O’Dell Restaurant Consulting Blog

You can greatly improve your cash flow by adopting a policy of smaller, more frequent price increases instead of waiting for a year or longer before raising prices a larger increment.
Use this simple example to catch my drift:
Chicken tenders $5.99 from January 2008 - January 2009
Price raised to $6.99 after January 2009
4000 orders of [...]

[Read more →]

One thing I’ll never forgive formal culinary schools for, is teaching new impressionable would-be chefs to use a budgeted cost percentage to price food menus. Chain restaurants share an equal responsibility for perpetuating this bad practice by focusing their managers on food cost percentages without letting them in on the secret that the cost percentage [...]

[Read more →]

Who are we?
What do we want our restaurant to be known for?
What style of service do we offer?
What kind of food do we cook?
What can our customers get from us that they can’t get anywhere else?
How can we make our customers FEEL?
What is our color scheme?
These are all questions you should ask yourself about your [...]

[Read more →]

How to make sure your products will sell
Pretty confusing main title, isn’t it? I’ll bet you’re wondering exactly what I’m talking about.
Along with the other biggest mistakes restaurants owners make, offering customers what the owner thinks is good, instead of what the customer thinks is good, is a surefire way to lose money in the restaurant business.
Here’s [...]

[Read more →]

Listen to learn, not to defend!
by Andy Swingley
Regional Manager
Thomas & King
Applebees Restaurants
http://www.fohboh.com/profile/AndySwingley
 
 One of the skills we should all take time to be better at everyday is listening. Many opportunities pass us by each day when we don’t engage in “active” listening. There is a positive benefit to be gained from everyone you interact with on [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]