how to control those numbers and achieve their goal, or you might as well not even bother implementing a bonus program. They will never hit their goals, which ultimately translates to lost potential profits for you.
- Scoring Systems: When I refer to scoring systems, I am referring to both those that you impose and those that are imposed on you. For instance, your health department inspections scores and customer complaints are imposed on you. You should also be utilizing secret shopping services, customer comment cards and internal inspection forms to make sure your restaurant is working in all areas. Profitability alone should never be your sole focus. While scores are not something you can put a hard dollar cost to, in many instances, low scores can kill your business. So implement, utilize and evaluate your scores. They will tell you a lot about how well you are doing and should be included when evaluating managers’ performances.
- MBOs: I successfully used Management by Objectives (MBOs) early on in my career and it remains a staple in my business planning to this day. The concept of MBOs was originated by Peter Drucker at The Harvard Business Review. He is called the Father of Modern Management, and he outlines MBOs in his 1954 book The Practice of Management. MBOs is a systematic process that helps management focus on company goals and reach the best results possible. There are five basic steps to the MBO Process, which are: 1) Review the objectives the company would like to accomplish, 2) Set objectives for your management team, 3) Continually monitor progress, 4) Continually evaluate progress, and 5) Reward the achievers. When you’ve done all that, you then start the process over again.
- Timely Reporting: Last but not least, you have to have timely reporting. It’s not good enough to have all of these systems in place if you can’t gather, analyze and distribute your results to your team on a timely basis. Taking too long can de-motivate your management team and even worse yet, cause you to lose money.
My goal with this article is to get you thinking about how important systems are in your restaurant and how they relate to rewarding your management team. You have to hold them accountable before you can reward them. Go down the list and take an inventory of what you have in place and if something is missing, add it to your I MUST IMMPLEMENT LIST. With these systems you can begin structuring your management bonus program.
David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.
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Sound advice and real life solutions
By David Scott Peters
Your general manager should be your right hand person. The one person you can count on to operate your restaurant the right way. After all, you can’t be there all the time, but your customers expect to have the same experience every time. So how do you find the person who sees it the way you do and understands the importance of the systems and processes you’ve put in place?
Let’s be honest, looking for a reliable general manager is an overwhelming task. In the best of situations you can’t recruit from within, but when that’s not possible, I have some tricks for finding someone who fits.
First, you have to find candidates. You can try management recruiters, newspaper ads and so forth. But you don’t usually have the luxury of a lot of lead time. To get candidates in a more timely manner, use the Internet. Post your position on places such as Monster, Career Builder and Craig’s List. You will get results, i.e., resumes and applications, immediately.
You will find today’s marketplace is full of readily-available candidates, but not all of them will have perfect resumes. Try to look past the imperfections and find those who have the experience needed to be successful in your restaurant’s culture.
Once you’ve narrowed your candidates down to about five, come up with a list of questions to ask each of the candidates during the interview. This is a patterned interview format. Consult with your team and find out what they would like to know about each candidate.
One of the benefits to going with the patterned interview format and having questions prepared is you will get to evaluate each candidate equally because they all answer the same questions. Now you can compare apples to apples when looking at responses. It can also keep you out of lawsuit territory. You never know when you might be accused of unfair hiring practices by a disgruntled candidate who didn’t get the job. But if everyone answers the same questions, then every candidate is treated fairly.
This process should get you to the second interview. Your initial list should now be less than five — those that made you think twice. In fact, you probably find yourself trying to visualize each of them in the position for which you’re hiring.
As you approach the second interview, ask yourself, “What do I hope to discover about each candidate during this interview?” What questions were left unanswered from your first interview? You’ve already asked them to explain their past experiences, they’ve told you a little about themselves, and why they’re leaving their current job or why they left their former job. Now you want to get the details of what they know and what skills they actually have when it comes to restaurant operations, marketing, dealing with employees and how they might fit in to your restaurant’s unique culture.
For this interview you should also have a preset list of questions.
After you complete the second round of interviews, you should be ready to make a selection, which can be a terrifying process. This is when we come down to basic human instincts — your gut.
You want someone who has the skills, experience and feels right. Don’t settle for less. And if you have to — start the whole process over again. Settling will likely only cause you more problems down the road. This is a position that is too important to your restaurant’s success. The person you choose must be the right fit in every way.
When you’re ready to make an offer, you’ll likely have to answer the following questions for yourself:
1. Do I offer the requested salary? If they are asking $75,000 and you’re about to offer $45,000, you’re wasting your time. It’s important that when you narrow your job candidates down to the final interview, that you take salary into consideration. In this case, the $75,000 candidate would not make the final stage because you know you can’t afford him or her.
On the other hand, if someone is asking for $60,000 and you can only offer $55,000, you’re in range. Remember, it’s like anything in life; if you don’t ask, you’ll never get it. In this case, your candidates might be asking for more than they really think they’ll get just in case they do get it.
2. Do we tell him about your current management situation, staff, business, etc.? Yes! When you offer the position, tell everything … the good, the bad and the ugly. You want to make sure the candidate enters the job with a clear understanding of what they are about to walk into. This allows them to make an informed decision.
If you don’t tell the candidate everything up front, when they start working for you and start to discover on their own the skeletons in the closet so to speak, you may find yourself looking for a new general manager much faster than you could ever imagine.
If you follow these suggestions throughout your hiring process, it will help you turn the nightmare process of hiring in to a dream come true.
David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in systems for independent restaurant owners. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.
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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.
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