Restaurant Job Board Blog

Whether you are running a well-established, long-running restaurant with lots of repeat business, running a struggling restaurant with poorer revenues than you know you deserve, or have just opened a brand-new place, hiring a Restaurant Service Consultant can be a big benefit to your business.

Restaurants are notoriously difficult to run well, and even the most experienced restaurateur can sometimes use a certain degree of outside help and an objective, critical perspective. A professional Restaurant Service Consultant is specially trained to ferret out flaws in the system and organization of the dining room, and to train waiters to perform at their best.

There are two fundamental aspects of Restaurant Service Consulting. First, a consultant will do a complete evaluation of the dining room and its operations. Second, they will train the wait staff to work effectively within a well-run system.

If you’ve ever watched one of those popular restaurant makeover shows on television you’ll have a rough understanding of what goes on. The consultant will develop restaurant floor plan diagrams, analyze the seating layout, the menu, the staff schedules, even the out-front advertising the restaurant provides. A consultant will seek constructive feedback from long-time restaurant staff and even from customers to better assess the problems and concerns of all relevant parties.

Even the already well-trained wait staff and kitchen personnel can suffer undue stress and become disorganized if the way the system works is flawed or poorly organized. The Restaurant Service Consultant knows what to look for and how to find bugs in the system. Only when an effective plan is in place can the wait staff be trained to work within it.

Properly trained employees will ensure a more consistent style of customer service, making fewer errors and giving diners a more positive overall experience. Pleasant dining experiences mean repeat business, excellent word of mouth, and, ultimately, greater revenues.

A huge component in poor restaurant performance is problems with communication. There are often gaps in understanding between the priorities and expectations of management, front-of-house staff, and the kitchen. A Restaurant Service Consultant is well-trained in hashing out these kinds of stumbling blocks and creating concrete solutions to improve communication among everybody.

Some restaurants have serious deep-rooted problems that need major work. But even an established, well-run restaurant can gain a great deal from professional Restaurant Service Consulting. Sometimes practices become entrenched and a restaurant fails to change appropriately with the times. Some owners might be resistant to change, or feel embarrassed or awkward subjecting their restaurant to outside scrutiny. But there is no shame in bringing in a helpful outside professional to suggest improvements. It is common in the corporate world, and it might be just what your restaurant needs to operate to its fullest potential!

Bartending is more than just pouring drinks and flirting with customers. It is a highly skilled vocational trade that requires professional certification and some degree of training. Many bartending schools exist to provide this. What should you look for when seeking a bartending school?

The first thing you need to do is make sure you only look for bartending schools that are properly licensed and have the proper credentials. A reputable school can provide this information to you, and will not put pressure on you to sign up for a course. They will have affliliations with hospitality industry organizations. Treat your search for a bartending school like you would treat choosing a college or university. Visit the establishment, meet with the staff, ask to see the schedule of their training course and inquire about what other kinds of services they can provide. Remember, serving alcohol professionally carries legal risks and obligations, so it is crucial that you train through a reputable program.

The most important task of a bartending school is to teach students how to make basic and more advanced drinks and cocktails, what is known as the fine art of mixology. Students must learn proper form and techniques, as well as speed and efficiency—not unlike culinary training. A proper bartending school will be set up like a real bar, to to give as close an approximation as possible to an actual working bar environment. check out the facilities. Is the classroom and bar area clean? Do they have the appropriate layout to replicate a real bar? There should be a proper bar sink, an ice machine, soda dispensers, blenders. It should be stocked with a wide range of glassware that would be used in all different types of bars and clubs.

Are the instructors professional, knowledgable, friendly and helpful? Does the school have proper bartending textbooks? What do they offer students other than the requisite training in drink-making? Most schools will provide students training in the way the hospitality industry operates, and the different areas you can enter (such as hotels, resorts and cruise ships). If someone is serious about the hospitality industry they may be interested in restaurant management and learning how to run a small business. A good school can provide training in this. Ask the staff what other opportunities they provide, such as financial assistance packages. Does the school have a job placement program? A proper school should be able to make your job search process go a lot more smoothly.

