Restocenter.com

Restaurant Operators must gather as much knowledge about targeted customers’ food preferences, service style, pricing, expertise skills. Concept will affect equipment selection, interior ambiance, size of the establishment and staff recruitment. Hence, it is very important to conduct market research before developing your restaurant concept to determine the potential market your restaurant plan to serve.

I. Industry Analysis
Make site visits to various restaurants. Identify each uniqueness and specialty of each operation. Study their menu, pricing position, staff arrangement, ordering system, POS register. Feel the dining atmosphere, the room cleanliness, staff grooming, the lighting, the music, table and chair arrangement. Identify the current industry trend, analysize each theme/concept, any innovation in delivering their F&B services,

II. Target Segmentation :
Find out who is your target segmentation. Conduct Demographic Study to learn more the area and market demand. Find out market size, how many houses, apartment, hotels, offices within a few blocks of your premises. Market behavior to study what motivate their dining out option? Does the eating out behavoir has any pattern or seasonal? What is the current trend? Healthy and nutrition factors? Organic and Green concern? Identify menu preferences for your target segment.What is the level of alcoholic, coffee or tea consumption rate? What is the economic characteristic of the area?

III. Identify Competition
Begin understanding customer’s expectation and their satisfaction requirement by analyzing existing competitors. In order to do this, we must have as much knowledge from competitive participants and learn from their operation. Identify opportunities that can contribute to competitive advantage. How many restaurant in your premises? How many of those appeals to the target customer you plan to serve?

IV. Location
When considering a location, it is important to gather general information such as population statistic, behavior pattern, traffic accessibility and crowd proximity. Schools, offices, residential areas, shopping centers can generate crowd. It is crucial to factor traffic accessibility, competition, price(lease or purchase)of the site, the size and visibility. Choose a site near the entrance, escalator, nearby supermarket/cinema to get high visibility. Provide good signage for better visibility. Pay more attention to exterior and interior appearances to determine caught customer attention.

Once we gathered more information about the industry, the demographic, competition and location analysis, we are able to refine our concept development and calculate risk involvement by projecting sales volume.

-theresia-

By Lisa Baertlein and Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A ban on new fast-food restaurants in poor Los Angeles neighborhoods has made headlines around the world, but residents say they don’t plan to give up their cheeseburgers, fried chicken and tacos anytime soon.

The moratorium, which was passed in July, was intended to fight obesity in low-income communities of America’s second-largest city where healthy food is hard to find.

The move is trend-setting California’s latest salvo in an expanding war on the fast-food industry, which is bracing for copycat maneuvers around the United States that could threaten growth.

But residents are skeptical that such laws will have much impact in Los Angeles’ low-income and minority neighborhoods, which are already blanketed with cheap and easy-to-find meals at chains such as McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Domino’s Pizza.

“It’s stupid. It’s our body, we choose what we put in it,” Tonya Owens, a 45-year-old nurse assistant told Reuters.

Edwin Tsai, interviewed at a cluster of fast-food chains in the affected district, which includes the neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, West Adams, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park, said there were reasons people eat at places like McDonald’s.

“It’s fast and easy. I think people will still come here no matter what,” Tsai, 23, said.

Eye-popping calorie counts and the often unhealthy ingredients used in fast food have made the industry a favorite whipping boy for anti-obesity advocates and lawmakers.

“This isn’t the calm before the storm, this is still the storm,” said California Restaurant Association spokesman Daniel Conway, whose group represents most major restaurant chains.

“A TARGET ON OUR BACKS”

“A target has been put on our backs. There seems to be some people out there who think that if only we can regulate the restaurant industry, we can cure obesity,” said Conway, who added that his clients were bracing for a flood of similar legislation after the election season.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, sponsor of the moratorium, said she didn’t want to eliminate fast-food chains in her 32-square-mile (82-sq-km) district, which is home to more than half a million people and 400 fast-food restaurants.

