Greetings!

The completion of Synergy’s project to redesign the kitchen and bar of a T.G.I. Friday’s in Nashville has the whole team celebrating-and thinking about how important it is for any operation to keep things fresh for long-term success.

The switch to an open kitchen and a bar designed for socializing will help launch the 47-year-old chain into its next era, with new cooking platforms-pizza and combi ovens, a plancha grill, wood-enhanced broiler and a high-speed panini machine-that can support a variety of contemporary new menu items.

Speaking of menus, our senior operations associate Mark Ladisky reminds everyone this month about how important it is to keep the offerings moving forward. As he points out in his article, even operations that are only a year old can start boring their customers if they’re not in constant menu-development mode.

We also take a look at some new, visually oriented social media platforms you should consider embracing, and -last but not least-examine the all-important industry trend toward menu customization.
To your success,

Dean and Danny

Menu Development—The Elephant in the Room

By Mark Ladisky, Senior Operations Associate

One theme that we see consistently while working with clients is the desire to save, save, save on costs, and to float those savings to the bottom line. While we always support those interests, there can be an elephant in the room. When operators spend all their time worrying about saving money by installing motion-sensor lighting or buying cheaper hand soap, they may lose sight of more impactful and longer-term financial results. Yes, these changes will bring a few dollars to the bottom line, but if your menu isn’t changing fast enough to keep your customers interested—if even your fans are getting bored—then you’ve got yourself an elephant that needs to be addressed.

“There’s a way to do it better—find it.” -Thomas Edison”

In this constantly growing and increasingly competitive dining landscape, we are often so preoccupied with trying to reduce operating expenses that we can lose focus on growing our sales to ease the financial stress. This problem is found in concepts of all shapes and sizes, and can happen as early as one year into operation depending on how frequently your guests use you for their dining needs.

The solution to this issue is easy to explain but the execution can be a bit trickier without the proper research. There are restaurants and brands in the market that have a mechanism in place for constant menu innovation and ongoing new product development. As industry consultants, we are often part of that effort by bringing new ideas to teams that may operate in a vacuum where ideas aren’t allowed to develop.

Innovative companies have one ear listening to consumer feedback and the other ear listening to trend reports and other industry metrics, all the time. This constant supply of new ideas is the easiest way to bring new attention to your brand, while keeping your current user base at the same or better frequency of use. Your market may be competitive on pricing, your market may be competitive on speed of service, but while the demands on those factors are dynamic and changing, the public’s desire for new items is always growing.

“Burger King and its franchisees have introduced a vastly changed menu with a record 10 new items in 2012, and according to Steve Wiborg, executive vice president and president of North American operations: “It’s the chain’s largest investment ($750 million) in a one-year time frame… This is the biggest change in scope in the history of the brand.” USA TODAY

In today’s landscape, menu innovation isn’t just limited to new ingredients. Starbucks has launched a cold-pressed juice bar concept called Evolution Fresh and Popeyes rolled out a co-branded Zatarain’s butterfly shrimp item, while Whataburger introduced a low-calorie menu this summer which includes new menu categories as well as new items under 550 calories.

If you want to think outside of the four walls for innovation, then look at Chipotle’s new food truck to see how they define innovation. Burger King and McDonald’s have invested major resources in recent years to enter meal periods that they had only lightly treaded on in the past. They now sell plenty of smoothies, frappes, coffees and other snacks during what was once a slow time of day for their offerings.

Concepts like Dunkin’ Donuts are continuing to innovate their menus so much that the donuts are no longer the first thing people think of when visiting the brand—by introducing a line of breakfast sandwiches and all-day snack items like tuna salad on a croissant. When did DD become a place to go for anything after breakfast, you may ask? When they had to.

For help with menu innovation when you need it most, contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

New Tools for Your Social Media Arsenal

Talk about game changers: Social media and interactive websites mean consumers are using the internet—increasingly through their smartphones and other mobile devices—to do everything from choosing a restaurant and making reservations to ordering and paying for their meals ahead of time.

Facebook and Twitter are pretty much household names at this point, with their number of worldwide users tracking toward 1 billion and 500 million, respectively, in 2012, according to the latest data. Fast food chains, in particular, have been particularly adept at marketing themselves via these well-established social media venues, especially when it comes to promotions.

The real news however, is that the visual side of social media is growing by leaps and bounds—photos and videos are the engagement tool of 2012, through established sites like Facebook as well as newcomers like Pinterest and Instagram. Consider adding any or all of the following to your arsenal.

Pinterest

This new online “pinboard” has seemingly come out of nowhere, and may actually be growing in influence, to the detriment of other platforms.

Designed to share passions and ideas in a fun, rapid-fire, highly visual way, Pinterest offers a number of avenues for marketing businesses, including restaurants.

Pinterest can be used both as an internal research tool by management (for instance, to “collect” images of interiors in anticipation of a planned redesign and share them with other stakeholders), and to engage customers on various subjects such as menu categories, recipes, favorite foods and more. Chicago’s Chopping Block, for instance, promotes its cooking classes, retail offerings and other activities through a variety of different Pinterest boards, while A&W Restaurants’ Pinterest account prominently features its Facebook and Twitter links, as well as establishing an emotional connection with historical shots and other memorabilia.

As with any form of social media, robust use of Pinterest can also enhance your SEO status, making it easier for internet users to find you.

Instagram

Launched in late 2010—and purchased by Facebook for a cool billion dollars in April 2012)—Instagram is a free photo-sharing program that allows users to take a photo with their mobile phone, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it on a variety of social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. The photo can also be used to check in on Foursquare.

In addition to turning mediocre cell-phone-quality pix into higher-quality images, Instagram converts photos to a square shape (similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images), instead of the 4:3 aspect ratio typically used by mobile device cameras.
Instagram makes uploading and sharing photos easier and more attractive on other social media sites, but it’s also becoming more popular as an engagement tool in its own right, particularly when synched with other sites. Many chefs and restaurants use Instagram to make their food look more appetizing or “artsy,” or to promote a special event space—anywhere a picture is worth 1,000 words. And because it’s based on visual images (their or yours), connecting with customers via Instagram is one of the most emotionally engaging things you can do.

Foodspotting

This fast-growing new food-specific site allows prospective customers to find you by your food, not just your restaurant listing. Foodspotting users snap pictures of food and menu items they’re enjoying, and then post them to their account with a brief description of what and where they’ve “spotted” it. Other users can follow, comment, and share their findings.

For restaurants, Foodspotting acts like a database for menu items that people in the area might want. Anyone with a craving for, say, chicken and waffles in Chicago can search the Explore section of the site and find places near them where they can indulge. And Foodspotting represents a great way for operators to see what competitors in their marketplace are doing with presentation and other areas that aren’t immediately apparent from looking at a website or menu.

Foodspotting is also a great vehicle for “spot-to-win” contests, where players compete to spot the most meals and dishes—a kind of internet-age scavenger hunt, if you will.

One of the most intriguing features of Foodspotting is the special guides, which might cover anything from best starter salads to the gustatory wanderings of such heavy users as Anthony Bourdain.

The Custom Connection

The average American may not be able to afford bespoke suits and custom-made furniture, but one area where they can have it their way is food.

In fact, menu customization has emerged as one of the top overarching trends of the year, according to research firm Mintel, along with local food and healthful menu items.

The NPD Group, moreover, posits that consumer desire for customized experiences is behind the recent decrease in the sale of combo meals in QSR restaurants.

Here are a few examples of restaurants that are doing the customization thing right:

• At Old Point Tavern in Indianapolis, customers can choose an item called Stuffed Stuff that consists of their choice of a tomato, cantaloupe or pineapple stuffed with a choice of tuna or chicken salad—standard fare to be sure, but the mix-and-match format makes it special

• The new three-unit Stacked full-service restaurant in Southern California touts “food well-built” by the customer, who chooses from a list of different ingredients from which to design a completely unique salad, burger, pizza, mac-and-cheese and more. The selection of sauce options alone numbers more than a dozen, from Dijon Horseradish Dill to Creamy Barbecue?

• How does it work at Roti Mediterranean Grill? Pick your base (sandwich, salad or plate), “meat” (chicken kebab or roti, steak, falafel, roasted veggies), and toppings and sauces (including everything from olives and hummus to Red Pepper Aioli), or choose one of three popular combinations proposed by this now-15-unit fast casual chainlet

• At chef Waldy Malouf’s new High Heat Pizza Burgers & Tap in New York City, you can order from the standard menu or build your own burger or thin-crust pie with various cheeses, vegetables and proteins (including such unusual options as roasted lemon and handmade pepperoni, respectively), and enjoy custom Tossed Fries seasoned with the likes of cheddar-and-bacon mayo, 13 spices, Parmesan & Tomato Oil)

• 4 Food, also located in New York, has created an entire interactive world where customers can develop their own salads, rice bowls, and burgers (which feature donut-shaped patties into which fans can stuff a “scoop” of their chosen ingredient—such as carrot slaw or mofongo). Patrons then promote their “builds” through social media in order to appear on 4 Food’s Build board Charts and qualify for 4food$ off future purchases

• The premise of the menu at The Salty Pig, in Boston, is a build-your-own board of cured meats and charcuterie, artisanal cheeses, and items like Marconi almonds and Fig Jam to round out the experience. Each component is priced a la carte, and customers can and do order as few or as many items as they want for sharing or a light meal to accompany drinks. At lunch, there’s also a Pick Your Pig concept that provides a well-rounded tasting of Osaka, Tamworth, or assorted salumi specialties

Granted, each of these restaurants feature suggested menu items for those customers who don’t want to experiment, but the basic premise is all about the DIY menu.

For help with making your menu more customizable, contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

Tip of the Month

Greetings!

As the summer heats up and travel season sets in, we hope all of you are experiencing an uptick in sales.

This month, we’re looking in more detail at one of the trends we mentioned last month: the blurring of lines between bars and restaurants. The increasing casualization of the restaurant industry, coupled with more interest in quality beverage programs, has led to some game-changing developments in the way customers and operators alike define eating and drinking establishments. We suspect that benchmark sales-mix ratios between food and beverage will also be changing with the times, and we’ll keep you posted.

What shouldn’t ever change is your focus on operational efficiencies. Our associate Patricia Liu addresses one area that sometimes gets lost in the hustle-bustle of more obvious issues, like scheduling and menu cross-utilization. To wit, is it time to look at your cook’s line and how well it functions? Patricia shares some tips for tuning it up.

Finally, there’s an article on what to do about the whole gluten-free trend, a situation we know many of you might have hoped would simply go away. Well, it’s not—but we have some advice for you.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Blurring the Lines 2.0

By Joan Lang

Amid the ongoing casualization of dining out, we’re seeing a new category of establishment: bars on the verge of being restaurants.

Rather than the gastropubs, urban taverns and other spots that were more restaurant than bar—which started colonizing the industry around the turn of the most recent decade—this new lot are essentially bars that happen to serve serious food. It’s a subtle difference, to be sure (to paraphrase the now-famous ruling on porn, you’ll know it when you see it), but it’s a significant one.

