Chef in kitchen of restaurant preparing food

Cooking Up Change: How to Know It’s Time for a Restaurant Kitchen Redesign!

A poorly designed kitchen/bar/service area can be the difference between success and failure.

It is a bold statement, but in the world of the restaurant industry, the kitchen and bar are the heart and soul of the operation. It’s where culinary and mixologist teams craft the perfect meals and cocktails. Your establishment’s success largely depends on your kitchen’s efficiency and functionality. This is why, from time to time, restaurant owners must consider a restaurant kitchen makeover.

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Restaurant kitchen design with two chefs

Recipe for Success: Unleashing the Power of Innovative Kitchen Design in Restaurants!

During the first few days in a new role, I toured the new convention and restaurant spaces that were under construction and opening within a few months. In the a la carte kitchen, the lead designer pointed out the new state-of-the-art equipment and other features of the area.

“Where is the printer going?” I asked.

Suddenly, I felt a nudge and then a whisper, “Don’t bring anything up. We will fix it later!” Later?

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Waitress taking order at resturant Blog: Employee Retention and Morale

7 Tips for Employee Retention and Boosting Morale

There are two restaurants with similar menus, prices, job positions, and functions with one significant difference – Restaurant A has exceptional employee retention rates, while Restaurant B faces high employee turnover. Because of Restaurant B’s high turnover rate, they are spending excessive money and time to recruit new employees while continuing to lose high-performing workers.

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restaurant concept outdoors classy dining

Don’t be Everything to Everyone: Deciding on a Concept for Your Restaurant

When walking through any city or scrolling through the internet for the latest and greatest new restaurants, there seem to be as many great concepts as there are restaurants. Adding to this are the micro concepts that have evolved from ghost kitchens focusing on very niche markets. As a consumer, the seemingly endless concepts provide a great deal of variety and excitement. For a new restaurant or food and beverage operation it can be overwhelming to decide which concept is best for their operation.

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empty tables in a restaurant blog: How to maximize revenue with table mix

How to Maximize Revenue Through Table Mix

When it comes to overall Food & Beverage profits, the amount of revenue doesn’t always correlate to profitability, and no matter how much revenue a restaurant makes, there is a potential it can lose money on the bottom line. In other words, a busy restaurant with high revenue may not be as profitable as a smaller restaurant with lower revenue. However, we all know that for a restaurant to make a profit, it needs to maximize revenue and capitalize on its full sales potential.

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pile of vegetables including peppers, garlic, and more Blog: Increasing accuracy of inventory counts

How to Improve the Accuracy of your Food & Beverage Inventory Counts

Month-end inventory counts are likely one of the least favourite tasks for Operations Managers. So much so, that many operations neglect to count their food and beverage inventory regularly or accurately, leading to inconsistent results. However, inventory counts are an essential tool to help operators maximize profits.

Let’s look at why inventory counts are despised, how to improve accuracy, reduce the time spent, and the benefits of counting inventory.

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Group of people around table working Blog: Leader productivity

Productivity Matters: How to Improve Leader Productivity

In the hospitality industry, and every industry for that matter, there is a constant desire and need to increase leader productivity. We use variables such as covers or rooms divided by the number of variable labour hours for any given position to measure efficiency. These measurements are also the basis for many other calculations, and as a scheduling tool – covers are up, so schedule more people, lower rooms booked, so schedule fewer front desk agents. They can also be used as a metric to measure individual employees’ performance or training progression.

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classy high end restaurant Blog: Food & Beverage forecasting

Food & Beverage Forecasting – How Being Wrong is Right

Every Food & Beverage operation has different factors that impact its business levels, and with profit margins being so slim, there is little room for error. Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly how much business is coming in? You would always schedule the right number of staff and order the right amount of food. Your customers would never wait, servers and cooks would be productive, and there would be no food waste.

Doesn’t that sound like the perfect world? If your food and beverage operation runs this way, then there is no need to read on. However, most restaurants find themselves reacting to the business on a daily basis leading to poor or inconsistent customer service, frustrated employees being overworked or sent home early, and food waste. It doesn’t need to be this way! By creating an effective forecast, you can take out some of the guesswork and maximize your profit.

There are so many examples of poor planning in the food and beverage industry. Everything from the restaurant manager texting their employees at 11:00 PM at night to tell them what time they’re working the next day or if they’re working at all to a restaurant running out of food midway through service because they didn’t think it would be that busy.

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Two kitchen staff working in a restaurant. Blog: Promoting New Leaders

Promoting New Leaders: Benefits, Risks, and Strategies for Success

The challenging and competitive labour market the hospitality industry is facing is nothing new, and there are numerous articles and strategies to improve retention and attract the best candidates. However, this problem has compounded in recent years with the number of people leaving the industry. At the leadership level, a void and skillset gap has emerged, making it very difficult to find candidates to fill the seemingly endless number of vacant leadership positions. When operators are unable to fill leadership positions with qualified candidates, they have a limited number of options to consider.

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Image of server carrying two plates of food in restaurant Blog: Cook and Chill systems

Cook & Chill Systems: Not Just for Large Operations

Anyone in the Food & Beverage industry knows the importance of mise en place and that it is impossible to prepare everything at the last minute for each order. Chefs need to be able to masterfully prepare food in advance while maintaining near-perfect quality. In many cases, this involves the proper cooking, cooling, and reheating of food. There is an endless supply of equipment available to help, from the well-known and mainstream vacuum/ROP (reduces oxygen) packaging, blast chillers, and rethermalizing warmers to combi ovens and the lesser-known cook and chill systems. 

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