Instead, she said, the law was intended to give officials time to attract healthy alternatives and grocery stores, which are few and far between in poorer, urban neighborhoods.

Experts say supermarket chains are reluctant to open stores in such neighborhoods out of security and theft concerns — a worry that Perry calls outdated and misplaced.

Her move followed a report showing that about 30 percent of children living in the district, which has the city’s highest concentration of fast-food restaurants, are obese compared with some 21 percent in the rest of Los Angeles.

“It’s what the community has said it wants over and over again,” Perry said in an interview.

Bob Goldin, executive vice president at restaurant consulting firm Technomic, said restrictions like trans fat bans have helped improve public health. But he is less optimistic about the ban on new fast-food restaurants: “I think they may have gone a little far on this one.”

Still, he expects little push back from consumers: “I strongly suspect you are not going to see a whole lot of people calling their council members to protest.”

California this year became the first state to ban artery-clogging trans fats in restaurants and in 2003 it banned the sale of soft drinks in middle and elementary schools.

State lawmakers have also backed a bill that would make California the first state to require chain restaurants with 20 or more outlets to list calorie counts on menus.

“I don’t think there’s a downside from the consumer point of view. We’re going to see a lot more of this,” said Goldin.

San Jose, some 350 miles to the north, already has tried to follow suit — though its proposed ordinance died when its co-sponsor went into premature labor with her first child.

A spokesman for councilwoman Nora Campos, the lead proponent of the proposed San Jose legislation, said she would try again when she returns from maternity leave.

Though the Los Angeles moratorium will likely be copied by local governments, experts say the causes of obesity are complex and fast-food restaurants won’t go away.

“I’m no fan of fast food or fast-food corporations but, having said that, its simplistic in the extreme to consider them the cause of all these ills that have been blamed on them,” said Barry Glassner, author of “The Gospel of Food” and sociology professor at the University of Southern California.

“There is a very real problem with a lack of food options in low-income neighborhoods and it’s one legislators have an obligation to solve,” he said. “But if you want more food options, do things to facilitate more options.”

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Martinez, editing by Dave Zimmerman)

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080903/ts_nm/fastfood_losangeles_dc?CFID=9589068&CFTOKEN=62989893

It could be a banana, a cup of coffee, a burger, or a chicken burrito, but whatever is on your menu, that very item, right down to the ingredients, has a story to tell, and your customers are interested in hearing it.

Just as the quick-serve industry was getting a handle on healthier menu options, consumers have sparked yet another paradigm shift by questioning the origin of the food they eat in quick-serves in an effort to make even more mindful purchases.

Whether it’s concern over the environment, recalls of pathogen-laced produce, news reports on inhumane treatment of animals, or tales of poor working conditions, consumer demands for answers are at the very heart of an emerging marketing phenomenon called “product life stories.”

According to Trendwatching.com, an “independent and opinionated” research firm based in Amsterdam, “Now that carbon foot printing has become a household term in mature consumer societies, expect consumers’ desires to find out about the origins of a product to become a given.

“Questions no one ever asked a few years ago will become an integral part of the purchasing process. As consumers become more educated and aware, and demand more background information on the products they are shopping for, manufacturers will need to provide more transparency.”

While many suppliers have stepped up to provide farm- and plant-to-fork transparency on a host of ingredients, quick-serves are continuing to disclose information on fat and beginning to tell their own product life stories. The move, they say, attracts customers and gains allegiance.

“It’s an effective loyalty marketing technique,” says Rick Ferguson, editorial director for Colloquy, a global loyalty marketing consulting firm in Milford, Ohio. “It’s a good way for a company to build good will and it’s a no-brainer if you’re trying to distinguish yourself from a competitor who has a similar product.”

Bona Fide Bananas, Above-Board Brew

Perhaps the most basic concept of the product life story phenomenon is embodied in a three-digit farm code that Westlake Village, California-based Dole Food Co. emblazons on fruit stickers. These codes allow customers to log on to www.doleorganic.com to find the origins of organic bananas, mangoes, and pineapples. Background information as well as photos of crops and workers are available on more than 30 farms in a host of Latin and South American countries.

