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• An effective logo is easy to recognize, even at a glance or at a distance
• An effective logo is easy to remember
• An effective logo tells people who you are
• An effective logo tells people what you do
• An effective logo suggests your service style

An effective logo may also have one “bonus” attribute that can make it not only effective, but outstanding. Your logo may also convey your unique selling point.

Knowing what it is that an effective logo conveys, we can start to look at some design qualities an effective logo has and doesn’t have, and why they are important.

Color scheme

Hopefully, your restaurant has a color scheme. Your scheme helps identify you and should consist of two contrasting colors. From those two colors, you can also find complimentary colors to use in the interior and exterior decoration of your restaurant. Often, the color black or another third color can be used to make the primary colors “pop”. It’s also good to know that certain colors have distinct psychological effects on how people behave. You may have noticed that many large chain restaurants use the colors red and yellow in their restaurant designs. These two colors make people feel “excited”. Research has shown that this excitement leads customers to eat more inside the restaurants they are used in.

Gradients

A gradient is the resulting color pattern when one color fades into another color. This effect may look artistic and interesting, but it muddles your logo and makes it harder to recognize at a glance or distance. It also makes reproducing your logo more expensive or even impossible with some reproduction methods, like embroidery. Stay away from gradients if you want a logo that is easy to recognize and easy to remember.

Bevels and highlights

Effects such as beveling, which makes the center of an object look raised while the edge appears to “drop down”, and highlighting serve to muddle an images appearance just as gradients do. While the effects look artistic and make the logo more interesting, it also makes the logo more difficult to see at a glance or distance, and harder to commit to memory. In logo design, too much detail results in a bad logo.

Shadows

After the last two paragraphs, I hope you don’t need much detail on why shadows, especially drop shadows, are bad for a logo. They add artsy detail that only serves to confuse the image. It’s extra detail that is there more for the logo artists ego than to make the logo more effective. Remember, “attractive” doesn’t equal “effective”.

Fonts

One of the most common logo design mistakes is using a font that is too hard to read, or putting a font on a background whose color does not contrast enough with the color of the font, resulting in lettering that doesn’t stand out enough. If the words on your logo are lost because they are too hard to read, you don’t have an effective logo.

Wording

What words you use in your logo and how they are emphasized based on the font size and color will greatly affect your logo’s ability to be recognized and remembered easily. More importantly, a poorly worded logo will not communicate to your potential customers who you are and what you do. Without communicating your identity and your message, your logo might as well be a blue dot with no words. An example would be a restaurant that just calls itself “Ralph’s” and has a logo consisting of the name “Ralph’s” over a plain background, like a circle, with no other words. This logo could easily convey what the business does by adding the word “restaurant” to the logo. It could communicate even better by including words that says what Ralph’s Restaurant sells, like “Ralph’s Sub Sandwiches”. Another approach would be to not have the extra words, but to use an image or background that infers “restaurant” or “sub sandwiches”. For example, Ralph’s could be spelled out between two hoagie bun images with a lettuce leaf on top and a tomato on bottom. This would leave no doubt that Ralph’s is selling sub sandwiches.

Shape

An effective logo doesn’t just need an easy to recognize color scheme, and words that effectively convey what the business sells. An effective logo also needs to utilize a basic geometric shape that helps identify the logo when someone is too far away to read the words. Along with a basic two color scheme, a shape in a logo makes that logo very easy to recognize. Think of McDonalds big yellow “M” or Burger King’s split yellow sphere (probably a bun) with a blue swoosh around the name and sphere. They create basic shapes and color patterns that are easy to recognize as soon as the sign comes into view, long before you are close enough to read the words.

Overall, you can summarize these design points by just reminding yourself to “keep it simple”. Too much detail may win some “oohs” and “aahs” from your friends, or make you feel better about your design prowess, but it won’t result in a logo that accomplishes the most basic task a logo is intended for, making people remember you and what you do.

