excerpt:
“The grosser a dish sounds the better. That’s the philosophy some chefs are adopting when coming up with names for dishes on their menu. From Kitchen Sink Chopped Salad to Debris Sandwich, chefs are giving food a bad name. Luckily, they’ve been able to convince customers the dishes taste better than they sound, and for many, the marketing gimmick has paid off.San Pedro chef/co-owner Michael Goodman created the Fat Boy Man Salad at home a few years ago, when he wanted to eat more nutritiously. His vegetarian creation consisted of baby field greens, carrots, grape tomatoes, beets and green beans. It tasted terrific, but Goodman found it wasn’t enough to satisfy his hunger. Soon, he began super-sizing it.
“It was obnoxiously large,” says Goodman. “People started calling it the Fat Boy Man Salad.”
Article: “How to increase your prices” (Aug.2006)
excerpt:
“The thought of price increases causes anxiety for many operators. But clever pricing is a great opportunity to practise your marketing skills, build your reputation and increase your profits.When inflation was high, price rises were almost a sport – now they’ve become an agonising debate. One thing’s for sure – you live by price and you die by price. Operators still holding the price of meals to what they were 12 months ago are bearing the brunt of massive increases in the cost of fuel and ingredients. Profitability is suffering.
So how do you put up prices with confidence and style?”
source: “How to increase your prices” (ProfitableHospitality.com, Aug.2006) [public access til Aug.19th]
Article: “Lehndorff: Spell-check those menus” (Aug.2006)
excerpt:
“I should be relaxing during these dog days of summer, but big questions plague my overheated mind. I get picky, picky, picky and wonder:Why don’t people who write restaurant menus use spell-checker or have someone proofread them before they print them? I constantly catch spelling and grammatical errors among the starters and entrees. When I see “prosciutto wrapped shrimp,” I wonder why there isn’t a hyphen connecting the modifiers, i.e., “prosciutto-wrapped.”
It makes me think there are other details that have slipped below the management’s radar…”
source: “Lehndorff: Spell-check those menus” by John Lehndorff (Rocky Mountain News, Aug.4,2006)
related link:
Resource: Customers list their restaurant pet peeves and annoyances [WaiterBell Blog]
Article: “Customer demand means beverage options overflow” (Aug.2006)
excerpt:
“Walk into any of the area’s Potbelly Sandwich Works and, next to the counter, there’s a large, refrigerated cooler full of soda, tea and water.Unlike many chains, most Potbelly outlets don’t offer fountain drinks. The decision to offer bottles and cans is part of the chain’s quirkiness.
But it turns out that an increasing number of restaurants, even those that rely largely on fountain drinks, are increasing the variety of offerings by adding beverages in bottles and cans…”
Free: Restaurant Industry, Hospitality, and Foodservice Discussion Forums
If you would like to hear how others in the restaurant, hospitality, and foodservice industry feel about a topic, then visiting and/or participating in a discussion forum can be very helpful. While there are some fee-based membership forums for restaurant owners, here are some message boards where restaurant folks are talking for free:
Foodservice.com’s Industry Discussion Forums
sample forums:
Restaurant Biz Talk
TechTalk – Restaurant POS / Software
Chefs and Cooks Corner
Chef2Chef’s Professional Community Forums
sample forums:
Ask a Chef! Get an Answer!
Restaurant Equipment Forum
Wine Beer Spirit and Beverage Forum
Topix’s Restaurant Management Forum
Restaurant Report’s “The Great Debates” and “Question & Answer“
StarChefs’ Message Board
ChefTalk’s Cooking Forums
Atlanta Cuisine’s Restaurant Talk
Article: “A menu of tasks” (Jul.2006)
excerpt:
“About a quarter of U.S. restaurants fail within a year, and 50 percent to 60 percent by the third year, according to three studies cited by the California Restaurant Association.Many owners underestimate the start-up costs and do not do enough market research or staff training, said Jordan Traverso, the group’s director of communication.
Experts said problems can arise if the quality of the cooking slips.
Mark Smallwood, owner of Harvest Moon restaurant in Modesto, said this is not a problem in his restaurant because he makes sure the kitchen crew knows what he wants…”
source: “A menu of tasks” by John Holland (Modesto Bee, Jul.30,2006)
Article: “Key to great service is avoiding the 12 fatal flaws” (Jul.2006)
excerpt:
“When plotting service strategy and delivery, too many operators, managers and trainers focus on what they should “do” for their guests. I think it’s just as instructive and illuminating to define first what not to do. In other words, do you know what you don’t know that you don’t know?So let’s take a closer look at what not to do to the guest and examine the fatal flaws of service-giving as seen through the customer’s lens. Eliminate these service blunders, and you may no longer have the need to “teach” service at all, because your customers will have a consistent experience characterized by the absence of complaints…”
source: “Key to great service is avoiding the 12 fatal flaws” by Jim Sullivan (Nation’s Restaurant News, Jul.31,2006) [free registration req.]