Food Franchise

Posts Tagged ‘Restaurant Business’

Running a restaurant is never easy. Trying to ensure that costs are under control and customers are happy makes it extremely difficult to run a restaurant successfully. However, there are some aspects where it can be really easy to ensure success. Choosing the right uniforms for your servers not only means that they are always going to look their best, but it will also help you to reduce your linen and uniform costs which can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

How many owners look at their yearly P&L reports and not become upset over something? Most owners are on a quest to find the perfect P&L report and sadly, this just does not exist. Reducing expenses line item by line item means you need to look not only at short-term expenses but also those that will cost you money in the long term. Of course food, cleaning supplies and other similar items have to be continuously purchased and unfortunately, for many restaurants you are left with a franchise agreement, which tells you which suppliers you have to deal with. For owners who are not left with a franchise agreement they are continuously searching for the best supplier at the lowest cost.

Uniforms are frequently ignored in this need though. How often have you considered the uniforms that your servers wear? They are very important for several reasons, but picking the right uniform is not impossible.

You should always look for uniforms that are made from cotton if any way possible. As your wait staff is moving around they are going to heat up, cotton uniforms can help to control the heat. This lowers your cooling costs, reducing the occurrence of unsightly sweat stains and also ensures that staff are able to perform perfectly.

Appropriate colors are another critical area. If you are working in a restaurant, you have no doubt noticed that white shirts and black pants is a huge staple amongst many restaurants. However, what happens when someone spills something? What happens after a few shifts? Suddenly that crisp white shirt does not look so appealing anymore. Choosing a different color that will not show the stains and dirt as quickly is very important to ensuring that all of your servers look their very best on their first day, but every day after that as well.

Restaurant managers work in some of the most glamorous, exciting environments you can imagine. From luxury resorts in exotic locations to high-powered conference centers to the hottest restaurants, hotel and restaurant managers are working behind the scenes to ensure the excellence of their establishment. If you are looking for a challenging, rewarding career and enjoy working with people, hotel or restaurant management could be right for you. The more people travel, the greater the need for Hotel/Restaurant Managers. As operations become more complex, employers are putting more emphasis on specialized training. The Penn Foster Hotel/Restaurant Manager program can give you a real advantage over others. As a Hotel/Restaurant Managers you can work in restaurants, bed and breakfasts, or even manage franchises for major hotel chains. You might be assigned to organize a newly built or purchased facility, or to reorganize an existing one. Managers determine room rates, oversee restaurant operations, and supervise the staff.

Being a restaurant manager is a lifestyle, not a job. If managers are going to succeed, they will put in 50 to 80 hours per week with high stress levels at times. But once you get everything going, it can be a fun career with very good pay. Employers suggest that potential candidates should consider the following: What type of restaurant business are you going into? There is a big difference between fine dining, family style, fast food and a sports bar or restaurant atmosphere. These restaurants attract different employees. A fine dining establishment might draw more experienced, mature employees, while a fast food restaurant or sports bar might interest younger ones. Do you want to be a floor manager, a back-of-the-house manager or a general manager? Each of these positions requires different skills.

When pursuing jobs, ask potential employers how long they have been in business, where they see the business growing, what opportunities exist for advancement and what type of manager-training programs they have. If someone wants a career in this field, try getting in with a franchise for training and a stable income, many employers will advise. After three to five years, you can look at a privately held restaurant where you can go in as a general manager and demand a pay of $60,000-plus for your expertise or partnership.

The Positives

Restaurant management is great if you like a lot of variety in what you do, like to work really hard and enjoy working with people. It is a fairly easy field to break into without investing in an education; however you can move up faster and not start at the very bottom if you do have an education.

The upside to restaurant management lies in the opportunity to advance quickly, the challenge and the chance to acquire an array of management skills. Nelsen suggests asking yourself these 10 questions to help you decide if this is the career for you:

Do I like to work with many different types of people, both as coworkers and as customers?
Will I mind working all hours of the day and night?
Do I like to motivate people to do their best?
Will I enjoy the pressures of making a budget, staffing the restaurant and managing daily operations?
Will I mind people calling me with questions on my time off?
What do I picture for the future, my family and how we spend our time? Do a restaurant manager’s hours fit into this vision?
Am I highly motivated?
Do I like to work hard?
Do I like to reach daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals?
What does this career offer that others do not?

