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.
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Great new Food Network show | Restaurant Stakeout
There is a great new show on the Food Network you need to check out if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s called Restaurant Stakeout. Instead of being just another show with a restaurant consultant telling people their food sucks and their menu is too big, Willie Degel’s show is an original and really interesting to watch.
During the course of this show, a consultant sets up multiple hidden cameras throughout a restaurant to observe the restaurant while no one knows he is watching. After finding numerous problems that are costing the owner money, he invites the owner to watch the footage with him. The owner is appalled at what really goes on in their restaurant when they aren’t there and the consultant beats them up over how much money they are losing. By the end of the show, the consultant is making recommendations to the restaurant owner which, by this point, seem like no brainers.
Besides the fact this show is much more original than any restaurant improvement show anywhere on television, this show is a great eye opener for restaurant owners. You never know what is going on in your restaurant when you aren’t there unless you have surveillance, or truly responsible leaders in the restaurant at all times.
Check out the TV show website here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/restaurant-stakeout/index.html
You can get a free 30-minute telephone consultation with Brandon O’Dell from O’Dell Restaurant Consulting to see if there are improvements that can be made in your own restaurant too.
Call (888) 571-9068 to set up a time.
www.bodellconsulting.com
Hilton Worldwide seeks independent restaurant concepts ripe for franchising
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
Liquors Can Be Local Too – Restaurant Management (RMGT)
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.
How restaurants can succeed with Pinterest | Nation’s Restaurant News
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.
Are Mom and Pop Restaurants a Thing of the Past « Culinary Career Research Center | How to Get Into Culinary School | Culinary Admissions & Financial Aid Info
Show Winner Blames Chipotle for America’s Next Great Failure
“Next Great Restaurant” New York location closed after 1 month
This story just goes to show that great food and a great concept just aren’t enough in the restaurant business. Even the best idea can fail without proper management and marketing. Check out the story here….
How to design an effective logo
In order to effectively convey what it takes to create an effective logo, I think it is important to outline the qualities of an effective logo.
- 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.
Do’s and don’ts for startup restaurants – vol. 1
Do:
Know your target market. Your target market is not the people you WANT to buy your food, but rather the ones MOST LIKELY to buy your food. A big red flag in any marketing plan is an assumption that your concept appeals to everyone.Don’t:
Have a large menu. Large menus confuse your concept, increase ticket times, decrease table turns, increase waste, make server training harder, and overall just make you lose money. You can’t be all things to all people. If you try, you’ll be very little to very few.Do:
Have an exit strategy. Knowing how you’re getting out of this venture if things don’t go right is more important than knowing how to get into it. What happens with your lease if your concept fails? Do you have provisions that protect you in case of road construction, building construction, or other cicumstances beyond your control?
Know your target market. Your target market is not the people you WANT to buy your food, but rather the ones MOST LIKELY to buy your food. A big red flag in any marketing plan is an assumption that your concept appeals to everyone.Don’t:
Have a large menu. Large menus confuse your concept, increase ticket times, decrease table turns, increase waste, make server training harder, and overall just make you lose money. You can’t be all things to all people. If you try, you’ll be very little to very few.Do:
Have an exit strategy. Knowing how you’re getting out of this venture if things don’t go right is more important than knowing how to get into it. What happens with your lease if your concept fails? Do you have provisions that protect you in case of road construction, building construction, or other cicumstances beyond your control?
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.
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