Phil Vettel, writing in the Chicago Tribune earlier this year, opted to call the new segment “nitropubs,” a linguistic mashup of nightclub and pub: scene-driven and alcohol-fueled, but also possessed of a respectable kitchen.

The trend may well have started, as these things are currently wont to do, in the outer reaches of hipster Brooklyn, at such places as Fort Defiance, owned by mixology maven St. John Frizell. The distinction of ownership is important, since many of these new bar-first/restaurant-second spots are owned by the growing cadre of celebrity bartenders who are going on to open their own places. The ratio of liquor-to-food sales probably favors the former rather than the latter (thus affecting licensing and other issues in some areas), and so may the local customer base. And hours are often a lot later than the local competition’s.

Like that aforementioned ruling, examples may be more instructive of the trend than any description.

• Vitell gives a shout-out to Maude’s Liquor Bar, in Chicago, who very name is a tipoff. The specialty cocktail list ($12 a pop) includes selections of Sparkling (St. German Fizz), Shaken & Stirred (a classic Aviation) and Smashes (Smokey Violet), plus an extensive selection of champagne and other bubbles. The menu is a bistro-style amalgam of oysters, tartine sandwiches, escargot and steak tartare.

• In Portland, Maine, the hottest address this summer is LFK (the name stands for Longfellow Fellowship of Knights, a reference to the bar’s location on hip Longfellow Square), owned by a pair of you entrepreneurs who have run bars in the town before, This time, however, they’vc got a menu that includes not only burgers but also mac-and-cheese, lamb koftas, and New England baked beans with braised pork belly.

• Across the country in the other Portland there is the brand-new Oven & Shaker, which gives equal billing to pizza and cocktails. Pitched as a “modern urban saloon,” O&S is owned by an experienced chef-bartender-restaurateur triumvirate and features a “Shaker menu” (e.g., the Pepper Smash: fresh mint, aquavit, maple syrup, “freshly pressed” lime juice and “freshly extracted” pepper juice) and a selection of wood-oven artisanal pizzas and “Finger & Fork” foods as fried chickpeas and lamb lollipops.

• Lest you lose sight of the “This & That” naming patterns of the genre, there’s the brand-new Pitch & Fork “everyman’s tavern” on Manhattan’s Irish-bar-intensive Upper East Side, with porchetta au jus, pig foot “trotter tots and crispy fried rabbit legs, and carefully curated spirits and cocktails. There’s also the anxiously awaited Gin Palace by Death & Co.’s Ravi DeRossi, which features a liquor-first menu where Gin & Tonic on tap and White Negronis (gin, white vermouth and Salers aperitif) take precedence over Scotched Eggs, pasties and samosas.

Interested in hearing more about current food trends, or in receiving a proprietary trends newsletter customized to your own menu and concept ? Contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

Kitchen Line Tune-Up

By Patricia Liu, Senior Culinary Project Manager

When was the last time you analyzed your cook’s line to make sure it was at its best? Just like a car, a cook’s line needs regular tune-ups for optimal performance. One important area for a cook’s line tune-up is around service efficiency. What often happens is that a cook’s line is initially laid out for efficiency when the restaurant first opened, but over time, that set-up gets modified piecemeal by different cooks or to accommodate menu changes. The resulting line is no longer set up for peak performance.

There are several areas of efficiency that should be regularly checked. One critical aspect is providing everything a cook needs within close reach—the less he or she needs to move or walk to make the food, the better. A general rule of thumb is that a cook should have everything in reach within one step in any single direction. As much as possible, ingredients and plateware should be within easy grasp, with minimal reaching up high or bending down (e.g., into the low-boy refrigerators). Sometimes, rearranging the line requires thinking outside the box. For example, are there areas of the cook’s line counter that can accommodate a small tabletop insulated well or ice bain marie, to bring items closer to the cook’s grasp?

An often-overlooked issue is how far a cook needs to travel to put a completed plate in the pick-up window. One client had a relatively efficient set-up for the cook’s line in terms of producing the food, but the overall line was situated so that the cook often needed to walk to the other end of the line to place plates in the window. This meant not only potential for food shifting on the plate during transport to the window but also lengthening ticket times, as well as higher labor costs due to the extra steps walked to put the food up.

Part of tuning up the cook’s line set-up is ensuring that the ingredient containers are the appropriate size. Are there ingredients that require more frequent refilling than others? Are there ingredients that require refilling in the middle of the rush? If so, that ingredient may require a larger container. On the other hand, if an ingredient requires less refilling than others, consider putting it into a smaller container. It will keep the ingredient fresh longer and free up room for other items or to compact the line. Pay attention to how often ingredients need to be refilled, so that the proper amount of ingredient back-ups can be stored close by.

Having an efficient cook’s line set-up not only means less time to produce a dish (translating to lower labor costs and lower ticket times), but also less frustration for the cook. In addition, the time savings means more time for the cook to prep the station or just keep it tidy and clean.

One of Synergy Restaurant Consultants’ core service offerings is performing in-depth assessments that cover 13 major areas of operations, one of which is the cook’s line.

Get Your Gluten Out

In December we cited gluten-free offerings as one of the game-changing trends in the industry for 2012 and, sure enough, the momentum keeps growing.

What started out as a small niche within the special diets spectrum has come to represent a mainstream opportunity for foodservice: The numbers may be small, but demand for gluten-free products cuts across an increasing swath of the population.
Some data to consider:

• While celiac disease affects about 1% of the U.S. population, according to the National Institutes of Health, as many as 10% have a related and poorly understood condition known as non-celiac gluten intolerance (NCGI), or gluten sensitivity

•  According to one gastroenterologist, half of the approximately 60 million people in the U.S. who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are probably sensitive to gluten

•  The Hartman Group notes that some marketers believe as many as 15-25% of the U.S. population is interested in gluten-free products, with digestive health, nutritional value and help in losing weight being the top three motivations

•  The U.S. market for gluten-free foods and beverages has grown by 30% a year since 2006, says Packaged Facts, to $2.6 billion in 2010, and is projected to top $5 billion by 2015

• References to gluten-free menu items have jumped more than 60% between 2010 and 2011, according to a study by Technomic
Small wonder that the ability to offer gluten-free options has become such a driver for new-concept menus like those of LYFE Kitchen, Burger 21, and Unforked.

Established chains like Bertucci’s and Chevy’s, meanwhile, have been upping the ante on their own gluten-free initiatives. Bertucci’s new executive chef, Jeff Tenner, has paid considerable attention to items that would not only advance the brand’s appeal and utilize its signature ovens, but would also be gluten-free, such as pesto grilled salmon and roasted eggplant pomodoro.

Independents and chef-driven establishments are in a position to drive gluten-free menus at well. At cult-favorite Keste Pizza, in New York City, there are no fewer than six gluten-free pies on the menu, the result of pizzaiole Roberto Caporuscio’s obsession with creating the perfect crust. Gather, in Berkeley, features many items that are both gluten-free and (not coincidentally) vegan or vegetarian; chef-owner Sean Baker is determined to prove that food can be both sophisticated and inclusive.

Still, it pays to be conservative. In announcing the availability of its new gluten-free crust, Domino’s notes that the product is not recommended for those who actually have celiac disease.

Rules of the Gluten Free Road

• Wheat flour alternatives such as rice flour, cornstarch and potato flour can be used in breads, pizza dough, desserts and in thickenings

• Watch the cross-contamination. For instance, if you offer fried items with both conventional and gluten-free profiles, maintain a separate fryer for gf. Separate prep areas if possible, and sanitize thoroughly when you can’t

• Work with a local bakery to find gluten-free bread, hamburger rolls and desserts, since this specialized form of baking is often beyond the means of the typical foodservice kitchen

• Whole grains including rice, quinoa and buckwheat make for deliciously healthy side dishes, breakfast cereals and more

• Be cautious about prepared products such as soups and soup bases, sauces and condiments; gluten may be hidden within

• Experiment with corn and rice pastas to find a substitute for semolina or wheat pasta; you may need to develop different sauces to complement the texture and flavor of these alternatives

• Train staff, both front- and back-of-the-house, to be sensitive to all special dietary needs; servers at BR Guest restaurants in New York City are trained to ask whether a restriction is because of an allergy or preference

• Include as much information for diners on the menu as possible, and post ingredients where staff can find them easily in order to answer questions

• Consider using stickers, special wrappings, notices on electronic tickets and other measures to flag gluten-free items to avoid mix-ups

Tip of the Month

Resources for Gluten-Free Menus

Greetings!

As restaurant consultants, we are often asked to predict what the hot new trends are going to be. While it’s impossible to have a crystal ball for everything, we’ve been thinking a lot about a few big game changers that we’re seeing today:

1. The focus on farm-to-table and local, sustainable foods will lead to a new spirit of authenticity on menus of all types
2. Continued pressure on food costs will inspire operators to look at more cost-effective ways to create signature dishes
3. Social media and internet-based technology will transform the face of restaurant marketing and operations
4. Bars-with-ambitious-menus and restaurants-with-serious-cocktail-programs will continue to blur the lines between the two segments

This month, we’re addressing two aspects of these trends, with our newsletter features on interesting chicken preparations and how to manage your online reputation. We’ve also got another hot-button issue for you with our coverage of energy conservation by Senior Operations Associate Michael Reynaga. Here’s hoping these articles give you some food for thought, too.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Playing the Chicken

By Joan Lang

Rising beef prices and declining production, food safety concerns about Mad Cow and “pink slime,” disheartening reports about gestation crates for pregnant sows… no wonder American are eating more chicken.

And that means more opportunity for restaurants to get creative with poultry—all too often treated as a common denominator alternative that doesn’t deserve the same signature treatment as beef, pork, seafood and even vegetarian mainstays. Take the Amish Chicken, served with spring garlic, pearls barley, cucumber and burnt hay ash at Gwynnett St., a super-hot new farm-to-table restaurant in Brooklyn: this ain’t no grilled chicken breast folks. And chains like Popeyes are adding new dippable fried-chicken items that satisfy cravings poultry-based finger foods.

• Spatchcocked – This surprising named technique for butterflying a chicken or game hen allows the flattened bird to be cooked more evenly on a grill, with a better ratio of crispy skin to tender flesh, and there’s no denying the conversational impact the word can have on a menu

• Chicken Under a Brick – Called pollo al mattone in Italian, this increasingly popular dish results when you flatten an aggressively seasoned halved bird under a weight (such as a cast iron pan) and grill or roast it until crispy.

