How to Avoid Surprise Health Inspections at Your Restaurant

How to Avoid Surprise Health Inspections at Your Restaurant

by | Sep 26, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

A restaurant can be a dangerous place, filled with razor-sharp cutting utensils, slippery floors, super-heated liquids and bodies moving at lightning speed in a confined area. It’s the type of hazardous environment that is a magnet for health inspections conducted by both the Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration (OSHA) and other workers’ compensation authorities. 

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. The key is to think safety, starting from senior management all the way down to the people bussing tables. It also comes down to something as simple as the design of the restaurant itself. Here are some suggestions, courtesy of Restaurant Hospitality and OSHA, on how the design of your restaurant can go a long way in reducing workplace injuries.

In the kitchen:

  • Buy countertops and cutting surfaces that can be adjusted to the right height for different workers.
  • Install dumbwaiters to transfer food products between floors.
  • Install sinks that are at the height of most workers’ hips. This helps prevent strain in dishwashing.
  • Buy thick rubber mats for use when kneeling.
  • Make sure that all the equipment, utensils, pots and pans needed in the kitchen are within reach of the shortest worker.

In the front of house:

  • Install coat racks at chest height.
  • Install hip-height bar sinks and ice storage at bars.
  • Install computer workstations for ordering that are adjustable with touchscreens.
  • Install lights at ordering computer workstations with dimmers that direct light upward, toward the ceiling.
  • Design at the bar is important, too. The distance between the bartender and customer should measure 22 inches or less.

Workers in the restaurant should:

  • Store heavy and frequently used items on racks that are no lower than hip height and no higher than chest height.
  • Limit very low and overhead storage to items not often used.
  • Rather than bending, stooping or kneeling, work at levels between your hips and chest. You should work in your power zone while sweeping the floor.

Owners and managers should:

  • Create a written safety policy in your handbook. This should address separately the hazards most frequently encountered by employees. Work rules must meet or exceed OSHA standards. Work rules need to be in writing and be distributed to all.
  • Communicate the rules to employees. Ensure management is on board and all new employees are properly trained prior to starting. Implement continued training safety and establish safety committed, view vendor demos and educate workers on most frequently encountered hazards.
  • Take steps to discover violations. Oversee safety inspections, walk-throughs and audits. Watch for hazards or rule violations. Do periodic safety self-inspections.

Eventually, health inspections will find their way to your location, preferably just on a routine inspection and not because of some catastrophic workplace injury involving hot soup. But by using the information we’ve outlined above you will survive your next OSHA visit because you will have substantially reduced your risk profile.

You might also like…

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Not only is terminating someone always hard on a personal level, but there are laws that must be followed regarding the firing process. So, how do you do it in the most tactful, lawful and useful way?

read more

Experience Sirvo for yourself

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

Sign up
Here’s How Much Your Time Actually Costs

Here’s How Much Your Time Actually Costs

by | Sep 9, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

When you’re in hospitality or food service, there’s plenty that demands your time and attention. However, what many fail to calculate is the cost of their time. Take a moment to consider this: what does your time really cost? While it’s not a perfect estimate, understanding what you’re sacrificing by trying to do it all yourself can give you a much stronger picture of what you need to outsource to others.

Calculating Your Value

In essence, the value of your time is expressed by your annual salary including benefits divided by the number of hours you actually work each year.

Value = Annual Salary (+ Benefits) / Annual Hours Worked

If you’re starting your business from scratch and its net worth is relatively low, your hourly cost might be as well. On the other hand, if you’re running a successful restaurant or hotel, you might find that your time is worth more than you think.

Examining the Balance

How much does it really cost to complete a particular activity, whether it’s having your taxes done, cleaning out an old storage room, or taking care of the decor for a new restaurant?

Sure, doing it yourself seems like a great way to shave a little money off of your budget, but that’s only true if your time could not be better used in accomplishing other tasks.

If you’re forcing yourself to work overtime, you’re lowering your net worth – and potentially bringing down the net worth of your business.

The Cost of Experience

Hiring experienced professionals to take care of things might have a higher up-front cost, but it also means that you can be sure the job is done right.

From a new paint job that won’t peel off the walls or need to be redone because you chose the wrong kind of paint to an experienced financial professional to oversee your books, hiring a professional means several things:

  • Less time spent cleaning up mistakes later
  • Greater professionalism
  • Higher levels of accuracy the first time
  • Accomplishing the task much faster than you’d be able to do it

Your contributions to your business are many and varied. You’ve done plenty of things, particularly in the business’s early days. The longer you own your restaurant or hotel, however, the more your time is worth–and the more important it is that you bring in professionals who will help make the most of it.

