3 Reasons To Have Your Restaurant’s Water Tested

3 Reasons To Have Your Restaurant’s Water Tested

by | Aug 8, 2016 | Management

As a business owner, your to-do list never ends. You wear a lot of hats, you keep balls in the air and your plate is always full. From managing your team to ensuring your patrons and guests are always having a positive experience, the quality of your establishment’s water is probably the last thing on your mind. Yet the toxins and harmful substances found in public water might surprise you. Courtesy of Restaurant Hospitality, here are three reasons why it makes sense to test the water in your facilities.

Your building might contain old lead pipes

Many of us have been conditioned to believe lead is a thing of the past. Over the years, lead has been removed from substances like paint, but unfortunately, we still have to worry about it showing up in our water due to old lead pipes that weren’t regulated until after the 1980s. Unless you’re a plumber, you’ll never know whether or not your pipes have lead in them, which is why testing your water for lead is crucial.

We still have to worry about lead showing up in our water due to old lead pipes that weren’t regulated until after the 1980s.

Lead is one of the most harmful chemicals found in water, especially for children who might be drinking it. The only way to eliminate lead from water is to filter it out. While some people believe that boiling water is the best way to get rid of lead in water, this is actually a myth. Boiling water actually causes lead particles to “loosen up,” making the water even more contaminated than before.

 Your local utility company can only test so much

Lead is a problem local utility companies can’t solve, either. While local utility companies test for contaminants at their facility, there’s not much they can do once the water is flowing through your pipes. Because every plumbing system is different, testing for lead is a difficult thing to regulate and measure from a community- or city-wide perspective.

Most water contamination occurs in private plumbing systems or service lines supplying your facility.

While local utilities work hard to ensure the water leaving their facility is safe, your facility’s’ plumbing system is like the Wild West. Most water contamination occurs in private plumbing systems or service lines supplying your facility, meaning that even if you have cleaner-than-average city water, your personal water could still be at risk.

Your customers care about the water quality

According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans are increasingly worried about polluted drinking water. The percentage of concerned citizens grew from 55 percent in 2015, to 61 percent in 2016. Give your customers peace of mind by ensuring the water they drink from your tap, water fountain or kitchen is clean. That extends to your soda and ice machines.

Testing your water to keep it free of contaminants like lead and arsenic is an important step that will increase trust and build a better relationship between you and your customers.

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10 Steps To A Great Restaurant Newsletter

10 Steps To A Great Restaurant Newsletter

by | Aug 5, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

Not only does the food you prepare bring in the customers but the environment and atmosphere in which you offer it. Giving your customers a sense of what awaits them begins long before your restaurant newsletter arrives in their email. Your newsletter expresses who you are and what you have to offer. It builds on existing relationships to create new ones. To make sure you do everything right, here are 10 Steps to creating a great restaurant newsletter.

Offer Great Customer Service

Perhaps you have unlimited funds to create a beautiful environment — but even a small, casual restaurant can provide a wonderful experience. Service is key. Friendly, professional, hard-working staff who serve the correct items in an appropriate time-frame let customers know you care about them. Building relationships with customers through simple techniques like calling them by name is key.

Create Your List

Who will receive your newsletter? Your customers who love you! Provide a way for customers to join your email newsletter list. All serving staff should speak about the newsletter after a customer has enjoyed a delicious meal and good experience in the restaurant. Let them know its purpose: providing a weekly menu of specials? Offering coupons and other incentives?

Learn how to take beautiful photos of the foods you offer or find an employee who has a good eye.

Use Photos

Photos are the way to tantalize your customers with Food, Food, Food when you can’t lure them in with the sight and aroma of an actual dish. Learn how to take beautiful photos of the foods you offer or find an employee who has a good eye. Build a photo library of your own foods to use in newsletters.

Plan It Out

Invest planning time into your newsletter. Think about what is most important to communicate and how you can frame it. Create a visually appealing template. If you can’t afford a designer, there are lots of email services out there nowadays that offer help and templates (we use Mailchimp).

Customers want to know what delicious food you’re going to offer them when they visit in response to your newsletter reminder.

Be sure your plan is for something that is easy to digest (no pun intended) and keeps the focus on what’s most important. Also, keep it simple; you don’t have to put everything into this newsletter — save some for the next one. Last but not least, you want to be consistent in frequency, so when you’re planning, keep this in mind!

Be Present On Social Media

Connect your newsletter to your accounts on social media that your customers use – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and more. Provide links to these accounts in every newsletter. Post pictures and company updates to keep in touch with your customers and let them know if there’s anything coming up.

Listen To Your Clients

Be client-centered in your newsletter. What do your customers want to know? They want to know what delicious food you’re going to offer them when they visit in response to your newsletter reminder. Customers look for both familiarity and variety. Your regular, fixed menu offers them familiarity. Specials and Items of the Day offer them variety.

