A Guide To Hiring A Restaurant Consultant

Consider the following conversation.

restaurant owner: Hey, got a minute?

General Manager: Sure. What do you have for me?

Owner: I’ve been looking at some figures. Food and labor costs are only going up, and the loan I got two years ago isn’t going to do me any favors either starting September. We need to refinance and take control of our costs, and we need to start doing it now.

Manager: About controlling our costs, I have some ideas. But I don’t have the time to implement them since I have my hands full with the operations. About refinancing, beats me. I didn’t sign up for that.

Owner: I see. I guess it’s time to bring in a restaurant consultant.

As a restaurant owner, a time will come when you need to hire a restaurant consultant. It’s something that happens over the course of managing a growing restaurant business.

restaurant consultants sell ability, time, credibility and experience to find information you need to stay on top of things. These professionals are trained and carry the experience to advise you on any number of things, including interior design, concept development, financial information systems, development assistance, etc. When your business hits a dead end, restaurant consultants help put you back on track.

But the question remains: how do I hire a restaurant consultant?

Here are the basic steps:

1. Begin a preliminary search
The first objective is to find the right consultant with the right solution to your problem.

Ask friends or colleagues if they could recommend you a good consultant, someone they’ve worked with in the past. Find out if their situation back then is similar to what your business is experiencing right now, and if they were satisfied with the consultant’s performance.

2. Discuss the project with each consultant
The goal is to create a shortlist of three or four consultants who you think is the missing link to your restaurant’s success.

By now you should have a fairly good idea of what you need to do with your finances. Discuss this project with the finalists and listen very carefully to their feedback. What they have to say about your problem could very well spell the difference between a good consultant and a bad one.

3. Ask for a written proposal
It’s time to see what these guys are capable of. Ask them to pass a written proposal regarding your current financial problems, as well as references, company brochures and collateral from the other candidates.

4. Analyze the proposals
Study the proposals and screen the remaining candidates based on how well they understood your ongoing dilemma. Ask them to explain their proposed solution very carefully, and from there determine if everything is realistic and well-thought out.

5. Choose the best consultant
It’s decision time once again. Consider everything you’ve learned about the finalists up to this moment, and then make a decision. Pick who you think is the most qualified consultant to work with you on the project.

It should be noted that restaurant consultants are paid by the hour. So save time and money by giving him all the information he needs right from the beginning. Withholding information from him won’t be doing you, or your wallet, any good.

Three Big Reasons How Swine Flu Will Affect Your Restaurant Business

The Chinese proverb says, Humans would get killed for money, birds would get killed for food.

So far the proverb has proven true. I hate to think of a time when people are getting killed for food. But with the surfacing of a new virus, what they call swine influenza, it is yet another strain in a long line of strains that is especially killing for restaurant entrepreneurs like yourself.

The true situation about the swine flu should reveal in the next couple weeks. But as a restaurant owner and a businessman, you need to be ready. How is this swine flu business going to affect your business?

Here are three big reasons how.

1. Aversion to pork
It’s been made clear that the swine flu virus doesn’t transmit through eating foods of any kind, even pork. The CFIA has released a statement about this issue.

“The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has been very clear in stating that swine flu is *not* a food safety concern. It remains safe to eat properly cooked pork products.”

But even so, who could blame someone for developing an aversion to pork after seeing all those death tolls rise every day on TV? Even my wife doesn’t want me eating pork these days, and it’s got nothing to do with my cholesterol levels.

As the infection worsens, more people are going to stay away from pork products on your menu. The worst part is, there’s nothing you can do about it.

2. Effect on food supply
Okay. Somebody orders pork on your menu. But what can you do when the supply itself doesn’t hold? The disruption of pork trade in the country will affect prices in the long run, and eventually, it will affect your business as well.

The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA), with the help of the Canadian Pork Council and Canadian Meat Council, is closely monitoring the circulation of pork products in the country. There are no indications of supply issues as we speak. But since the infection is still going on, only time will tell…

3. Less people would eat out altogether
Remember the days of the SARS outbreak when people chose to stay in their homes and even less people preferred to dine outside. Sure, the swine flu isn’t there yet, but nobody’s saying it won’t get there either.

As a precaution, the Public Health Agency of Canada has released the most up-to-date information about the swine flu on its website, especially now that a total of 13 cases of human swine flu have been confirmed in Canada, as of April 28, 2009.

You can read more about the swine flu virus on the PHAC website.

