Featured Blog Posts (3,074)

Each Restaurant Candidate’s Manager Career Strategy will be unique. While the Restaurant Manager Job Description is fairly standard, how you prepare yourself for that job position will vary depending on your talents and learning style.

Before registering in post secondary education, or taking courses, then it is necessary to work backwards. It will be impossible to clearly identify what type of manager you will be. Restaurant manager candidate in training have a limited view of what…

Get the most from every dollar of food spend by calculating your 3 allowable food cost controls and acknowledging that you may have a problem area. If nothing goes wrong, from your back door to your register, what will your food cost be?



With something as important as your food cost, you want to have the tools and resources available to establish standards. In other words, you need to compare actual costs with the standard base, and spend your…

Running a restaurant can be a challenging task for a business owner. Most small business owners end up responsible for more work throughout the week than they really want to handle. In fact, in a recent survey, “69% of small business owners wish they could focus their attention on their actual business…

By Aprons & Smocks

With all of the anxiety related to the fiscal cliff, the payroll tax holiday has been given little media attention over the last few months. However, the fact that it quietly expired after 2 years could have a negative impact on consumer spending.

Although President Obama signed the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which extends the income tax rates of 2001 and 2003, it does not…

Once you understand yourself it is time to understand the work type. Then determine how you can fit into the work type. One of the most effective tools to understanding your strengths and how to leverage these is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  This tool explains the relationship between personality types and the workplace. The MBTI will increase self-understanding and appreciation of personal differences. Once a manager understands how different personality types process…

   Nobody wants to go to a family restaurant with a smoking section at the front of the place.  Conversely nobody wants to get a beer and watch the game at a place with a giant furry teddy bear as a mascot.  It is these differences that enable us to pick our spots and stay loyal to them.  The issue with this loyalty is that sometimes we attract the wrong people.  There is going to come a time where some unsavory characters are going to come into your establishment.  Now I am not saying that…

Stop Losing Money – Your Online Menus is at the Cutting Edge of 1995

Brian Gatti, TableSites.com

Welcome to part 3 of the 8 part series where we discuss how your website may be costing you thousands of dollars in potential business. Here we look at how your online menu implementation can be keeping traffic from your website and importantly, your door!

I will start with a warning that this will be one of…

Each of us is multifaceted. Our desires are molded by beliefs. Unfortunately, many of our beliefs are ‘second hand.’ We were told that success requires a certain income, level of recognition, lifestyle so we strive to reach for that definition of success without asking if this will make us happy.

It is impossible to understand what we need until we identify the beliefs that are truly ours, and what we believe because parents, society, media, or peers have imposed on us.  The…

Libby Tucker, CEO…

Meet Bob Kirscher. Bob owns three Broken Egg Restaurants in Florida. Dressed in costume, he plays a great Santa, going to each of his three restaurants during this holiday season spreading Christmas joy to all. …

Building a loyal customer database takes time but is well worth the effort. Instead of restaurant patrons that are loyal to daily deal sites but never visit your restaurant a second time, create a loyalty program by treating your customers well and offering them incentives to visit your restaurant as…

There are seven basic principles shared by successful people. There are also some fundamental steps shared by people who reach their goals.

1: Learn who you are.

2: Determine where you want to be in the next 5, 10, 20 years.

3: Identify your strengths and areas where you need development

4: Create a career Plan

5: Engage/Create a team of people who will help you reach your goals

6: Create a check list of achievements designed to move you closer to…

Quickly approaching a week after the Super Bowl, how many of those 52 plus ads can you remember? I wrote about why Super Bowl ads are a waste of money in my ad agency business blog.

You may remember the "Farmer" ad (it was great!) but what pickup…

You build a brand. You hire great people. You are an unstoppable team…then one of your people leaves. Employee turnover is not an event or single action. It is a process that starts weeks, months – even a year before your key people actually leave. And sometimes, just sometimes, they leave but stay on your payroll.

According to Gallup and other sources, only 29% of employees are truly engaged (Gallup); disengaged employees are 5 times more likely to leave than engaged employees…

As a restaurant owner, you want to increase your profits. To do so, you need to sell more items on your menu. A great way to sell more items is to have repeat customers. The Food Service Warehouse claims that repeat patrons make up about 15% of your customer base, however that 15% provides about one-third of your revenue. Getting those frequent customers can be challenging, but if you follow these time-tested ideas, it won’t be as hard as you think!

A program call ‘Our Town,’ create…

There is no simple answer to this question. One person may require taking some personal development courses and attending some seminars. Another person may need to improve their academic and communication skills.

Today’s managers need expertise in several areas. These include negotiation, communication skills, team management, personality identification and development. Take a few minutes to take a hard look at who you are as a person and what areas need to be improved before you are…

Rules of Engagement

It’s a wildly held misconception that what happens at work stays at work. That coupled with the belief that leaving our home life at the door when we walk into work is possible, is not only untrue but somewhat hazardous to your brand’s wellbeing. In our do-more with-less work environments, the reality is the line between work and life is increasingly blurry. What engages and motivates employees at work is no longer just a matter of whether or…

Advocates are companies’ most loyal customers. They’re highly engaged consumers who go out of their way to recommend their favorite brands and products on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Amazon, and more plus offline. There are 500 billon peer impressions on the social web today (Forrester), rivaling ad impressions.

But how do you leverage that Brand Advocate power at scale?

Here are ten ways brands are leveraging their Advocates now at scale via the…