FINANCES: Don’t Let Your Bar Drink Your Profits Under the Table [Presented by Orderly]
Adding a bar to your restaurant may be fun, but it also brings along many challenges. With the Complete Guide to Bar Profitability in hand, you’ll be able to ensure you’re raising your profits before you raise a glass.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Restaurant Décor Trend: Botanical Wallpaper
Botanical wallpaper is growing like weeds across the industry. More restaurants are opting for the flowery décor on their dining room walls over painted walls. Why? Instagram. The eccentric and interesting designs of the wallpaper makes for great social media fodder for guests looking to share their dining experience with friends & fam.
Expensive Melons
Two Japanese melons fetched a record-breaking $29,000 at auction. And you thought Whole Foods was bad. Farmers who make these “Yubari King” melons must sell them directly to the Yubari Agricultural Cooperative Association which owns the trademark for the melons and ensure quality control. Demand for the melon often exceeds the supply and people often try to bootleg them. They take their melons seriously.
Selling WWE Digi Rights?
The WWE is toying with the idea of selling digital streaming rights for Monday Night RAW and Smackdown. Analysts think that Amazon or Facebook would be the prime targets for acquiring the online rights to the two shows, which Facebook having a slight edge since the WWE has an existing Facebook Watch platform in place.
WHAT DO THEY EXPECT FROM US?
Why it matters to you: Employer’s brand perception can affect a job seekers’ decision making when looking for work.
We’ve all been on both sides of the hiring process. It can be a stressful scenario for everyone involved. In our industry, unlike others, the hardest part is getting your prospects to finish the hiring process and stick around, more so than having to find decent prospects.
Recently, a company called StartMonday surveyed 750 non-management and non-executive workers in our (and the retail) industry and they found something interesting -- 18% will only apply to companies with good reputations and 35% will drop out of the hiring process if they discover issues with management. This comes with an additional 45% dropping out if they see/find out current employees are unhappy. The rates of dropping out also (of course) increase even further if potential employees see evidence of racism or sexism, but that kind of goes without saying.
With the numbers staring you in the face, it is hard to deny that statistically finding someone out there in this industry is difficult. It also shows how important it is for you to control your brand’s message and reputation. Prospective employees don’t want to be guilty by association of a restaurant’s bad behavior. It’s also important to keep the staff you already have working for you as the cost of employee turnover can be too much for many to handle. That’s why we made a guide in regards to our constant industry-wide War for Talent to help us all try to survive; everyone knows we can use all of the help we can get these days.
ENOUGH TABLESIDE SERVICE ALREADY.
Why it matters to you: Restaurants have taken the tableside trend too far.
Back in the good old days, if you wanted a taste of the action in a restaurant’s kitchen you had to do one of a few of these classic options: book a chef’s table, go to a hibachi restaurant for a theatrical and fun version, or maybe order omakaseat a sushi restaurant. Not anymore. Nowadays we have truly beaten the tableside carts and tableside service to death. Everywhere you go you can get tableside guacamole, tableside Caesar salad, prime rib slices, flambé dishes, and so on and so on. We even heard about a tableside chicken wing restaurant opening in our hometown. Now that is a sign that this is where the buck has to stop.
We, as an industry, always do this with every new trend that we see. Someone has a great original idea, someone else tweaks it, someone else steals it, and so on until we’ve absolutely picked it apart and beaten it to death. We must learn that going full throttle at these trends can have as big a price as they can a payoff. Aiming for some flavor-of-the-moment viral trend has made ghosts before. We completely understand where we were going as an industry with the tableside carts -- we really do -- but at some point you need to step back and asses what is truly worth it and what isn’t. Is training a waiter to make tableside omelets really worth it when you have an extremely talented BoH staff ready to go? No. Can that same waiter maybe mix up some guacamole so your customers get something they are excited about and know is fresh? Yes, absolutely.