Code 223, for instance, is Bonanza Farm, an organic, biodynamic banana farm located in Sullana, Peru, and owned by the Don Lander Aleman family. All of Bonanza’s fruit is sold to Dole Peru’s Copdeban Organic Project.

Some of the codes provide information on shipping and packaging, like Farm 001, the Huangala Palletizing Unit located about 30 minutes away from Sullana.

“The fruit arrives from the packing plants located at Montenegro, Huayquiquirá, Pueblo Nuevo, San Vicente, Santa Rosa, Chalacala, and Huangala,” according to the site. “Approximately 52 percent of the Dole Peru organic fruit is palletized in this facility.”

What’s Your Story?
Dole’s mission, according to its Web site, is to educate consumers as well as develop more earth-friendly agricultural methods. These social and environmental values are also standards for coffee giant Starbucks. At the core of its business are the goals of creating a more sustainable approach to coffee production, minimizing its environmental footprint, and responding to consumer health and wellness needs.

Taylor Mork, co-founder of Crop To Cup Coffee Co., says his firm embraces those same ethics, but believes his New York- and Chicago-based coffee importer takes that mission a step further.

Crop To Cup offers Ugandan farmers a 20 percent premium above market price and reinvests 10 percent of its profits in those farming communities and provides plantations with tools to “realize additional per-pound bonuses connected to sales on the coffee drinker’s end of the supply chain.”

“We provide cafés with a direct relationship with the grower,” Mork says. “Usually there is only a connection to the roaster. We see ourselves as service providers to coffee farmers by helping them get into specialty markets in the United States and to help them benefit socially and financially.”
For retailers and restaurants, Crop To Cup provides customized educational events and point-of-sale (pos) marketing materials to help demonstrate leadership and a commitment to offering “conscientious coffee.” Retailers, restaurants, and customers can also view the “economic, social, and environmental impacts” of purchases by logging on to www.croptocup.com, which allows visitors to “trace your cup” and review profiles, pictures, and videos of farmers and the regions where they cultivate coffee.

Another incentive Crop To Cup provides customers are tax-exempt receipts, which allow customers to deduct 5 percent of their purchases because sales are handled by DevelopNet Iganga, Crop To Cup’s nonprofit.

“Let’s say you are a café customer. At the end of the year, you can take a tax deduction, because you bought $95 worth of coffee and donated $5 to a charity,” Mork says. “Having something like that communicates to your customers that as they help your business grow, change in this community is happening. It also connects farmers with the coffee-drinking community.”

Blogs and Moms

Connecting with the community and providing transparency of its purchasing practices to suppliers was the main goal of McDonald’s Corporate Responsibility Blog, yet the mission of the message board and its content embraces the trend of telling a product’s life story.

“We didn’t create it with that intent or categorize it as that type of marketing,” says Lisa McComb, manager of corporate media relations for McDonald’s. “It was simply a way to provide some transparency and communication with our suppliers. Even though they are competitors, they talk openly about issues of sourcing availability and quality.”

Those blog entries, however, served as the building blocks for McDonald’s to tell product life stories to customers, debunking myths about the quality of McDonald’s food, says Molly Starmann, director of marketing for McDonald’s USA.

“We were hearing from our guests that they wanted to hear the stories around the ingredients of our menu items,” Starmann says. “‘Where is the food coming from? What’s in your burgers? How are your fries made?’ There were guests who had misrepresentations about the quality of our food. So, now we’re telling them about our ingredients in a very transparent way.”

Starmann says television spots, print ads, and a “robust” Web site answer questions about beverages as well as the meats, produce, bread, dairy, and eggs that go into McDonald’s menu items.

“When we go out and tell our food quality story, we serve all types of people,” she says. “Our effort is focused on every age, every ethnicity, and our communication is structured around the mindset of everyday foodies. We are honest and transparent because they need to know we are being truthful.”