Don’t:
Think if you “build it they will come”. Every new restaurateur thinks their food and product is so interesting and unique that people will flock to their restaurant just because they opened it.

Do:
Have a marketing plan. Word of mouth marketing only works if a lot of people already know about your business. You can’t depend on word of mouth for a startup. Marketing a startup takes money and a plan on how best to utilize that money to get people in your door, so you can build relationships and earn their referrals to their friends.

Don’t:
Sign a contract without having it reviewed by legal counsel, whether it’s for a lease, a partnership, or a vendor.

Do:
Create a unique selling point. Form an emotional bond with your customers by promising to make them FEEL something, then delivering on that promise. The memory of how you made someone feel with your restaurant will last long after they forget who served them and what they ate. “Good/great food and service” are NOT unique selling points. Every restaurant claims to have these. The emotion that you promise and deliver to your customers IS a unique selling point. Other restaurants will not have this.

We currently have 60 entrees and 24 soup/salad/apps. We are known for our pizza, so we have a full pizza section which includes 6 sizes, 2 types of dough, 33 toppings, calzones, strombolis, 6 specialty pizzas, 7 sandwiches, beer, wine, and standard beverages.Which is better, 50 items or 100?

If you ask me, you need to eliminate 2/3rds of your menu. Big menus mean big waste, big inventory, big kitchen staff, big cost control issues, big ticket times and big confusion for your customers.

One thing to keep in mind with a restaurant. You are only ever going to be as profitable as your peak dining periods. Meaning….  when you have a large menu, you can not serve as many customers in any given period of time. With a large menu, people take longer to order. Big menus clutter POS’s, making the average time to input a ticket longer. They mean more prep for the kitchen, resulting in more kitchen employees in earlier to prep, and more employees on the line to produce too many different types of food. Even with more employees on the line, it takes longer to produce food when you have less multiple orders of the same items being made at the same time. All this extra time means you can’t serve as many people during your peak periods, which is where 80-90% of your revenue, and 100% of your profit is made. If you can increase your customer counts during peak periods by 10%, then you can increase your profit by more than 10%.

From a customer viewpoint, more choices doesn’t mean you’ll get more regulars because you have so much to choose from that people will keep coming back to try everything. That is a huge misnomer among owners and managers, that perpetuates the use of large, inefficient menus. More choices on a menu for customers means more confusion about who you are, what your specialities are, and why they should like you better than the Italian restaurant down the road.

Simply put, more choices isn’t better for business, it’s worse.

As far as what’s better, 50 items or 100? Neither. They’re both way too many. If you want to be known for having great food, you need to have a limited number of items, that stand out to people each on their own merit. If you have 4 or 5 great menu items that stand out from your others, people may remember them if there are only 10 or 15 surrounding them. If you bury them under 60 other items, people are less likely to remember what it was they had that was so great, and they’ll be less equipped to sell their friends on how great your food is. Confusing your customers isn’t good for business.

Stripping down a menu isn’t hard to do. The hardest part is convincing yourself it’s a good idea when you believe that more=better. Simply take your sales mix report, and eliminate most the items on the bottom half of your report that aren’t selling as much. Within the top half, keep all your top sellers, then make a list of what kitchen station those items are prepared in, saute, grill, fry, cold, etc. Use your top sellers, and a selection of the rest of the items you haven’t already eliminated to create a menu that balances your menu between each of your production stations. When you finish, I would suggest having NO MORE than 20 main course dishes, including sandwiches (10-15 would be better, I would eliminate the sandwiches altogether), 4-6 starters and 2-3 salads. If you are known for your pizza, then pizza should maybe make up 2/3rds of your main course selections. 6 sizes of pizzza is ridiculous though. Any more than 3 is complicating things unnecessarily. You could even think about going to only 1 individual adult size, and 1 individual kid size. This, and eliminating the sandwiches on your menu would greatly increase your average gross profit per item sold.

