To wrap up our series of blog posts about improving your bottom line, I’d like to cover a few extra ways to save your business money—and increase your profits.  One is through creative menu-making.  With food costs in flux, many restaurateurs are finding this to be a good time to rework their menus, featuring high-profit and value-oriented items in the most eye-catching locations.  Changes in menu offerings and prices often lead to renewed customer interest and higher profits.  Rather than outsource your menu-making, though, make your own menus with quality menu paper and protective menu jackets.  Making your own menus also allows you complete control over the finished product.  If you’re looking for a way to offer seasonal items or daily specials, consider inexpensive table tents; use them to keep your food inventory in check and reduce spoilage.  Write-on signs are another good choice for featuring a particular dish for a limited time.

Besides revamping your menu, it’s always a good time to reenergize your employees.  The foodservice industry isn’t suffering the labor shortages more common in years past, but it is still important to invest in keeping your managers, cooks, and wait staff at the top of their game.  An essential tool in brushing up on skills or retraining staff is a collection of specialized foodservice training books and manuals.  In fact, with “poor service” often named the #1 consumer complaint about dining out, training your staff to offer the best service possible is a way to differentiate yourself from your competition.

You can give new life to your seating, too, with replacement furniture parts.  In these economic times, it is often more cost-effective to replace the necessary parts rather than purchase new.  For example, a barstool with a worn seat can get a fresh look with a slip-on seat cover—at a fraction of the cost of new furniture.  Even if you’d just like to test out a new décor, barstool covers and replacement seats allow you to make the transformation at a minimal cost.  At Serv-U, we carry replacement seats for wood furniture, upholstered seats for metal barstools, barstool swivels, slip-on barstool covers, metal barstool frames, chair glides, table base plates and columns, and even upholstery by the yard.

Of course, there are times when you need new furniture.  After all, your dining area needs to be comfortable, inviting, and up-to-date for your guests.  For new restaurant furniture, you can count on Serv-U to supply you with top-quality chairs, barstools, booths, and tables at factory-direct prices.  For the best quality furniture for the price, look for Serv-U Furniture in our catalog and online.  Many styles are in-stock for immediate shipment, and our sales staff is very well versed on the details of our furniture; just call 800-797-3788 to have any questions answered.  We also have complete turnkey services if you are considering a remodeled kitchen or dining area; for details, call 800-797-3788.

In these economic times, security is critical.  Be sure that you protect your hard earned profits by using a heavy duty safe.  Depository safes allow employees to make quick and easy deposits without access to the inside of the safe.  If you have any more money-saving tips or if you have tried any of the above ideas successfully, email your stories to us at servusales@servu-online.com and we will add them to this blog.  Thank you for your patronage.

When it comes to making new menus, many factors must come into play; food cost and availability will likely be at the top of any restaurateur’s mind.  According to a Time article, though, the font may be in the back of the customer’s mind.

This news article is based on a report that will appear in October in Psychological Science, and the researchers report that certain font types on menus convey very particular emotions to diners.

“To conduct one of her experiments, Song compared the responses of subjects exposed to menu descriptions typed in a simple Arial font with responses from those exposed to identical dish descriptions in a harder-to-read Mistral font. Subjects in the latter group were more likely to conclude that the dish was hard to prepare and required great skill.”

So if food costs are worrying you, and it’s time for that dreaded price increase, using a fancy font on your new menu may lead diners to believe that there is an added value to the food.  Of course, use this tactic at your own peril, as some suggest fancy fonts will bring nothing but trouble:

“ ‘Using fancy fonts and small print may suggest that you're sophisticated, fancy and highbrow, but also pretentious and unapproachable,’ says Aaron Allen, founder and CEO of the Quantified Marketing Group, a restaurant design and marketing company based in Orlando, Florida.”

But if you really are ready for an exciting menu project, you might take a lesson from Bennigan’s.  The nationwide casual chain has recently come out with an all-Spanish menu because, as their director of marketing says, “The U.S. Hispanic community is our country’s fastest-growing segment, and this new menu is just one more way we can welcome those customers.”

…Speaking of Spanish-language offerings, here at Serv-U, se habla espanol; favor de llamar 800-797-3788!  Serv-U has everything necessary to create your new menus, so give us a call!

With the slumping economy and people being more careful with how they spend their money restaurants are having to come up with innovative ways to bring in customers. One method being tried out across the country is to gear the theme of their restaurant toward their target audience.