One of the components of McDonald’s commitment to quality campaign is the Moms’ Quality Correspondents, a health-conscious group of six mothers from different walks of life who were handpicked by McDonald’s and who will have extraordinary access to various parts of the McDonald’s supply chain.

These six quality correspondents have already toured McDonald’s apple supply chain, starting at an orchard in Buffalo, New York, and ending with visits to two produce packing facilities.

Read more on : http://www.qsrmagazine.com/articles/features/119/story-3.phtml

Wendy’s Tests New Coffee Drinks
By JANET ADAMY
September 5, 2008 6:14 p.m.

Wendy’s International Inc. is pushing further into specialized coffee drinks with a major new coffee program in Mississippi and iced coffee tests in three cities.

In the past few weeks, about 65 franchised Wendy’s locations in Mississippi have started serving a line of iced coffees as well as a new concoction called a Frosty-cino — a coffee-infused version of the chain’s traditional Frosty drink. Separately, Wendy’s has been testing a different line of iced coffee drinks in Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Kansas City, Mo., since the spring as part of its expansion into breakfast.

The moves come as fast-food chains are placing more emphasis on beverages, having seen how Starbucks Corp. and others have drawn customers with specialized drinks. McDonald’s Corp. plans to add lattes, cappuccinos and other upscale coffee drinks at all of its U.S. locations by the end of next year.

In Mississippi, longtime franchisee Gene Carlisle has launched his own coffee program, using the same supplier — S&D Coffee Inc. — that McDonald’s uses. The centerpiece of his program is the Frosty-cino, a coffee-flavored version of the Frosty that’s slightly less thick. It comes in four flavors and sells for $3.69 for a 20-oz serving.

“You drink it through a straw, which you can’t do with a Frosty,” Mr. Carlisle said. Mr. Carlisle experimented with building a café area in his restaurants, including a case with warmed pastries and afternoon cakes, but he scrapped that idea because the cost of staffing it and keeping the baked goods fresh was too expensive, he said.
Source : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122064966200105093.html?mod=googlenews_wsj&CFID=9589068&CFTOKEN=62989893

Starbucks’ Healthy Breakfast Goes Live
2008-09-04 — Starbucks Coffee Company (Nasdaq:SBUX) is adding five new permanent breakfast options to the menu. Starbucks Perfect Oatmeal, Chewy Fruit & Nut Bar, Apple Bran Muffin, Berry Stella, and Power Protein Plate are now available in participating stores across the U.S. and Canada.

“Many Americans are too busy to make a healthy breakfast at home, but it’s the most important meal of the day,” says Katie Thomson, registered dietitian and senior nutritionist, Starbucks Coffee Company. “Our customers have told us they want delicious choices that offer real nutrition including whole grains, fruit, and lean protein to help fill them up and give them energy to make it to lunch.”

The new breakfast assortment is the next step in the company’s commitment to providing food and beverage selections that support a healthy lifestyle. All of the items are made with high-quality, wholesome ingredients such as: whole grains, real fruit, nuts and seeds, and healthy fats such as omega-3s.

Additionally, these products contain no artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, or high fructose corn syrup.

The new menu items are:

Starbucks Perfect Oatmeal — Each order can be customized with three different toppings; a portioned 50-calorie pack of brown sugar, 100-calorie pack of dried fruit, and 100-calorie pack of a nut medley, and contains 140 to 390 calories depending on topping selections, up to 7 grams of fiber and 1.5 servings of whole grains.

Power Protein Plate — The Power Protein Plate is a combination of a cage-free hard-boiled egg, 100 percent whole wheat bagel, peanut butter, cheese, and fresh fruit. At 330 calories, it has 16 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber.

Berry Stella — This first of the six healthier additions was introduced nationally on July 15, 2008. The Berry Stella is a 100 percent whole grain breakfast pastry that delivers a blend of fiber, whole grains, real fruit, and more than 200 mg of Omega-3s at 280 calories.