Stop worrying about trying to be everything to all your customers. While you should still accomodate special requests if possible, you should make sure you are charging a special price for that accomodation, and you also shouldn’t be encouraging them. Your servers and your kitchen staff don’t like it, regardless of what they tell you. It makes their job harder. If you cut your menu down, you are more likely to gain new customers, than to lose old ones. Take this statement to heart, THERE IS NO CUSTOMER OF YOURS THAT ORDERS ALL 60-80 MENU ITEMS. They WILL NOT be dissapointed enough about losing a few options to quit dining with you, especially if they are regulars, and especially if you train your staff to explain that your reduction in choices helps you give them better food, better service, and serve more people.

Discourage the ordering of those old menu items, clean up your POS, simplify your training, and make your operation capable of serving more people during your peak times. Your employees and your pocketbook will thank you.

Is the cost of food and supplies less when you own a franchise because of their buying power, or the same, or even more because of kick-backs from suppliers?

The franchise I am looking at shows cost of goods to be from 34% – 38%.
This sounds a little high to me. Is this what the norm is in this industry?

It all depends on the menu and prices. If you’re evaluating a potential franchise purchase, the food cost percentage is the last thing you should be worried about. Percentages don’t equal profit.

You should be concentrating more on the average profit and investment, how large the investment is, how fast that profit will earn back your investment, and whether that profit makes the investment worth your time.

Franchises do normally have increased buying power. Whether that results in a lower food cost percentage depends on the pricing, not the purchasing.

There is no “norm” for the industry. Some operations make a profit with 45% food costs, some need to be under 20%. Achieving either one doesn’t mean either will even make a profit. The profit is made with the money that is left over AFTER you pay for the food. While operating efficiently, and not wasting product is important to profit, the importance of running a particular food cost percentage is grossly overstated in the restaurant business.

As far as chains that use coupons, they know something the average independent operator doesn’t. They have a sales history showing them how much of their sales are given away in the form of coupons. They track their discounts, and they price their coupon marketing strategy into their menu. If a pizza costs them $3.00 to make, and they need to make $7 gross profit for every pizza they sell, they know they have to make the regular price of that pizza $12 or $13 so they can send you a coupon and make you think you’re getting a good deal paying only $10.

How many people really pay $18.00 for a large pizza at Papa John’s? None. People wait until they have coupons. Sure Papa John’s makes money, but they know they’re not earning repeat, full price, customers by sending out coupons. They know how much money couponing is costing them, and they adjust their prices accordingly. They then use coupons as a “trick” to build value into their product.

Can coupons be used responsibly and still allow for a profit? Sure, if that is part of your marketing and pricing strategy from the get-go. Outside of that, coupons should only be used to promote items that earn you MORE gross profit than you need to make money AFTER the discount is applied. Even then, I suggest never offering a flat percentage discount, and only using coupons to promote package values, or to give freebies that are “extras” that won’t detract from the gross profit you’ll make by selling the rest of the meal at full price.

“I have quick question…For the past 3 weeks have been the acting GM and have not been compensated for it. I am a team player, but was told that it will be another 12 weeks before they can get another GM trained and ready and that I have to continue in the same role until they find one. Is this right?”

Initial responses directed the person to quit and look for a job that paid what the person thought they were worth. I have a much different take on this situation and thought I would share it. I tend to be pretty straight forward with my opinions and apologize if it doesn’t sound sugar coated.

(Tom),

3 weeks filling in at a GM position doesn’t qualify you to be a GM. Every employee honestly believes they can outperform their boss, whether it’s the restaurant business or any other. That’s human nature. The truth of the matter is that most employees understand no more of their bosses job than what they know how to do themselves. This creates the picture that their boss is not working as hard as them because their boss is not accomplishing the volume of the same activities that the employee does. Thus creating the appearance to the employee that they can do their bosses job better.

