O’Dell Restaurant Consulting Blog

Alex Markels a writer for US News & World Report made the following observations regarding the success of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a high volume fast casual concept.
A Tested Recipe: Five Ingredients
Five lessons for start-ups from Chipotle Mexican Grill
By Alex Markels
Posted January 9, 2008
It’s the food, stupid. Its hip surroundings and green ethic notwithstanding, Chipotle succeeds [...]

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Communication. In one form or another, it may be the most important thing that happens within a restaurant. Just like your employees, your customers need to know what is going on in your business. How do you communicate with them?
If there is one thing I try to get across to every business owner, it’s that [...]

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Excerpt from a forum post to an Indian restaurant owner: 
A unique selling point stays away from claims about “better food” and “better service”. Those are minimum expectations of your customers, not reasons to choose you over your competition. Sure, you may be able to get that very small market of people looking for Indian food by [...]

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You won’t be able to find the answer as to what it is exactly that makes a restaurant successful in any forum. Without experiencing it for yourself, it’s tough to imagine that a restaurant is one of the most complicated businesses you can run. Most businesses are pretty simple. You buy a product, mark it [...]

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Effective problem solving is not a skill that comes to most people naturally. It is a taught skill that must be practiced to become effective, a structure in the way you approach every problem you tackle. The following problem solving system is derived from a version of the scientific method I was taught at a [...]

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I suggest only using one thing to base your incentives on, the only thing that really matters, which is profit.
Whether you are encouraging upselling or controlling food costs, the ultimate goal is more profit to you. So rather than encouraging different segments of the staff to concentrate on different parts of the P&L, and setting [...]

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