Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Today's Specials:
MARKETING: Why Sports Bars Need to Start Live Streaming Video
If your sports bar wants to be seen on Facebook, it has one hero to turn to -- video. Be it pre-recorded or live-stream, native Facebook videos is the social media marketing tool for sports bars.
DID YOU KNOWs…
Will You Like, Marry Me?
Working in restaurants we’ve all seen proposals (especially on Valentines Day). Food & Wine counted down the top six old fashioned restaurant proposals. Warning: some are theatrical.
Mystery Meats
A restaurant called The Stuffed Dormouse in Carleon, Wales is offering customers a zoo of exotic animals on their menu. Diners can try zebra, llama, horse, crocodile, ostrich, kangaroo, or wild boar. As an added surprise, diners can choose four types of meat and let the chef decide which meats to deliver as an exotic guessing game. Vegans beware.
Domino’s Double Digits
Domino’s posted a 10.2% domestic same-store sales gain for the first quarter. Overall, net income for the quarter rose 37.4%, to $62.5 million, on a 15.8% jump in revenues, to $624.2 million. The chain ended the quarter with 189 more restaurants in operations globally than it had the year-ago quarter.
DRAINING THE POOL
Why it matters to you: would you distribute pooled tips based on server performance?
Tip pooling has been a controversial topic in the restaurant industry for years now. Multiple restaurant chains have come under fire such as Reb Robin, for running a defective tip-pooling practice that distributed pooled tips unevenly some of which not going to the staff. Restaurant Business Magazine recently featured an article that examines the tip pooling distribution in one restaurant that doles pooled tips based on performance. In some cases, the process of giving the hardest working employees the most tips seem logical, however, it is very difficult to assess the scale of whether some employees should make more than others.
Where many establishments will run into problems with distributing pooled tips, is in using tips rather than wages to pay employees. Overall tip pooling has become a gray area within the restaurant industry that becomes difficult to assess. Most often at our restaurants, some employees will pull extra weight; while that’s not fair, in some cases it’s safer providing all employees the same compensation. Some establishments that refuse to remove their tip pooling system have seen success with offering added incentives to reward top employees without unevenly distributing the tip pool.
INMATE RUN RESTAURANT
Why it matters to you: restaurants have countless ways to support the community.
We’ve talked about how many restaurants have participated in their version of a purpose economy. One woman named Nancy Gould teaches a food service and food technology class within the North Carolina penitentiary system. Gould’s class leaves inmates with practical, employable skills, but it’s not just about that: In her words, she “wants each and every one of them to be a better man when they get out of here.” Eater recently featured a video on Nancy and how she runs her classes where often, the entire class runs a restaurant, each with their own specialized tasks. In addition to food service, she also teaches them the basics of cooking.
Nancy’s food program was the only program that the correction facility did not cut out of twelve programs. The correction offers felt that what Nancy offers could really help the inmates reintegrate into life easier upon their release. A majority of the inmates that took part in Nancy’s program were surprised to realize how much they loved to cook and work in food service. Working in the restaurant industry is a great way for us to take part in a purpose economy and give back to the community through a variety of ways. At the end of the day, the food service industry is much more than the numbers on the income statement.