Sending another individual or hiring out a particular task is a more cost-effective use of your resources.

Your Employees’ Time Matters, Too

Accepting that your time is important is just one step in the process of making the most of your business. It’s also important to acknowledge how much your employees’ time means.

Whether it’s the manager who is the absolute best at dealing with customer complaints or the server who always receives glowing reviews from customers, sending them to take care of menial tasks means that you’re paying their current (higher) salary for those tasks.

In many cases, sending another individual–or hiring out a particular task instead of having your employees complete it–is a more cost-effective use of your resources.

Understanding the true worth of both yourself and your employees is the ideal way to increase your business and make the most of every aspect of it. The cliche is, “Time is money!” The truth is, your time is worth your money. Acknowledging that will make it much easier to decide which tasks are truly worth your time and which ones are better moved to someone else’s plate.

You might also like…

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Not only is terminating someone always hard on a personal level, but there are laws that must be followed regarding the firing process. So, how do you do it in the most tactful, lawful and useful way?

read more

Experience Sirvo for yourself

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

What a Little Competitor Spying Can Teach You

by | Sep 2, 2016 | Management

Keeping an eye on your competitors is valuable, but it’s something you should definitely be prepared for in advance. Blundering into a competitor’s restaurant and ordering a meal with no preparation is going to lead to little in the way of insight and is very likely to be a waste of time and money. And if you’re sending someone else to do it, you need to be sure that they are equally prepared. Here’s how to get started

Start with a digital stakeout

Examining their web presence and digital marketing materials is an easy way to start off from a safe distance, and it will help you to develop ideas about what to focus in on when you actually go in for a visit.

Check out their website. Put yourself in the shoes of the target customer, or better yet, get the feedback of a few other people who are close matches. Try to determine whether the structure and presentation of the site are enticing and welcoming. Does it provide enough information about the menu? And how well does it work on a variety of devices, from the office desktop to a smartphone?

Put yourself in the shoes of the target customer, or better yet, get the feedback of a few other people who are close matches.

Stalk on social media. Keep in mind that this type of traffic can be faked by services who are hired out for this purpose – a sure sign of fraud is a lot of followers and upvoters who have a very limited posting history and aren’t very active. How are they doing for likes, shares and comments? Is there a consistent theme or style to the posts that are most upvoted and shared?

Google them. Start with just their name, then search for their primary food category in conjunction with their location. Also, look into a few of the results like Yelp and TripAdvisor to see what their customers think. Where do they rank in terms of results? What are customers saying on review sites?

Get some face time

An in-person visit is mostly going to be centered on gauging the staff, the atmosphere and the internal marketing materials. You can get some sense for the quality of their food and beverages, but obviously, this is something that can vary greatly from day to day and from dish to dish. So, here are a few items to take note of.

Eyeball the overall layout. Think about what is appealing to the customer, and what could be interfering with their dining experience. Take note of which aspects of the atmosphere are working well and if this is something you could imitate or create your own variant of. Are the customers enjoying themselves? Does the staff have to waste time with inefficient movement to get supplies? Is it easy for customers to move around or is it a hassle?

Make specific note of what’s going wrong with competitors as well as what they’re doing right – these are the areas you can directly emphasize to customers.

Put the staff to the test. Get a rough head count of the staff, and how it compares to your numbers to provide similar service with the similar atmosphere. Take note of how long everything takes to get done, from initial contact to offering to bring the bill to the table. Is the waitstaff pro-active about refills and checking on customer needs? How do they handle unexpected questions, requests and complaints? What is their general demeanor and attitude?

Look into amenities. Make a trip to the restroom just to see how they’re keeping it up. While there’s no scientific correlation between a dirty restroom and a dirty kitchen, customers certainly get a negative impression of the establishment from the condition of the restroom, to the point that a nasty restroom can cause up to 30% of business to never return.

In some cases, several different visits will be appropriate to gather all of this data. It can also be helpful to have your staff pick up a variety of meals to get a better sense of the food quality. During all visits, most critically, make specific note of what’s going wrong with competitors as well as what they’re doing right — these are the areas you can directly capitalize on and emphasize to customers.