• Beer Can Chicken – A home-cookout staple that’s grabbing a lot more attention on menus these days; propping the bird up on a can filled with anything from actual beer to other flavoring agents not only makes for a tasty chicken, but also one that’s evenly cooked. At Bounty Hunter Wine Bar in Napa, CA, they even use this signature in pulled chicken sandwiches

• Perfect Roast Chicken – Many a French chef will tell you that the test of a restaurant is how they roast a chicken, and sure enough, a carefully roasted chicken is returning to trendy restaurants, often in the form of a whole bird roasted to order for two patrons. At Nomad, in New York City, it’s even barded with foie gras and truffles and priced at $78

• Specialty Birds – Free-range, all-natural, farm-raised, poussin and game hen, Amish, Jidori: The premium ingredient-trend also extends to the prosaic chicken, and true believers claim you can taste the difference, and charge for it

• The Fried Chicken Revolution: Thomas Keller may have started it all at his French Laundry, but scores of chefs now stake their claim to the ultimate fried chicken recipe, from David Chang and his fried chicken two ways (Korean and all-American) to the Sunday night Fried Chicken Dinners featured at restaurants around the country. At Food 101 in Atlanta, where the iconic Southern specialty has been on the menu for 12 years, there’s even a celebration of National Fried Chicken Day (July 6th)

• Dark Meat Returns – Breast meat, tenders, and wings are all well and good, but real chicken lovers appreciate the legs and thighs, which are not only less expensive, but also more flavorful and forgiving to cook in braises, stews and other hearty fare. Treated to signature preparations, just as you would duck legs, chicken thighs can be delicious; witness the popular Chicken Thighs with Almonds and Olives at Barbacco in San Francisco

• Brined and Marinated – Building flavor and ensuring juiciness is important when menuing lean, neutral flavored poultry. These techniques also make chicken more of a signature item, from spice-rubbed Jamaican jerk chicken to the refreshing citrus flavors of South American rotisserie chicken.

In fact, Richard Sandoval, the Mexican chef who has been so influential in bringing contemporary Latin flavors to the United States, has recently worked with Colombia-based Kokoriko to create the new Miami prototype for a planned fast-casual chicken chain. As Sandoval puts it, “How many more burger places can there be?”

For advice on how to make your menu more in tune with the times, contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

Maintaining your Online Reputation

By Joan Lang

For every example of how the internet can help a restaurant operator build sales—new marketing vehicles like Facebook and Pinterest; online ordering and reservations; iPad wine lists —there’s apt to be another one that represents a downside, including everything from malfunctioning website servers to inaccurate or malicious “citizen reviews.” (Think it doesn’t happen? According to a recent poll by SmartBrief, 62% of respondents claimed to have been threatened by a user of Yelp or another review site.)

And with it all comes the responsibility of managing and maintaining your reputation, not only in the real world but also in the virtual online one.

The Rules of (Social) Engagement

1. Tune in to the conversation – Find out what’s being said about you by local bloggers, review sites like Yelp and Trip Advisor, on your Facebook and Twitter pages, and other social vehicles. By using saved searches, page tagging, and automated services like TweetBeep and Google Alerts, you can see brand or name mentions in posts even if people are not fans or followers.

2. Familiarize yourself with and use tools, like Me on the Web or Reputation.com, that will help you manage the job of keeping your reputation clean

3. Recognize that like washing the dishes, monitoring and responding to what people are saying about you online is a never-ending task. If you don’t have time to do it yourself, enlist the aid of a trusted employee, marketing department, or PR specialist.

4. If you really don’t have time, consider turning to an online reputation management service—not surprisingly, there are lots of them. Good ones can make negative content less visible in search engines, and find positive or fresh content that will push to the top of search to re-establish your reputation, among other things.

5. Claim your listing on the local search sites, to maximize SEO (search engine optimization); the more complete your listing is (e.g., your website URL, hours of operation, special features like patio dining, and so on), the more likely it is that you will get found—since this is also a convenience to potential customers who may be trying to find a place to have lunch outdoors on a beautiful day, for instance. Make sure you update them whenever something changes.

6. Develop a response plan. Decide whether to acknowledge and address each review or comment publicly or privately. Although there are arguments for both (telling your side of the story vs. not embarrassing a commenter, for example), it may be that you’ll want to decide each case pretty much individually. Never underestimate the power of an old-fashioned phone call to let a commenter know they’ve been heard—it may even result in their changing a negative online review.

7. Whatever you do, do it quickly. Social media works faster than the speed of light. A review posted at lunchtime can affect another patron’s dinner choice. One bad comment can trigger a chain reaction, and it only takes a few days of online life to spoil your business prospects for weeks to come.

8. Resist the urge to delete negative Facebook comments —it makes you look like you don’t care, and could enrage commenters. Deal with them instead

9. Think of posters as secret shoppers who don’t happen to be working for you. Smart operators take criticism constructively, discern patterns, pay attention to early warnings, and take steps to correct legitimate problems that commenters may be pointing out. We know one restaurateur who changed his bread service when he noticed how many online reviewers commented about staleness

10. Remember that the social web can be mined for priceless intelligence of who your customers are. Analyze metrics to get a better sense of your customer demographics. Use a tool like Site Meter or statcounter.com to find out how users are coming to your website or listings. Look at commenters’ profiles to find out who they’re friends with and what other brands they follow.

Keeping Cool – and Conserving Energy

By Michael Reynaga, Senior Operations Associate

Summer is here and you know what that means: It’s time for the constant reminders about energy conservation. It seems that whenever the temperature rises, so does the need for all of us to conserve energy. Restaurants are in a unique position to help conserve energy while also lowering their operating costs. Let’s explore four ways to do this:

1. Let’s start with walking in the door first thing in the morning. Many operators turn everything on the moment the first employee walks in; lights, ovens, ranges, and other equipment. Instead, gradually turn on the equipment as you need it. In addition, powering down your equipment during slow periods of business (say between lunch & dinner) can also reduce your usage. Being diligent about your equipment use can save you upwards of $200 annually.

2. Now let’s shed some light on some other simple cost-saving measures. One of the easiest ways to save money while reducing your energy usage is to switch from incandescent to fluorescent lighting. Fluorescent bulbs use 1/4 to 1/3 of the energy compared to standard incandescent bulbs, and on average every light switched to fluorescent can save you $34 annually. On a side note, your choice in lighting can also affect your air-conditioning costs, as fluorescent lights do not generate heat like incandescent light bulbs do. Generally speaking, every watt that is reduced by switching bulbs can save you the same amount of wattage used to power your air-conditioning unit.

3. Another cool idea to reduce usage is to take charge of your thermostat, and set it to 76⁰F for cooling and 68⁰F for heating. You can save about 4% for every degree you modify in your heating and cooling settings. If your restaurant doesn’t have programmable thermostats, it might be worth it to purchase them: Many of today’s newer thermostats have multiple settings for different dayparts. This would allow you to program the thermostat to run at certain peak times, and stay idle when nobody is in the restaurant.

4. When it comes down to it, there are many opportunities to reduce your energy usage, but one of the soundest ways for long-term conservation is to buy equipment that is Energy Star compliant. This specialized equipment is engineered to run more effectively on less power. If you’re looking to upgrade any of your current equipment, talk to your local equipment vendor to see what Energy Star rated models are available. It may also be worth it to replace some of your older items early, as the energy cost savings can help pay for the new equipment over a relatively short period of time.

Being smart about your equipment and how it’s used can pay off financially as you move to become more energy-minded. Contact the Synergy Restaurant Consultants team for more information.

Tip of the Month

Online Technology Marches On

Wondering if your customers would like the option of online payment? Thinking of developing a smartphone app for your brand? Don’t know if people use online nutrition information? This data from the National Restaurant Association answers all those questions and more about technology use in restaurants.

Greetings!

We’ve been travelling a lot lately, and we couldn’t help but notice how exciting the hotel dining scene is getting again. This happens periodically in the business cycle, as hotel-development strategies have shifted back and forth between full-service and limited-service approaches. This time the cycle seems to be very much in support of offering amenities like spas, concierge services, and exciting food-and-beverage facilities—even multiple options. What’s really different this time, however, is the fact that so many of the high-profile hotel openings are among the ranks of the boutique lodging sector, not the well-established chains. And that has made the hotel-dining boom even more high stakes.

While you’re here, be sure to read Karen Brennan’s excellent analysis of how to tell if your advertising approach is really working. The founder and principle of the brand strategy group Brandscapes, LLC , Karen debunks several prevalent myths about how to measure the results of your marketing efforts.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

The End of Ho-Hum Hotel Dining

By Joan Lang

Every decade or so, there seems to be a renaissance in the quality and innovation of hotel dining—and this one’s a game changer. Positioned to attract gastro-tourists, upscale business travelers and sophisticated food-loving locals alike, this new crop of restaurants (often helmed by famous chefs) are rapidly becoming destinations-within-a-destination. Pack your bags and go.

Shanghai Terrace, The Peninsula, Chicago

Aiming to recreate the ambience and romance of a 1930s Shanghai supper club, this elegant new Chinese restaurant sports dark lacquered wood and dim, moody lighting, plus a Cantonese-style fine dining menu complete with dim sum and a five-course traditional Peking duck feast. There’s bird’s nest soup, abalone and steamed market fish, plus such contemporary reinventions as miso marinated cobia and dry aged prime ribeye with smoked garlic sauce, plus ambitious cocktail and tea programs.

Tamarind and Bellocq, The Hotel Modern, New Orleans

Two high-profile options—a restaurant and a cocktail bar—anchor this new Central Business District boutique hotel. Tamarind showcases French-Vietnamese culinary influences via local star-chef Dominique Macquet and chef de cuisine Quan Tran: Lemongrass Galanga House Cured Salmon, Wagyu beef coulette with Asian ratatouille, Saigon Cinnamon Molten Cake. Bellocq, named for the famed Storyville photographer, touts sophisticated cocktails and naughty live entertainment.

Parallel 37, The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco

Marketed as a freestanding restaurant, Parallel 37 (named for San Francisco’s geographic latitude) specializes in local ingredients like Sonoma duck and Dungeness crab, as interpreted by Michael Mina acolyte Ron Siegel. A “pairing and sharing” menu and communal tables lend to a neighborhood lounge vibe in the restaurant, aided and abetted by Camber Lay’s one-of-a-kind cocktails (e.g., the Bar Fly, with Bulleit bourbon, Benedictine, poblano pepper, vanilla and fresh lemon juice).

Wit and Wisdom, Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore

Michael Mina leads the team behind this upscale tavern offering seafood-intensive “comfort food with a contemporary twist”: lobster corndogs, roasted Barnegat Lighthouse skate wing griddled in a cast iron skillet, Border Springs Farm braised lamb shank. Frequent promotions like Burgers & Beer and a Preakness Triple Crown menu help bring in locals; comfortable leather couches and generous cocktails encourage them to stay. The hotel is also home to Lamill Coffee for Euro-style café dining, and a Japanese izakaya-style restaurant called PABU.

The Dutch, W South Beach, Miami

The culinary amenity for Miami’s hip hotel and residences is Andrew Carmellini’s second “just an American restaurant” (the first Dutch is wildly successful in Manhattan’s SoHo), featuring high-quality hangout food like oysters, dry-aged beef, and such “supper” entrees as marinated roast chicken and homemade pappardelle with lamb ragout. It’s quickly become a power destination for breakfast and lunch, and a serious bar scene with a huge collection of specialty spirits to wash down the fried-oyster sliders and sheep’s milk ricotta with grilled bread.

Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles

The original celebrity chef continues his domination of the local food scene by lending his name

to the F&B roster at this historic glamor-hostel. The Puck-ish menu focuses on modern California cuisine with luxurious European and Mediterranean influences: red snapper crudo, Dover sole, roast guinea fowl, exemplary bread service. Society and celebrity weddings, breakfast-in-bed, a lavish Sunday brunch and a star-studded outdoor lunch on the legendary terrace complete the return of old-school dining excellence to the expensively (Rockwell Group) refurbished and re-opened hotel.

China Poblano, Cosmopolitan Hotel, Las Vegas

In a city rife with high-profile chefs and their restaurants, none has gotten more attention lately than this hot new outpost of the José Andrés/ThinkFoodGroup empire. The daring China-meets-Mexico menu connects East to West with Chinese noodles (made fresh daily at a display station), dim sum and soups, served alongside tacos, tableside guacamole, and ceviches in a distinctly casual-hip environment, where Singapore Slings share bar space with Margaritas and aquas frescas.

Advertising: Which Half is Which?

By Karen A. Brennan, Marketing & Branding Strategy

By now everyone has probably heard the saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Most people attribute it to a friend or business associate, but the comment was originally made by retailer John Wanamaker, a marketing pioneer in the early 1900s. I guess the reverse is also true: Half of the money we spend isn’t wasted…it actually generates a return on investment (ROI) that builds sales and builds the brand. The real question is, how do you know which half is which?

• I just visited P.F. Chang’s for the first time in a long time. What made me do it? I saw their “20 Lunch Combos Under $10” TV spot. After seeing it enough times, I just had to go. But I didn’t go for lunch; I went for dinner. In other words, the advertising moved me even though I didn’t go for the deal. The Chang’s spots do a great job of making the case for the brand and the product and use the deal to merely “punctuate” the ad, not as its centerpiece. It’s not about the deal…it’s about the brand, with a big coupon exclamation point at the end of the sentence.

Years ago I read that including a coupon in an ad increases readership by 90% (almost double) even if people don’t redeem the coupon. This makes sense, especially when you consider that redemption rates on coupons average 1-2% and are often redeemed at a rate of less than 10%. People are paying attention to the ad and responding to it, even if their “response” is a non-coupon visit. I recently spoke with P.F. Chang’s president, who confirmed that the restaurants have experienced lift at both dinner and lunch because of this promotion.

Lesson: The law of ‘unintended consequences” can also work in your favor. Be sure to factor that into your ROI.

I recently attended a board meeting where the accountants looked at 5-10% coupon redemption rates as “modest,” and questioned whether it was worth doing. Interestingly enough, there was a positive ROI on the promotion, but the accountants wondered whether they might have gotten an even higher ROI doing something else—the grass is always greener. My take on this is that the ROI is the low end of what the promotion achieved when you consider the overall awareness it produced and the energy level it created in the restaurants during what would have otherwise been a slow time (like P.F. Chang’s). And we all know the best promotion result is a busy restaurant.

Lesson: Don’t be distracted by someone else’s green lawn.

Advertising is like the pill you take to make the symptoms disappear. Once the symptoms have gone away, you might think you are fine and decide you don’t need the pill anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a Cumulative Effect of Advertising: A number of years ago it was found that only 60% of the impact of an advertising initiative is felt in the first year, 25% is felt in year two, 10% in year three, and 5% in year four. If you keep advertising year after year, it will build and build until year four, when you will finally realize 100% of the benefit of the campaign. If you do the same thing the next year, you will get the same 100%. This will make it appear that sales have flattened, but the truth is that the base has moved. A certain level of marketing simply ratchets up the base.

Lesson: Stopping your advertising loses the residual impact and sets you back years in building sales. Ultimately, you need to “up the ante” to get bigger impact. Stops and starts, rather than a consistent year-after-year approach, leaves money on the table because of the lost impact.

• Reach & Frequency, the traditional measures of advertising in a mass media world, are giving way to Impact & Engagement, the watchwords in a social media world. But it’s not an either/or choice. A full marketing approach includes both Reach & Frequency and Impact & Engagement. Anecdotal information that reflects how much more powerfully guests respond to your brand is almost as meaningful now as the ROI.

Lesson: Advertising that doesn’t Reach enough people, doesn’t reach them Frequently enough, doesn’t have Impact or is not Engaging is probably in the half of your advertising that doesn’t work.

• Not spending money enough may cause a promotion to fail, whereas spending a little more would give the program enough to break through and be a success. Years ago, I tested two ad campaigns. One featured a “buy one, get one free” coupon and the other featured “buy one, get one for a dollar.” Our managers thought they would save a lot of money not having such a high coupon cost, when in fact the number of people coming in for the less compelling deal was so much lower, it didn’t even generate enough revenue to pay for the ad. The BOGO with the free offer, on the other hand, actually generated a lot of traffic and made lots of money.

Lesson: Go Big or Stay at Home.

So here are my simple rules:

1. It’s important to measure sales gains not only against last year, but also against a realistic assumption of what sales would be if you had done nothing. Ask, for example how your competition is doing. If you are doing better than they are, your advertising is working.

2. Make it about the brand, not the deal. People will seek out the deal—you’ve got to expose them to the brand on the way. That gives you impact today and tomorrow.

3. About the time you are getting sick of your advertising, your customers are just beginning to pay attention to it—the promotions that are working are working because you stick to them.

4. Continuously evaluating your efforts and eliminating the things that aren’t working, and doing more of the things that are, will build the half that works and eliminate the half that isn’t.

For help with your advertising and marketing strategy contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

Why Blog?

By Joan Lang

In the rush to Facebook, Twitter and now Pinterest,  blogging has gotten a little lost in the social media fray. But one of the original ways of “sharing” on the internet can still be a valid outlet for foodservice organizations.

Blogging has been around since the late ‘90s and was first used by politicians and news services to express opinions and begin a dialog with readers. In the business world, the blog has been eclipsed by Facebook for many interactions with followers, but its uses as a “long form” for communicating with employees, customers, and even suppliers and vendors need not be overlooked.

If Facebook and Twitter are a short story, then the blog is a novel, and can be used to explore more in-depth topics in a variety of ways:

•  When used internally, a blog written by a member of the top management team can be used to help establish the culture, mission and communications pipeline within the company. The CEO can provide a roadmap for growth strategies and more, while a human resources executive can post about policies or other issues affecting the team. A blog post carries a degree of weight and permanence that no memo or email can match, since it also becomes part of the company’s archive

•  Externally, a blog can be used to showcase an important project or team member. For example: The corporate executive chef, who often labors in obscurity to the public eye, can blog about the R&D process, with posts about travels and favorite meals or a “diary” of how a new signature dish came about. Linked with demo videos and recipes, this can be extremely effective in putting a face behind the food that’s served, positioning the company’s culinary chops with existing and potential customers

•  A blog that exists on the website serves as a constantly updated source of content, helping to drive traffic to the site. Blogs can also help with SEO (search engine optimization, that all-important vehicle for getting “found” on the internet); by using key search words within blog posts (such as “macaroni and cheese” or “hiring bartenders”) you can help market your restaurant in strategic ways

• Allowing employees to post blog items (under supervised circumstances) helps give key team members a voice and can engender pride, engagement and personal development

• Blog posts can be used to demonstrate expertise. Synergy’s blog highlights the variety of skills and services the company provides, such as menu development, food trend analysis, staff training, kitchen design and more, as well as being a way to bring attention to the team’s activities and projects

If you do decide to move ahead with a blog, here are a few rules and tips for making the most of it.

1. Make sure the person who’s doing the writing can actually write. Designated writers should enjoy writing, understand the mechanics of spelling and grammar, and be willing to post regularly.

2. Have someone else proofread every post before it goes online. Twice.

3. Promote your blog via Facebook and Twitter so followers will know there’s a new post.

4. Make sure readers can navigate easily to the rest of your website from the blog, in order to capture the enhanced traffic opportunities.

Current Synergy Projects

Maitland, Florida-based Sonny’s BBQ, with over 120 restaurants in 9 states, has named Synergy Restaurant Consultants as its “go-to, think-new” team. Synergy will be working on multiple strategies as it seeks to re-energize the Sonny’s BBQ brand through new menu items, operational efficiencies and equipment upgrades. Read more.

Tip of the Month

The Restaurant Growth Index

Searching for new locations? Restaurant Business magazine’s annual RGI study is available online to guide you to Towns with Potential. The alphabetical list, prepared in conjunction with Nielsen, ranks all 942 Core Based Statistical Areas (aka metro areas) by such values as population, number of restaurants, and sales per capita. The study helps identify areas that may be underserved, and where restaurant sales are strong compared to the national average

Greetings!

Smart operators know they have to look beyond traditional streetside locations for opportunities. This includes not only the relatively well-established playing fields of such venues as airports, college and hospital “cafeterias,” and malls, but also public venues. That’s one reason why we have partnered with the market leader in bowling and other entertainment centers to offer a pair of turnkey foodservice startup packages, which you can read about in this newsletter-and expect to see more news about in the future.

We’re also taking a look at a couple of exciting QSR concepts that specialize in well-loved menu items like donuts and chicken wings in surprising and game-changing ways. And be sure you read our associate Margee Drews’s advice about working with an interior designer if you plan a new build or brand refresh.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Dinner and a Movie… or a Few Frames

For savvy investors, sales opportunities through foodservice abound. That’s why Synergy Restaurant Consultants has partnered with QubicaAMF, the market leader in the bowling and entertainment industry, to offer foodservice start-up packages to QubicaAMF clients.

As part of the agreement, Synergy has developed a package of turnkey start-up services intended for two specific types of bar and restaurant operations: fast casual and casual dining, which are the most relevant for entertainment centers today.

Hotels and resorts, malls, and other retail developments have long understood the value of offering upgraded foodservice options—as both a consumer amenity and a source of traffic, sales and profits—often partnering with chains or locally prominent independent operators.

Now other types of venues are getting into the arena, including such entertainment options as bowling alleys, movie theaters, and so-called lifestyle centers, which are mixed-use commercial destinations that combine the traditional retail functions of a mall with leisure facilities oriented toward upscale consumers.

• Alamo Drafthouse is a small chain of hip movie houses that include chef-driven dining venues in each of its four markets. In Austin, for instance, the company’s flagship Ritz features executive chef Elijah Horton’s menu of movie-seat-friendly appetizers, pizzas (Wild Mushroom with Manchego, Asiago, Parmesan and Romano cheeses), sandwiches and burgers (the de rigueur Green Chile Cheeseburger), and milkshakes (strawberry-balsamic, anyone?), as well as wine, beer and craft cocktails.

Speaking of craft cocktails, the company has recently hired Austin cocktailian Bill Norris as its new beverage director, to develop beverage programs and oversee The Highball in-theater bars and the new tequila-focused satellite bar 400 Rabbits at Alamo Slaughter. In addition, Drafthouse has opened a new reservations-only craft cocktail bar called Midnight Cowboy on trendy East 6th Street in Austin.