An interim position as a GM does not require you to perform all of the duties required of a GM. As GM, what steps have you taken toward the restaurants long term planning goals? What are you doing as GM to increase the revenue of your store? Are you planning the stores marketing strategy? As GM in the last three weeks, what have you done to broaden your restaurants role in the community? Have you been attending Chamber meetings and networking with other area business people to help develop a plan to further your business community’s role in your local area government? What are you doing as interim GM to safeguard your owners against liabilities such as worker’s comp, unemployment insurance costs, lawsuits. Are you performing the restaurants safety plan audits to ensure compliance and reporting the results to the owners? Are you maintaining accurate day to day employee records and answering Department of Labor inquiries as to the status of terminated employees to reduce unnecessary payment of unemployment benefits? Have you started on next year’s financial budget? It’s September now, time to start planning. Do you know what percentages your restaurant has for goals on labor, COG’s? Do you know what COG’s are? Can you read a P&L, really? Can you look at last year’s P&L and know which expenses were out of line and where you can save? Do you know what is acceptable to your owners to plan for as an acceptable increase in sales? Do you know what market prices are acceptable for every item you buy in the restaurant? Do you know if you’re getting ripped off or getting a good deal? What do you do if you are getting ripped off? Are you capable of negotiating a contract with a new purveyor? Do you know how prices for your food items or other expenses are calculated with the companies you do business with? Have you familiarized yourself with pricing structures and payment terms with every company your restaurant has a contract with? Are you familiar with every report required of you as a GM? Are you completing the restaurants Accounts Payable logs, coding invoices for payment, auditing payroll to ensure accurate employee compensation? This is only a short, short list of the GM’s actual responsibilities.

The point here is this, as an assistant, you don’t yet understand what it takes to be a GM. That is why the owners are searching for someone else to fill this position rather than just promoting you. They’re not just idiots who are oblivious to your presence. Believe me, it’s been discussed whether or not they could just promote you. Day to day operations are the responsibility of the staff. They’re only 1/3 of the real responsibilities involved in running a restaurant. A GM who spends all their time concentrating on daily operations is an ineffective GM and most likely overworking themselves. So don’t expect it from the position.

You are in a position of opportunity right now. You have two choices:

1) Let your ignorance lead your actions and assume a negative position. Get mad because you think you are doing a GM’s job and not getting paid for it. Approach the owners from this negative position and create a negative image of yourself to them. Most likely you will quit or get fired when things don’t go your way. You will create a red flag on your resume. “Didn’t see eye to eye with owner” is not something you want to list as your reason for leaving.

2) Look for favorable outcomes that could happen and take a positive position to attack your situation. Ask the owners for a detailed GM’s job description so you can do the best job possible until they find a permanent replacement. Learn everything you can about job tasks you have never had to perform. Take on the tasks you know the most about and demonstrate your ability to the owners to do more than just day to day operations. Gain experience. Your positive actions will show the owners how valuable you are. They could possibly even decide you have enough potential and the right attitude to train into a GM position at that location. Maybe you’ll be the first consideration for GM at their next venture after you have more experience. Maybe they are ignorant fools and you can use this experience to pad your resume in the search for a GM position elsewhere. “Offered a better position” is something acceptable to list as a reason for leaving.

There are many positive outcomes possible here. Think about your future and your reputation and take the positive approach. Negative people are doomed to a life of being unappreciated, overworked, underpaid, and generally miserable whether it’s only imagined or a self fulfilling prophecy.

Opportunities in any occupation are created through adversity, a negative situation. The best outcome is not created with another negative but rather a larger positive. Be the larger positive.

 Brandon

                                                By Brandon O’Dell                                      

All over the country and the world, owners and managers are asking themselves, “What can we do better? What separates us from the really profitable companies?” Operators want to know what the most successful companies do different that makes them consistently profitable and spurs growth. The answer?  Profitable operators understand that success requires a plan for absolutely everything in their operation. They have effective programs to control losses and increase revenue in all areas. They don’t just concentrate on the “big two”, labor and product cost, there is a plan for everything. This article addresses an often overlooked area in many restaurants, slip prevention.

