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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Hiring Waiters

I remember my practicum days at Edsa Shangri-La Hotel. Of the ten departments I went through, I remember enjoying restaurant service the most. I thought it was fun but tiring. Standing up and walking the whole time is no joke. However, I thought that it was a task that was routinary and not too cerebral. It needs a lot of communication skills and a lot of love for guests.

While managing a hotel, I started to realize that not all waiters are born to be waiters. Some of them have to be trained and guided to the 'waiter' mold of your preference. I also realized that waiters who stay in their jobs for so many years become either a great waiter or one who has lost all affection for the job.

When hiring waiters, I consider mainly good working attitude and communication skills. Some restaurant owners tend to hire waiters for as long as they can take orders, carry a tray and buss tables. I think that above these skills, which can be easily taught, by the way, waiters have to be good communicators. They should know how to speak well and when to speak.

Why is that so? They're waiters, not guest relations officers. On the other hand, they are a restaurant' s main guest relations officers. Waiters should know the questions to ask in appropriate situations. They should be able to aid sales by knowing how to suggest-sell and know dishes that complement each other.

Of course, waitering skills are important. Guests who dine need waiters who can attend to their needs while dining. They need proper flatware and glassware and dinnerware and waiters should know which these are.

A waiter's customer service skills have to be in check as well. He or she should be sensitive to a guest's requests or complaints. Simply put, a waiter should be courteous and attentive to guests at all times. At the same time, ensuring that restaurant service policies are kept in mind and followed.

In summary, do consider the following before hiring anybody to be a waiter for even the simplest restaurant setup.
  • Ability to communicate and express himself
  • A natural friendliness and enjoyment to be serving people
  • A desire to put their best foot forward for your restaurant
If your waiter turns out to be not the kind of waiter you want, you can either re-train them or let them go. A waiter is usually all that a guest sees of a restaurant's employee pool. So all means have to be taken to ensure that what a guest sees is all good.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Food Cost Control Simplified

One of the most problematic areas in a restaurant operation is operations are labor and material-intensive. Add to that the external factors that affect a restaurant's finan controlling costs. Restaurantcial status a lot like inflation rates, trade, supply of materials and others.

Cost control is a vital point of concern. In fact, in bigger establishments, there is a whole department or at least an employee allocated to cost control. Here are the reasons why it is important:
  • Cost control is the backbone of menu pricing
  • Cost control defines a restaurant's ability to compete and to pay suppliers
How do you control costs specially in a business where the risk of spoilage and breakage is always there?
1. Always look for the best suppliers
Don't rely on suppliers you find in the grocery. Even better, look for the suppliers who supply for grocery stores. These would be direct distributors for consumer and food items like Unilever Bestfoods or Nestle or Sysu. They can offer you concessions and credit arrangements. They also deliver to your place if the quantity is good. Since you would usually consume ingredients in large quantities, you would most probably be given good prices.

2. Determine your par stock, lead time for orders and shelf life of food items.
If you can project your consumption and lead time on certain items, you can order just enough and just in time. This avoids over stocking on items and hurting your credit or cashflow. This will also help you budget your expense allocation for cost of goods or food costs. Most importantly, this will minimize spoilage greatly.

3. Recipe test then cost.
Some restaurateurs take the lazy way to menu pricing by making estimates. Not a good idea at all! If there is one sure way to control your costs is to document your recipes, test them and document the testing. Pur each recipe in a file or an index card with separate columns for ingredients, quantity of ingredients needed and cost. Add the costs up to know the at-cost rate of this particular food item.

4. Review your costs regularly.
Recipe costing does not happen only when a restaurant is just about to operate. Costs should be reviewed at least twice a year or when there is a substantial increase in prices. It is also important to review costs and prices when competition dictates so. There is a tendency to be enthusiastic only at the beginnning and when things are doing well.

5. Support your cost control with control points.
Control points like different persons for purchasing and receiving, different persons for audit and stock disbursement. It is also good to conduct surprise inventory, although, a monthly inventory is most advisable. Use forms to define flow of stocks.

