Portion Control: Are You Losing Money To Food Waste?

Imagine for a second that you run Coca-Cola instead of your restaurant.  You sell millions of cans of soda every day, and you’re making a decent profit.  Now imagine that as the founder and owner of Coke, you never bothered to standardize the size of each can, so some cans are 12 ounces, others are 13, and some are even as large as 16 ounces, but you charge the same price for all of them. Think you’d be losing a little money...

10 Restaurant Marketing Tips That Will Crank Up Your Revenue

After a year of dedicated blogging on The Back Burner, I took a minute to reflect recently about where the food service industry has been and where it’s going in 2010.  That reflection got me thinking: after a year and 350+ posts, what were the 10 simplest, most effective ways for a restaurant to boost their business? Over the course...

A Review Of Klick Kitchen By Chef Forfeng

The following is a great review of Klick Kitchen by an industry insider with a lot more personal experience in the food service industry than I have. I came across Klick Kitchen last year and while the concept was intriguing, the price at the time was not. Since then they have apparently changed it to a free basic service to the consumer/back of the house...

Restaurant Management: Why Nick’s Isn’t Just Another Pizza Joint

Inc. Magazine did an article recently about pizza and pub owner Nick Sarillo, a restaurateur with blue collar roots based in the Chicago area.  Sarillo has built his business based upon a corporate culture that emphasizes customer service and employee development. Sarillo’s Nick’s Pizza & Pub is another example of how the labor...

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...

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...

Restaurant Equipment: 4 Factors For Calculating Total Cost Of Ownership

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 will be around for a long time after you’ve written the check to purchase. Of course, restaurant equipment makes you money as well.  Without that ...