General

As a restaurant owner, you try to cater to a wide range of customer tastes. Business is business after all. But some items are more profitable than others. Increasing sales of these more profitable items will improve your bottom line.

How do you nudge customers towards these high-margin items? Here are 6 restaurant menu engineering tips.

Many restaurants and fast food establishments couldn't operate without industrial fryers. Whether you serve hamburgers and French fries or Mozzarella sticks, your kitchen needs a commercial fryer.

Like any other piece of equipment, restaurant fryers are an investment. It's important to make sure that you choose the right one that meets your needs and budget. 

What should you look for when buying a deep fryer?

Foodborne illness outbreaks or a food poisoning outbreak can take time to manifest. You can serve customers for days or weeks before complaints start to roll in. Those that do become sick will go to the doctor and have to trace their illness back to your establishment.

The owner is an integral element of a restaurant's success. If an owner's leadership skills are lacking, it will trickle down to other key employees, such as small managers.

Griddles are the backbone of many restaurant kitchens. They're a quick, efficient and versatile cooking tool that makes it easy to prepare several foods at once.

Whether you're just opening your restaurant or looking to upgrade your kitchen, you have a big decision ahead of you. It's important to weigh your options carefully and consider the following factors.

Restaurants loyalty programs reward loyal customers while encouraging repeat business and improving service. In the restaurant business, repeat customers are crucial to success. The majority of a restaurant's revenue comes from just a small portion of current customers.

One of the workhorses of any restaurant is the refrigeration system that restaurant owners put in place. A competent system is integral to the freshness of your food, and customers come in for the freshest food available, so it's worth putting in the investment into commercial refrigerators versus the kind made for the home.

As a restaurant owner, you want to be successful, especially since you are serving your best to all your clients. Have you considered starting a restaurant delivery service? Given the current situation with a lot of your clients self-isolating and restaurants closing, you might find that having a delivery option for your establishment could help you to keep the business up and running.

The effects of coronavirus on dining out came in like a respiratory wrecking ball to a normally thriving industry. Currently, with no cure in sight, nearly all Americans are on a virtual lock-down. To date, nearly 5 million workers have been laid off due to the coronavirus and half of that number worked in the food-service industry. That means that roughly 2.5 million food workers are out of a job and many other Americans are left wondering if and how they'll get their food fix.

Offering discounts to customers seems beneficial on the surface, and it can be, but it can also be bad for business. Sure, you're getting new customers through the door, but will your new business make up for the losses stemming from your discount offer?

Price discounting is both an art and a science. When done improperly, it can negatively affect your bottom line. So, what is a consequence of "discounting" when talking in economic terms?

When a patron sits down at a restaurant, one of the first things they'll see is a menu. Unfortunately, menu design does not get enough attention in most establishments. It usually goes like this — if you don't know how to design one, chances are you either hire someone else to make it (we hope), or use your own experience from eating out. Having clear concept vision and gathered information might help. But what happens if a lot of truths you've heard about are really myths?

Winning concept is vital for starting a new restaurant or promoting remodeling of an old one. There are millions of food serving establishments in the United States, and your restaurant or bar concept may already exist somewhere.

New concepts are hard to formulate, but it's possible with the right approach.

An efficient restaurant kitchen is like a well-choreographed dance - everything flows smoothly and beautifully together. But just like with a professional dance performance, this level of efficiency doesn't just happen on its own. Restaurant operators must take the time to plan and optimize their kitchen stations to keep everything running like a well-oiled machine.

A restaurant manager works behind the scenes to ensure patrons are happy and everything is running smoothly. They may not be directly involved in the restaurant's cooking, serving or bartending, but they do work with all of these parties to keep the establishment running like a well-oiled machine.

Financial red alerts can quickly lead to closure and bankruptcy. The restaurant industry is one where even the slightest red alert going unresolved can lead to disaster. Restaurant profit margins are often very tight, so it can be difficult to overcome some of the financial issues if they persist too long.

A restaurant has a lot of elements that lead to success: location, management, concept - and that's just the start. Restaurants, especially smaller locations, need to look at what franchises have to offer.

But how do you stand out as a smaller restaurant that isn't backed by a major corporation? Service. Your food. Your staff. You have the advantage of being able to provide a level of service that keeps customers coming back.

Restaurant owners must leverage relationships with a food distributor to ensure that they have the ingredients they need to serve their customers. Supplier selection is key, and you may work with a variety of local food distributors to increase your availability to ingredients.

What makes a good restaurant? Sure, the food is the main draw, but customers also want to feel welcome and important. You can serve the best food in town, but if your restaurant isn't customer-friendly, you'll have a hard time winning customer loyalty.

Fortunately, you don't have to hire ambience personnel to make your restaurant customer-centric. Follow these tips on how to make customers feel valued.

Here we are, up to our collective elbows in foul weather, flannel and family. However, the holidays are an exciting time to prepare and present your very best to beloved patrons, Christmas fair visitors or family. If you are a restaurant owner, a home chef, or just hosting your first fancy get-together, we've got the recipes and glassware to make them (and we mean you!) shine. 

A commercial range is the lifeline of a kitchen, and it's this range that will handle the majority of your restaurant's cooking. But whether you're starting a restaurant from scratch or replacing a range, there is a lot to consider.

Purchasing a restaurant helps alleviate a lot of the initial issues when starting a restaurant, and you may consider buying a bar / restaurant that you frequent often. When you go into a local establishment and find that it's always filled with patrons laughing and drinking, it may seem like a good choice for a purchase.

But there are a lot of questions to ask when buying a business.

Restaurant food waste can quickly lead to inflated food costs. If a chef has made a special stew on Tuesday and there is a lot of leftovers, discarding this food, while it's still good, will lead to restaurant waste.

You're throwing money away if you're not trying to get profit from it.

Restaurant owners are many things, but most are not architects. The owner will have an idea in mind for their restaurant layout and design, but while the design may look nice, it may be an architectural disaster.

Simple mistakes in a restaurant's floor planning can lead to less efficiency and more overhead for the owner.