Apple Bran Muffin — Made with whole wheat flour, oats and wheat bran, and baked with real apples, tart cherries, and honey, this muffin has 7 grams of fiber, 7 grams of protein, Omega-3s, and 330 calories.

Chewy Fruit & Nut Bar — Full of whole, nourishing ingredients including oats, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and honey, the Chewy Fruit & Nut Bar contains heart-healthy Omega-3s and 250 calories, 4 grams of fiber, and 5 grams of protein.

Multigrain Roll with Spreads — Made with seven seeds and grains, and sweetened with honey, the roll has 7 grams of protein and 6 grams of fiber, at 280 calories. The almond butter spread is pre-portioned to a 100-calorie pack, while the strawberry preserves contains 40 calories.
Source :http://www.qsrmagazine.com/articles/news/story.phtml?id=7226&CFID=9589068&CFTOKEN=62989893

How often do you “touch” your customers, clients or guests?

Lessons by examples:

Recently my wife and I tried a new restaurant. It was very good. On the way out the hostess thanked us and asked for our e-mail address. Two days later we received an e-mail thanking us for our business with a promotion for the next time we came in. Every month we receive an email with the newest specials.

Not long ago I went shopping for some new clothes. Several days later I received a thank you note. Two months later I received a post card, signed by my salesperson, announcing the latest sale. A couple months after that there was a message on my voice mail from this salesperson just “checking in” and telling me that the new season’s clothes had just arrived. This guy is good. He has a system. He keeps track of his customers and keeps in touch with them.

One of my clients is a CEO who writes a short note twice a year to all 1,000 plus employees in his company. Sometimes it is a holiday or birthday card. Other times it is a congratulatory note of some kind. Regardless, everyone gets “touched” at least twice a year.

Everyone, in just about any type of business, can do this for both external and internal customers. With all of the technology we have available to us, it is easy to mix in some of the personal with the non -personal/technical contact. It shows we care. It keeps us “in touch.” It puts our names in front of people. Overall, it gives us a competitive edge.

Are you keeping in touch with the people you should?

Shep Hyken, CSP is a professional speaker and author who helps companies develop loyal relationships with their customers and employees. For more information on Shep’s speaking programs, books, and other learning products, please contact (314) 692-2200. Email: shep@hyken.com Web: www.hyken.com. For information on customer service training, go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com.

What does it take to make a successful restaurant? Steven Schussler ought to know. As the brains behind Rainforest Cafe, the brassy entrepreneur saw mega-success. But then the chain fell out of favor with investors, and Rainforest sold in 2000 at well below book value to national operator Landry’s Restaurants Inc.

Now the team at Schussler Creative in Golden Valley, Minnesota, is back with a new high-concept restaurant: T-Rex. The interactive, dinosaur-themed eatery–a hybrid restaurant and museum attraction–opened its first unit last July at The Legends mall in Kansas City, Kansas, with local government footing more than half the $15 million cost. Initial buzz is strong: Before T-Rex debuted, Landry’s took an 80 percent stake.

Entrepreneur: What did you learn from your experience with Rainforest Cafe?
Steven Schussler: We didn’t have same-store sales increases because we already had three-hour waits, and I think we did a poor job explaining that to Wall Street. We took our eye off the ball–we opened a T-shirt factory to make our own shirts. We also ignored the educational aspect of the rainforests. I wanted to do things on deforestation and market vegetarian and vegan food.

With T-Rex, we’re building something more upscale in terms of food quality, and we’re taking the education and entertainment to a different level. Here, everything’s interactive–kids can dig for fossils. We’re also open earlier so kids can come on field trips, and we have private parties. Rainforest never did either.

Entrepreneur: What are the biggest mistakes that would-be restaurant owners make?
Schussler: The biggest mistake they make is ego. The second biggest is underestimating how much time, money and R&D they need to spend to make their concept a reality and take it over the top.

People get caught in their own box. When they hear things that are outside the box, instead of saying “How wonderful would that be?” they say “You’re crazy.” I take that as a challenge. I hate the word NO.