You might also like…

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Not only is terminating someone always hard on a personal level, but there are laws that must be followed regarding the firing process. So, how do you do it in the most tactful, lawful and useful way?

read more

Experience Sirvo for yourself

Sign up now to find hospitality jobs and hire top industry talent.
Sign up
What to Expect When You Become a Personal Chef

What to Expect When You Become a Personal Chef

by | Aug 31, 2016 | Career

When you decide to become a personal chef, things should start to go your way very quickly, and you may soon find that being a personal chef is quite the lucrative position. A personal chef goes into the homes of clients and creates magnificent meals that tend to be highly rewarded. On average, the profession makes more money than any other chef-related job. However, becoming a personal chef brings its own challenges.

Challenges

The problems that can arise during one’s stint as a personal chef can vary from one job to the next. For instance, you may be hired to cook in a poorly equipped kitchen. Your clients may be too demanding and difficult to work for. Children may be allowed to run in, out and through the kitchen while you are attempting to work. Still, the opportunities to explore the joys of creatively cooking your own way are worth the inconvenience of the occasional setback.

The best way to market oneself as a personal chef is to find a specific niche.

Becoming a Personal Chef

Besides having experience in other professional kitchen jobs, becoming a personal chef is different from other types of jobs, because it usually does not entail any type of formal job application, and acceptance rates depend on many different factors. Food handlers licensing varies from state to state as do taxes, and business laws. All of these things should be taken into consideration ahead of time.

The best way to market oneself as a personal chef is to find a specific niche. For instance, one chef might advertise that she cooks with local ingredients only. Another might make a mark on the vegetarian scene. Each choice has specific constraints and advantages that the chef should work out well in advance of starting a business.

People Skills

Chefs who work in restaurants have the advantage, or disadvantage, depending on their particular perspectives, of being separated from their customers. With few exceptions, chefs work in the kitchen and the customers eat in the dining area. Being a personal chef is a different scene altogether.

Oftentimes, personal chefs develop up close and personal relationships with their clients because at times, their clients want to work with them to help cook, or they want the chef to teach them a few tricks. In other instances, people walk through the kitchen and stop to chat, creating perfect opportunities to make new acquaintances and to work with the clients to prepare exactly what they want.

Personal chefs do not necessarily have the same job security as restaurant chefs, but it is an occupation that can be creatively rewarding, and monetarily rewarding as well.

Feedback

Personal chefs are more vulnerable to feedback than restaurant chefs because they are in closer proximity to their clients. In these more intimate types of positions, clients tend to be much more open to expressing exactly how they feel about the job the chef is doing.

Clients are able to ask for exactly what they want and how they want it cooked, and can readily give kudos or criticism, depending on how well they enjoyed the meal. Their comments should be taken in stride and noted for future reference.

Taking Care of Business

Chefs working in restaurants receive regular paychecks that reflect their hours worked or salary. They are able to spend that money at their own discretion. Personal chefs have a whole different scenario.

When one is a personal chef, he or she bears personal responsibility for making the cash flow. It is up to the chef to find clients who will pay a negotiated fee. Then come the business expenses, such as extra utensils, transportation, food containers and other things. Taxes are also different for a personal chef than for a restaurant chef. All income will be taxed as a business.

Personal chefs do not necessarily have the same job security as restaurant chefs, but it is an occupation that can be creatively rewarding, and monetarily rewarding as well.

You might also like…

What Is TIPS Training, And Should You Get It?

What Is TIPS Training, And Should You Get It?

The 35-year old TIPS training program covers the legal responsibilities of establishments, the effects of alcohol on people, and various customer-friendly ways to provide alcohol service in a responsible manner. It also gives you a chance to practice some ways of dealing with real-life scenarios.

read more
Why You Should Never Hesitate To Cut Guests Off

Why You Should Never Hesitate To Cut Guests Off

You want to keep the customers happy, and clearly you are there to provide them with what they ask for. However, when a drunk customer starts to become a problem you should never hesitate to cut them off, and here is why.

read more

Experience Sirvo for yourself

Sign up now to find hospitality jobs and hire top industry talent.
Sign up
How To Create An Excellent Restaurant Menu

How To Create An Excellent Restaurant Menu

by | Aug 26, 2016 | Business Toolkit, Management

Lots of people remember a restaurant from their past or even in their present in which they enjoyed a neighborhood kind of aura, friendly, laid back with some of the best food on the planet. The food might have been a mix of your everyday sandwiches and a steak to die for, or the food could have been something a five-star chef would turn out. The menu was a typed list of the food and its description, every now and then paired with a wine or beer to complement the food. The ambiance might have drawn people to the restaurant initially, but the food kept them coming back for more. Times change, though, and menus reflect that change. If you need to know how to create a good restaurant menu, we have five tips that will help.

