What Restaurant Managers Can Learn From Disney's Magic

First time Disney visitors have a whopping 70% return rate. How many restaurants can say their customers are that loyal? Fortunately, the Disney Institute has published many of its parks' tricks in "Be Our Guest," so let's take a look and see what restaurateurs can apply to improving their own customer loyalty.

It's All About Process

Walt Disney was utterly obsessed with process and procedure, and this drive to develop processes which allow delivering a "magical" experience every time is the key to Disney parks' success.

It wasn't a question of "luck" for Disney... not ever. A theme park was a "factory" for entertainment and delight, and key to this level of service was designing great processes and rolling them out at scale.

For example, consider height limits on rides. After it became clear that kids were devastated by waiting in line and then being told they were too short for a ride, Disney implemented passes that would give turned-away kids permission to skip to the front of the line on their next ride.

Constant Optimization

Walt Disney was detail-obsessed, viewing the parks as ever-unfinished products which required constant improvement. He would tour the parks incognito, looking for minor staff slip-ups and track down supervisors to arrange a retraining program.

Even the sound system of Disney parks is designed for the perfect customer experience. The Disney World park uses some 15,000 speakers placed scientifically to ensure the volume of the music you hear is constant as you walk.

Training Staff To Understand Tone, Not Just Words

If a customer asked a seemingly nonsensical question like "When does the 3 o'clock parade start?" -- how would your staff react?

For Disney park staffers, known as "cast members" because Walt viewed every service person as part of the experience, the question isn't nonsensical. They're trained to interpret the tone and understand the question isn't necessarily meant literally. Often, the customer really wants to know "When will the three o'clock parade pass by here?"

The staff member then answers the "real" question appropriately, offering proactive advice if possible. Of course, their staffers are also trained in the best gestures, postures, and facial expressions and how humor or tone of voice produce the best possible experience.

Never-Ending Customer Research

Walt Disney strongly opposed the idea of an administration building, because he wanted his administrators walking around the park and seeing how customers interacted. He understood this was the only way those administrators could make good choices about how to improve the customer experience.

Nowadays, this principle is formalized with customer researchers going out and collecting data, but that doesn't mean it has to be formal for your restaurant operation. As with all of these Disney park tricks, you can apply it on a small scale every day yourself.

Tips For Hiring A Restaurant Chef

Hiring a restaurant chef may well be the most significant decision you make when starting or operating your restaurant. The quality of the food, timeliness of presentation, profitable operation of the business and draw for diners who appreciate the food all depend directly or indirectly on the skills and abilities of the chef. Here are a few tips that should be considered when you are searching for the right person to carry the title of chef.

If your establishment already has a signature style, your new chef should be able to follow that general format in cooking. However, it is also true that a chef will always bring his own personality and style into the dishes that have made your establishment known and enjoyed in the community. For a new restaurant which has not yet cast a theme or cuisine, the outlook of a chef can help to form the personality of your restaurant.

Finding a chef may be done through various means. There are head hunter employment firms. Be sure that the one you use is knowledgeable about the specific needs of the restaurant industry. You could check with reputable chef schools for upcoming graduates, although these people may not have the level of experience. Some chefs are looking for a change of geography, so you could attract inquiries to your business.

Administrative duties are also part of overall responsibilities of chefs. If there are workers in the kitchen, they must be directed and supervised. The chef is usually responsible for maintaining the knowledge of health and sanitation standards expected of a first class establishment. Food handling and storage is a necessary part of duties of the chef. He or she must also be able to maintain a reliable inventory of the necessary food, spices and kitchen supplies. Working within a budget is also important.

When choosing the chef, you should give them an interview that includes preparing a selection of items from the menu. You may want to combine that with allowing the applicant to prepare something that they are skilled at. Ultimately, the chef must be able to work with you, with the existing staff and in the surroundings that will be commonplace while on the job.