Make sure to share something new each time – a program, a new service or a new award – to make each newsletter unique.

You don’t need to repeat your whole fixed menu in each newsletter. You can summarize it, sometimes pick a dish to highlight. Be specific, though, about Specials and Items of the Day, and whenever possible, include mouth-watering photos.

Provide Boilerplate Information

Your address, phone number, website, email address, links to your social media accounts and hours – make sure they are there and are easy to find. Awards or special mentions? List them. Great Yelp reviews? Provide a link. Make it easy for people to find out more about you and to get in touch.

Make Each Newsletter Unique

Yes, the boilerplate information is important, but this is a “news” letter! If you said the same thing to a friend every time you connected with them, you probably wouldn’t be friends for long. Be sure you share something new each time — a program or special event, a new service or an upgrade, a thought about your food or an experience in the restaurant, a featured staff person or customer, a new award.

This is a “news” letter!

Provide A Call To Action

What do you want people to do in response to this newsletter? Share it with three other people? Bring a friend to dinner? Order lunch for an office? Come to the restaurant during a particular week or for an event? Be specific, and offer an incentive.

If your newsletter is honest, informative, attractive and easy to take in, if it reminds your customers how much they like your food and how much they enjoy visiting you, it will be a great success.

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Cost of Living and Restaurant Industry Wages in Metro Areas

Cost of Living and Restaurant Industry Wages in Metro Areas

by | Aug 3, 2016 | Career

Restaurant industry workers face a fundamental industry conundrum. The highest number of restaurant jobs, as well as the best-paying jobs, are in the main metropolitan areas. Unfortunately, these major metro areas are also the most expensive places to live, so the higher wages and better tips tend to be immediately offset by the cost of housing.

New York has long been the poster child for this conundrum. The greater metro area, which includes parts of New Jersey, employs the largest amount of chefs and head cooks in the country. The rate of industry employment is almost double that of the Los Angeles metro area, which is number two on the list.

The higher wages and better tips tend to be immediately offset by the cost of housing.

Of course, the problem here is that New York City is also one of the most expensive places to live in the world. Both entry-level and managerial workers enjoy a higher average salary than most of the rest of the country, but it’s largely offset by the cost of housing alone. Los Angeles faces a similar problem.

The traditional solution to this conundrum has been to commute, trading some extra time each work day for lower housing costs in a more remote suburban area. That isn’t always possible anymore, however. Take San Francisco as an example. The city recently edged out New York for the first time as the most expensive place to live in America.

The rapid growth of the tech and finance industries there has elevated the cost of living.

The San Francisco metro area is one of the top ten largest employers of restaurant industry workers in the country, and the traditional solution for lower to mid-level industry workers there was to live in Oakland or other East Bay cities with a reasonable commute time and a much lower cost of living.

The rapid growth of the tech and finance industries there has elevated the cost of living throughout the Bay Area as a whole to the point that there’s no relief to be found within about 50 miles in any direction from the city. The median wage for cooks and head chefs of $49,290 seems nice at first but quickly fades in appeal when average apartment rentals run in the range of $3,000 to $4,000 per month.

Metro areas away from the coasts still offer a desirable quality of life with good wages and a reasonable cost of living.

That doesn’t mean that every major metro area in the country functions this way, however. This is a phenomenon largely limited to the coastal cities, particularly the West Coast given the temperate weather all year. Metro areas away from the coasts still offer a desirable quality of life combined with good wages and a reasonable cost of living.

Las Vegas is perhaps the foremost example. Despite being geographically smaller than many metro areas, the region employs the third highest amount of restaurant workers in the country yet has a very moderate cost of living.

Despite being geographically smaller than many metro areas, Las Vegas employs the third highest amount of restaurant workers in the country.

Las Vegas cooks and head chefs also have a median annual wage of $52,330, which is significantly higher than much of the country. Other examples of good mean wages for chefs in cities with an affordable cost of living include Houston, Sacramento, Denver, Colorado Springs, Sioux City, Lincoln, Jackson, Lansing and Jacksonville.

Surprisingly high wages can also sometimes be found in more rural, non-metropolitan areas. Central Louisiana, East Arkansas, East Kentucky and both Northeast and Southwest Wyoming all have some of the country’s highest mean wages for restaurant industry workers, though naturally these jobs will not be as plentiful as they are in densely populated cities.

The greatest number of jobs are found in Washington D.C., Chicago, Boston and San Diego, all cities that have established issues with affordable housing.

The top ten cities that have the most jobs for restaurant workers do tend to be expensive places more often than not. In addition to the cities already mentioned, the greatest amount of jobs are found in Washington D.C., Chicago, Boston and San Diego, all cities that have established issues with affordable housing. Only Atlanta at #8 begins to approach the more affordable major metro areas of the country.