Now Alamo is expanding to New York City, and most recently, founder Tim League has announced plans to revamp San Francisco’s historic New Mission Theater.

• In Portland, Maine, one of the hottest tables in town is at Bayside Bowl, where the upgraded menu features the likes of pulled pork sandwiches, burritos, and grilled steak salad, plus a full bar. Grilled pizzas and the signature mac-and-cheese share a pantryful of a la carte topping options, ranging from bacon and olives to broccoli and barbecue sauce—a smart way to cross-utilize ingredients. Bowling parties and catering are sources of additional revenue. The foodservice options have helped to attract leagues as well as walk-in bowlers at a time when the sport is growing in appeal to families and singles.

During the recession, many consumers were drawn to activities like movies and bowling because they represented good value for an evening’s entertainment. Now, with the economy on the upswing, investor interest in this sector is also increasing. Synergy’s relationship with QubicaAMF will help both parties take advantage of the opportunities.

“Restaurants are our core business,” says Danny Bendas, Managing Partner at Synergy Restaurant Consultants. “We have helped so many independent operators and restaurant chains over the last 25 years to reach a position of competitive advantage that we are now really excited to support bowling and entertainment investors with their food and beverage strategies

“We understand the importance of combining food with bowling and entertainment to provide guests with a unique experience, and are excited about this alliance and long term partnership with QubicaAMF.”

For more information on how to add foodservice to your facility, contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

One Dish Wonders

By Joan Lang

You’ve heard of meatball shops and mac-and-cheese merchants, but now the market seems poised to welcome a new generation of fast-casual single-item specialty concepts, from upscale doughnuts (which are beginning to look like the new cupcakes) to chicken wings and tater tots.

In many ways this is nothing new, of course—as anyone who was around in the era of TCBY (the frozen yogurt chain that debuted in 1981), Cinnabon (1985), and Auntie Annie’s pretzel bakeries (1988) already knows.

For that matter, the entire fast food industry is founded upon the notion of limited-menu options along the order of hamburgers, fries and a shake.

But this newest generation of pared-down-menu merchandisers sits squarely in the arena of the booming casual segment, offering such amenities as enhanced ambience, alcoholic beverages, and sometimes even table service. The place where all the action is anyway, in other words.

You can tell the whole story simply by focusing on one market: New York City, where the demographics, streetscape and economy are vibrant enough to support lots and lots of options. New York, in fact, has always been an enormous metropolis made up of little, five- or 10-block-square neighborhoods, each with the population to support multiple dry cleaners, grocery stores, pharmacies and a Starbucks or three. If you can make it here you can’t necessarily make it anywhere, but there are some pretty amazing concepts coming out of the Big Apple right now.

Pok Pok Wing. Andy Ricker has come to town, hoping to do for New York what he did for Portland, Oregon: Make Vietnamese/Thai food hip, trendy and contemporary. Pok Pok Wing takes a signature product from a full-service concept—Ricker’s addictive fish sauce-marinated chicken wings—and turns it into the linchpin for a wildly popular fast casual letter of introduction.

That Tot Spot. I’ve been tracking the trend of upscale housemade tater tots for a couple of years now, so it comes as no real surprise to see the opening a spot that specializes in them. Like Belgian frites, shop dispensing “Tater Tots, Sauces, Goodness” sounds like a good idea for a high-traffic pedestrian attraction like Brooklyn’s Artists & Fleas Market, where shoppers are inclined to grab a snack of fragrant fried potatoes with mix-and-match spices and sauces.

Bark Hot Dogs. No dirty-water dogs here, only artisanal tubesteaks custom-made to the chef-owners’ specifications by an upstate butcher, then fried in lard and served with a compendium of house condiments, plus local draft beers. People travel to Brooklyn to dine at Bark Hot Dogs, and they don’t mind waiting in line for them.

Doughnut Plant. Chestnut Cake, Crème Brulee and Lavender Glazed? Honey, you’re not at Dunkin’ Donuts anymore. At the Doughnut Plant, Mark Isreal’s high-end, $2.75 confections are made with seasonal fresh fruits and lots of loving care, in cake, yeast, and jam- and cream-filled formats… because life’s too short to have to decide.

The Role of Interior Design in Restaurant Success

By Margee Drews, Senior Design Associate

The ideation of a restaurant requires a team effort, whether it’s a new build or a refresh. Getting the interior designer involved early in the process is essential.

New Restaurants

The role of the interior designer begins with the inception of the restaurant concept.  The designer must understand and participate in the development of a creative idea into a sound brand design.  Development of a conceptual idea into a complete plan requires a clear understanding of the menu, brand differentiation, spatial objectives, and efficient maximum utilization of the space to achieve the highest sales per square foot with complete code compliance.

The designer’s artistic application begins at inception and continues to take shape as the floor plan and elevations are completed.  The objective is to provide the best design to articulate the brand identity, with costs always in mind.  The ability of the designer to collaborate with owners, operators, architects, kitchen designers, and builders and to provide design leadership is critical.  A great designer visualizes the brand intent and brings it to fruition.

The laborious work comes with the selection of the many materials best suited for long life as well as seamless integration into the final product.  The designer must understand the critical use of lighting (both natural and manufactured) and the impact it will have on ambience.  The design ambience must fulfill the brand identity in a manner that provides sensual excitement from the moment of first seeing the exterior of the site to entering the building.  A potential guest must immediately feel drawn into the design and be at a high level of excited comfort.

In general, the restaurant should be freshened within no more than five years.

Existing Restaurants

Existing restaurants are often more challenging, especially if a complete brand renewal is required.  The scope of work will depend on the budget allowed, and it frequently requires leaps of the imagination to obtain the best results.

Updating an existing theme usually requires attention to visual cues with less emphasis on layout.  Paint, upholstery, lighting, carpet, tabletop, and artwork can task a budget to freshen an existing successful brand.  The designer will often need to incorporate as much of the existing detail as possible to fall within financial goals.  A full renewal requires that the designer incorporate both exterior and interior surfaces into the design and may also require landscape and signage replacement.  One objective is often to avoid changes that will require new code adherence.

Rebranding an existing restaurant typically is even more involved.  Whether it is a change of concept or updating an old concept to renew guest enthusiasm and visitation, the changes must be significant.  Older existing buildings may also require changes to meet new code requirements.  This may involve major changes to the existing layout to accommodate disability access and so on.  Successful rebranding should start with the same disciplines as required with any new brand.

Design at its best requires artistic visualization skills along with sound architectural knowledge, broad knowledge of surfaces and surface treatments and their technical properties, appropriate geographic elements, and current code requirements.  Today it is also important to understand the environmental properties of all aspects involved in the design, from paint emissions, energy usage, and water usage as examples.   Finally, a great designer will possess excellent communications skills and a highly organized mind.

Interested in finding out more about how Synergy can help you in the design process? Give Synergy Restaurant Consultants a call.

Tip of the Month

Those Who Can’t Do… Outsource

Linen, public relations, fresh bread – there are lots of things most restaurants cannot do themselves. As operations become more complex, here are other areas where you may want to consider seeking outside help:

* Human Resources
* Social Media
* Menu R&D
* Music

Are you on Facebook?

“Like” Synergy on Facebook to read latest restaurant news, view photos of the hottest new restaurant concepts and join in on the conversation!

Greetings!

Danny and I recently spent a few days in New York City doing research for a client in the full-service Italian segment. We visited all kinds of different Italian restaurants, from the trendy, casual Italo-American sandwich shop Parm to Michael White’s magnificent, pasta-centric osteria Morini. We also took another field trip to Mario Batali’s amazing Italian playland known as Eataly, and we were blown away by the vibrancy of this urban multi-use marketplace. In fact, we continue to be amazed by how the Italian restaurant scene keeps reinventing itself-every time we think the Italian trend has to have gone as far as it can go, we see something new and exciting.

Speaking of new and exciting, we’ve got some new articles for you in this month’s newsletter, including our associate Jim Campbell’s roadmap for fostering all-important collaboration between the supply chain department-which all too often labors in a vacuum-and the finance, marketing, operations and culinary working groups. You owe it to yourself to read it.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Supply Chain Management: The Value of Collaboration

By Jim Campbell, Restaurant Supply Chain Management

As with any business discipline, Supply Chain Management doesn’t operate in a vacuum—it must be connected to and engage with other corporate or entrepreneurial functions in order to be successful.

Communication and collaboration are necessary between key company departments.

Finance, Marketing, Operations, Culinary, and Supply Chain all have common interests and individual key components that will lead to success. The key collaborative components as they relate to Supply Chain with other disciplines are the development of interdepartmental relationships, broad understanding of menu and promotional products and issues, availability of supply, distribution and cost. Understand that Supply Chain is not in the collaboration business by itself, and that all departments must have interdependent relationships for optimum success.

Here’s how it works:

Finance Department

• Finance creates food and supply budget annually, and without forecasts from Supply Chain the company budgets would be flawed at best.
• Foods, disposables, smallwares, services, etc. make up as much as 40-50% of some restaurants’ budgets. Supply Chain must communicate these costs and provide them to Finance on a timely basis.
• Communications must remain open throughout the year so that any critical deviations from the original budget can be disclosed as soon as possible. Early recognition of cost increases will minimize damage and provide Finance the opportunity to work out solutions with other departments.

Marketing Department

• Collaboration with Marketing is critical to the team’s success, whether working on new menu concepts or a promotional campaign.
• Timing between Marketing and Supply Chain are essential to ensure that all menu or promotional products and materials are available when needed. Prior planning, precise timing and deadlines must be determined by Marketing and met by Supply Chain.
• Planned timing will also enable Supply Chain to negotiate better prices, avoiding last minute demands on suppliers to come up with supplies and “best price.”
• Collaboration is a two-way street, and Supply Chain should provide Marketing with best overall values. Supply Chain can support the Marketing group by providing a calendar of harvest times for fruits and vegetables as well as seafood items that will coincide with best supply and pricing. There are also favorable cyclical pricing periods for specific beef, pork, and poultry items. Marketing will be able to avoid price peaks and take advantage of weaker seasonal markets, increasing the success of their promotional and menu programs.

Operations Department

• Open communications with the Operations group has great value to Supply Chain Management.
• The exchange of information from the field provides input, both positive and negative, about products and services that are valuable in analyzing and decision-making. They also contribute to the negotiation process in a powerful way.
• If Operations believes a supplier is underperforming there are two possibilities. Either Operations does not understand the specifications or the supplier is not delivering the specifications. Regardless of the situation, Supply Chain is responsible for intervening and resolving the issue either way.
• Building a strong link to Operations leads to creative and practical ideas, and ultimately to positive policy changes. Supply Chain is constantly interacting with suppliers and can often offer solutions to the comments and suggestions made by field management or personal on the ground.

