The Fundamentals Of Running A Restaurant

It seems like everyone and her third cousin is running a restaurant these days. In the U.S., 935,000 eateries serve more than 70 billion meals and snacks per year, according to the National Restaurant Association.

You know something about food and wine. You like people. You could be a restaurateur, right?

It’s a sexy idea–until you realize how hard starting a restaurant really is. Soon enough, questions will be flying like grains of sea salt. What permits do you need? What are your start-up costs? Where should you buy your produce? What corporate structure should you choose?

In other words, you need to know the fundamentals.

That’s why Forbes.com is breaking down those building blocks by answering eight core questions related to a given industry. Taken together, the information will give budding entrepreneurs a head start on making those first critical steps.

So start mastering the Fundamentals. Your entrepreneurial dreams depend on them.

 http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2007/02/02/small-business-restaurant-ent-manage-cx_bn_0202fundamentals_lander.html

Restaurateur Fights Online Mudslinging

His contemporary American cuisine eatery, 21P, is named for its address, 2100 P Street NW, in the district’s hip DuPont Circle neighborhood. The owner and chef says he learned of the first incident in May from a nearby competitor. About 10 reviews had appeared simultaneously in the site’s City Guide section. They claimed that the eatery used recipes from cookbooks instead of preparing originally-designed meals, and its antique floor boards were unstable, among other remarks. Mr. Sakuta says the accusations are false and he suspected that former employees may have been involved.

http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/marketingsales/20061024-needleman-restaurant.html?refresh=on

Where everyone’s a critic with star power

Consumer-behavior experts once advised that customers who had a bad experience at a store or restaurant would tell 10 others.

That was before an estimated 70 percent of Americans had Internet access.

Today, the old saying “Everyone’s a critic” has greater resonance and relevance for those in the customer-service business, because even amateur critics’ opinions have the potential to be seen by thousands of people or more.

See Full Article http://www.timesunion.com/aspstories/story.asp?storyID=530796

Compliments to the staff

Who doesn’t appreciate a little pat on the back?

“If we have notably good service or food, we will tell the server, and sometimes we’ll even ask to speak to a manager and give that person feedback directly,” Michaels says. “Recognition from a manager can be a great motivator to keep up the good service.”

Mott likes hearing from customers.

“It makes you glad you’re doing what you’re doing,” she says. “This just happened to me on Saturday. I was taking an order, and a gentleman from another table came up to us and told the table, ‘You’ve got the best waitress in the house.’ It makes you feel good.”
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061004/LIFE/610040343/1004

A restaurant’s feedback needs to be good

A restaurant’s feedback needs to be good to get patrons back for a feed, writes John Lethlean.

Oh, the things waiters say when they don’t know to whom they’re talking. The little slips, the grumpy faux pas, the rude retorts.

There was the waiter who was asked what “twice cooked” meant. His response was that the meat was cooked yesterday, and then put in the fridge overnight “and then cooked again today before serving”. It was possibly true, but it didn’t put much of a spin on the chef’s technique.

There was the waiter who growled “you don’t want dessert, do you?” After being told that yes, the diners did want dessert, she responded: “Well, there is a 45-minute wait.” Told the diners only wanted ice-cream, she insisted this would make no difference; when the dessert finally arrived, it was not what had been ordered.

Then there’s the restaurant-table-as-confessional scenario.

A couple was seated with menus for 10 minutes with no service. The very apologetic waiter returned and explained that everything was going wrong today. They were short-staffed. There weren’t enough wait staff to cover a function as well as the cafe and to top it all off, the head chef was off sick. The waitress confessed that an agency chef was cooking, advising that some dishes were “a better bet” than others to order, as the chef “looked disoriented”.

Full Article -  http://www.theage.com.au/news/epicure/the-word-on-the-flaw/2006/09/22/1158431887508.html

Online Reviews and Small Businesses

DeBare ends with some good tactical tips:

• Find out what people are saying about you. Even if you don’t know anything about Internet review sites, they may know about you. Do a Google or Yahoo search with your business name and “reviews” and see what comes up.
• Respond to unhappy customers. Some sites allow you to send a personal message to reviewers; others let you post a public response. If a reviewer has a legitimate gripe, e-mail him or her with an apology. Consider making amends for their bad experience with the offer of a free or discounted service. If the site allows a public response, try to explain your side of the story without sounding defensive or angry. Avoid getting into a cycle of hostile accusations.
• Respond to happy customers. You can’t ever thank people too much. If possible, send a thank-you note or small gift to people who write positive reviews.
  

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  Hmm…maybe there’s a business here: an outsourced company that would monitor what people are saying about an organization and help the unhappy ones and thank the happy ones. Bloggers could use company to thank other bloggers for links, post comments, and respond to tirades, etc. It would be perfect for someone who wanted to work at home.
  

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• Use reviews to improve your operations. Some negative reviews are off the mark, but most provide at least a kernel of truth about problems in your business. Take steps to fix these problems.
• Encourage your customers to post reviews. Mention these review sites to your regular customers, and tell them how much you would appreciate them posting an honest review about you.
• Use positive reviews in your marketing. Just like a Zagat’s write-up or a newspaper profile, a good online review can be posted in your shop window or on your Web site.

See Full Story   http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/09/online_reviews.html

Keep your customers happy and coming back for more

Why should you care?

The 80/20 rule means that if you can define your critical few customers and target marketing directly to their needs, it’s likely to pay off big time. The cost of acquiring new customers, according to many surveys, runs 8 to 10 times more than the cost of keeping existing ones. So you get a stronger return on your marketing dollars and better sales by focusing on 20% or so of your top-tier prospects. Usually, that requires three steps:

•	Identify and characterize your key customers.
•	Target messages in suitable media to hit nerves among the important customer segments.
•	Build in a payoff that rewards customers for giving you time and attention.

Here’s how to stay connected to customers who count.

Click here to read full article

Good reasons to post customer reviews on your site

Today’s customers are putting less trust in corporate marketing messages and becoming more influenced by recommendations from other people, surveys show. Customer reviews — customer opinions on products or services that companies publish on their Web sites — are now widely read. With the right execution, companies can use customer reviews to improve results across the board, from marketing to product development.

PowerReviews provides its services for free in exchange for using reviews on its own shopping research portal. Bazaarvoice and other online-review specialists follow a more traditional pricing structure. A typical installation runs about $2,000 a month

See Full Article

http://www.microsoft.com/midsizebusiness/businessvalue/onlinereviews.mspx

Nightclub sues over MySpace.com postings

“Hey guys,” the posting on MySpace begins. “Everyone knows that Ymetro.com has been behind Cuccini’s from day one and we really feel betrayed. As of today, we are asking everyone to go to the Vault, Scores or Smoke (other San Jose nightclubs) and to boycott Cuccini’s.”

The posting and the e-mail messages must have had an effect. In the lawsuit, Mr. Shafazand says his clubs “have suffered loss of reputation (and) financial harm.” The lawsuit says Mr. Shafazand “has suffered extreme emotional distress.”

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2006/09/18/story8.html?page=1&b=1158552000^1345552

Bad attitudes leave diners with service indigestion

Her eyes never left her computer as she delivered this information that felt more like a command. I stood there in disbelief of her “whatever” attitude. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up, feeling my attitude deflate like a pin-pricked balloon.

“Although the food was quite good and the menu creative, the less-than-mediocre service experience warranted a talk with the manager, assuming he would welcome my feedback”.

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2006/08/07/smallb4.html