Sound Advice for Opening a Restaurant

Look Before You Leap I get a lot of inquiries from people kicking the tires so to speak, interested in opening their own restaurant. For a lot of restaurant owners, owning a restaurant is a lifelong dream. They can imagine every detail, and it’s filled with happy customers who return again and again. A lot of these independent restaurant owners, they had a certain idea of what it was going to be like to own their own restaurant. But...

Want To Start An Independent Restaurant? Start With The Incubator

Every restaurateur has been through the baptism by fire known as Opening Night.  Those who have survived can testify to the nerve-racking experience of preparing menu items for the first time for a dining room full of people.  Many hopeful entrepreneurs have had their dreams realized or crushed on opening night, and anyone wanting to start a restaurant had better be prepared for the big night. The problem many new restaurant...

Text Message Ordering: Why Your Customers Already Love It

One of the biggest shifts in customer behavior over the past few years has been the preference for take-out food.  All the major national chains (Applebee’s, Chili’s, etc. etc.) have added drive-up service for their customers.  And I’ve written on this blog about taking your restaurant’s food out, whether it be catering,...

Product Watch: Robot Coupe’s J80 Ultra Juicer

The new J80 Ultra juicer by Robot Coupe represents another leap forward for a company that has long been known for its reliable and innovative products. With many food service...

How To Take Restaurant Marketing Underground

Since last August, when I first posted about the blossoming underground fine dining scene in San Francisco, the phenomenon has grown exponentially and started spreading up and down the west coast.  From Vancouver to L.A., chefs are ditching the kitchens of established restaurants and setting off on their own, and using shrouds of...

Restaurant Management: 4 Ways To Invest In Your Staff & Why You Should

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...

Why Is It So Difficult To Convert A Bad Experience Into A Great One?

When a customer is displeased with the service you’ve promised to provide, whether it be in your restaurant or retail store or any other category that deals with people, why does one think that a simple “I’m sorry” is going to remedy things? If you truly want to convert a bad experience into a memorable WOW experience that creates word of mouth, then you’ve got to take your “apologies” up a notch and do the unexpected. For...

Restaurant Equipment: 4 Factors For Calculating Total Cost Of Ownership (cont)

To read the first installment of this article, click here. There’s always a significant amount of cost involved whenever you buy a new piece of restaurant equipment.  Those costs only continue as that equipment ages in your restaurant – from energy use to repairs, the consequences of new equipment...