INVENTORY: It's Time to Change How You Take Your Restaurant Inventory [Presented by Orderly]
Customers have changed. They want fresh, they want local, they want unique. And though you've started to change your menu, you've stuck with your old methods for counting your stockroom. But if you want to survive in the new-look restaurant industry, you need to adapt the way you do your restaurant inventory counts. Don't let profitability pass you by. It's time to take the right steps towards a profitable future.
DID YOU KNOWS…
When Craft Brews are Big Brews
Craft brews are pretty hot right now. And while there are 10,000+ independent craft brews in the US, there’s a good number of smaller brands that are actually owned by big beer companies. This infographic from The Mad Fermentationist shows what beer brands are owned by what companies.
A Portrait of Summer League
The NBA shot two Summer League games in vertical (portrait mode) for phone consumption, and it might do more of the same. This also provides extra social media fodder for the league and teams, too. But if the NBA decides to do more phone-friendly shoots, it’ll be as an add-on option – not the norm… for now.
A Tip About Tips
It’s rarely a good idea to shame your guests, especially if they were polite and paid their bill in full. Beer 88, however, did the opposite, publicly shaming a 17-year-old kid who paid for their $45 meal + tip with a $20 bill and a crapton of quarters. Like, we get that counting all those coins is annoying, but vent about it in the back. Shaming via Facebook was not wise and now they’re feeling the heat.
CHEW AND SCREWED.
Why it matters to you: Police in Missouri falsely accused black IHOP customers of leaving without paying; how do we all avoid this scenario?
At an IHOP in suburban St. Louis, a group dined & dashed on the tab. The manager called the police, vaguely describing the group as “young black men.” That’s when this routine dine & dash turned into a full-grown fiasco.
The police ran into a group of 10 black male students who swore that it wasn’t them who skipped out on the bill. They even showed their receipts to prove they had paid their tabs. The cops forced the students to return to IHOP to settle on the skipped tab. The issue here? The students were telling the truth and they were just on their way to catch some public transit nearby. When the students arrived the manager quickly told the police officers that they weren’t the guys in question and they could go.
What is the point of this story? We need to accurately describe anyone who dines & dashes if we are to get the police involved. One reason being that we’d all rather not inconvenience innocent people going about their business. Two, if the incident makes the news it can reflect poorly on your business even if it’s the police who were in the wrong. We need to try to remember outfits, how many people were involved, and whatever other seemingly minute details we can to give the police useful information to catch the guilty parties and not have them out wandering aimlessly for “young black men” (a task that sounds and ends very bad, historically). In short, if we’re going to get the cops involved, we need to give them useful and detailed info so we can get our retribution and keep innocent people safe.
WHEN TO ASK FOR SOME HELP
Why it matters to you: We all go through a rocky time at some point; here are some examples of when to call in a consultant to your establishment(s).
Before we open up a restaurant or bar, everything has to be considered: the staff, menu, tables, chairs, light fixtures, everything. Many folks will hire a consultant to help them along. We wanted to highlight some instances when it may be a good time to call in a restaurant consultant for aid(hint: there is never shame in asking for help).
Often many of us may decide it is time for some renovations or a mix up in style or service. This is an excellent time to get the opinions of an outside party. A good consultant can make you think in ways you may not have considered previously. They can help with oft-overlooked aspects of a successful restaurant like type of lighting and tone, artwork, music vs no music, rethinking your staffs’ uniform, all the way down to analyzing your menu and its pricing, etc. If you especially like your consultant, you can even get them on retainer much like a lawyer. Our point is there is never a bad time to bring in some help, plus you never have to make any of the changes if you strongly disagree with their opinions.