A blogger made some observations on the effects of swine flu on restaurants in Hong Kong, and wrote the following on his blog,

“…aside from the hot sales of masks, there is little sign of panic among us here in Hong Kong, restaurants are still packed with people and few are wearing masks, I hope the situation worldwide will soon be better, but no precaution is excessive, and keeping good personal hygiene is what each of us can do to help.”

The swine flue outbreak is still in its early stages, and there’s no telling how else it will affect restaurant businesses in the country. As a restaurant owner, the only thing you’re capable of doing right now is to prepare for the worst.

Hopefully the outbreak will end soon enough to not deserve another proverb.

Double Your Sales By Advertising Your Menu

Social media is getting a lot of attention these days. Whether you need to let out some steam before going to bed at night, or simply bored with work at the office, millions of people are connecting and exchanging bits of information over this digital landscape that is the Internet.

For the average person, this means fun. For the restaurant entrepreneur, this means sales.

If you own a foodservice establishment—restaurant, café, fast food chain, etc.—you already have the perfect tool you can use to advertise your business on social media: your menu. What better way to plug your restaurant than by bringing your menu to the screens of millions of home computers? And all of it for free.

Here are four ways to advertise your menu on social media:

1.    Advertise on Facebook
Almost anyone who uses social media to connect with friends has a Facebook account. Facebook is one of the more popular social media websites these days. So what you should do is add a copy of your menu to your Facebook profile.

Make sure it is uploaded as text and image to make it readable both by search engines and the human eyes.

2.    Partner with CityMint
The cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Chicago and NYC all have one thing in common – they belong to CityMint’s market. If you live in any of these locations, partnering with CityMint would be a good move on your part.

Restaurants that are partnered with any of CityMint’s markets have their menu uploaded and accessible through CityMint’s popular iPhone application. Imagine your restaurant’s menu being available on the iPhone… that’s just great.

3.    Blog
Blog your menu. It doesn’t get any simpler than this. These days blogging is one of the most effective ways of communicating relevant information with other people. In your case, the “relevant information” is your menu, and the “other people” are your potential customers.

4.    Advertise on Twitter
Advertise your new dishes on Twitter. Then pass along a discount coupon for hearing the good word. For example, if a customer says he found out about the new dish on Twitter, knock off 5% ~ 10% of the check. That should boost your Twitter buzz.

Most restaurants upload their menus on websites as a static PDF file. This is a big mistake. Search engines can’t read PDF files, and the tactic is boring. The best form of advertisement is still word-of-mouth. And on the Internet, social media is the new word-of-mouth.

Four More Tips To Increase Revenue With Proper Food Merchandising

In the last article, we talked about five effective ways to improve sales through proper food merchandising, a restaurant marketing strategy advocated by foodservice specialist Diane Chiasson. But the list doesn’t end there. Here are four more tips from the expert.

1. Use merchandising and cross-merchandising to boost sales
Here’s a good question to get you going. Did you know that food sampling and cross-merchandising increases the average consumer’s transaction by more than 75%? Make sure your products are visible from every possible angle. Pair relevant food items together, such as sandwiches and potato chips and soups together, or cheese and yoghurt and fresh fruits.

Diane says,

Customers often enter an eating area with no clear choice of what they want to eat, so by selling paired add-on items, you stimulate the appetite, increase impulse sales, and boost sales, as well as enhance your diner’s experience.

2. Use signage and point-of-sale materials to reinforce your brand
So you finished designing your display areas. Now you need to create the appropriate POS materials and signage to complement your theme and promotion. Simply put, restaurants with proper merchandising and POS materials have higher sales and perform better overall than those without.

3. Stimulate the customer’s appetite with good lighting
Diane says about good lighting,

Lights are not used to just illuminate a space, but must also be used to focus on food items, displays and merchandising areas, and used to create a specific mood or theme within your space

Anyone will tell you that the eyes have as much to do with stimulating the appetite as the tongue. Which is why lighting is right up there as one of the most essential elements of designing the interiors of a restaurant. More than anything, the food should always dominate the displays in and around the restaurant.

4. Be consistent with branding
The last thing to remember is that you need to be consistent with your branding, and one way to do that is by understanding your brand and the message you want to put out there. Think long term. Refrain from making sudden changes to your messages and brands. If you do this, you might even get the chance to start your own private label line.

