SCHEDULE: Download the 2018-19 NCAA Bowl Championship Series TV Schedule
The NCAA Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system is one of the most entertaining approaches to irrelevant sporting events ever known. There are forty individual games and only three of them count, and that doesn’t count the many post-season all-star games.
However, with pools and pick ‘em games happening everywhere you look, college football fans seem interested. The games do credible ratings and the part of our Americana dedicated to football on New Year’s Eve demands we all pretend they mean more than pride for the teams playing. Download the Bowl schedule, so your guests never have to miss a second of the action.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Whiskey Ambassadors
Here’s a cool story with four people who might have the coolest jobs in the world – whiskey ambassadors. They basically travel the world, throw parties, and spread the good word of whiskey in all its varieties. Sign us up.
A Man’s World
Between 1968 and 1982, men took home $51,575 on average while women earned a mere $14,379. From 2001 to 2015, men still made over $50,000 on average while women saw their average paypacket go up to just under $30,000. For women, that figure includes time off for family and child care.
CO2 Hits All-Time High
Human activity is the driving force behind the CO2 increase with a booming global automobile market and a rise in coal usage in China major contributory factors. As the Chinese government attempted to boost the economy, coal use climbed 3% in 2018 while CO2 emissions are projected to go up an estimated 4.7%. After several years of decline, the U.S. also saw its emissions increase this year by 2.5%, primarily due to a cold winter and warm summer that drove up demand for energy.
WE’VE GOT A BUDGET FOR THAT
Why it matter to you: Planning your marketing is the first step to actually marketing.
It’s a Monday in early December; have you completed your marketing plan and budget for 2019? What do you mean you don’t have one? This conversation could be repeated tens of thousands of times across the spectrum of small group and independent operators. Let’s be direct; you are never going to win at marketing if you don’t have a plan that you fully fund and properly execute. Any plan requires discipline and organization. Of course, the alternative is to continue doing what you have been and see declining traffic, as everyone in full service has seen over the past several years.
The good news is there are plenty of resources to support you building a plan and budget to market your business in 2019. Check out this one on POS provider Toast’s site that outlines how to build a marketing budget. Inherent in the budget build is a plan that the budget funds to drive more guests to visit your restaurant. Given that the fabled definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different outcome, if you’re crazy you can do the same thing again this year. Or you can buckle up and take control by building a better plan and giving it the patience and resources to succeed.
RECRUITING BEST PRACTICES THAT YOU NEED TO PRACTICE
Why it matters to you: We all need to be reminded about the most effective steps to improving recruiting efforts.
If you read the Daily Rail regularly you might think we spend a lot of time on staffing issues and you’d be right. Given historically low unemployment and an incredible dearth of available candidates, it’s hard to imagine any issue more central to running your restaurant in current economic climate. Which is why every little bit matters. Posts that deliver concrete suggestions may only be reminders of best practices, but then how do we achieve best practices without being reminded? A recent post on the Restaurant Engine blog provides seven points of opportunity to improve your success in staffing. While these may sound basic, it’s because they are and any successful recruiting and hiring process includes them.
Ideas like developing a recruiting pipeline sound so simple, but you actually have to take steps to deliver. This means working closely with your staff to encourage them to make referrals or check out your competitions job postings to see if your jobs sound attractive enough. Also, taking a good hard look at your compensation package. If everyone around you is paying more, you may have to acquiesce and raise your hourly rates. These are hard tasks, but if you avoid them you are more likely to struggle with staffing. Take the time to fully review your recruiting process and you’ll be happy with the results of better staff and fewer openings.
[Source: RestaurantEngine]
