I would have to rate a computer as a must have for a Chef, second only to a good set of quality knives. While utilizing a POS (Point of Sale) System and knowing how to use it can be enormously useful to a chef, I think spreadsheets are the cat’s …
Read More »Independent Restaurant Marketing – 3 Ways To Compete With The Big Boys
Big chain restaurants dominate the mass market when it comes to advertising – a fact of life that can sometimes make it difficult for smaller independent operations to be heard among all the songs about baby back ribs. Launching a restaurant marketing campaign for an independent means less money to …
Read More »How To Use Google To Manage Your Restaurant’s Reputation
We’ve talked about the importance of reputation management on The Back Burner in the past, and as review sites like Yelp and discount sites like Groupon continue to influence the way consumers make their dining decisions it becomes even more important for restaurants to make sure they are engaged with …
Read More »How To Get A Liquor License
Getting a liquor license for your restaurant all comes down to two words: it depends. Determining how much it’s going to cost, how long it will take, and how easy it’s going to be all depend on where you’re located. That’s because liquor licensing varies from state to state and …
Read More »HACCP Principle 2 – Defining Processes
As we discussed in the last HACCP post, you need to organize the hazards and critical control points at every step in the food preparation process. So how do you decide which points are a CCP and which can be handled by a Prerequisite Program? A good strategy is to …
Read More »Is Your Recycling Program Really Working?
We’ve talked before on The Back Burner about the importance of greening your restaurant operation for two reasons: because customers appreciate it (and are beginning to expect it) and because frequently green practices mean cost savings. Unfortunately recycling is not a practice that usually saves your operation money. It is, …
Read More »4 Tips To Keep Inventory Shrink From Making Profits Smaller
Every month your restaurant spends thousands of dollars buying food. More than likely, it’s the second largest expense on your balance sheet after labor. And every month, that inventory of food products might be “shrinking,” meaning a percentage of it is disappearing due to either unintentional waste or very intentional …
Read More »How to Recruit, Train, and Keep Top-Notch Restaurant Staff
High turnover rates are a perennial challenge in the restaurant industry, with many contributing factors. But while many restaurant owners and managers shrug their shoulders and dismiss the problem as something they can do nothing about, there are in fact several practical things you can do to recruit, train and …
Read More »Simplify Your Life: Reduce Your Restaurant Menu Items
In these times of economic uncertainty, it is easy to get lost in trying to do many things all at once. A good example is restaurateurs trying to manage their inventories, their staff, their operations, their books, their sales, their marketing… do you know anybody like that? I thought so. …
Read More »50 Restaurant Resolutions For A Successful Year
If ever there was a good time to make some positive changes to your restaurant’s operation, now is that time. The time to kick things up a notch and really go after more business. If you’re going to beat out the competition then you need to trim down, work harder, …
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