6. Make sure that all food items consumed are accounted for.
There is a possibility of pilferage, breakage and spoilage all the time. Make sure that you have a system to trace ingredients released to the kitchen to how much it was paid for by costumers. There are now softwares and inventory systems that can do just that with less difficulty. Spoilages should be reported and items duly released by person in authority. Same should be done with breakages.

7. Have a buffer.
Allow a 10-20% mark up on your selling price for any unfavorable eventualities. So that you have an allowance if competition pushes you to reduce prices. However, if this is not possible, especially in price-sensitive food categories, it would be best to make sure that costs are spent where they should be.

8. Be mindful of other costs.
Remember that there are other costs entailed in ruuning a restaurant. Among them restaurant supplies like napkin, condiments, toothpick, fuel, manpower, electricity, water, rent, repairs and equipment.

Cost control could be made easier by putting in systems and procedures. Aside from this, it is also a must that all the people involved in your business understand what cost control means for them and for the business. Point out clearly the things they could do that will be detrimental for the business and what they must do to help. In this way, it will be easier to impart procedures to them.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Fastfood, casual or fine dining? (Part 3)

When it comes to details, standards and pageantry, fine dining restaurants would be on top of the list. If there is anything that should differentiate a fine dining restaurant is its elegance and price. Elegance and price in everything! Menu price, price of cutlery, dinnerware, linen, ingredients, furnishings, decors, music, everything! These have to be all justified by great food and even greater service.

A fine dining restaurant requires waiters who know how to serve different fine dining types of service like wine service, Russian and French. Waiters have to be familiar with proper order and manner of service of certain menu items.

A fine dining restaurant's table setup is usually composed of dinner knife, dinner spoon and fork, dessert fork or spoon, soup spoon, charger or soup bowl for initial setup, table napkin. For glassware, there should be a water goblet and wine glass.

It's a different game altogether if the restaurant is themed. Like if it is a Chinese restaurant, there will be an assortment of spices needed, chopsticks and chopsticks holder.Food is usually served one at a time. The food should be served in this order, whichever is ordered.
  1. Appetizer (soup or hors d'oeuvre)
  2. Entree
  3. Salad
  4. Dessert
  5. Coffee or tea
A lot of times, fine dining restaurants have individual servings, have a rather more formal setting and quieter than most casual type restaurants.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Fastfood, casual or fine dining? (Part 2)

Casual dining restaurants are probably a favorite of mine when it comes to setting up and concept. It is not as 'casual' as fastfood and not as formal as fine dining restaurants. You can play around so much with the concept, restaurant setup, menu, uniforms, everything! Fun would probably be an appropriate word for it.

Casual dining restaurants should aim to be comfortable, cozy and yet, not with a little formality needed if you are hosting business meetings. Talk about power lunch. It is a place where you would usually find couch and family meal servings. They can be themed according to country (japanese, chinese, greek), interests (music, movies, sports) or even just any theme that suits you like pizzeria, burger, cereals, your family secret recipes or your favorite dishes from all around the world.

One thing that should be noted even for other types of restaurant is your Unique Selling Proposition. What sets you apart from the other restaurants? What should customers look forward to?

Casual dining restaurants would be heavy on customization if it wants to make a niche in the dining public. Here are a few things which casual dining restaurants can customize for that marketing flavor.
  • MENU (not just the menu book itself but with the names of the items and presentation. How about LCD tabletop menu screens?)
  • RESTAURANT LAYOUT
  • RESTAURANT ACCESSORIES (table placemats, utensils, salt and pepper shakers, napkins, centerpiece, utensils, glassware, diningware)
  • STAFF UNIFORM
  • RESTROOMS
Casual dining restaurants have to decide on whether it will serve individual servings or family platters. These would have to be decided upon at the beginning. It will be such a hassle, not to mention expensive, if you start recipe testing for individual servings and decide later on to serve in platters. A combination would be possible. The only critical part is to make it clear in the menu so as not to confuse customers and dining service staff as well.

Sticking to the theme is important. If you decide to be a Pizza and Pasta restaurant, it would be odd seeing Tempura or Bulgogi in the menu.