These tips should put you in the right path to being a successful restaurant entrepreneur. I’ll end the article with a final quote from Diane,

I really believe that you, as a restaurant operator, can create the opportunity to add or sell something extra to your customers not only in the eating area, but for customers to take home such as homemade specialty desserts, sauces, etc.

Five Amazing Strategies To Proper Food Merchandising

There are countless ways to increase your sales as a restaurant operator. This blog website is proof of that. Every article here is after all about boosting sales and improving your services. For this article, I’ll be talking about yet another great way to increase sales – proper food merchandising – through the words of Ms. Diane Chiasson.

Here’s what Diane has to say about proper food merchandising.

“With visual merchandising, I always try to bring food to life through eye-catching food displays, where visions of freshness, color, quality and quantity are used to create a total eating experience for customers – essentially making a “feast for the eyes.” When done properly, food merchandising encompasses everything your customer feels, sees, smells and hears. It not only creates greater eye appeal but also increases the perceived value of a product, therefore achieving higher sales.”

According to Diane, stimulating all four senses – not just the taste – is essential, almost indispensable, to proper food merchandising. Here are five amazing tips from the expert herself.

1. Evaluate your workspace
Being a restaurant operator has much the same with being a painter: you need to evaluate your workspace, or canvas, before you begin any type of project. Take into consideration the walls, floor and ceiling, and how they affect the traffic flow and interior lighting throughout the store.

2. Choose appropriate themes and colors
It’s decision time. You need to create a display with a theme, a special promotion or a message—something, a layout that’s easy to identify and connect with your target customers. This message is important and should not be overshadowed by excessive decorating. Diane says,

“When you decide on what props, displays, food items and decorations you want to use, always choose items that are vibrant in color and texture, are eye-appealing and mouth-watering, and convey freshness, quality and quantity.”

3. Use relevant props and displays
Take a good look around the kitchen and your operations to see if there are any items you can use for display. For example, if you operate a restaurant that serves pizza and pasta, you can use cutting boards, large flour sacks, rolling pins, the chef’s top hat, etc. for display around the dining area. All these promote a sense of “freshness” that customers love.

4. Fire up the senses
This one is so important that it deserves repeating. Stimulating all five senses is the winning formula in running a successful food business. What your customers smell, hear, see and touch is just as important as the taste of the food on their table.

5. Make use of food sampling
Food sampling works both ways. It’s a cost-effective way to give customers a taste of what your menu is like, and it also encourages customer feedback. Food sampling is one of the most inexpensive means of data gathering and food advertising. Diane has this to say about the practice of food sampling,

“I have applied the sampling technique in several different types of foodservice operations, and have always experienced great success from it. But be sure to use only attractive, eye-appealing and well-identified fresh food items to sample.”

Diane Chiasson is an expert in the food and retail industry. She’s been in the industry for more than 25 years.

Diane is the first foodservice merchandising specialist in North America and currently the only one working in Canada. Her experiences on running food service operations range from small restaurants run by families and independent operators, to large food chain franchises and operations, even hospital and university cafeterias, supermarkets and convenience stores, casinos, hotels, etc.

She is currently the president of her own firm, Chiasson Consultants Inc. in Toronto. She’s been there and done everything!

Check back on us this week for more food merchandising tips.

Diane Chiasson, FCSI, president of Chiasson Consultants Inc., has been helping foodservice, hospitality and retail operators increase sales for over 25 years. She provides innovative food and retail merchandising programs, interior design, marketing and promotional campaigns, and much more. Contact her at 416-926-1338, toll-free at 1-888-926-6655 or chiasson@chiassonconsultants.com, or visit www.chiassonconsultants.com

Boost Your Sales By Adding A Take Out Service

Everything is perfect. The food is delicious, operations are running smoothly, the ambiance is exciting, and most importantly, customers are coming and going – just the way you pictured it. Everything is going according to plan. But any successful businessman will tell you that money coming in isn’t the sole end goal of running a business.

These days it is no longer enough to simply offer great food and services within the four walls of the establishment. You need to maximize your profits. As a restaurant entrepreneur, you must be creative and persistent in finding other means to extend your services to customers. What better way to do that than by establishing a take out service?

Here are some tips on planning an expansion for take out service:

1.    Create a simplified take out menu

First things first. Before you begin to plan on anything, first you need to put your attention into creating a simplified version of your restaurant menu—that is, unless you want to bore your customers to death whenever the server or host has to read the menu to them over the phone.