Take the time to ensure that you know what you want when hiring a chef. If you want a person who is calm and laid back in the kitchen, your interview should reflect that. If you can handle a lot of drama, you may be less picky about a little emotion from your applicants. Be sure that you taste the type of dishes that the chef puts out

How To Handle Restaurant Discipline Issues

Even in the best run restaurants, there will occasionally be discipline issues that arise. When you find that employees are not performing as expected, it is important to act consistently, and promptly. When a relatively minor issue is allowed to grow and fester, it can affect morale of the other employees and can even result in loss of business. In worst case scenarios, failed discipline can result in safety issues or even legal action against the restaurant.

Before you can work on discipline problems, your employees must know what is expected of them. There must be a standard of behavior or performance against which the actions are measured. Even if you think about behavior that should be obvious to most people, your problem employee may not be aware of the issue. If, for example, off-color comments or foul language is part of the vocabulary of an employee, they must be informed that such comments are unacceptable.

Standards and expectations about what is acceptable and what is out-of-line should be consistent across the entire employee roster and work environment. A particular dress code, if stated, must be followed by every employee. This leads to a less stressful workplace for everyone. There is no effort to push boundaries because of lack of knowledge.

The employee should be encouraged to participate in restaurant training sessions, either at the work place our outside the workplace. For example, failure to perform a specific part of the job correctly should become a discipline issue until the employee has been trained in the correct way to do the task. Training can be formal or can simply be in the form of a regular performance review.

Part of identification of correct standards is setting up a progressive statement of penalties for failure to meet standards. A plan for correcting unwelcome behavior presented in a tactful and positive way has the benefit of salvaging the training efforts already expended on a specific employee. Many employees who start out with rough edges can be trained and counseled to become an asset to the employer.

In every case of restaurant discipline problems, it is important to approach it with the idea of preventing legal, health and safety issues. Additionally, you want to avoid employee behavior to drive away customers. Identify the expected behavior and train the employee in how that behavior is to be displayed. When there are continued issues with a specific employee, follow a plan of progressive penalty. Your goal should be to salvage a marginal employee, rather than eliminating him or her.

Tips For Setting A Restaurant Theme

Setting a restaurant theme is one of the more important tasks for setting up a new dining establishment. The thematic choices can incorporate food type, decorations, staffing and equipment needed. Proper market research must be conducted in order to ensure that there is a pool of people who will be interested in the themes that you select. Here are some tips from ReservationBooks.com to help ensure that the tone of your establishment is effective in reaching your customer pool.

It is important to understand that a selected theme of your restaurant is far more than just picking a type of food. A theme certainly incorporates the cuisine, but it also describes the type of service offered and the customers you plan to attract to your business. For example, a family restaurant may be one theme, while a dinner club will be a different theme. Both of these examples could serve the same type of cuisine.

Determining the customer pool will often help to determine the theme of the facility. If you want to attract senior citizens who have time to sit at a table and discuss grandchildren while drinking a cup of coffee or two, the type of service you will offer and the facility set up will be different than for an eating place that mainly serves the lunch crowd from a nearby office complex.

Although you may prefer to serve a specific ethnic cuisine or specialty, the theme is still the over-riding factor. You can easily use your cuisine choices offered to customers in a way that is true to the theme while still providing a variety of options to your dining public. The menu options should mesh smoothly with the theme and decor of the facility.

The decor can reflect the theme of the facility without being overwhelming. You don't have to have every item of equipment and decoration related to a Western theme in order to display a family friendly Western atmosphere. Wagon wheel light fixtures, table decorations and focus walls coupled with numerous items that appear to have come from a local junk dealer may result in a cluttered look, rather than a family theme.

Choose your restaurant theme carefully. The elements of choice can include the style of service, type of food and the decorations that provide visual interest. The theme that has become more of a gimmick than a philosophy of service may have a shorter lifespan than is desirable.

Tips For Setting Restaurant Hours

The decision about what hours your restaurant should be open is one that can't be made in a vacuum. It is true that the scheduling of open hours for the facility must be considered in advance of opening or re-opening. Placing advertising in telephone directories, newspapers or other marketing venues requires letting potential customers know when you will be open. Here are some tips for setting restaurant hours.

