General

Refrigerator maintenance should be a top priority as you build your restaurant business. Commercial refrigeration maintenance allows you to keep food for longer while saving on overhead and allowing your customers to enjoy the freshest food possible.

If you want to keep your restaurant refrigeration equipment running optimally, you need to rely on proper maintenance.

When you open up your business, will you open as an independent company or a franchise? Buying a franchise restaurant is a great idea for some, but non-franchise restaurants, or independent options, provides its own benefits.

What's the one thing that supermarkets, deli, and markets have in common? All three of these entities rely on scales for their day-to-day operations. They allow you to verify shipment weights, manage inventory, and sell food based on weight.

The restaurant industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and food waste, but many in the industry are changing their practices to reduce their environmental impact. Sustainability restaurants are a growing part of the industry, and your establishment can join them by implementing these 10 practices.

If you want to know how to open a restaurant, you'll need to make sure that you have all of the food permits and food licenses required by the State of New York to operate legally. You'll want to conduct your own due diligence on starting a business in NYC as some of these requirements may change.

If you walk into many chain restaurants, you'll see waiters and waitresses wearing uniforms. Restaurant employee rules are in place in many establishments that dictate the attire and appearance standards of workers.

Dishwashers, play an important role in a commercial kitchen keeping it going. Sanitization requirements make having an efficient commercial dishwasher a priority. Budget is an obvious consideration when selecting a restaurant dishwasher machine , but there are also other factors that you must consider.

Restaurants that offer food made-to-order can choose between two main options: cooking from scratch or offering pre-made meals. A lot of restaurants, especially smaller establishments, will purchase pre-made food and pass it off as their own, unique recipe.

The problem with pre-made menu items, in the sense that they were made by someone else or are frozen and need to be heated, is that you lose that unique flare for your food. If it tastes the same as the restaurant down the street, what will keep your customers coming back?

A professional pizza maker won't settle for anything less than the best commercial pizza oven. When you want the best-tasting pizza, a lot of the cooking process relies on a high-end oven that is able to reach high enough temperatures and meet your establishment's needs.

If you don't know the best pizza oven to buy, you will know after reading this article.

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.