Casual dining restaurants also need a good group of dining service employees. Most people who dine in casual dining restaurants tend to know a couple of things about food, have the extra money for a casual dining and would usually ask things about the menu. It is important to have a clearly and neatly printed menu with simple descriptions. However, it is also a must that the waiters know how to explain the food. Best would be if they have actually tasted all the menu items.

(to be continued in the next post)

Monday, January 14, 2008

Fastfood, casual or fine dining? (Part 1)

The question of whether to have a fast food, casual or fine dining kind of service in your restaurant would have to be one of the first questions you have to answer. Of course, there are other choices like cafeteria style (where guests queue up with trays and point to the food they like). In the Philippines, it is called turo-turo or point-point because you point the food items you want to order. There are also family dining restaurants, bar-type and eat-all-you-can.

For this article, let me discuss fast food, casual and fine dining.

Fast food service is when guests line up to order, tell the order taker what they want, pay, wait for their food and carry their tray or food to their table.
Food prices: are expected not to be expensive
Service: courteous but don't expect to be treated regally
Food presentation: usually none or very minimal
Plates, glasses and utensils: not fancy but decent, usually plastic or of melamine

Advantages: It is ideal for office or business district lunch destinations. When working people have only one-hour breaks, they cannot eat in a restaurant where they have to wait for their food to be served after 15 or 20 minutes. The number of people you have to employ for service can be reduced to 1 staff for every 10 or 15 tables since they only have to take away the trays and utensils and clean the tables. The dining table staff do not have to be bothered with having to know menu items by heart since the cashier or order taker takes care of that solely. Kitchen procedures can be simplified and batch-cooked as food has to be ready in advance. Knowledge of how many orders of each menu item is ordered has to be established as it is critical. Kitchen and purchasing need these data to just about right as to the number of menu items to be cooked.

Disadvantages: Like in any restaurant, food wastage and spoilage is the scary part as fast food restaurants need to pre-cook or at least pre-prepare food. Every item has to be standardized down to the number of minutes it takes to cook one item.

(to be continued in the next post)

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Restaurants are Made of These...

Any restaurant, big or small, posh or otherwise, has to have the right combination of CONCEPT, RULES and RELATIONSHIPS.

Concept meaning marketing mix, theme, ambience, location and the like.

Rules cover control measures, house rules, business manners, policies for functions, large orders, guest complaints, employees, order replacement and workflow processes.

Relationship is all about customer service standards, service policies, values to uphold, employee relations and proper business ethics with clients and suppliers.

In my next posts I will discuss each section in details.

For starters, restaurant owners will benefit a lot by answering the following questions. This is to assess, in brief, how the restaurant fares in terms of marketing, service, stock/inventory control, staffing and cost control.
  1. What sets my restaurant apart from other restaurants belonging in the same catergory as ours?
  2. Do we have repeat customers? How many in a night?
  3. Do I know what is our average check per guest? Our average daily revenue?
  4. How much revenue goes to food and beverage? functions? large orders?
  5. How much is my food cost?
  6. Are my recipes standardized? Documented?
  7. Do I know which menu items are popular?
  8. Do I get to monitor all purchases and stock release to the kitchen?
  9. Do I have away of knowing if any food item is cooked, consumed and not paid for?
  10. Are there separate persons for purchasing, receiving and stock disbursement?
  11. Are there separate persons for cashiering and auditing?
  12. Is there a person assigned solely to see if guests are attended to properly?
  13. Do I know if guests are satisfied with the food and service?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

I Love Restaurants!

It’s my vice.

When I travel, instead of shopping and incurring excess baggage weight, I spend my money on checking out restaurants.

When I have extra expendable money, I think about visiting that new restaurant or new hotel.

When I go to the bookstore, I buy recipe books and food magazines.

I love eating good food.

Growing up with a mother who cooks really really well and in a family where overcooked vegetables and tough meats are a no-no, my senses have been stretched since birth Luckily, my career path went to managing hotels and restaurants. So I share, in this blog, not only my formal and work learnings about restaurant management but, more importantly, that restaurants should serve great food above everything else.

Enjoy reading!