I feel your pain but rest assured you are sitting right in the middle of the problem. First, you need to make some crucial steps to change your business without leaving the building...
Remnants of the history of tipping, adding a little extra “to insure promptitude” are clearly evident in your restaurant. Known good tippers get extra good service. Even now, when tipping at least fifteen percent on every check is the norm, we have all seen servers fighting to avoid...
Commodity prices, which translate to the food prices you pay your purveyors, change daily, though with an upward trend overall. Because food prices are tied to weather, harvests, fuel prices, pests, wars and other factors, it is challenging to predict future prices.
Clearly there’s a lack of communication happening here. Guests do not know what potential allergens the menu items contain from the description, servers are not asking guests about their allergies or do not know the allergens that each menu item contains, and/or guests are being...
As a culinary educator I have written hundreds of these letters and have read thousands. They are read and taken seriously by admissions committees but are always considered as part of the entire application package. That is, rest easy, because your letter probably won’t make or break his...
When talking oven speed, you need to distinguish between hot and fast. If the goal is hot, quick cooking, the answer is yes. A pizza oven, for example, cooks much hotter than most commercial convection ovens and, accordingly, the food will cook (or burn) faster.
“Pink slime” has been all over the news and social networks lately, which means it is on guests’ minds as soon as they think of ground beef. Videos of its production and petitions to ban the substance from school lunches are circulating the web. Television newscasts are...
While there are good data available on employee compensation in the restaurant industry, information on sick days and vacation days for salaried employees is not as clear. According to the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) the national average for a first-year...
It is smart to expand your cocktail program, especially if you perceive a market demand. Guests are very price sensitive to beer since these are branded items, often bottled, that are widely available. So unless you are offering a rare brew, some must-see entertainment or an unparalleled view,...
Most restaurant costing advice considers cost per a la carte item. For example, calculating the cost of beef patty, bun, lettuce, tomato and French fries will indicate the total cost of a hamburger entrée on your menu. From there it is relatively easy to be sure the item is appropriately...
“Spicy” is a term that is often misused because two very different sensations are called “spicy” in English. Properly applied, spicy refers to spices, dried aromatics that come from non-leafy plant parts—roots (such as ginger), bark (such as cinnamon), fruit (such as...