Whether you are new to the hospitality industry or are already working in the industry, a quality bartending school can be of value to you as you seek to acquire new skills or build on existing ones. Hospitality is an exciting industry with the possiblility to not only make a lot of money, but to move forward and possibly become a manager or even an owner. Finding the best bartending school will make you a better-equipped, more marketable employee.

It used to take hours, a day or even a few days before a customer’s experience was shared with his/her friends and family. A bad meal or a great experience might have been discussed that evening or at work the next day. That was before the mobile phone which meant that customers could text their experience to one or two friends. Maybe even take a picture of a great dish with their camera phone.

But this limited and delayed communication is nothing compared to the speed at which hundreds or thousands of people can be updated about your experience thanks to the arrival of Facebook and Twitter.

Web-enabled Mobile Phones and PDAs have made it extremely easy to install these social media applications.

Think about what this means for your business for a second and think why every touch counts:

A customer waiting for attention from the waiter instead decides to update his Facebook Status with the message that “I’m in The Mill Pub and can’t get service. Hate that”. This message then becomes visible to the customer’s network of hundreds or thousands of friends. Could this have a negative effect on perception and even on bookings? Potentially.

A similar incident became widely publicized in the US recently when the high profile wine blogger and internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk when he attended a recent conference in Miami. His poor experience in a high profile hotel affected him so much he video blogged about it, as did a few other high profile internet folks with the result that hundreds of thousands of people learned of their experience within 24 hours. The results were huge and the hotel went into fire-fighting mode to try and offset the negative publicity.

The effects will be felt for a while because two of the bloggers posts are on the first page of Google for anyone searching for Mondrian Miami. Can you afford an impact like this? Could you survive it?

So the next time you sit down with your staff or plan your training schedule, don’t forget that every touch counts. Every time.

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Barry Chandler is Managing Director of http://www.manageyourbar.com , the complete online resource for independent bar and club owners and operators, designed to assist bar owners manage their business more effectively and provide all the tools/downloads/templates/articles for prospective bar owners to research and plan their new bar.

For any bar, restaurant or nightclub owner that thinks social media is a passing fad not worthy of their time, the numbers coming out of a recent study (2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study published by Opinion Research Corporation) should come as a wake-up call.

For starters, almost 60% of Americans currently interact on social media web sites and 25% interact more than once per week (2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study).

Also, you would think that the last thing people would want is to have businesses invading the platforms they use for communicating and socializing with their friends and colleagues. As it turns out, the exact opposite is true.

According to that study, 85% of Americans using social media think businesses should have an active presence in the social media environment. What’s even more interesting is that those users actually want the companies to interact with them while there.

It seems that users are actually receptive to the idea of your bar getting involved on social media platforms and interacting with them while there.

Out of the 85% of users who want companies to have a presence in social media, 34% want companies to actively interact with them and 51% want companies to interact with them as needed or by request.

So, what do your customers want your business to do on the social media sites?

• 41% would like companies to solicit feedback
• 37% would like companies to provide new ways to interact with the brand via social media.

These numbers could not be clearer: your bar’s customers are practically begging for bars like yours to get involved in social media…they actually WANT YOU TO MARKET TO THEM in this new medium.

Here are 5 things you need to know to market your bar/restaurant with social media marketing.

1. You want to stand out…be interesting and full of personality.
2. You want to build more credibility than your competitors.
3. You want to learn to promote…without it sounding like a sales pitch.
4. You want to learn how to grow your network fast…and without spending hours a day to do it.
5. You want to give your ideal target prospect the highest number of and most compelling reasons to think of you when they need a business like yours.

It’s a lot to learn, but with time and the right tools, you can really use this new medium to make your bar stand out from your competition.
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Brian Horn is an internet marketing consultant specializing in several niche industries. He is also the creator of the newly released “Promoting Your Bar with Social Media” system SocialMedia4Bars.com that walks bar and nightclub owners through the process of creating a social media marketing campaign.