If your restaurant or bar has beer on tap, you already know how much customers appreciate a good pour.  Beer on tap tends to taste better, and from a business perspective, buying kegs gives you a better margin than buying it in bottles or cans.  For most restaurateurs, beer taps …

It was taken as a good sign recently when the Nation’s Restaurant News reported that employee turnover in the restaurant industry was on the rise for the first quarter of 2011.  This means more jobs are being created and more vacancies need to be filled in the restaurant business than …

SURVEY IS NOW OVER It’s been the talk of the country all summer long: the state of the economy.  There’s a lot of uncertainty out there, and that’s why we want to know: how is the economy affecting your business – good, bad, or indifferent? We are preparing a report …

Not all brewing equipment is created equal, and the success of your quest for a great cup of coffee can largely rest on the type of brewing equipment you use.  When investing in new coffee equipment, it’s also vitally important to purchase a brewer that can handle your weekly volume. …

Getting ice from the ice machine bin to your customer’s drink glass without contaminating it is a food safety consideration that is easy to overlook.  That doesn’t mean it’s any less important than the other danger points you deal with every day while preparing and serving food in your restaurant.  …

Here at The Back Burner we have talked a lot about food safety.  It’s an ongoing project for any restaurateur, and also a potential matter of life and death for any food service business given the stakes if a food borne illness were to break out in your restaurant. So …

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 …

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 …

Bacteria, contaminants, and pathogens are all the enemies of your restaurant’s kitchen.  It’s a battle you fight every day.  The first line of defense is controlling the growth of pathogens that could make your customers sick.  That is best accomplished through a robust HACCP program.  Unfortunately, as effective as HACCP …

Most restaurant owners get the basics of restaurant marketing down pretty well: they get a Facebook page, buy a couple local media ad spots, and get some big signs for the front of their location.  But there are a lot of marketing ideas that are simple to implement that can …