excerpt:
“It’s the age-old question: Should I tip for takeout?After all, nobody sets your table, fills your water glass or listens to you whine about the spots on your butter knife. The kitchen does most of the work.
On the other hand, somebody goes to the trouble of packaging the food, utensils and napkins, and double-checking the order — hopefully — before ringing it up.
Understandably, opinions on the subject vary…”
excerpt:
“You’re ready for the grand opening of your all-American burger joint when you learn McDonald’s is moving in next door. What do you do? Don’t panic. There are a number of steps you can take to give your independent restaurant the edge it needs to take on a chain.“The number one way small businesses can compete with chains is by nurturing the relationships they have with the customer,” says Joe Erickson, editor of RestaurantOwner.com, an online resource and networking tool for independent restaurateurs. “Collect their names, birthdays, anniversaries, and their specific likes, and use that [information] to start a direct mail campaign….”
source: “Independent Restaurants, Lose the Chains” by Douglas MacMillan (BusinessWeek,Jun.29,2006)
related segment:
An Edible Game Plan
There are a slew of ways to compete with franchises, according to 10 independent restaurateurs around the country…(click here for more)
excerpt:
“Diners may regard a menu as little more than a restaurant’s bill of fare, but chefs and owners know these deceptively simple-looking lists are layered with significance.…Experts agree.
“The menu is probably the single most important piece of marketing [a restaurant] will ever produce,” says Isidore Kharasch, president of Hospitality Works Inc., a restaurant consulting firm in Deerfield. “What they do with it can make a big difference in how people spend money, how they perceive the restaurant–it’s really the whole package.”
source: “Designs on menus” by Janet Franz (Chicago Tribune, Jun.29,2006)
excerpt:
“Calls continue to come in re garding customer concerns and complaints over common dining challenges. Challenge is polite lan guage for a whole parcel of often appal ling and outra geous situa tions.Because there’s usually some measure of “he said, she said,” some of these calls and e-mails are edited. The concerns still stand – and so, I hope, do my observations.
Loud, noisy restaurants
Why do restaurant owners equate dining, both fine and moderate, with frenzied? We frequently feel as though we are sitting inside a steel drum that is being played on our heads…”
source: “The bad aftertaste of dining out” by Joe Crea (The Plain Dealer, Jun.28,2006)
excerpt:
“In customer service parlance, however, “demanding customers” mean people who feel comfortable telling you what they want. You make them know that you want them to be fussy and tell you their requests. If you have this kind of environment, you attract customers with high expectations who are willing to pay for what they want.Phil Wexler gave one example of how you can encourage your customers to be demanding. He featured Max’s Laws of Max’s Deli in San Francisco, which has 20 laws their customers must abide by and not their employees.
- This restaurant is run for the enjoyment and pleasure of our customers, not the convenience of the staff or owners.
- You get gree round of drinks if anyone on our staff comes up and says, “Is everything all right?” When we aske questions, they’ll be helpful ones…”
News:
June 28, 2006
With a Cellphone as My Guide (NY Times)
June 23, 2006
Wireless on the grow in Mesquite cafes (The Mesquite News)
June 22, 2006
Research Conference Addresses Web Usability (ABC News)
The iKitchen: Pods and Pans (The Sun News)
June 21, 2006
Food fast, not fast food (Houston Chronicle)
June 17, 2006
As restaurants turn to technology, Delray Beach’s Siva Corp. has a full plate (Sun-Sentinel)
June 16, 2006
Fast-food assistant ‘Hyperactive Bob’ example of robots’ growing role (Post-Gazette)
Press Release:
excerpt:
“What is a service standard, exactly? One very successful business’s read: “We will endeavor to greet people in the way we want to be greeted. Once they’re with us, we will treat them with respect and the knowledge that they know our business almost as well as we do. In return, we will expect to get the kind of feedback that will allow us to continually improve and change anything that is not working in our organization.”Many organizations already have service standards, but most don’t actually practice them even intermittently throughout the organization. Your service standards need to be a part of the business’s fabric, and those running the organization need to make the standards something their people do on a regular basis.”
excerpt:
“The average employee turnover rate for the food service industry ranges from 45 percent to 63 percent annually, according to the National Restaurant Association. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, turnover within food and drinking services hovers around 20 percent in Montana.Unfortunately, entry-level employees tend to abandon their jobs at the beginning of the summer, just as restaurants are gearing up for the busy tourist season.
In answer, many restaurants have replaced their career ladders with escalators, offering fast-track training programs and promotions in a bid to earn loyalty from top-level kitchen staff while inspiring those further down the chain.”
excerpt:
“Most bar patrons have severe misconceptions about the actual lives of bartenders—who we are, what we do and why we do it. Also, remember that the interaction between bartender and customer is a delicate one; it’s both an economic and a social relationship that has stood the test of time. Most other relationships in life are fleeting but, if managed properly, the partnership between drinkers and their bartenders is sacred.Consider this a pocket-size operating manual for our mutual good times. And, if these points are taken to heart, we can continue to raise our collective glasses and toast to our long, drunken future together.
So forget all those third-person fluff pieces you’ve read everywhere else. Here it is: the plain truth about bartending, from someone who knows.”
source: “The Barman Speaks” by Ryan Osterbeck (MetroActive, Jun.21,2006)
excerpt:
"One restaurant. Two nights. Two markedly different dining experiences.The pitfall of restaurant reviewing is that cooking and service are performance arts. If a cook calls in sick one night or a server is off his game, dinner may not reflect a restaurant's usual standards. Yet, you can't just discount those off nights. The check is the same whether the operation is running smoothly or stumbling along.
Nowhere was that problem more clear than at the Basin in downtown Saratoga, where I ate two dinners in one week. On a Monday, rarely a restaurant's best night, the food was poorly cooked, the service inattentive, and I left fuming that I had spent so much on such a disappointing meal. A few nights later, when the kitchen was in good form and our server charming and solicitous, I could understand why this place has become a favorite among Silicon Valley execs who live in multimillion-dollar homes nearby."
source: "The Basin stumbles one night, satisfies another" by Aleta Wilson (Mercury News, Jun.21,2006)
WaiterBell Angle: Ensuring consistent quality in the dining experience is a constant challenge for a restaurant. Would you go into a restaurant if you had a 50/50 chance of having an enjoyable meal?
WaiterBell Blog: In the Restaurant Customer Service Business 