Fred Favole's Blog (47)

To get you prepared for your dream job interview as wine buyer or sommelier intern, lets review answers given over the years by applicants that you should not use in your job interview. Then we’ll look at 9 top tips for success while on the job!  

1. Working with the FBI investigative unit I didn't mean to hit the “reply to all” button.
2. I like working late at the bar,  you have less clowns telling you not to…

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…

As top-line growth is hard to come by, the opportunity to build a defense that holds the line on price increases or going for the goal line of greater profits, is simply too good to ignore. 

Limited resources, like a salary cap for the Champion Ravens are a fact of foodservice life, including time, staff and funding.  Learn how to get the most out of your current team by running plays that recognize CORE talents and add special teams players to improve your game winning…

Foodies tell me ice cream started as “flavored ices” in China. and the Chinese are credited for creating the first ice creams, possibly as early as 3000 BC. (Wasn't that before ice was invented?)  

Anyway, Marco Polo is given credit for pasta and ice-cream, introducing a tasty egg based pudding concoctions that was cooked and cooled down with ice, somewhere near Marlon Brando's Northern Italian villa.

Modern day ice creams may have been invented in Italy during…

Things changed sometime in the late 1990's in our industry and that lead to the Sliver Age of foodservice, inferior to the Golden Age in terms of opportunity, fun, profits and iconic hero's like Ray Kroc, Bob Carney, Alvin & Bob Cohn, Harlan Sanders and R. David Thomas.…

The danger of buying the wrong quality food products are customer dissatisfaction, higher food costs and lost revenue. To the average person, "food quality" is a vague term. It may mean the best product available or perhaps the best that can be purchased seasonally or on a restricted budget. Our firm is…

Restaurant Chain CFO's and Purchasing Officers are on the front-line of developing strategies to meet tighter budget demands. 

In foodservice business jargon an “empty suit”  or “hollow bunny (f)” is a restaurant owner, investor, chain executive, or consultant that has authority, without knowledge or substance, yet maintains a know-it-all attitude, for example; their travel advise to you might…

Only in the last ten years have I appreciated what the legend of Creighton Churchill (The World of Wines, A Notebook For the Wines of France) has meant to the foodservice industry in the selection and enjoyment of selling fine wines and alcoholic beverages.

During my brief encounters with Creighton during the heyday of the airline industry (Jumbo 747s, piano bars) we were both always high; I worked for American Airlines and traveled, and he was our wine consultant.…

In the event that the world does not end with the Mayan calendar this month, here is a quick guide to preparing your organization for the coming higher commodity prices, product allocations and forced C-staff reductions.  

Try to tackle the spend management challenge even if the boss is saying, “we’re already behind on this year’s goals and our infrastructure needs work before we can go ahead with any changes.” Many times team…

Purchasing is not an isolated function and to succeed it must operate in cooperation with the food and beverage operation.  At the same time, the relationship between buyers and sellers is key to protecting prices and assuring supply.  To accomplish your organizations purchasing goals you need a purchasing support system.

The business of food purchasing in the foodservice industry is dominated by major chains, systems of international agriculture, government…

Foodservice operators will be under pressure like never before in 2013 to meet budgets, contain food cost, provide efficiency improvements and even survive.   What will it take for restaurant executives to understand that product savings and spend management starts upstream, right at the corporate buyer’s office.

No Purchasing Strategy

Most restaurant chains have no formal purchasing supply-chain strategy other than “buy at the lowest price”. …

In order to be competitive, emerging foodservice organizations are re-examining the way they perform activities such as;  product sourcing, contracting, price-compliance and other routine C-staff functions.

Despite the clear advantages of outsourcing these non-core business processes, many chains fail to do so because of established attitudes, limited knowledge of the purchasing supply-chain or long standing distributor and supplier relationships.  

DOES…