You’ve had a dream of owning your own restaurant for what seems like forever, and now things are finally coming into place. You have your funding, your location, and your menu. But how will you make your restaurant memorable? Will your brand be one that stands out from the crowd, or will it merely be one that blends in with “the sea of same?” Restaurant branding positioning against the competitive set is as important as the food you deliver to your guests. In the competitive restaurant landscape, great tasting food is just the first step towards success. As a restaurant startup, part of your business plan needs to include what your brand stands for. This brand identity needs to be conveyed through your restaurant design and restaurant marketing.

We recommend to our clients that they define their target market, their points of difference and the business they will be in as a first step to establish a cohesive brand strategy.  Think of all the different pizza brands, they all sell pizza, but each one has a different approach to winning business.

Brand development includes the strategic architecture of a brand in addition to the creative design of the logo and visual identity. This development is based on the market, customer, and business factors. The brand strategy is like the blueprints for your house. You must build the foundation, guidelines, and rules before you start construction. In its simplest terms you’re defining:

Who you are

What you do

Who else does what you do

Why you do it

Who you do it for

How you do it differently or better than the competition

Once you have established the brand strategy, you can develop a unique brand visual identity that expresses your ideas through the logo, color palette, fonts, and brand voice.

Brand consistency is key, as is raising awareness for your startup. Don’t forget to brand these facets of your restaurant to elevate brand awareness in your market:

• Restaurant decor, restaurant menu (and takeout menus)
•  Website and social media pages
• Employee uniforms, if applicable (this depends on the type of restaurant you operate)
• Packaging (bags, napkins, cups, containers, etc.)
• Restaurant advertising
• Music played in your location
• Business cards

A successful brand strategy will ensure your new restaurant concept is cohesive and memorable.

If you need help developing your new concept or want someone to review your restaurant brand identity, contact Synergy today.

How did you celebrate this month’s holiday? No, not Valentine’s Day. We’re not talking about President’s Day either. For us, National Pizza Day, inspired us to recollect and celebrate some of our favorite pizza concepts, including one we recently helped to get off the ground!

We don’t like to brag, but at Synergy, we have some very talented folks with amazing palates, who’ve traveled the world sampling pizza — you can be sure our picks for tasty pies are top notch.

Last year, Synergy had the privilege of working with a new pizza startup out of Plano, Texas. The owners envisioned not only a place to eat freshly created and delicious pizzas (plus salads, lasagna, and wings), but also a place where people could feel good about what they’re eating.

The Synergy team helped them develop a concept that focuses on premium ingredients (fresh pizza dough, hand-picked veggies, non-GMO and organic meats, gluten-free options, and house-made sauces) with an elevated guest experience in the restaurant and catering to busy guests by always offering free delivery!

One of the latest pizza concepts we’ve come to appreciate is Doughbird in Phoenix. Their menu twist is awesome — wood-fired pizzas and free-range rotisserie chickens. It’s a unique mashup concept that we truly admire and appreciate from Fox Restaurant Concepts.

From fast-fired to Neopolitan, deep-dish to square cut, we love pizza in all of its formats so much we don’t need a national holiday as an excuse to dig in.

 

 

Labor is an expensive aspect of running a restaurant and restaurant staff scheduling has an immense impact on whether or not your operation runs efficiently. How much time are you spending on scheduling? How do you intelligently streamline scheduling and employee communication? How do you manage last-minute phone calls and shift swaps?

Let’s start with technology. Sure, pen and paper works, but why not embrace new tools that are specifically made for restaurant scheduling? There are many scheduling apps on the market that allow you to easily drag-and-drop shifts onto your calendar (and make changes) and share with employees. Some even have additional features like tracking labor hours and dollars, forecasting sales, time clock, POS integrations and more. We are a fan of Hot Schedules, a tool to help manage all aspects of restaurant scheduling needs. It integrates with nearly all POS systems and is very user-friendly, simplifying the many challenges managers face while scheduling staff.

But scheduling smart doesn’t merely mean the random filling in of time slots on a calendar and calling it a day. You need to assess your staff – your best or senior workers will shine during busy times. At the same time, you still want to allow newer employees to have their share of the peak times as well. Make sure to rotate appropriately.

Always make sure there are open lines of communication. Ensure there are simple ways employees can voice their requests and that they have up-to-date information readily available to them as well. Keeping your staff in the loop will help avoid confusion, conflict and promote smoother operations.

Further, effective labors scheduling needs to be done in conjunction with labor budgets and guidelines. If the goal is to run labor at 20% of forecasted sales, then that tells you how much you have to spend on total labor. There is a broad range of ways to forecast sales — we like looking back at the previous five consecutive weeks,  averaging them together to get to average weekly sales. There is a good chance the projected, forecasted sales will be within 3-5% of the average assuming there are no major holidays, sporting events or unpleasant weather expected.

Finally, if you are trying to micromanage labor and scheduling, refer to the five-week previous history and look at sales by the hour. You can use this as a good guideline to understand the sales volume throughout the day. This information may allow you to better schedule servers and perhaps stagger the incoming staff, as needed.

If you need more help with managing scheduling and labor, please contact Synergy.

There are multiple facets in a restaurant that can either decrease or increase efficiency. When we think from a consumer’s perspective, food should be received as described and promptly. Wait time is a large factor when people are making their dining choices. In just a few clicks, people can even check live wait times at certain restaurants via Google Maps. If wait time has been a particular issue for your restaurant, it’s time to dig a little deeper.  

 

Issues that Impact Wait Times at Restaurants

Menu

Is your menu too complex? Do you have too many items on your menu? How simple are the items to execute? Understanding the elements of your menu is crucial. Inefficiencies in the back of house are directly correlated to long wait times for your guests. Making sure you have in place easy-to-follow procedures for prep and cooking will ensure smoother operations.

Kitchen

Even with solid procedures in place for the back line, if your kitchen space isn’t organized, efficiency will suffer. Is there enough space for your staff to freely move? Is equipment strategically placed to ensure flow of movement and easy access? How well is space being utilized when it comes to storage?

Technology

Is your restaurant point of sale system simple to use and up-to-date? Getting orders to the kitchen should be a streamlined process. Some point of sale systems include additional features like inventory control, employee time-clock, and even table management.

Front of House

Another consideration is your mix of dining room tables. The rule of thumb is that you only get 75% occupancy at a table. If you have a large number of four-tops, you are probably only seating three people at them at best.  Moreover, if you are seating two people at a four-top, that means you are wasting a table and only getting 50% occupancy which directly impacts wait times.  It would be prudent to carefully look at the number of guests in a party and maybe consider adding more two-tops tables to accommodate smaller parties which will directly impact table turns and wait times.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are numerous ways you can increase your restaurant’s efficiency which will, in turn, assist in reducing guest wait times. If you would like a detailed operations assessment to uncover areas for increased productivity, please contact Synergy.