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Advice Guy

Do you have a question for the Advice Guy? Please use the form to submit your questions or email them to MonkeyDish@cspnet.com. Published letters may be edited for space and style.

Tom Feltenstein is the CEO/Founder of Power Marketing Academy and a renowned keynote speaker, motivator, trainer, and strategist.  A widely praised author, he has written 13 books, including Change is Good…You Go First, Uncommon Wisdom,  NS The Ten Minute Marketer’s Secret Formula (the definitive textbook on Neighborhood Marketing). 

Jonathan Deutsch, Ph.D., associate professor of culinary arts at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY and public health at the CUNY Graduate Center.  He is the author or editor of six books including Culinary Improvisation (Pearson, 2010).

 

 

Let’s imagine an eighty-dollar tab with a twenty-dollar tip charged to a credit card. If your merchant fees are 3%, you are paying the credit card company $3.00 ($2.40 on the food and beverage and 60 cents on the gratuity). So the question is, can you pay the server $19.40 rather than the...
As a Mac lover for my personal computing, I am sympathetic to your question. As I am sure you have noticed, the vast majority of POS products run on Windows operating systems. At first glance this may sound frustrating for a Mac user but consider two key points before you get too discouraged:
Telling a restaurateur what her food cost percentage should be is a bit like telling someone what his blood pressure should be. Yes, there are guidelines, but each case is a little different. The rule of thumb that most managers and chefs learn in hospitality or culinary school is 30% food cost...
There are many reasons people dine out—to feel pampered, to avoid the time commitment and hassle of cooking, to have a venue to socialize or do business, to start, deepen or end a romantic relationship, to mark an important milestone, to grab a quick bite at a convenient location, to enjoy...
As an existing restaurant, the decision to expand to delivery is a bit easier than it would be for a new operation. No doubt you already have a sense of the market demand from fielding, “Do you deliver?” calls or seeing guests double parked outside to pick up their to-go orders.
It’s important to remember that any promotion is defined as a short-term incentive for customers to buy. In other words, part of what makes the offer effective is urgency. The customer sees it as something they must act on right now, because they may not have the chance again for a long...
I recall a night spot in Texas called the Pistol Bar.  They advertised that you could “Drink till 12, and Pistol 2.” However, I probably wouldn’t recommend that for CiaoChristina! I looked at your website and you’re right… it is confusing. In fact, the hours...
It is easy to dole out advice, but is it good advice? This week we take inventory by going back to some earlier columns to see how the advice worked in the operations.
The art of scheduling is in keeping employees—especially tipped employees—busy enough that they are excited by the work, high energy, and well-compensated, while not so busy that they are frazzled or quality of service declines. It sounds like in your case, the negatives of the busy...
Having a wine certification is a bit like having a culinary degree. Is a certification required to become a wine professional? Absolutely not—like cooking or management, it is a field that is very much about what you know and what you can do. Can a wine certification open doors to career...