These are just the absolute biggest destinations, however. With an estimated 14.4 million jobs in the industry in the country as a whole, there’s definitely a place somewhere for everyone who wants to work. And, if you’re looking, Sirvo has great job opportunities available now!

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Sirvo Says: Where to Find the Best Burger In Colorado

Sirvo Says: Where to Find the Best Burger In Colorado

by | Aug 1, 2016 | IndiNews

Colorado loves hamburgers! This is no surprise due to our western background and the fact that the “Cheeseburger” was invented here in Denver by Louis Ballast at his Humpty Dumpty Drive-In once located on Speer and Federal back in 1935. With the Denver Burger Battle right around the corner, we figured we’d hop around town to see who we thought had the best burgers in town. While there were so many great options to choose from, this is the list of the top ten that tantalized our taste buds the most. 

 

1. Highland Tap and Burger

If you’re going to put the word “Burger” in the name of your restaurant, you better have a great hamburger and HT&B doesn’t disappoint. The most apparent and popular choice is the Shroom Luva: an all natural beef patty, sautéed mushroom blend, Emmenthaler cheese (a variety of Swiss) & white truffle aioli! Pair it with a Stone IPA and you will be full and overly content. This is a great neighborhood spot, with a great staff.

2. Cherry Cricket

The Cherry Cricket has probably made it on every top ten burger list since its inception in 1945. This place is a Denver classic and us natives cannot picture a future without it. With all of the options that have entered town, the Cherry Cricket continues to pack them in and that can be attributed to one thing mainly, their hamburger. It’s easy, start with your choice of meat (beef, bison, chicken, black bean & turkey) and start building. Ever had peanut butter on your burger before, do it here! Oh and the Stuffed Jalapeños for an appetizer aren’t too bad either! P.S. If you’re looking for a job, check out Cherry Cricket’s page on Sirvo to see if they’re hiring.

3. Park Burger

With five Park Burger locations across town, this three time reigning Denver Burger Battle champion isn’t hard to find! While The Royale and the El Chilango are fan favorites, we like The Scarpone: ⅓ beef patty, provolone, crispy pancetta giardiniera & a truffle garlic aioli. Chef Jean-Philippe Failyau has brought elements of his fine dining background and fused that together with a casual burger joint. Great beer selection, atmosphere and concept make this place a legit option.

4. Meadowlark Kitchen

Located in RiNo, which is wrapped in Five Points, resides a hip and delicious establishment run by co-owners Casey Karns and Chef Joshua Bitz. Meadowlark Kitchen is not a burger place, but it has one of the most amazing burgers you will ever have simply called The Meadowlark Burger. Are you ready? It’s a cheddar sauce, candied bacon, an onion ring, poached egg, jalapeño confit all on a house made brioche bun. It’s marvelous and big and worth every bite.

5. TAG Burger Bar

Chef Troy Guard is one of the most recognizable names in the city and has been a major influence on Denver’s food scene. When you’re this big of a name, it makes sense that TAG Burger Bar’s best burgers is called Godzilla. This 2014 Denver Burger Battle People’s Choice Award winner is unlike any burger you will ever have, teriyaki sauce, shiitake mushrooms, butter lettuce, crispy tempura & smoked kewpi. Do it, and see if they’re hiring on the Tag Restaurant Group page on Sirvo! 

6. Steuben’s Food Service

Ladies and gentlemen…Steuben’s famous Green Chili Cheeseburger: a six ounce beef patty, covered with roasted Anaheim chilies, American cheese on a toasted challah bun. This burger has made it on almost every top ten burger list created and has been recognized by some national media outfits as well. Chef Brandon Biederman and Owner Josh Wolkon have provided this city and state with some of the best comfort food in town for the last ten years. Is it an elevated cuisine? Not necessarily, it’s comfort food done right. With all the buzz around their new location in Arvada, don’t forget about the original Steuben’s located in the uptown neighborhood where it all started. And, if you’re in need of a gig, why not check out the Steuben’s page on Sirvo to see their open jobs!

7. Acorn

One of, if not, the best restaurants in town ran by one of the best chefs in town. Chef Steven Redzikowski is becoming a household name with all of the accolades his two restaurants (OAK on 14th in Boulder) have received. Acorn’s Oak Grilled Double Cheeseburger (only on lunch menu) does not disappoint, harissa aioli, Gruyere a side of tater tots and you might as well add either an egg, fried pickle, avocado, bacon or maybe add all of them! Acorn is the place you bring friends or family who is visiting from out of town or where you take that date you are trying to impress, just so you know. Plus, their staff is great so if you’re ready for something new professionally, see if Acorn is hiring on their Sirvo page.

