80/20 vs. 4: Restaurant Marketing By The Numbers

The Pareto Principle has long been hailed as the Holy Grail of marketing, the one rule by which all marketing efforts succeed or fail.  The principle itself is pretty simple: 20% of your customers drive 80% of your sales.  There’s always a core group of loyal customers who not only spend money in your restaurant, they...

A Glossary of Restaurant Lingo, Slang & Terms

A     * All Day – the total amount.  If table 12 orders two orders of salmon and table 19 orders four orders of salmon, that’s “six salmon, all day.” B     * Back of the house – the back end of the restaurant, the kitchen and storage areas, where the chefs, cooks, prep people and dishwashers primarily work.     * Bev Nap – the little square paper napkin which a beverages rests on.     * Brigade...

The Skinny On The FDA’s 2009 Food Code

The Food and Drug Administration has officially released an updated Food Code for the first time since 2005.  The Food Code details procedures for implementing a food safety program in any food service environment, from grocery stores to fine dining restaurants.  The agency updates...

11 Hot Restaurant Trends

Keeping up with the latest and hottest trends in food service could be a full time job in itself.  Luckily for you, The Back Burner is here to keep track and distill things down into manageable chunks.  This is a quick rundown of the trends we’ve been tracking over the past couple months, covering everything from weird new menu offerings to radical new approaches to management: 1.  ...

Do Price Reductions Dilute Your Restaurant’s Brand?

In a very well written post on Waiternotes.com titled “Self-Fulfilling Prophecies,” the author examined in-depth the price reduction strategies the owners of the two restaurants where he works have employed over the last year.  The main point revolved around how cut-rate specials were bringing...

Is Pizza Perennially Profitable?

While many segments of the restaurant industry are struggling to stay afloat, pizza concepts in large part seem to be well positioned to weather the current economy. There seem to be at least three distinct reasons for this – sales don’t appear to be slumping as much for pizza outlets as in other segments, commodity prices for pizza staples have adjusted very favorably, and the value-centric focus of today’s dining customer...

3 Tips To Give Your Host Stand Some Personality

The host stand is the first thing your customers see when they enter your restaurant.  That first impression can be an opportunity or a potential stumbling block, and no matter which way you impress your customers, the host sets the tone.  It’s like any new relationship: every word and action takes on an importance unique to the situation.  Just like a first date, your customer is wondering why they should trust you. Your...

Louisiana Restaurant Association Fighting Back Against New FDA Regulations

The Food & Drug Administration announced in October that it would place a ban on untreated oysters coming from the Gulf of Mexico.  Louisiana is the primary harvester and exporter of Gulf oysters, and the industry accounts for $318 million dollars each year. Gulf oysters have been deemed a food safety threat because a particularly nasty virus, vibrio vulnificus, can infect raw oysters during summer months.  About 15 people...