Are You Ready For Flu Season?

Personally, if I never hear another story about H1N1 (swine) flu again, I’ll die a happy man.  Unfortunately, the grim reality is everyone is going to have to take steps to combat the spread of flu this winter, and restaurants are no exception.  Organizations like the National Restaurant Association are already educating restaurants about ways to inhibit the spread of viruses, and the food service industry as a whole is taking...

Restaurant Management: Use Creative Compensation Strategies

As if you didn’t have enough on your plate trying to keep your restaurant’s head above water this year, some in the food service industry are starting to talk more and more about changing some basic assumptions about employee compensation.  The traditional model has been to pay your kitchen by the hour depending on what they do, let waitstaff earn their living on tips, and maybe pay a hostess by the hour as well if you get...

Restaurant Management: No Training Budget? Spend Nothing But Time And Succeed

According to a new study by the Council of Hotel And Restaurant Trainers (CHART), 53% of the restaurants surveyed had cut back on their employee training budgets.  Only 19% increased their budget, with the rest remaining the same.  The study covered a wide variety of restaurants, from small independents to large national chains, with the largest...

Restaurant Management Tips: How To Deal With Employee Theft

As anyone in the food service industry knows, staff turnover is a constant problem.  Hiring and training employees is important but often tedious work, and keeping your team motivated and happy can also be a challenge.  Yet these “human resources” tasks are not nearly as tough to deal with as employee theft. ...

The 4 R’s of Driving Server Sales

The tired old maxim “your servers are your salespeople” is as true today as it ever was, but just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean you have armed the front of your house with every weapon they need to drive your restaurant’s profits.  Really, there’s no understandable reason why servers shouldn’t be some of the best trained people in any restaurant, but as I go through a mental check of every place I have eaten...

Restaurant Management Tips: Recognize The Kids

Training servers to engage the kids at the table helps encourage the family to come back the next time. I know this was the case when I was a server, and maybe a lot of you out there are a little more accommodating than I was when a family was seated in your section, but for me, kids were a disappointment. Kids don’t order $8 martinis, and usually neither do parents when they’re with kids.  Plus those are one or two spots...

Restaurant Management Tips: Cross-Training

The food service industry can be a brutal business, and sometimes the differences between making it and breaking are very, very thin.  As the manager, you have a lot on your plate – from training and supervising employees to running budgets and purchasing new...

Restaurant Food Safety Tips: Be Your Own Health Inspector

Health inspections are a regular part of life in any food service business, but too often it’s easy for a restaurant or commercial kitchen to fall into the trap of just passing the inspection rather than regularly practicing good food safety procedures. This series is intended to help your business improve food safety practices, because it’s about more than passing an inspection.  It’s about protecting yourself, your employees,...