Restaurant Management and Operations

No matter what kind of restaurant you run, from fast casual to fine dining, combo meals can help your customer make a choice that makes them feel like they’re getting a deal, even if the combo costs exactly the same as the a la carte menu. This is backed up …

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 equipment and supplies. This series is …

Any server will tell you the hardest thing to sell is dessert.  The meal has come to an end, customers are ready to go or just enjoy a cup of coffee, and more often than not the dessert menu is met with some pretty stiff resistance.  Add in a climate …

In Counting Plates: Parts One we discussed the difficulties faced by managers, servers, and guests resulting from shrinking renewals budgets. I advanced the idea of treating glasses, plates, and tableware as inventory rather than purely as an expense. This allows the cost of these items to be more accurately reflected …

Small independent restaurants have been dropping like flies over the past year.  Chances are, if you’ve made it this far through the recession, the worst is behind you.  That doesn’t mean tough days aren’t ahead, but hopefully you’ve at least stopped just trying to stay above water and have started …

Every year, your restaurant’s green credentials on the street gets more important.  According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA), it’s one of the hottest trends this year.  Companies across the board, in and out of the food service industry, have scrambled in recent years to label their brands as green, …

A popular topic lately, in a couple different restaurant discussion forums I participate in, is the question of who owns the recipes your restaurant uses? Let’s look at a couple possible scenarios that could affect your restaurant: Your executive chef or kitchen manager quits. Maybe one or two members of …

The HACCP, or Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, is a set of guidelines and procedures for food safety originally developed by NASA for astronaut food 30 years ago.  NASA needed a food safety program with “zero tolerance” to protect astronauts from foodborne illnesses while in space.  One can imagine …

Technology has made data easier to store, manage, and collect than at any other time in human history.  That power has resulted in amazing improvements in the efficiency of business, and restaurants have benefited just as much as any other – few restaurateurs can imagine running their business today without …

In part one of my discussion of pre-shift meetings, I discussed the things a manager can do to harm the effect of a pre-shift meeting. It was by no means a comprehensive list. There are many other mistakes managers can and do make that harm their pre-shift meetings.  It does …