Attracting and retaining enough employees at all levels to meet the needs of organic and inorganic growth
Developing a robust leadership pipeline
Success as a restaurateur rests almost entirely on the critical talent acquisition decisions you make. A restaurateur can not operate a restaurant solely, the hiring front of the house and back of the house staff is necessitated. People are your competitive advantage
More than half of fast food visits are with family members (52 percent); 29 percent of these visits with a spouse/partner; and 23 percent are with children under the age of 18 which points to the potential influence that children can have on deciding where to eat.
Fast-casual restaurants (i.e., Chipotle, Panera Bread) have the highest sales per occasion while Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's are among the restaurants with the lowest average spend per visit.
"Our research found that not only did Chipotle and Panera Bread have the highest spend per occasion but their customer tended to dine in compared to getting carry-out. While their meals tend to cost more, having a 'captive' audience may be creating additional sales opportunities for these chains," Kleijngeld explains.
Panera and Chipotle both continue to report increases in same store sales while most other segments are retrenching.
•What’s the model you plan to use to make money?
•What markets are you targeting?
•How are you going to generate sales?
•How are you going to attract talented people to work for you?
•Who do you network with?
•What mentors have you found who are willing to help you, work with you, or give you their time?
People whom you pitch for money have heard every scheme, angle, spin imaginable; the deciding factor will be how much passion do you have for your project? Other people will gladly give you their money if you can demonstrate to them that you actually have a plan and that every fiber of your being exists for the sole purpose of successfully launching and operating this business.
Even opulent steakhouses are searching for ways to help customers battle rising food costs.
Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar sends leftovers back to the table in elegant, shiny take-home bags with a note signed by chef Jason Carron. He invites guests to check out the steakhouse chain’s new Web site, LeftoverSteakRecipes.com.
There, diners will find tips for turning last night’s leftovers into today’s breakfast, lunch or dinner.
How great is that?
“Life is short, eat dessert first”
LA Times piece on grilling desserts is worth a nibble:
EVERYTHING seems to taste exponentially better when seasoned with fresh air and stars -- and smoke -- and maybe because it's unexpected, this is especially true of dessert…
…Cinnamon toast is intriguingly transformed on the grill; the mixture of butter and sugar and cinnamon gets deep golden brown, almost slightly charred. It's served with a mound of strawberries macerated in a lavender simple syrup. Pound cake -- slices of it with Nutella sandwiched in between -- undergoes a similar transformation from familiar to festive when you apply the magic of playing with fire.
That works for me!
T. S. Eliot
The fragile blue planet has completed an entire journey around the sun, since I began this voyage of self discovery called “Can I Have That With”. The blog is one year young today and has been read on every continent other than
Happy Continuation Day!
Thank you for visiting!
Seth Godin’s post offer’s this little nugget:
DATA is observational. What do people actually do? Wal-Mart uses data to decide if an end cap is working. Google Adwords advertisers use data to decide which copy delivers clicks and sales. The library can use data to decide which books to buy (and not to buy).
Too often we ignore the wealth of data in the restaurant. Chefs and entrepreneurs are so focused on what they think will work that they ignore what the menu sales data is telling them. Never start a P& L review until you have reviewed what the product sales mix tells you customers are buying. P & L information means nothing until you understand what is selling.
“At the state level, some efforts have been made to help workers dependent on tips for part of their income. The
The reason tips are down is because traffic is down and revenue is down. Legislators think the way to solve this is to raise pay for tipped employees: How do they expect the restaurant to pay for the extra wages they are legislating? The end game of this enlightened thinking is that the restaurant will close, thus reducing sales tax, unemployment tax and income tax collections, the employee will be without a job which will increase unemployment benefit payouts which leads to further fiscal insolvency.
Tim Ferriss has a great primer for any business:
The financial goal of a start-up should be simple: profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees: more profit.
Question: Why is getting good at change so important?
Answer: Every day we experience changes in the economy, the stock market, politics, business, the environment, education and healthcare systems, technology, and our family and home life. Change is the only constant in life - the one thing that is guaranteed to happen.
Everyone you meet is either struggling with a change, secretly wants to make a change, or is helping someone else through a change. Everything that has happened in your life, all that is currently taking place, and all that will eventually occur to you personally and professionally sits under the umbrella of change. You may have just graduated, started a new job, fallen in love, been laid off, gotten divorced, or received a troubling health diagnosis, and so on, it's all change.
Getting good at change simply means getting good at navigating life. When we become comfortable with change we are equipped to handle any transition that is thrown at us and will be able to initiate any change in our own lives. The way you approach change is a mirror for the way you deal with life: with your work, you're loved ones, and yourself.
Q: How will the dining experience be different?
Cantu: I think it's going to be a lot more interactive. . . . Maybe you'll make a phone call, and an alien ship will deliver the food to the table.
Achatz: Like now, many types of restaurants will exist. The fast food will become faster. Ordering your meal choices via handheld device before you arrive will allow you to go through one of several lines for fast-food pickup. Payment will be made at the time of order so there will be no need to fumble with cash or credit cards. Many high-end restaurants will actually go almost unchanged. People 25 years from now will want the same level of human connection via service that we have now. That will be lost in everyday life in the future, so it will become a luxury.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first” Brian Tracy
The magic of improvisation is the understanding that that whatever happens the only acceptable response is “yes, and …” Here is a home work assignment for today. Whatever happens today, your response needs to be “yes, and …” Try it for twenty four hours, See what happens.
Yes, and…!
The paradox is that to get noticed you have to be interesting, however to succeed you need to be interested in your guests.
“If you have not specified your company's brand, don't spend another dime on marketing until you do. … small companies can also develop potent brands and market them successfully, says Steve Manning, managing director at Igor, a branding and naming firm based in San Francisco.
"A brand creates an image in the mind of the consumer. It says something is different at your firm, something worth more than business as usual. If your firm is a commodity, your customers will choose you solely on the basis of price or getting something for free. If you've got a brand, you're selling a lifestyle and you can sell anything you want," Manning says.”
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Victor Frankl
Stephen Covey’s book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” was built on the foundation of Victor Frankl’s quote. How this applies to a restaurateur is simple. Black Swans will occur to your business, to you, actually to every aspect of your life. In all that disruption, you have a space between stimulus and response. That space, that power to choose determines the quality of your life and the success of your business.
Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.
a mere four, five-ounce glasses of wine “starts getting close” to the amount of resveratrol they found effective”
This is healthy habit I can really appreciate! I’ll have another bottle of red wine!
Brian Tracy highlights speed as differentiator and as a business opportunity. ( think McDonalds, Dominos Pizza and Jimmy Johns) Americans love quickservice, and the entire industry has been created because we want things faster. Look around your restaurant, is there something that you can deliver faster and would that give you an advantage over your competitor?
“The key to any successful business transaction is to do your homework,” he says. “You want no surprises. I would never go to a restaurant without knowing the layout, which tables are available and which are saved for regulars. My advice is to become a regular at two or three restaurants.”
The key to remember is that a restaurant is not a place where people go to eat, it is a place where people go to solve a problem they have. Solve problems for your clients and you will never go hungry!
Jerry Hirsch’s interview with Starbucks CEO offers this nugget on how to navigate through lower traffic counts.
We have to be ultrasensitive to providing value for our customers. And 50 million customers a week are coming through Starbucks stores.
We have to innovate and provide more value to the customer, but the customer comes into Starbucks not only for coffee, [but also] the sense of community, the sense of humanity in our stores. We really have become this third place between home and work. We have managed through different downturns in the economy before, and we will again.