Customers are tired of the same old thing. You need to change, whether it’s the music or the color palette. How many restaurants have the same menu for five years? It becomes tired and boring.

Originally published in the February 2007 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine
Source : http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessideas/restaurantcenter/

Planning for a Restaurant
Get a business plan in place before you open a restaurant.

If you’re planning on starting a restaurant, you’ve got a lot of company. In my experience, more people seek advice on launching a restaurant business than any other type of business. While that doesn’t make your task easier, it does mean I can help with some tips.

To start, you need to plan your strategy very well. Your restaurant has to focus on some key elements that’ll set it apart from the thousands of other eateries out there. These could be location, cuisine, decoration or even–good luck with this one–price. Maybe it’s located where there’s a lot of traffic, or across the hall from a gym, or near a bookstore, or outside a theater. Maybe there are no fish tacos in your town, or no good Italian restaurants. Maybe there are no cafes near the river with outside seating. You have to know why you’re different. In short, don’t try to please everybody generally; find your niche market, and please those people very well.

By differentiating your restaurant, you make marketing it much easier. Marketing is critical to restaurant success, but marketing can be expensive. And in most cases, the most effective restaurant marketing depends on repeat business and word-of-mouth. Think about how you choose a restaurant yourself–do you look through your Entertainment book or other coupon source? Do you research with a Zagat guide or online reviews? Or do you ask for recommendations from friends? Ask yourself how people will describe your restaurant and why they’ll recommend it. If you can’t put that short conversation into easy words, you’re in trouble.

Also, if you have a choice, don’t start a low-priced restaurant. Low-priced restaurants are much harder to market than mid- to high-priced restaurants. Fast-food franchises are everywhere, and they have a huge corner on that market. People believe in cheap food when they see strong branding and lots of customers. You don’t want to be the dive on the corner that can’t attract business.

Unless you’re already partnered with an investor, you should assume you won’t be. In general, restaurants aren’t targets for professional investors because they’re so risky. The few exceptions include celebrities who back restaurants that capitalize on their names, and well-known chefs and successful restaurant owners opening new venues.

Not having access to startup financing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start the business. It means you should carefully decide whether you’re going to start slowly, minding expenses, or borrow enough money to start big. Your borrowing options include commercial bank loans, which require assets you can stake as collateral, and SBA loans, which require less collateral than bank loans but still require you to put up 30 percent of the starting costs to qualify for the guaranteed loan. When in doubt about loans, go straight to your favorite bank and ask for advice.

Be sure to count your startup costs well. You don’t want to get into a bind where you’ve spent half of what you thought you needed and you’ve run out of money. You’ll probably have to rent a location and spend a few months fixing it up, and you may need employees some employees to help out during the fix-up period, too. Unless you’re moving into an existing restaurant, you’ll need to buy kitchen equipment, tables and chairs, cash registers, phone systems and décor to establish ambience. And then you need to budget for what’s called “working capital” for the startup period when your spending exceeds your sales. Some say you need at least six months of expenses ready to go; others recommend having 12 months covered.

Your sales forecast is also important. I like to build a sales forecast based on unit sales, meaning meals and drinks, not just gross sales amounts. That helps me break the sales forecast into components I can count. How many tables do you have? How many meals will you serve on Friday night when the place is almost full? What does an average meal cost? How many drinks come with the meals? Then calculate unit sales, average revenue per unit and average cost per unit.

Then comes your expense forecast. With meals and drinks already priced out, your remaining operating expenses are mainly people, rent and other fixed costs. Estimate those per month, and match them to your sales forecast.

When all the costs are tallied, you’ll get a good picture of the cash flow and how much money you’ll need to keep the restaurant operational. During the early months of startup, your cash flow probably won’t cover all your expenses, so you’ll want your plan to include how you’ll cover the difference.