Culinary Department

• Supply Chain’s collaborative relationship is most critical and essential with Culinary. This is the ultimate interdependency for Supply Chain.
• Supply Chain must understand and respect the creative nature of the Culinary team. Creativity is the primary focus of what Culinary is all about. Their expertise and knowledge can and should be used by Supply Chain in sourcing and negotiating.
• Culinary must understand and respect the business nature that drives Supply Chain.
• Culinary and Supply Chain can most often find their common ground in “high value,” where quality is obtained at a reasonable or very reasonable price.
• Once Supply Chain understands Culinary’s drive for quality they will be better able to target those products and focus on negotiating the best price.
• Culinary must also understand the focus of Supply Chain to source alternative products and brands of equal quality.
• It can be a delicate balance, but the relationship can be strengthened and developed through common goals of which “high value” is one. There will be instances where Culinary will be most comfortable specifying brands, but for the most part and in the long run focusing on pure quality and specifications as opposed to “brand specifications” is the best path to success.

We have focused on issues and the nature of Supply Chain Management collaboration with Finance, Marketing, Operations, and Culinary. In truth this is just one component of the total collaborative effort. In order to attain the maximum success, each discipline or department must interact will all other key departments. Once interdependency is recognized by all, you will be amazed at what can be accomplished. Collaboration when executed properly yields the best result for all those involved including the restaurant guest. The keys are mutual respect, open and inclusive communications, planning, learning, and execution.

The restaurant business is really just another “team sport.” Call the Synergy team for a consultation if yours needs a little help with the process.

The Finer Points of Good Service

Lately Zagat Survey has been covering customer and employee annoyances on its blog, collecting responses to topics ranging from the 10 Most Annoying Restaurant Trends (“oversize wine glasses”) to the 10 Foods Chefs Most Dislike Cooking With (“balsamic vinegar”). A recent post about The 8 Most Annoying Questions Asked in Restaurants” —by both staff and patrons—got us thinking about service. Which continues to be one of the biggest restaurant-experience bugaboos for Zagat survey respondents and other customers alike, by the way.

Here are some specific do’s and don’ts for rendering good service:

•  The owner, a manager, a star-server, the chef… someone should always be scanning the dining room to make sure everything’s going well. You don’t have to be standing around to notice when a customer is frantically waving arms to get someone’s attention
•  Servers never refer to guests at a table as “you guys,” as in “Are you guys ready to order?” Well, maybe at Brick House
•  Water glasses are kept filled
•  Appropriate utensils and other eating aids have been delivered before or along with the course in question: steak knives, oyster fork, extra napkins with the barbecued ribs
•  This is a point of argument, but we believe that individual plates should not be picked up when other people at the table are still eating—unless someone has pushed their plate aside to sketch their new house on a cocktail napkin
•  Servers are trained to have at least some understanding of body language and group dynamics so they can judge the energy and mood of the table. Are they getting acquainted after not having seen each other for six months? If they haven’t even opened the menus perhaps now is not the time for a three-minute recitation of specials
•  Speaking of specials, the kindest approach is on a separate menu (as opposed to verbally), unless there are only one or two, and always with prices
•  Employees are generally happy with their jobs, function well with their colleagues, are capable of working as a team, and won’t be bringing a bad attitude or the idea that “this isn’t my job, it’s the busser’s” to the table
•  If a server simply cannot get to the table s/he should at least say “I’ll be right with you” or send someone else over to help
•  The check is not automatically placed in front of the man. In fact, unless someone has specifically asked for the bill, it should be left in a neutral place
•  Remember Steve Martin in the movie “The Lonely Guy”? Avoid asking “Just you tonight?” or “Are you alone?” of an arriving guest or when first approaching the table. (Better scenario: The host asks “Hello. Table for one?” and then informs the server… or removes the extra place setting as a cue)
•  Other rules for singletons: Don’t stick them at the worst table in the house, and don’t give him/her short shrift because his/her check might be lower than the adjacent deuce’s. Experienced diners—and many road warriors are these days—can tell
•  Keep “notes” on regular customers, ranging from favorite table to what kind of Scotch they prefer. They’ll love you for it
•  Hire for passion and personality, train, reinforce, offer constructive criticism, repeat

Need help whipping your service into shape? Contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants for a free consultation

Life in the Age of Yelp

Talk about game changers: Crowd-sourced social media review sites like Yelp have put the fortunes of businesses like restaurants into the hands of mainstream consumers, rather than just the paid and published reviewers. And that has really changed the way your patrons and potential customers get and share their information.

For one thing, Yelp has profoundly affected how customers find you. For instance, your Yelp review will pop up in results after your restaurant’s name is input into a search engine like Google, second only to your website—an indication of Yelp’s growing popularity and relevancy. And guess what happens if for some reason you don’t have a website, or rely solely on Facebook?

The volume of reviews is important to search engine rankings, too, since search engines favor accurate and complete business listings.

Of course, many people searching for a place to dine go straight to Yelp, finding your business review-first. The statistics are impressive: The company claimed a monthly average of 66 million unique users during the last quarter of 2011 (the last period for which such data was available), and the number of mobile users at five million and counting as of November 2011.

Yelp reviews can have a significant bearing on sales, especially for independent restaurants. A recent Harvard Business School study revealed that a restaurant that boosts its Yelp score by one full star can see revenues increase 5 to 9% (chains did not see the same kind of bump in response to an improved score). Another issue that apparently affects Yelp reviews is daily deals; according to another Harvard study, people who visit a restaurant on a deal are more likely to give it a negative review.

And while Yelp has a review filter to weed out either customers or business owners who are loading the results, the situation can be as fraught as the old days of fine dining when losing a Michelin start could be the death knell for a restaurant.

Not surprisingly, operators tend to have a love-hate relationship with Yelp, but it’s smart to learn what you can from the site and its users.

Monitor What People Are Saying About You. Not just on Yelp, but on other review sites, too, like Urban Spoon and local directories. If this sounds like a lot of work, there are services and tools that you can subscribe to that will help you stay on top of new reviews, including Google Alerts and Yelp’s own tracking tools.

Yelp Can Be a Warning System. Pay attention and you may learn something that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed, like a snippy bartender, erratic quality of a popular menu item, out-of-whack price point compared to competitors, or a reservations policy you didn’t authorize. While any customer can have a bad experience on one visit, read all your reviews to see if any patterns emerge. Develop Policies for Whether and How You Will Respond to Reviews. Here’s where the pedal really meets the metal. Yelp allows you to respond either publicly or privately to reviews, both good and bad, and the stories of business owners who have converted complainers to loyal customers are legion. And the instances of an operator declaring war on reviewers —and vice versa—are the stuff of legend.

Monitoring reviews and responding, however, takes time. Naturally, this has led to a flurry of new businesses that will manage your SEO (search engine optimization) and online reputation—for a fee. Consider asking a trusted employee or associate, perhaps someone who works in the back office, to monitor and flag reviews; they can also handle favorable reviews, which basically just call for a simple thank you if you do decide to respond. Good customers can also be solicited, to write a counter review, but that can lead to other problems.

Whatever you do, never answer in the heat of anger. Yelpers yelp because they are vocal and plugged in, and an abusive response can easily backfire on you.

Tip of the Month

Not everyone can employ a star bartender like PDT’S Jim Meehan, but they can certainly gain inspiration from his new book “The PDT Cocktail Book,” which should be a must-read for anyone who wants to up their craft cocktail game. Other sources we like are the exhaustive site Drinks Mixer, the free Mixology Drink Recipes app for iPhone, and the oldie but still goodie drinks database from Esquire magazine.

Are you on Facebook?

Greetings!

This month, we cover off on several topics that operators need to be paying special attention to these days. At a time when more seats are chasing after fewer keisters, we start with an article on customer loyalty, presenting 12 ways that you can keep the customers you have coming back more often, talking you up to their friends and colleagues, and maybe even spending more when they get to you.

And while you’re working to build relationships with your customers, why not extend that good energy to your employees? After all, your staff is often the “first-line” protector of your brand and standards, and their job satisfaction can translate directly to your customer’s.

We also take a look at how to put your data into actionable form via Bill Taves’s discussion of “Finding the Right Recipe” for accounting and operational data. Following his advice to establish exception-based reporting can help you identify problems quickly and take steps to correct them.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Creating Customer Loyalty

The goodwill of regulars and other good customers has never been more important, and there are right ways and wrong ways to create it. (The owners of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, who recently offered survivors a 30% discount on their next cruise, might want to pay attention.)

According to a recent article in Ad Age, simple prizes are no longer enough to reward today’s sophisticated consumer, who is bombarded with opportunities for freebies, benefits, points and prizes at every turn. The incentives have to be more creative these days, whether or not they are dependent upon technology like social media, mobile apps and iPad scanning.

1. Chains should consider creating a menu item that speaks to the local market, as smash-hit Smashburger does with offerings like the Colorado (topped with grilled, fresh mild green chilies, melted cheddar cheese, pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo on a spicy chipotle bun) and the Brooklyn (a Reuben stand-in with grilled pastrami, Swiss cheese, pickles, onion and yellow mustard on a pretzel bun) in their respective locations.

2. Get regulars involved with menu decision-making by soliciting their input at the very least, and preferably inviting them to a tasting or even an in-the-kitchen R&D session—nothing makes people feel more special than being an “insider.” You may even find that their real-life insights are invaluable.

3. Investigate a formal loyalty program, which could be as simple as a punch-it card (or smart phone app) for Buy-Five-Get-One-Free, for instance, or as involved as a multi-brand setup like the Ultimate Dining Card offered by Atlanta’s Buckhead Life Restaurant Group.

4. Make sure loyalty efforts are concept- and demographic- appropriate. Several established brands—including Taco Bell, Red Robin and Quiznos—are teaming with loyalty-marketing start-up Plink to create a Facebook-based program that allows users to accrue credit toward social gaming rewards. Can you say “appeals to core market of twentysomethings”?

5. Wooing back customers with a special LTO meal deal can work—provided it’s done in a way that doesn’t erode brand value—as Red Lobster is proving with its four-course, $15 Seafood Feast. The success of the promo inspired a similar $12.95 program at Olive Garden.

Be cautious, however, with the price-loyalty equation: A recent COLLOQUY study suggests that these kinds of incentives can actually diminish loyalty by devaluing the brand.

6. Spend as much money as necessary on improving the guest experience. I hardly ever go to one of my favorite Italian restaurants because it’s too hard to park in the neighborhood—yet the restaurant’s cost for a valet or even an agreement with the bank across the street to use their parking lot at night would be more than offset by just one additional table a night.

7. On the flip side, even the smallest little nod to a regular’s status can create a big boost—for instance, having the chef come to say hello, or sending out a complementary dessert or after-dinner drink to thank them for their patronage. Other examples include prime seating or the chef creating something special for the table.

8. “Old-fashioned” touches like sending a birthday or anniversary card or email are still great strategies for building loyalty—and planting the seed to come celebrate the event at your place. Collect this information in any way possible, from asking regulars to fill out a card, to having a server let you know if a good customer is celebrating something.

9. Think twice before eliminating guest favorites from the menu, especially if it’s just because the kitchen is tired of making them. Switch out accompaniments, tweak the formula a bit, or offer it as an off-menu special that your regulars can request.