An article earlier this month in The Dallas Morning News discussed a local restaurant that had changed its theme to one that catered to people (mainly men) who wanted to relax and have a good time with their friends.

The restaurant in the article had a lodge-type feel, which was accomplished by putting animals on the walls and serving a heavily meat themed menu. The owner also put television sets all around the restaurant to broadcast games and other big events on, which he believed would help to draw in men during busy sport seasons.

Other restaurant owners follow the same pattern when trying to draw in their target audience. Whether it is a seafood restaurant with fish nets on the wall or an Italian restaurant with red and white tablecloths, restaurant owners know that the looks of their business are important to their customers and can help bring them in again and again.

It’s easy to cater to your target demographic if you have the right furniture, decorations, table settings, and menu items. If you think your business could use an update to help get your target audience call your Serv-U representative today. They can help you get everything you need to have the restaurant you want.   

How about some news you can use?

The National Restaurant Association has released its 2007/2008 Restaurant Industry Operations Report and the Examiner.com had the opportunity to interview Hudson Riehle (the NRA’s senior VP of research and information services).  You can see the article here, but the main ideas were that a tough economy is forcing ingenuity in the restaurant business.  Namely increasing food and energy costs are putting the squeeze on many restaurateurs and some suggestions for pulling in more profits include wireless ordering systems and advertising online and through cell phones.

The good news?  Restaurant sales volume finally increased in March—for the first time since December.

More news...
 

Remember my recent blog post about celebrity chefs coming to the NRA Show in May?  Well, if you are looking for your fifteen minutes of fame—and the chance to stand side by side with those celebrity chefs—your opportunity has come.  The National Restaurant Association recently announced a YouTube-based competition called the “Hot Chef” Challenge.  Basically, all you have to do is make a great 2 minute video of yourself making a trendy dish and alcoholic beverage.  Submit it to the appropriate YouTube channel by May 7^th and tell your friends to vote for you.  Get all the details from the NRA.

We’ve been very busy at Serv-U in the past year; we’ve moved to a new location, created a fresh homepage for our web site, become Energy Star Partners, and launched an industry-best web page dedicated to energy efficiency incentives, among other things.

Today, I’d like to highlight one of our most recent endeavors—our new “Featured Product of the Day” on Serv-U’s homepage.  The “Featured Product of the Day” is available at a special discounted price for one day only; tomorrow, a new product and price will be featured, and so on.  Come back daily to see what the latest restaurant equipment deal is.

If you’d like to receive emails with Serv-U’s latest news (including special pricing offers), simply join our mailing list.  Keep reading the Restaurant Guru blogs for restaurant equipment tips and food service news.  If you have questions or requests for the Restaurant Guru, post a comment here and I’ll do my best to answer!

Good news for independent restaurant operations!  Though the public may not be eating out as often these days, they are dining out more selectively.  Many potential patrons are seeking a unique experience, one that can only be found in a unique restaurant.  So how do you go about getting the lion’s share of this market?  Your restaurant needs to create a unique experience for your guests, one that they will remember and talk about later—thus drawing more customers without a penny of marketing money spent.

Where to start?  You might start with your menu.  With a slight lull in sales, I have seen restaurant operators debating increasing their menu offerings.  However, this can be a risky move if it dilutes your restaurant’s message.  Does your food have a theme—or a quirkiness that you could play on as a strength?  What makes your food memorable?  Make sure your menu reflects your restaurant’s uniqueness: in the food and in the look of the menu.  You can find all the menu accessories you need here at Serv-U.

Confident in your menu, move on to décor.  Delicious food alone may be enough to keep people coming, but creating an interesting dining environment is one more piece of the puzzle.  If you don’t have a cohesive décor yet, now might be the time to cultivate it.  Get creative and dream big; ask trusted friends for ideas.  And then go with your instincts.  If your budget permits, start with tables and chairs.  If you’d like to “test the waters” first, start by freshening up smaller items like wall art, tabletop lighting, tablecloths, even interesting glassware and dinnerware.  Don't stop there, though; consider other tabletop items like ceramic vases and stainless steel holloware, metal serving baskets, and sizzling cast iron skillets.

Stuck for ideas?  Check out this wacky list of unique dining experiences.  I don't know if I’d like to eat in a morgue, but I’m sure that if I ever did, I’d never forget it!