Finally, as you get started, remember that business plans continually go out of date, and good business plans are never done. You should take an hour or so every month to review the difference between what you planned and what actually happened, and update your plan accordingly.

Author : Tim Berry is the “Business Plans” coachat Entrepreneur.com and is president of Palo Alto Software Inc.,which produces the industry’s leading business planning software, Business Plan Pro, as well as other popular planning applications for businesses.

Whether it’s quick service or white tablecloth, food safety violations do not discriminate. Consider the ways to avoid being the next perpetrator.

One of my company’s clients wanted to find out exactly what its staff was missing or doing wrong when it came to food safety. Before any training was implemented, I was asked to note all of the violations I witnessed throughout the course of service for one evening.

The establishment that I surveyed is an independently owned fine-dining restaurant where the average age of the kitchen staff and servers is around 25. The question you might want to ask yourself as you read the following lists is: Could any of these things be happening in my establishment?”

In the prep area of the kitchen where food products are cleaned, chopped, sliced, diced and pre-cooked, I found the following food safety violations:

• A tray of chicken breasts was on a shelf where the juices could have easily dripped onto the raw vegetables on the table below.
• A knife that was used to fillet fish wasn’t properly washed and sanitized before it was used to chop onions.
• Meat, fish and poultry products were unnecessarily left out at room temperature.
• Prep cooks did not wash their hands regularly in between handling meats, fish and produce.
• When they did wash their hands, it was a quick, two-second rinse under water without soap.
• The walk-in door was left open for long periods.

As service started and the guests started placing their orders, I proceeded to the kitchen line to see what they were up to. This is what I saw:

• Steaks, chicken and fish were unnecessarily out at room temperature.
• Hands were not properly washed after handling food, or after an employee touched his or her hair or face.
• A cook made very little effort to shield a cough from the food in front of him.
• The same bowl was used to mix salads throughout the evening without being washed.

Next, I moved to the service area to see what the servers and bussers were up to. I saw the following food safety no-no’s:

• Servers and bussers almost never washed their hands. I even saw two of them eat a piece of bread and not wash their hands.
• A server ate food off a guest’s plate.
• The paper towel dispenser in the service area was empty.
• Silverware was often touched above the handle and glassware was touched on the rim.

At the bar, I saw some equally disturbing events:

• The ice scoop was left in the ice throughout the evening.
• After a glass was broken, the surrounding area was not properly scoured for broken pieces of glass.
• Again, silverware and glassware were touched directly on the eating and drinking surfaces.
• Money was handled constantly with very little hand-washing afterward.
• Opened beer bottles were touched on the rim.
• Fruit containers weren’t washed before being refilled.
• Straws were touched on their tops before being put into guests’ drinks.

Finally, while eating a meal at a table in the dining room, I saw the following things occur, which any fellow patron could easily have spotted:

• Food was delivered with the server’s thumb accidentally touching a piece of food on the plate.
• A server was seen fiddling with her hair.
• A few female servers wore excessive jewelry, which is a perfect place for bacteria to hide.
• As empty glasses were cleared from a table, a busser actually placed his fingers inside three glasses so he could carry them all at once with one hand.

Assessing the Damage
Although many of these violations, unfortunately, are common occurrences in most restaurants, a few of them are not. The lack of hand washing throughout the staff was alarming, especially after handling commonly contaminated items such as money and raw meats. The server eating food off of a guest’s plate is another one that sticks out, but it’s really the inconspicuous violations that can hurt the most people.

For example, the chicken breasts sitting on a shelf over the tray of vegetables in the prep area is potentially catastrophic. If the juices of the chicken drip onto the vegetables and the vegetables are served raw, a Salmonella outbreak is imminent.

The meats left out at room temperature on the kitchen line is another potential disaster. As bacteria reproduces and accumulates on the meat while it is out, it becomes less safe. A medium-rare steak that has been left out for four hours before being cooked is a food-borne illness incident waiting to happen.

I was also disappointed in what I was able to see from the guest’s perspective in the dining room. After all, if this is what is out in the open, imagine what’s going on in the kitchen and other areas that are hidden from the guests.