10. By the same token, do keep growing and changing if it means offering more value to the customer. Foursquare’s recent decision to include menu details in its restaurant postings practically guarantees more relevancy—and loyalty. It’s a great lesson for restaurants themselves to emulate; perhaps you can offer gluten-free menu items, for instance, or more specials (which also happens to be a great way to test core menu additions).

11. Do nothing to violate trust, which is the single most important thing you can offer customers compared to the competition. This can extend from the simple (don’t make people wait at the bar for a table if you can seat them immediately; make your menu as transparent as possible) to the philosophical (treat staff members well and pursue sustainable measures such as recycling or waste reduction).

12. Finally—and perhaps most important—treat all customers like potential regulars. As much as you offer perks to your VIPs, keep the spirit and quality of service and food the same for all.

For more loyalty-building ideas, contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants.

Building Employee Relationships

If you think building trust, communication and empathy between management and employees is just a human resources issue, you can stop reading this article right now.

Successful employers treat employee relationships with as much care and thought as they devote to customers. Happy employees help make for happy customers—and who doesn’t want happy customers?

Unhappy employees? Well, for one thing they might quit, which could end up costing you an average of $7,000 per employee, according to the National Restaurant Association, in new recruiting, screening, training and other costs.

For another thing, an unhappy employee could also cost you customers. A recent study by management and marketing professors at two different universities found that when customers witnessed co-workers behaving badly to each other, they wanted to punish the company that employed them. The study’s authors theorized that this stems from a kind of personal moral code that includes how people should be treated, and that lack of respect to one another on the job is an indication that the employees are not being treated correctly by their employer.

It bears repeating that your staff members are your brand ambassadors, first and foremost, particularly in this era of social media, when many of your employees will be sharing Twitter and Facebook space with potential customers.

And keeping staffers focused, engaged and content can be a big challenge, especially in an industry that tends to go a little short on such “perks” as sick days, paid vacation, health care, and advancement opportunities.

In its new report “Optimizing Employee Engagement,” Technomic identified trust as the most important of four key factors in building employer-employee relationships, followed by clarity, common purpose and growth. Managers can help inspire trust in the following ways:

• Include employees in the decision-making process as much as possible by soliciting their ideas and feedback
• Give them the tools to do their job, be it training, or simple resources like enough cups to reset table
• Be open, honest and truthful; share company news and goals, both good and bad
• Adopt a problem-solving mindset; implement systems but don’t just do things because that’s the way they’ve been done in the past
• Provide relevant and consistent direction
• Help employees meet their job and career challenges
• Respect their private lives, including time for family, friends and other activities

For more Human Capital Solutions, contact Synergy Restaurant Consultants

Accounting and Operating Data: The Right Recipe

By Bill Taves, Finance and Accounting, Synergy Restaurant Consultants

When you’re managing and monitoring the many facets of restaurant operations, it helps to have the right information at your fingertips. But what is the right information?

Systems today provide endless amounts of information. Too often accounting, reporting and point-of-sale systems offer hundreds of reports that can be overwhelming to understand and cause “analysis-paralysis.” The proper setup and use of both accounting and operational data can be a tremendous help to any operator.

Identify and Use Key Metrics

Idetifying the key drivers of your restaurant’s performance is essential to establishing sound reporting. There is more to learn about sales than looking at your income statement and comparing sales to prior year or budget. To be useful, any sales comparison should be measured by its key metrics: guest counts, average check, and sales mix.

This distilling of accounting data (sales) into operating data (average check, etc.) is critical, because accounting data is rarely “actionable.” Actionable data tells you where the issue or opportunity exists and can be a guide toward what needs to be done to improve operations and cash flow. For example, a common reaction to a sales shortfall can be to raise prices; without knowing the cause of the shortfall (for example, lower guest counts), however, raising prices could exacerbate the problem.

Budgeting and Planning

Budgeting is an essential tool in any business. Just like a road map (or GPS in today’s world), you can get lost without one. However, budgeting can often seem fruitless months down the road. That is often because the approach to budgeting is not founded using the same metrics that being using to monitor and report on operations.

A useful budget is founded on key operating metrics, such as guest counts, labor hours, and so on. A budget built from the ground using key metrics can be compared to actual results using those same metrics. This allows for a clearer understanding of performance to expectations and any corrective action that needs to be taken.

Exception-Based Reporting

The most efficient way to keep your fingers on the pulse of your operations is to establish benchmarks and thresholds using key metrics, and then design reporting so “alerts” are provided any time operations go beyond or outside of those benchmarks. Examples where this approach is commonly used include voids and overtime hours, but it can also be used for labor hours, sales, average check, promotional programs, and many more.

It is not necessary to produce a void report every day if you have an acceptable threshold for voids. Many reporting systems provide alerts in the form of an email or text that is sent when voids exceed a given threshold and thus require your attention. Using systems to inform you of a problem or “exception” can eliminate hours spent running through reports looking for problems.

Need help setting up any of your accounting systems or procedures? Contact Synergy for a free consultation.

Tip of the Month

Looking for new ways to incent repeat customers without resorting to daily dealing and other price discounts? Check out this article on cnbc.com, which goes beyond Groupon to explore Strategies for Long-Term Customer Loyalty.

Greetings!

The end of the year is upon us, and that means all the annual wrap-ups, best-of’s and best guesses for next year are being published. With this month’s and next month’s newsletter, we’ll be sharing some of our collective thinking on what the important food trends will be in the coming year, based on what we’ve been seeing, hearing, tasting, and drinking in the last few months. The list runs from the ongoing importance of menu items like burgers and pizza to the new fascination with nose-to-tail sourcing.

And we’ll continue with more trends next month. In addition to food trends, we’ve also got some ideas for increasing your beverage sales at a time when many customers are saying “Just water, please.” Creative nonalcoholic beverage items can represent a significant source of incremental sales and lasting customer satisfaction. And if you care about your corporate culture—and you should—make sure to read out colleague Morreen Bayles’s article on how to create a good one.

Wishing you all a safe, healthy and profitable holiday season.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Food Trends: 12 for ’12, Part I

By Joan Lang

This is the time of year for reflecting on what’s happened in the past 12 months, and looking forward to the possibilities for the next 12. For many of our peers, that means predicting what some of the food trends will be for 2012. Here are Synergy’s.

The Big Three: Burgers, Dogs and Pizza These value-laced favorites have proven themselves to be blank canvases for the creativity of operators—and the seemingly unending craving of consumers.

1. Burgers: As stripped-down “better burger” franchises like Five Guys and Smashburger continue their march across America, new players are keeping the pressure on.  B.A.D. Burgers/Breakfast All Day charges into Manhattan with its huge and trendy menu (Chicken-and-waffles! Five kinds of burger patties! Dozens of a la carte sauce and toppings options!). Coal Burger in Scottsdale bases its burgers on the coal-fired ovens that made parent company Grimaldi’s Pizzeria famous. Not to be outdone, established chains are ramping up their burger offerings: witness Whataburger’s new Green Chile Double, which ran systemwide as an LTO earlier this year.

2. Hot Dogs and Sausage: Where hamburgers go, hot dogs follow, joined by sausages reflective of the growing interest in charcuterie and other housemade meat products. Brats, bangers, even bologna are getting the handcrafted treatment: Kupersmith, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side—a project of eight School of Visual Arts students—emblemizes the trend with a mix-and-match menu  of housemade sausages and crafty suds.

3. Pizza: Neapolitan, Provencal-style, grilled, wood-fired, coal-fired, round, square, deep-fried. Topped with everything from fried eggs and Benton’s bacon to handmade mozz and heirloom tomatoes, artisan-style pizzerias are sprouting up everywhere there’s 00 flour and a customer base. Serious Eats’ exhaustive/obsessive weblog Slice is getting a real workout staying up with the volume.

4. Sandwich Generation Hasta la vista, ham and cheese: You’ve been edged out by everything from Vietnamese banh mi and Italian porchetta sandwiches to gourmet grilled cheese and media noche panini. The sandwich category is attracting serious chefs with ambitious culinary philosophies who want to make their food more accessible to time- and wallet-challenged food lovers. Take Charles Kelsey of Cutty’s in Brookline, MA, who has channeled his CIA education and 12 years of experience working at upscale restaurants into a quick-casual concept that dispenses the likes of the Spuckie (a muffaletta-like mélange of fennel salami, hot capicola, mortadella, mozzarella, and olive-carrot salad on ciabatta) and the Ham Pimento (Niman Ranch ham, Southern-style pimiento spread and sweet pickles and baguette).

5. Butchers Get Star Status

The whole nose-to-tail cooking thing (housemade salumi, heritage pigs, and crispy pig tails) has reached its natural next step in the whole “craft butcher” movement, in which many of the meat cutters are or were chefs. The new Butcher and Larder in Chicago, for instance, is run by husband-and-wife chefs whose resumes include some of the Windy City’s finest restaurants. In New Orleans, John’s Besh’s Cochon Butcher not only supplies his other restaurants, but also serves as both a retail and restaurant profit center in its own right. In a reverse move, Prather Ranch Meat Co. is opening a restaurant adjacent to its shop in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. And the uber-hip Marlow & Sons in Brooklyn has begat not only an onsite general store, but also the nearby Marlow & Daughter for grass-fed beef, humanely raised pigs, and all kinds of sausage—the skins are even sent to a tannery to be turned into sustainable leather tote bags.

6. Gluten-Free Gets a Jolt A recent article in the New York Times entitled “Should We All Go Gluten-Free?” shows just how mainstream the disinclination to eat gluten has become—a trend that savvy restaurant operators have not failed to note. In fact, according to Technomic, menu items billed as “gluten-free” increased by 61% between 2010 to 2011. Nowadays, many independents and chains alike sport special menus for celiac sufferers and the gluten-averse, including pizza and pasta concepts like Biaggi’s. Bakeries specialize in gluten-free cupcakes, websites like glutenfreetravelsite.com list restaurants around the country appealing to the gluten-sensitive, and with sales of such products topping $1.6 billion last year, according to Mintel, there’s no doubt that consumers will learn to expect this option more and more when they dine out. Get busy and get the wheat out.

Be sure to check our newsletter in January for Part II of the Food Trends article.

Pour Profits, Instead of Just Water

By Joan Lang

The recent “Beverages at Foodservice” study released by the NPD Group put numbers to a trend that many operators have known implicitly for quite some time: In an attempt to hold the line on expenditures, many consumers are ordering water instead of soda and brewed coffee. In fact, according to NPD, while traffic declined a relatively moderate 1% over the past five years, sales of these profitable but discretionary beverages are down a more significant 6%, representing more than 2.7 billion servings. And that’s some real coin.

The concurrent relative growth of other nonalcoholic categories, including smoothies, specialty coffee and even tried-and-true iced tea, indicates a targeted solution to the problem of customers saying: “Just water please.”

As Synergy’s Dean Small states in this article from Fast Casual, “When a guest buys lunch, they want a beverage, and if you don’t have a creative beverage strategy, they’ll not buy one or trade down to something basic.” That thinking is even more true today as the languid economy struggles into its fourth year.