8. The Royal

A family friendly joint in a family friendly neighborhood (Berkeley). The Royal is where to take the kids to get some burgers and floats on a Saturday afternoon. An excellent staff provides you a timely and entertaining experience that will make you want to return every week. We suggest The Royal Jelly: a beef patty with honey-sweetened Habanero jelly, cream cheese, Bib Lettuce, sliced tomato. The Royal is the sister restaurant to Jelly (one of Cap Hill’s best brunch spots) and has been a wonderful addition to the fast growing Tennyson Street food scene.

9. West End Tavern

Since 1987, the West End Tavern has been serving some of the best BBQ in Boulder. We suggest starting with the Skillet Cornbread with a whipped honey butter and then for our main course we get the Double Double: a bacon double cheeseburger, smoky mayo, lettuce, tomato & onion. Wash it down with a Ron Burgundy: bulletin bourbon, Leopold Bros Tart Cherry Liqueur, bitters and a house-soaked bourbon cherry. The keywords here were honey, butter, cheeseburger, bourbon. You stay classy Denver and see if West End Tavern is hiring on Sirvo.

10. Larkburger

“One of these things ain’t like the other”, no it is not. Denver is one of the originators of the fast casual scene (ever heard of place called Chipotle?) and it would be a disservice to not include that type of concept on this list. Well that and the food at Larkburger is really good. What do we like best? The Tuna Burger: four ounce sushi grade Ahi tuna steak with wasabi ginger sauce, cilantro, marinated Tamari-miso served in a warm brioche bun. Best thing about this type of place, it doesn’t take forever to get your food and it has a sleek design that compete with most. It’s simply a great, local gourmet burger.

Clearly there are more than ten burger options to choose from in this great city of ours, but these are the one’s we like a lot. Now it’s time for you to check them out, we promise you won’t be let down!

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How To Motivate Your Restaurant Employees

How To Motivate Your Restaurant Employees

by | Jul 29, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

A thriving restaurant is driven by happy, motivated employees. When your staff is motivated, it shows in their work and in your cash register. Keeping workers motivated may appear a daunting task at first, but it’s really quite simple. With a little creativity, there are countless ways to motivate your restaurant employees!

Hold Competitions

Humans are competitive creatures, no matter what job sector they’re in. Restaurant owners can tap into that drive as a way to improve sales and provide incentives for recommending specific menu items and offering top-notch customer service. It doesn’t require a lot of money, and yet it can be a very powerful tool.

Restaurant owners can tap into competition as a way to improve sales and provide incentives for recommending specific menu items.

It’s called gamification and it can help boost and even exceed goals. Try putting together menu bingo cards and hand them out to the servers. Encourage them to recommend the menu items listed on the cards. When they sell one of those items, they can mark off the spot on their card. The first one to get bingo wins a prize.

Managers should make it their duty to oversee these competitions and ensure the prizes are being fairly distributed. Also, make sure the staff isn’t being distracted from their jobs. Some games and drawings will work better for some employees than others, so feel free to experiment and figure out which ones motivate your team the best.

Ongoing Training

Some employers fail to see the value of continuing training beyond the onboarding stage. They think workers are either not interested or don’t need additional instruction.

Receiving ongoing training helps the staff to feel more valued as individuals and improves the overall morale.

On the contrary, receiving ongoing training helps the staff to feel more valued as individuals and improves the overall morale of the establishment. It also demonstrates an invested interest from management for employee success and advancement. If an ongoing training program is not in place, consider adding one.

Celebrate Your Staff

Employees like to feel like management cares about them as individuals rather than simply as workers. Anytime a staff member reaches a milestone, such as celebrating a birthday or completing a training course, make it a point to celebrate the occasion. It doesn’t have to be a big fancy party – providing drinks, a free meal, or a cake is sufficient.

It doesn’t have to be a big fancy party – providing drinks, a free meal, or a cake is sufficient.

Provide Bonuses

To encourage employees to stay with the restaurant, consider offering an annual bonus or a raise for every year a worker stays on. Regardless of hourly pay rates, employers can give regular bonuses based on how many years the employee has been working for the establishment. Even if there are few opportunities for growth, it can still serve as an incentive for your staff to stay on the team.

Close Early

Whenever holidays come around or a staff member celebrates a major life event, such as a wedding, it’s not a bad idea to close the restaurant early. This way the entire team can celebrate the occasion without some of them having to stay behind and work. Doing this will also allow for employees to better manage work with their personal lives without having to burn themselves out.

This way the entire team can celebrate the occasion.

Implementing even just one of these tactics will surely improve your team’s overall attitude towards their job. Your staff will not only become more motivated, but they will begin to enjoy their work and be much more pleasant to interact with.

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Experience Sirvo for yourself

Sign up now to find hospitality jobs and hire top industry talent.

Sign up