These are articles or other print pieces that contain information I deem very important to independent restaurant owners and other food service operators. They may be written by myself or others.
Congratulations to Mary Molt, Assistant Dining Director at Kansas State University, for winning the 2012 Silver Plate award! Mary is also the author of an essential food production cookbook named Food for Fifty. If you don’t have a copy, you are missing out on an incredible food production planning tool. It’s great to see Kansas food service professionals getting praise on a national stage.
Read her interview below…
Silver Plate 2012 award winner Mary Molt from Kansas State University
Quality, convenience key to restaurant selection, study finds
For help implementing tools and procedures to improve your quality and service speed, find our services at bodellconsulting.com.
When is it right for your restaurant to add a location? What are the potential pitfalls? What are the advantages? The following article shares input from 5 chefs who did it. They give their experiences opening a second location to hopefully help you decide whether expansion is the right decision for you.
The restaurant business is tough. Everyone in it knows it. Everyone looking to get in it ignores it.
The cold fact of the matter is that opening up a restaurant may be one of the worst investments you could make with your money. That’s a horrible, sobering statement coming from someone like me who’s in the business of helping restaurants succeed, but it’s the truth. Most restaurant fail. Oh, the failure rate isn’t the “90%” you may have heard from friends and family, but according to Cornell University, and the National Restaurant Association, 60% of restaurants fail within the first three years of operation. After five years, the number might be as high as 75%.
Uggghh!
Why the hell would anyone want to get into this business with a failure rate like that? Risk and reward my friend, risk and reward.
As with other high risk investments, opening the right…
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Spread the word, Hilton Worldwide is looking for successful independent restaurant concepts to pitch to their franchisees to put into their hotels. This might be a good opportunity to take the first step into franchising. The following article from Restaurant Hospitality E-Zine doesn’t say as much, but the Hilton maybe willing to foot all or part of the cost of franchising the concepts.
http://restaurant-hospitality.com/trends/hilton-wants-restaurant-concepts-yours
Here’s an article from Restaurant Management E-Zine about the use of locally distilled liquors in restaurants.
Liquors Can Be Local Too – Restaurant Management (RMGT)
Go to www.bodellconsulting.com for operations and marketing assistance for your restaurant or foodservice.
Have you heard of Pinterest yet, and are you using it? Here is an article about why restaurants especially have a product that is tailored perfectly for Pinterest…
How restaurants can succeed with Pinterest | Nation's Restaurant News.
My friends all tell me how great my dinners are, so I decided I’d start a catering company.”
Typical inspiration for starting a catering company. Now what?
Maybe the most important question that would-be caterers don’t think through completely before starting a catering company is, “Where will I prepare my food?” Seems like an obvious question, doesn’t it? In truth, all start up caterers probably do ask themselves this question, but all too often their answer is to prepare food in their own kitchen and transport it to the site. “What’s wrong with that,” you say?
According to the health department in most states (all that I’m aware of, but I admittedly have not researched it), it is not safe to sell food prepared in a kitchen that has not been inspected and licensed by your health department. At least, it’s not legal. Health departments require restaurants and caterers to operate kitchens that are equipped with NSF approved equipment, meet certain electrical and plumbing requirements, and all food safety codes concerning everything from shelf heights to cooler temperatures. Simply put, a standard home kitchen won’t do.
Many start up caterers seem to have no qualms about breaking the law, or at least are ignorant of it, so what does a conscientious citizen who wants to abide by the law do if they want to start up a catering company but don’t have the funds to lease a commercial kitchen right off the bat?
In the past, caterers looking to abide by health department rules needed to borrow/rent a kitchen from a restaurant or church to prepare their food in. Churches are great partners for this, as their kitchens are rarely used and often pretty big. Restaurants with space to rent are a little harder to come by. They have to work around their own business to let someone else come in and prepare food. Sometimes you can find a breakfast and lunch spot that will allow you to use the space at night, or occasionally you can find a restaurant with such a large kitchen they just have space to spare.
If you are asking this same question for yourself because you are wanting to start a catering company, then today is your lucky day. Just today, I happened upon a growing movement that I was previously unaware of. Small business conscious communities are finding facilities to offer something called “incubator kitchens” or “culinary incubators” to small business owners who need kitchen space to prepare food for parties, or produce and package food for retail sales (this usually requires additional licensing). Some even have space availabe to rent for parties and events, making them essentially “banquet halls” with open food policies.
These culinary incubators charge low hourly rates to business owners to rent space to prepare food in a safe, compliant, licensed kitchen. One such kitchen in my own city only charges $15 per hour to rent. Many of these kitchens are located inside non-profit business development centers that are not looking to make money, but rather to foster small business growth.
While it’s still a great option for a caterer to borrow a church kitchen in exchange for a percentage contribution from the sale of their food, these new incubator kitchens sound like an incredible idea that could help a lot of new caterers get their business started with very little cash outlay. To help you try and locate one, here is a map of incubator kitchens all over the country from culinaryincubator.com. If you don’t find one on here near you, don’t give up, Google “culinary incubator” and “incubator kitchen” in your area to see if there is one near you.
Brandon O’Dell
O’Dell Restaurant Consulting
www.bodellconsulting.com
blog.bodellconsulting.com
Here is an interesting article I found from the Wall Street Journal about servers “reading” tables to adjust their service style to fit the customer.
While this is presented in the article as a new approach, it is really an “old” approach. Before McDonalds encouraged the next generation of restaurant owners to standardize everything in their restaurant in an effort to improve quality through consistency, servers didn’t really have training manuals. They picked up what they could from following other servers then made the rest up as they go. While this probably wasn’t the best approach to improving service in the industry as a whole, and may not best allow the restaurant to have service that reinforces a particular theme, it did yield servers who thought on their feet and could change their style of service to fit the customer.
Take a look at the article and leave your thoughts here on service, training, standardization of procedures and whatever else the article inspires you to talk about…
Apparently, Christopher Elbow and Boulevard Brewery in Kansas City aren’t the first pair that thought input from a chef could result in a great craft beer. I do have to say though that the Chocolate Ale made by Boulevard and Elbow is certainly a new twist in brewery/chef collaberations.
Read about what other chefs and breweries are doing in this article…
O'Dell Restaurant Consulting's Blog 