      According to the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), slip and fall accidents are the second leading cause of on-the-job deaths, second only to automobile accidents. The U.S. Department of Labor states that 15% of workplace deaths are caused by slips, trips and falls. The ASSE, whose building codes are adopted as law in most cities and states across the country, recently released a new American National Standard which focuses on reducing slip and fall accidents in the workplace. Up to 9 million disabling slip and fall accidents each year, that’s 25,000 per day, are attributed to slip and fall accidents by the National Safety Council. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) both mandate that walk surfaces should be slip resistant. With the high amount of expedient walking and ever changing and even wet conditions, restaurants become a high risk environment for slip and fall accidents. What should a restaurant owner or manager do to limit the restaurant’s liabilities?

      Implementing an effective slip and fall prevention program is a restaurants best defense against getting caught with high workers compensation insurance, liability insurance, ADA or OSHA fines, or a lawsuit. There are five key areas to an effective slip and fall prevention program. Though concentrating on any one area can reduce risks, using a complete program that addresses all the areas is the only way to ensure a successful program. Here are the five areas your program should address:

1.                  Flooring surface – This is the foundation to a slip prevention program. The more dangerous the environment around the surface, the more slip resistant the actual surface itself should be. Slip resistance is measured by a ratio called the coefficient of friction. There are numerous devices used to measure the coefficient of friction of a floor, though no one device is recognized by the ADA, OSHA or court system to be the correct device. Slip resistant flooring surfaces and treatments to change existing flooring surfaces are available to correct a low friction surface situation. The presence and placement of floor drains in kitchen floors should be considered a major factor in evaluating the surface itself.

2.                  Proper cleaning methods – Without the use of proper cleaning methods, even the most slip resistant surface can become slippery. Food particles, dirt, grease and even cleaning agents all build up and fill in the tread patterns on a floor without the use of proper cleaning methods. Once the tread is filled in, there is nothing left to create friction against a shoe. The three biggest cleaning mistakes made by restaurants include 1) using a mop as the primary cleaning tool, 2) mixing a high concentration of soap or degreaser into the cleaning solution and 3) not having a rinsing cycle for the floor to remove soaps and degreasers. Ideally, restaurants should use the same type of cleaning method other high risk businesses, such as butcher shops, are required by law to use.

A proper floor cleaning starts with applying a correctly diluted degreaser or cleaner. A higher degreaser ratio is needed for more contaminated floors, lower for less contaminated floors. Most systems that mix chemicals automatically dispense at a ratio only correct for the greasiest of floors. Entry ways, for example, require a low concentration of cleaner while kitchens require a higher concentration. By applying cleaners with a pump sprayer, instead of a mop and bucket, and properly mixing cleaners, operations can save a significant amount of money on chemicals by not wasting. The use of pump sprayers also reduces the spreading around of grease from one area to another.

Next, the floor should be scrubbed with a deck brush. Mops to not move into the pores and crevices of a floor to break out buildup, deck brushes do.

After scrubbing the floor, the contaminants and cleaner have to be removed. They are removed through squeegeeing into a drain, or into an area with a wet/dry vacuum if floor drains are not present. Mopping alone does not pick up the majority of the contaminants. Mops only push the contaminants around. They end up in the pores they were just removed from.

Lastly, a floor needs to be rinsed with hot, clean water. Ideally, the restaurant is equipped with floor drains and equipment and product is organized to allow for the used of a hose and squeegee rinsing. If this is not possible, using hot clean water in a clean mop bucket and a clean, uncontaminated mop head will suffice. Simply wetting, wringing often and mopping over the surface will provide for the best rinse possible without a hose.

Low traffic and low contamination areas may not be required to be cleaned in this method on a daily basis if a regular weekly proper cleaning is administered to avoid buildup.

Another cleaning option that should be considered in addition to the above proper cleaning method, or to help work around a restaurant with cleaning challenges, is monthly restoration cleanings. Very strong cleaners are available from restoration product companies or mainline suppliers that, when used once a month, can strip your floor of any buildup that may be effecting the surface.