Lack of Effort
After documenting everything I saw throughout the evening and reporting it to the managers, they asked me what my thoughts were on how the staff could be this negligent when it came to food-safety practices. After all, all of their managers, chefs and sous chefs are certified according to state regulations and whenever they see something wrong, they let the offending employee know about it.

Was it the way they were training (or not training)? Was it that the employees don’t care about food safety? And most importantly, what could they do to improve the situation in their restaurant, thus improving their guests’ dining experience and protecting the brand name?

The answer I gave them was that they weren’t making a strong enough effort to create a learning culture within the restaurant in which proper food-safety practices were constantly at the forefront of every employee’s mind.

Where to Start
I told managers that implementing a food-safety training program for all of their food-handling employees was a good start, but they needed to use that as a foundation for their entire food-safety program.

Besides proper training, the following are other effective ways of making sure your employees are constantly mindful of food safety:

• Monitor your employees’ hand washing. If you see them touch something potentially contaminated and then not wash, don’t be afraid to call them out on it.
• Make it someone’s sidework to fill paper towels and soap at every sink at the beginning of each shift.
• Touch on at least one food-safety guideline during every shift meeting. Keep hammering the same points over and over -they’ll get it eventually.
• Conduct your own food-safety audit every few weeks and document violations.
• Approach each offender and explain to him or her exactly what they did wrong and how it could hurt someone.

You can always “teach” somebody something, but the importance lies in making him or her realize why he or she is learning it.

When it comes to food safety, it is your guests’ well-being that should be your employees’ top priority.

Author : Lee Biars, director of industry relations for Safe Food Solutions, can be reached at 443-451-5522 or via e-mail at lbiars@safefoodsolutions.com

How to run a restaurant: startup costs by Forbes.com

Every new business owner needs to know the fundamentals. Forbes.com is breaking down those building blocks by answering eight core questions related to a given industry. Taken together, the information will give budding entrepreneurs a head start on making those first critical steps.How much will I need to shell out in start-up costs and ongoing expenses?

After you snare the right permits, decide whether to start from scratch or fix up an existing eatery. Depending on how fancy your new place is, a blank-slate approach will set you back US$100,000 to US$300,000 for stuff like industrial cooking and ventilation equipment, refrigerators, freezers, tables, bar stools, shelving and counters with stations for cutting, heating and cooling. Renovating an existing restaurant with a similar concept will cost less, though the rent may be comparatively higher because the value of the previous build-out is already baked in.

Unless you’re starting an old-fashioned diner that runs on grease-stained order slips, you’ll also need a point-of-sale system to collect money and manage the floor and the kitchen. These systems also will allow you to accept credit cards, but in order to get your money from Visa and American Express, you have to set up an account with a processing middleman such as Heartland Payment Systems. (Commissions run 1.8% to 2.5% of sales.) And don’t forget the little things, like an eye-catching outdoor sign, menus and triplicate china, glass and linen sets for every seat in the house.

Restaurants often fail because they are undercapitalized, so try not to blow the bank on too many gleaming new pieces of stainless steel equipment, says John Vyhnanek, a consultant and professor at Boston University’s Culinary Arts program. “People should ask themselves, ‘Do I really need this now to open, or could I wait three months?’” he says. As for ongoing expenses, the cost of goods sold (food) will be the main course: 25% to 40% of revenues, depending on the restaurant concept, says Peter Ryan at Restaurant Solutions in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (Pizza joints will be on the low end, steak houses on the high end.) Payroll will gobble an additional 20% to 25%; rent should eat 8%. After marketing, payroll and taxes, if you end up clocking 5% profit margins, pat yourself on the back.

One last move: Even if you don’t need it, open a line of credit with a local bank. The track record you establish will come in handy when you’re ready to open your next restaurant - and the ones after that.

Source : http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/02/visa-american-express-ent-manage-cx_mf_0202fundamentalscosts.html