OPERATIONS: The Questions to Ask Before Restaurant Expansion [Presented by Orderly]
You feel ready to open a second restaurant, but are you sure you can handle it? The Restaurant Expansion Checklist has everything you need to ensure the process goes smoothly.
DID YOU KNOWS…
I Don't Like Cricket - I Love It!
Around the world and mainly in Asia, insects are a key part of the diet of up to two billion people. Farming insects is a fraction of the cost of producing beef, pork and poultry. According to United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organization data, producing a kilogram of crickets requires less than a fifth of the feed that a cow would eat to produce the same amount of beef. Insects also negate the need for antibiotics, growth hormones and require far less water than conventional livestock. By 2023, the value of the global edible insect market is expected to triple and its value will climb from $44 million to $154 million in the U.S. alone.
Financial Inequality
The situation with regards to financial inequality is worst in the United States where the share of wealth held by the richest 10% of households stands at 79%. The bottom 60% of U.S. households only hold 2.4% of household wealth. The inequality gap is also wide in Europe and the top-10% of households control 68% of wealth in the Netherlands and 64% in Denmark. In both countries, the share held by the bottom 60% of households is negative which means that on average, these households have liabilities exceeding the value of their assets.
Gambling, Football & You
Thanks to a SCOTUS decision, networks are expecting to gain some serious moola from legal sports gambling ad revenue. The most likely networks to score big are CBS Sports Network, ESPN, FS1, FS2, and NBCSN. This means you could expect to see an increase an ads on your TVs starting with the NFL season, especially on the Fox stations since Fox is selling off its entertainment assets. Because what we all want is more ads during gameplay.
80/20 ‘RULE’
Why it matters to you: A lawsuit is challenging the 80/20 tip credit "rule.”
On Friday the Texas Restaurant Association and Restaurant Law Center filed a lawsuit with hopes to stop the U.S. Department of Labor from enforcing a restriction on employers from using a tip credit for side work. This lawsuit is questioning the labor department’s authority to enforce the “80/20 rule” which says that tipped employees who spend more than 20% of their working hours on non-tipped duties (side work) cannot be paid their sub-minimum wage for those duties and that time spent. Additionally, they wouldn’t be able to use the tip credit for time the worker spends on duties like cleaning the bathrooms or washing windows because the DoL does not consider maintenance work related to those tipped positions. A major goal of the lawsuit is to try to keep the DoL out of restaurants’ day-to-day operations as the Texas Restaurant Association says the DoL does not understand how a normal work day for a server works paired with the “80/20 rule.”
The lawsuit states: “The department’s 80-percent standard concerning tip-generating tasks, as well as its zero-tolerance for taking a tip credit for time a tipped employee spends cleaning bathrooms or washing windows, derives from a misunderstanding and a lack of information regarding how employees actually perform their jobs in restaurants,” the lawsuit said. “Congress never intended for the department to micromanage restaurant employment at the task level, nor did it ever give the department the authority to do so.”
Though there is no real timeline for the lawsuit, we’re sure to keep our eyes on the outcome as it could end up affecting tip credit guidelines everywhere. Stay tuned.
ALL DAY HAPPY HOUR VS DOLLAR DRINK SPECIALS
Why it matters to you: As Applebee’s and TGI Fridays duke it out over food & drink specials, we consider the possibilities that facing off with competition can bring.
We’ve discussed Applebee’s $1 drinks numerous times; they’ve been utilizing this method as a traffic driver and it seems to be working for them. Now we have TGI Fridays throwing their hat into the ring with All-Day Happy Hour as a challenge to Applebee’s $1 drink specials. TGI Fridays is offering four cocktails, draft beer, and wine all for $5 every day, including some food options as well. The kicker here is two of the TGI Fridays drinks are former Applebee’s top performers, a definite nod towards the competition. We love seeing the competition between these two and it has given us some ideas…
Almost all of us have competition. Whether friendly or not, we usually have someone gunning for the top spot in whatever area/neighborhood we do business in. Our competitors occasionally, like Applebee’s and TGI Fridays, run specials and Happy Hours that can draw business away from our doorstep and into their establishment. So why not have a little friendly competition? If you are actually friendly, consider talking to your competition and run the same specials the same day and challenge guests to pick a favorite dish or drink. If you aren’t friendly, then maybe don’t talk to them about it beforehand. This can all drum up quite a bit of business (or at least buzz). On that note, we’re sure fans of Applebee’s are going to be lining up to try TGI Friday’s Long Island iced teas and margaritas to see how they stack up vs each other.