One last thing to remember about a career in restaurant management is that with all the training and experience you get, you can move to many different industries and careers, for example, you can go from restaurant management to office management, to sales management to bank accounting, publishing and marketing.

Leading by example is a single principle for any success. Passing information through proper leadership is essential to the harmony and relationships among your employees. Whether you are working at the Front of the House or the Rear of the House, leadership sets the course for the direction of your operation. Knowing the basic principles of leadership will help you in every imaginable way in the restaurant business.

Here are a few tips for future restaurant managers: Take a moment to review your facility and operation. Does your facility accommodate critical relationships established by the flow of food? Or, do your servers have to walk through the prep or production areas to access the ware washing area? Are your servers and kitchen employees able to move freely? Or, are they always engaged in “right of way” debates? When a facility is designed based on the flow of food, the quality of service, risk of cross contamination, and employee morale all improve. If your facility utilizes this approach to design, you can attest to the results. If not, consider how you can improve the current configuration or operational procedures to better follow the flow of food.

Menu marketing is an important aspect for the success of any foodservice establishment. Menus are statements of the food and beverage items that are provided by a restaurant based on consumer wants, needs and demands. Menus can be interpreted as a list of products that a restaurant offers, and it can be a piece of literature or display used to communicate the products to the customer. From a marketing view point, menus are more than the conventional function of a communications and selling tool but also a tool that must be formatted to increase restaurant profits. Menu engineering provides the manager with information about a menu item’s profitability, as well as popularity, so that proactive planning, recipe design and customer pricing decisions can be made. Menu engineering is not a substitute for proper purchasing, food rotation, standard recipes or any of the other basic kitchen controls that can negatively impact your costs. Rather it is a method of evaluating every item on your menu relative to its present contribution to bottom line dollars, thereby allowing managers to recognize the items they want to sell!

We all love a tall glass of Root Bear and have heard of A & W. Some of us have heard about the restaurant, while others might not have. However the restaurant chains itself has been around about as long as the root beer and there’s no wonder it’s very popular in many parts of the country.

A & W was started back in 1919 when Roy W. Allen opened his first stand in California just selling root beer. It was only three years later when he met Frank Wright and started establishing drive-up restaurants which would sell things like hot dogs and hamburgers.

But when it comes to franchising an A & W Restaurant the last thing you are is limited. It offers so many different variations of the restaurant business, the simplicity or complexity is all up to you.

You have a combination convenience store with a small restaurant, you can include gas, you can have just the restaurant or you can do anything in between.

It will take about one to two years before you are open and up and running. The process can is long and doesn’t happen overnight, but it is insurance that you are selecting the right program and location for the business.

Unfortunately, this franchise is not for everyone. The start-up costs can be very high. The lowest you would expect the have invested in the whole opportunity is $1,000,000.00 and can reach up to $2,000,000. It might seem to be too much, but if you have the money on hand and are willing to get things running right, it might be the best decision you made.

Of course other than the initial set-up costs, you will have to fork over some of your gross sales to the franchisor each year. Royalty is between 5 and 6% and the franchise fee is between $20,000 and $30,000.

Many franchisors don’t want people coming in and out, so the term of the agreement is 20 years.

With this franchise, you will need to build your own property and purchase land. All the other items that would be included in the restaurant/retail area are your burden to find and purchase. The franchisor does not finance anything, so it would be up to you to ensure that you have proper financing on anything you may need it on.

It seems a lot to have to deal with and then run a business that is using someone else’s name, but when things are said and done it truly is yours. The real estate is yours to sell when choose which can essentially bring you in more profit when you are done with the franchise business.

You can get out a little cheaper if you choose to take over a franchise that is already up and running. These businesses have already had everything done so the only thing you have to do is train and step in.

Of course, franchising isn’t for everyone. If you truly have an interest in getting one of these started, take the time to research everything before you jump in. It’s quite a hefty investment; you need to make sure it is what you want.