Your facility location will play an important role in deciding how to set your serving hours. An area that has a large daytime population will need to be open during the hours that will serve these people. This doesn't rule out changing the dynamics of the restaurant in order to attract a different type of diner in other hours.

If your location is largely deserted in the evening hours, you have a choice of doing something that will bring people to the location. This might be a better service level, theme foods or perhaps entertainment. Those people who are interested in your restaurant theme or cuisine may travel some distance to take part in what you offer. You will also need to consider the availability of staff, so that patrons of your facility can receive the same type of top quality service at any time they choose to eat.

You may find that your restaurant advertising or marketing efforts are different for different hours of serving. If you are trying to reach young families you probably won't want to advertise your facility in a singles dating site. The hours for families would be different than for those people eating after attending the movie theater. The type of menu may change with the time of day.

Checking out the surroundings and considering how you can take advantage of events going on in the surroundings will provide a reason to use flexible scheduling. For example, if a nearby church holds choir practice every week, you may want to have open hours so that people can eat before their meeting or can grab a cup of coffee after the session.

When deciding which hours your facility will be open, there are several factors to consider. If you have a daytime location, you will need to give people a reason to make the trip during off hours. If you are open with other nearby establishments are closed, you will probably pick up some customers. A cost-benefit analysis will help you to decide. The diners who are likely to come to your eating place will affect the best hours for your facility to be open for business.

Catering Contract Worksheet

A few of us know how catering actually works. It is not just about decorating and serving food for the guests, but also a procedure in executing every single detail in an event flawlessly.  Numerous things are required for a successful catering service. Some would say that it is a form of art and the caterer must have an impeccable taste, much like how an artist is perceived through the eyes of the critics. The jargon used in the catering or food business is also unique.

Catering is a different world of food altogether. It has a wide array of choices namely wedding, baptism, baby shower, corporate, and many more. If you have your own catering service, being organized is very crucial. One has to take into account the availability of the venue, the materials needed for the decorations, food tasting, and the number of guests who will attend the event.  It is important to make sure that your clients’ requirements are met and to give them their money’s worth.

Since we want to give them the best event that they could possibly have, constant communication with the client is a must. Be ready for last minute changes as opposed to a permanent decision. For this, the rule of thumb is for you to have it all in written agreement and not just verbal. This is to give you assurance that there will be no room for changes once a decision has been agreed upon. In order to help you with this, Mr. Dave Lipson has come up with a solution with the use of his catering template form at FreeRestaurantForms.com. It is a catering contract worksheet stating the most relevant information in organizing an event, giving restaurateurs and their clients a common ground with regards to having a successful event.

FREE Restaurant Produce Spreadsheet An Easy Way To Track Produce Use

What easier way to monitor produce supplies than by using a spreadsheet and a free one at that. There are plenty of websites that offer spreadsheets for tracking various restaurant inventory. Restaurants generally consist of a multitude of items that need to be stocked and re-stocked on a regular basis, since the majority of these items get consumed daily. Having a free restaurant produce spreadsheet is one way to properly maintain a complete list of what needs to be ordered next time from the food service in charge of supplying all the perishables.

The website with the most commonly used spreadsheets available is called freerestaurantforms.com and these are completely free documents that are able to be downloaded right to your computer. This spreadsheet can be altered in any way needed to make it fit better with your list of produce used. Not all restaurants carry the same items or quantities, so these numbers are easily inserted to make them accurate for your restaurant.

While the individual items are located in the column to the far left, the estimated quantities to be used and how much was ordered are listed to the right.

The columns start off the with par amounts for a typical weekday and weekend, with each amount able to be placed in a separate column. The days of the week are then listed, starting with Monday and ending on Sunday, with two columns alloted for each individual day.

There is a column for Par and a column for Ord. This is a great way to use this free restaurant produce spreadsheet for keeping track of what is used on a daily basis. It is nicely organized and very easy to follow. This format will make ordering produce much simpler, since you can see if the par amounts are as accurate as you thought or if you need to adjust your produce order.