It needs to be simple, and it needs to be direct to the point. Keep the take out menu at a one page maximum, if possible, a simple document that is easy to change and reproduce as the menu changes. If your restaurant maintains its own website, have it uploaded – an effective way to generate customer awareness about your new service.

2.    Focus on your local area

Extending your business services means expanding your market niche. A true businessman should think that way if he or she wants to survive the competitive market. But this issue is something the restaurant entrepreneur needs to think about very carefully compared to running other types of businesses.

No one wants to order take out and then drive out 50 miles in the cold with food freezing in the backseat. So for now, at least, focus all your promotions in the area within a couple square miles of your restaurant. If the area around you is residential, handing out take out menus as flyers doesn’t hurt. Offer a 5% or 10% discount from time to time on take out orders within a certain radius from the restaurant.

If the surrounding area is commercial, try this approach. Are you surrounded by offices on all sides? Take an afternoon walk around the nearest offices and introduce yourself and your services to the folks at the front desk. It pays to make a good impression to the people who’ll be holding the menus and making the calls for an order.

3.    Make changes in the workflow

The worst possible scenario is the take out service interfering with your in-house operations – servers are getting hung up taking orders on the phone, dining customers are being ignored, etc. Remember this when you plan your new take out service and keep it from happening at all costs. Do this by assigning a different group of staff dedicated to answering take out orders and cooking the food and preparing it for delivery.

For walk-in take outs, one good tactic is to steer the customer to the bar who is waiting for his or her orders. Give them a complementary glass of wine and ask them what they think of your establishment. Not only did you make a lasting impression on that customer, but you’re also one less glass away from emptying that cheap bottle of wine you’ve been trying finish off for weeks.

Small gestures like these make all the difference. Who knows? Maybe you just turned that take out order into a regular customer – either dine in or take out.

Seven Gross Mistakes In Marketing Your Restaurant

All businessmen rely on marketing to gain customers for their firms, and these include restaurant entrepreneurs. Each business have different audiences, and very different ways to market.

Unfortunately, most new businessmen misinterpret the meaning of marketing and end up making mistakes along the way. To make matters worse, marketing makes or breaks how your business fares in the long run. Here are some of the most common mistakes that businessmen make when marketing restaurants.

1. Making Empty Promises

   You should do what you are coming out of your ads towards your prospective clients. For example, do not make promises that you cannot keep. Do not tell them that there is something in the menu which actually does not exist at all. This affects your restaurant’s credibility and, in this day and age, customers can maintain blogs that can critically affect your business’ reputation.

2. Drowning Audiences with Too Much Focus on Your Products

   Most marketers tend to believe that slapping too much wonderful information on your products will cause them to turn around and avail of them.

   Bad news is, people do not give a damn on how good your service is, and in what ways are they better than the competition. What people are concerned with is how the products can benefit them, and if you don’t include that in your descriptions, you’re in for a world of hurt.

3. Unrealistic Expectations

   This is another common pitfall that affects new businessmen. Most restaurant entrepreneurs and other businessmen in general are too optimistic with their marketing that they expect them to do magic and have good returns right away.

   This kind of thinking also influences the marketing strategies employed as well. Bad news is, no marketing strategy gives instant results. In fact, marketing takes time to accomplish. Actual returns and results come after some time and is a product of diligence and perseverance, as well as persistence on your part.

4. Failure to Follow through with Prospective Clients

   A very common mistake in online marketing, this is the failure to keep reminding prospective clients about your business. Let’s say, you’re maintaining a blog about restaurants and use it to promote your business.

   You get a response from an interested party inquiring about your menu, and you respond only to it once and never care about the contact again. You have lost your chance to convert a visitor to a client because you failed to follow through again.

5. Lack of Event-related Activities

   You may think people don’t care about what your restaurant does during events like Christmas Day, Valentine’s Day and other things but, surprise! They do care. People look forward to discounts and other promotional activities from your restaurant when these days come.

6. Website is Not Up to Par with the Actual Restaurant Standard

   Most marketers also neglect the design of the website, relying on the information and content there to attract visitors. In actuality, the aesthetics of the website is a huge marketing factor.

   If your design is not that good, people will not explore your site no matter how good your information is.

7. Late Correspondence

   As part of your professional image, any queries in your website about your website should be addressed promptly. If you fail to do so, the prospect will lose interest and will look for someone else to satisfy his inquisitions.

   There you have it. Now that you know common mistakes people make when marketing their restaurants, avoid them at all costs and you can expect positive returns in the long run.