Lessons in glassware; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Glass is stylish, elegant, and fragile.  You can’t always prevent breakage, but there are ways to make it less likely.  Did you know that mechanical shock to glass can lead to thermal shock?  (Example: that glass that miraculously survived a fall yesterday may crack in the hot dishwasher today.  The mechanical shock weakened it and the thermal shock finished it off.)

And mechanical shock can come in places you might not expect.  Like the bus tray; your glassware will fare better if it is separated from the cutlery and dinnerware.  And unless your glass is specifically marked as “stackable,” it really shouldn’t be stacked together.  It’s better to store it in glass racks, but even your ware washing equipment needs to be appropriately sized to offer the best protection for your investment.

To get an idea of what size glass rack is best for your needs, print out a copy of Carlisle’s glass rack sizing guide.

Even housing your glassware appropriately isn’t full protection against thermal shock, though.  If your restaurant turns tables so quickly that you are forced to use glasses straight from the dishwasher, those glasses could be weakened by thermal shock.  It’s best to allow glasses to cool to room temperature before adding icy beverages, or to “pre-heat” the glass (with warm water) before serving hot drinks.  To avoid using dishwasher-warm glasses, a restaurant that turns tables very quickly should generally have glassware to support three times the number of table settings.  An eatery with a slower pace can do with two times the number of place settings, and a facility like a banquet hall only needs enough glass for one round of settings.

Like so many things, a small up-front investment can save your business money in the long haul.

What's your restaurant's furniture say about your style?  Is it laid-back?  Is it elegant? 

 (photo of turnkey restaurant: see Serv-U's Flickr photos)

Besides the style of furniture, the spacing of your seating affects the way your restaurant is perceived.  Sometimes I'm in the mood to sit elbow-to-elbow with a group of friends, and sometimes I want a quiet table well away from other patrons while enjoying a romantic evening with my sweetie.  To this end, I found a helpful spacing guide in SEFA's Reference Guide book and thought I'd pass it along:

Spacing Consideration for Furnishings

• 14 sq. ft. per person for spacious dining
• 12 sq. ft. per person for cafeteria or restaurant
• 10 sq. ft. per person for banquet, instituational, or close seating
• Allow 18” for person seating from edge of table to back of chair.
• Diagonal seating saves floor space.  Deuce tables and wall spacing save the most space.
• Allow 42” between squared tables for chairs back to back—leaves 6” to push out.
• Allow 60” between squared tables for chairs back to back –leaves 26” service aisle.
• Allow 24” between corners of diagonal table for customer access—no aisle.
• Allow 30” between corners of diagonal tables for customer access—narrow aisle.

 Note: Where space is limited, booths require only 8 sq. ft. per person, including aisle allowance.

Estimating Seating Capacity per Square Foot

For Banquet Seating:  When using oblong tables, divide the room area (sq. ft.) by 8.  When using round tables, divide the room area (sq. ft.) by 10.  These figures are for maximum seating.  If space is available for more comfortable seating, allow an additional 2 sq. ft. per person.

For Seminar Seating:  Divide “attendee” seating area (sq. ft.) by 8.  This formula allows for chair and passage aisle, but not for wide traffic aisles, doors, exits, posts, or other obstructions.  It is useful for a quick approximation.

When planning seating several factors must be considered:

• Cost per square foot per person. 
• Approximate tables for the best usage of space. 
• Ease of providing service to tables

Well, it’s getting to be that time of year, the days when holiday food abounds.  I’m not complaining, per se, but this means a lot more time than usual spent planning and executing special dishes.  So I began thinking about the kitchen gadgets that make the job of cooking just a bit easier.  My top picks are:

1. My heavy-duty mixer.  Like most people, I make an awful lot of cookies during the holidays and it pains me to even think of the time before I had one of these!
   
2. The trusty wine bottle-opener in my cupboard.  (I love cooking with a little glass of chianti at my side…)
   
3. The food warmer gets a lot of use at family gatherings and holiday potlucks these days.  
   

Now for my wish-list…because even the Restaurant Guru doesn’t have the “perfect” kitchen:

1. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a nice countertop fryer!
                     
2. Bar stools.  I know this one doesn’t seem that helpful in the kitchen, but they’d make any holiday party just a little cooler.
     
3. A tortilla press.  I  l-o-v-e  LOVE Mexican food and really want to start making my own tortillas.  
     

 So…Santa, I know you won’t let me down!