1. Create the goal of the menu

A menu should represent the personality of the restaurant. Your brand is at stake, here, and the diner will recognize this in the menu. Diners should be impressed with the presentation and be ready to recommend the restaurant to one and all. We know that’s a tall order, you should pardon the pun, but take a look at American restaurant Cracker Barrel’s menu: homestyle fixin’s, Grandpa’s Country Fried Breakfast, fancy fixin’s, wholesome fixin’s –  we’re sure you get the idea. The whole aura is homey, comforting and the food filling for a great price.

Tip: Your menu should be logical. Begin with appetizers, followed by entrees, perhaps fixin’s, desserts then drinks. Pictures help, but don’t overload the menu. Just a few pictures and a personality-indicating description will do just fine.

2. Do your homework

You’ll need to research how a successful establishment presents its menu. Check online as well as the brick and mortar store. Figure in your own financials, marketing and potential sales. Look up either online or in a library professional publications describing what’s new and selling wildly in certain areas. Additionally, you’ll need to decide your personality. Shall your establishment be a beanery, a classy joint or quick-natured?  What do you do well, and will it sell in your area? Compare pricing, too.

Tip: Balance your food costs by offering several dishes using one ingredient. For example, if you offer a burger, offer to top it with ingredients from other dishes such as lobster, shrimp, gourmet cheeses, specialty sauces like truffle aiola, and even bacon and eggs.

A menu should represent the personality of the restaurant. Your brand is at stake, here, and the diner will recognize this in the menu.

3. Come up with a design

The eye follows many things, among them light and color. Highlight your specialties or any new ideas you’re trying out. Keep it simple. Stick to one easy to read font. Don’t make the menu sixteen pages; this annoys diners, who must search for what they want. One or two nicely typewritten pages tell diners what is available with no fuss. Remember that if you laminate your menu, you can’t change it without going back to the printer. Plastic covers allow you to update or change menu items when needed. Having more than one menu isn’t expensive, and it makes things easier on diners when they don’t have to get past breakfast items to get to lunch or dinner items.

Tip: The color of your menu should reflect the personality of your restaurant. For example, reds and yellows would feel natural in a restaurant serving spicy dishes, while blues and silvers would better suit a seafood restaurant. Place pictures or a special label around specialties or new menu items. Offer a variety of prices to suit a variety of diners. Keep the descriptions short and sweet.

4. Avoid mistakes

We’ve all handled menus that were taller than we were, heavy ones we almost couldn’t lift and menus that presented too much color or pictures for us to take in. Mistakes you want to avoid include making your print too small to read, excluding English terms for foreign dishes, menus without daily specials or weekly specials, and using generic clip art from the Web to illustrate dishes that won’t look like the pictures when they arrive.

Tip: You only get one chance to make a good first impression. Ensure your menu presents your restaurant’s personality without all the hype.

Analyzing which dishes sell the best and which are slower in comparison to your competition should enter the pricing picture.

5. Price it right

Items like certain meats and cheeses tend to fluctuate in price, and we mean going up not down. Keeping this in mind, price your dishes competitively with other restaurants of your type. If the prices of your ingredients go up, cover it by raising prices by a dollar or two. Most diners won’t notice a slight rise in price, but they’ll know instantly if a six to ten dollar price increase will strain their budget. Not everyone can afford filet mignon, so offer dishes lower in price but just as tasty.

Tip: Examine your menu from a customer’s point of view. Taking pictures of the food will give you an idea if the dishes are worth what you’re charging. Analyzing which dishes sell the best and which are slower in comparison to your competition should also enter the pricing picture.

How your restaurant is perceived by diners begins with your menu. Making it attractive, fun and properly priced is essential to weather the changes happening in restaurants today. Want some menu design ideas? Head over to Envato or Graphic River to browse and download.

You might also like…

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Good Terminating Practices For Restaurants

Not only is terminating someone always hard on a personal level, but there are laws that must be followed regarding the firing process. So, how do you do it in the most tactful, lawful and useful way?

read more

Experience Sirvo for yourself

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