A trend in chemical companies recently has been to offer floor cleaners that leave a polymer buildup on floors to create “tread”. While some may help less porous floors with a small amount of preexisting tread, they often serve to fill in pores and tread on more porous floors. In a dry condition, the slip resistance is slightly improved, but the polymer buildup over the pores may serve to make the floor more dangerous wet instead of safer. In any case, proper cleaning procedures and permanently changing the surface itself are much more effective and less expensive in the long run.

Proper cleaning procedures should be part of every employee’s training. Most employees come from one of the estimated 90% of operations that do not use proper cleaning methods.

3.                  Surface evaluation and documentation – Measuring the coefficient of friction of your walkways and keeping a record of the readings not only gives you a measuring stick to help you gauge the success of your slip and fall prevention program, it also provides up to date accurate data on the condition of floors and documents the operations efforts to comply with ADA and OSHA requirements in addition to court recognized minimum slip resistance. In the big picture, this step could possibly save the operation more money than all other steps combined.

4.                  Footwear – Slip resistant footwear has increasingly become a tool for slip prevention. Many shoe manufacturers now make slip resistant footwear specifically designed for wet or oily conditions. While requiring slip resistant shoes to be warn in an operation is a necessary step in slip and fall prevention, the use of shoes alone does not constitute an effective slip and fall prevention program.

5.                  Hazard Warnings – Proper signage and its’ correct use is the final ingredient to a slip and fall prevention program. The use of signage alone does not release an operation from liability in the event of an accident. Too often, operations do not remove signs after floors have dried. Employees and patrons become complacent when approaching areas with wet floor signs because, more often than not, they are no longer wet. Many operations buy two sided wet floor signs that cannot be read from the sides. Four sided wet floor signs should always be used. Improper use of signage and/or the use of ineffective signs could be the deciding factor of liability in a slip and fall lawsuit.

The benefits of implementing a good slip and fall prevention program are numerous. Some, such as the added protection against lawsuits are immeasurable. Evidence of compliance to ADA and OSHA requirements and court recognized minimum standards of slip resistance can help protect you from not only law suits, but also fines that can be levied by the ADA and OSHA. While neither organization recognizes a ratio of minimum slip resistance because they cannot agree on a method to measure it, both do require all walkways to be slip resistant. Without an absolute ratio to measure compliance, the determination of compliance is left to the opinion of the inspector.

Lowered worker compensation insurance and liability insurance are a definite benefit of a good slip and fall prevention program. Decreasing the likelihood of a fall helps to decrease the number of accidents, in turn helping to hold down or even reduce insurance premiums. The implementation of a solid plan alone may be enough for an insurance company to offer a discount.

Increased employee productivity is another benefit that is hard to measure, but absolutely present. Sure footing increases the speed of an employee’s gait. Employees work faster when they walk faster. They get more accomplished in a shorter period of time. The added confidence and reduced stress affecting employees with a safe surface to walk on can improve every aspect of their work, including their attitude.

Another hard to measure benefit of a good slip and fall prevention program is the psychological effect a safe walking surface and sure footing may have on your customers. Elderly customers often avoid restaurants with floors they consider slippery. A slip and fall accident to an elderly customer could mean surgery or even death. Not a good payoff for the risk of going to a restaurant that serves their favorite hamburger. Families with children just learning to walk may avoid restaurants with unsafe surfaces. Lack of sure footing and slip resistant surfaces are factors customers just can’t put their finger on when they attempt to explain why they do not eat at a certain establishment. Their decision is often made subconsciously as a protective reflex.

As a contributing factor to loss prevention and even increasing revenue, implementing a proper slip and fall safety program can help a restaurant take one step closer to the profitability owners and operators see in other restaurants. Take one more step toward becoming a professionally organized and managed operation idolized by others. Have a plan for everything, including slip and fall prevention, and reap the benefits.

Brandon O’Dell

O’Dell Consulting