If you haven’t branched out past the standard-issue beverage offerings of coffee-tea-or-cola, then you’re not doing your part to leverage a powerful source of profits and customer satisfaction. And remember that some people order tap water because they are avoiding calories and caffeine, so you need to take that into account as well when you offer options.

Iced tea and coffee, juices, flavored lemonade, and espresso-based specialties are obvious choices for building beverage sales, but here are some additional ideas for turning on the tap—for profit opportunities.

• Housemade sodas – Remember the old soda fountain? At their simplest, carbonated beverages are nothing more than fizz and flavor, and many clever operators are taking advantage of that fact by utilizing their soda gun or a cartridge-based carbonation system to create their own housemade sodas. At one sixtyblue in Chicago, the extensive beverage list includes housemade sodas flavored with the likes of cara cara orange, pineapple and elderflower, priced at $5. Making sodas in house opens up a range of flavor frontiers, from familiar root beer and chocolate to more exotic products like fennel-cardamom, many of which are designed to be more food friendly than standard cola or lemon-lime.

• Local and regional specialties. The age of artisanship has led to a revived interest in local and small-batch bottled sodas and other beverages, whether traditional favorites or newly minted. At American Eats Tavern, José Andrés’s newest creation, in Washington, DC, the selection of nonalcoholic possibilities includes Moxie from Maine, North Carolina’s Cheerwine, Boylan’s cola and diet cola from New Jersey, and other old-fashioned regional favorites that fit with the restaurant’s American-heritage menu format.

• Seasonal beverages. The possibilities for seasonal offerings go beyond hot beverages in cold weather and coolers in summer. Coffee specialists like Dunkin’ Donuts display considerable genius with hot and cold options that tap into seasonally popular flavors like Gingerbread or Iced Peppermint in December and Tropicana® Orange & Blue Raspberry in the summer. The fact that these season-sensitive beverages respond so well to promotion is absolutely no coincidence.

• Special-teas. The world of tea is, if anything, even more prone to geekdom than coffee, with hundreds of different varieties that tea lovers are rushing to sample. From the fairly standard categories of black, green, and oolong to super-specialized products like exotic flowering white tea, chai (a category of spiced tea beverages), rooibos and other herbal teas, tea-like infusions like hyssop, matcha (a finely milled green tea popular in Japan), and lapsang souchong (smoked tea), this is a category that can educate and delight for a lifetime.

• Customized specialties. A recent SmartBlog on Restaurants post heralded the age of customer specification for beverages, just as build-your-own pizza and mix-and-match sandwiches have put food menus in the consumer’s hands. If you have syrups, juices, bitters and other flavorings on-hand for specialty coffee, these increasingly available products can also be offered as add-ons to other types of beverages, from steamed milk and hot chocolate to lemonade and old-fashioned phosphates. In addition to providing more flavor for the customer, these additions can support premium or a la carte pricing.

• “Healthy halo” beverages. Tea has long been considered a health-giving elixir, and juices and smoothies are another natural when it comes to tapping in to healthy messaging for beverages, but there are other options as well. Natural sweeteners like agave syrup, honey and stevia are supplanting sugar and sugar substitutes in a variety of different refreshers, and fruits and vegetables with purported anti-oxidant powers—like pomegranate and acai—have also become more popular. At LYFE Kitchen, a healthy-foods concept that Synergy Restaurant Consultants helped to develop, the beverage menu includes a variety of healthy beverages both bottled and housemade, including coconut water, pomegranate-cranberry juice, and the Cucumber-Mint Cooler (purified water with slices of fresh cucumber, mint and lemon).

Need help making your beverage menu more interesting and customer-friendly? Synergy Restaurant Consultants can provide a free evaluation.

How to create culture

By Morreen Rukin Bayles, President, Creative Restaurant Solutions

Culture: It’s one of those concepts that is so hard to define because it’s not tangible like an employment application, a training manual, or a performance review.  Culture is not something you can touch, but it certainly is something you can feel, whether it is present or absent.  It’s the fiber that weaves together a team and it’s exhibited in the way managers and employees interact with one another and with the guest or customer they serve.  It’s the energy, attitude, and support evident in these interactions.

Creating a productive, effective culture takes time, focus, and consistency.  Because culture sets you apart from your competition, it’s critical to take the time to thoroughly define it and thread it through all aspects of the employment life cycle.  To create a distinctive culture, use the following tips:

• Start with your organization’s mission, purpose, and value, then define the behaviors required to deliver them 100% of the time.

• Determine the energy and “feeling” for your concept from the perspective of the managers, employees, and consumer.  How will you be different from your competitors?  What unique behaviors must occur to provide this differentiation?

• Identify, by position, the actionable tasks necessary to provide the desired level of service, and include those behavioral components in the job definitions.

• Create hiring tools that identify the type of person who can perform the required tasks while naturally exhibiting the desired behaviors.  This is essential because it’s easy to train the tasks required for the job, but nearly impossible to train the behaviors.  For example, many companies conduct pre-hire assessments that test for their desired behaviors.  Others conduct behavioral interviews where you ask the candidate to imagine themselves in realistic scenarios and see how they would react. Provide training to the professions using the hiring tools to ensure they use them consistently and appropriately.

• Conduct an orientation that exemplifies the culture with every new employee.  Make sure the orientation involves interaction, activities, and introductions to all other team members.  At the end of the orientation day, if new employees don’t feel inspired and welcome, you can guarantee they will turnover quickly.

• Provide training heavily weighted toward hands-on practice and involvement with other team members.  Validate the effectiveness of training with hands-on demonstrations and activities.  Make it as “real-life” as possible.  Allow for flexibility in the number of hours required for training based on the team member’s ability to demonstrate the behaviors and tasks.

• Create an environment based on acknowledging positive behavior.  Recognize and reward managers and employees who foster the culture.  Rewards can be as simple as a shout out at a pre-shift meeting, to a hand-written thank you note, to a small gift card.  It doesn’t have to be much, but it should be given publicly to motivate others to strive for the desired behaviors. How can you identify these people?  Just look at their results.  In an environment where culture is strong and delivered consistently, retention and sales are usually up, while costs and complaints are down.

• Incorporate cultural components into performance reviews and make them just as important as the numeric results.

• Provide advancement opportunities to those who uphold the culture and get the results.

• Conduct culture surveys periodically to assess the reality of the day-to-day execution and perception of your organization’s culture.  Getting feedback from those who have to uphold the culture everyday is priceless.

Yes, all this takes time and effort.  But incorporating these suggestions is invaluable to the organization’s results and retention.  Paying attention to your culture will help to position  you for more profit and long-term success while creating a more enjoyable environment for the people you serve.

Tip of the Month

Have you decided to ramp up your selection of tea offerings? Congratulations: You’ve picked a subject that has kept people fascinated for thousands of years. Tea connoisseurship is every bit as specialized as the fields of wine or coffee, so you’ll need a few resources to get you started: Teausa.org represents the U.S. tea industry through the combined resources of The Tea Association of the USA, Inc., The Tea Council of the USA, and the Specialty Tea Institute.  Learn-About-Tea provides a good basic starting point for learning about the world’s many kinds of tea, their history, characteristics and benefits.

In Pursuit of Tea is beautiful retail site that includes ample information about the culture of tea, its health benefits and brewing tips.  This article on Tea Flavor Profiles from About.com takes a more flavor-based approach to tea selection, and includes links to more detailed entries.

Greetings!

Happy November!

We can’t be alone in thinking that the whole world’s gone casual. The absence of big-deal upscale-restaurant openings this season is just the latest nail in the coffin of the hushed, formal, jacket-and-tie dining destination. Instead, consumers are getting more of what they were starting to want anyway, even before the Great Recession: approachable, affordable restaurants that still offer quality, variety and a memorable dining experience. In a word: casual.

And speaking of casual, getting rid of the trappings of upscale dining, like embossed menu covers and white linen tablecloths, is one of six new-economy cost-cutting measures that we explore in the article linked below. From breaking out the 1-oz. labels to implementing an online ordering system, we’ve got all sorts of ways to hold the line on costs this month.

And if you’re interested in the subject of sustainable design, please be sure to check out Gary Wiggle’s article covering best practices for “Going Green.”

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Keepin’ It Casual

By Joan Lang

It seems that the New York City Parks Department is looking for someone to operate a “high quality casual restaurant and café” in the old Tavern on the Green location in Central Park. But the worries of a few UES residents notwithstanding, are there any other kind these days?

Think about it: How many new restaurants could accurately be called formal? The kind where the waiters wear tuxedos and gentlemen wear jacket-and-tie, the atmosphere is hushed and the tables are separated by acres? Although established destinations like the French Laundry may still require a jacket, the marketplace has been headed in another direction since even before the recession killed off the concept of old-line fine dining. And the issue isn’t really sartorial anyway: It’s all about the overall experience.

The trajectory of Cleveland “cheftrepeneur” Michael Symon could be a case study for the casualization of the restaurant industry in the new millennium. His first restaurant, 1997’s Lola, may have a rep as being the best restaurant in town (and one of the most expensive), but make no mistake: This is an American bistro, with a high-energy atmosphere fostered in part by an open kitchen and servers in shirtsleeves.

Next came Lolita, in 1995, more casual still and with prices that Symon has worked very hard to keep at under $20 for an entrée. And now, with his B Spot mini-empire of burger joints, the chef has taken the same high standards that brought him to the party and applied them to menu items and ingredients like housemade pickles and sausage, custom-blend beef proudly sourced from star butcher Pat La Frieda, and a serious craft cocktail program (the B stands for burgers, bourbon, beer, bratwurst and bologna).

Service is majorly casual: “All food will come to the table together,” says B Spot’s mission statement. “This way we’ll keep everything running ship shape & keep waits to a minimum. If you’re interested in courses…ask your caddie.” Tellingly, they’re not kidding about the word waits.

A glance at some of the new higher-profile restaurants on the docket for this year’s restaurant-opening season provides more fuel for the fire of this quality/casual trend, from wine bar/retail markets to Mexican small plates:

• Bread & Wine – This new wine bar-cum-market in Chicago will specialize in farm-to-table options like lamb–mustard seed meat loaf and house-made pappardelle with braised beef shank, pickled radish, and crème fraiche. There will also be a bar-snack menu, available from 3 p.m. onward (snacks including fried pickles with a horseradish dip, house-made kielbasa, and tacos with house-made chorizo); an extensive selection of small-batch and other unique wines; and a retail market dispensing housemade jams, jellies, baked goods and artisanal cured meats and pate

• Despite his much-touted Italian provenance, Mike Isabella—runner-up in Bravo’s first “Top Chef All Stars”—will be opening a new “modern Mexican” small-plates restaurant called Bandolero in Washington, DC, early next year. The Jose Andres protégé, who opened an Italian-inspired restaurant called Graffiato in June, aims to attract the college-student crowd with items like salsa, guacamoles, ceviches, tacos, and fajita-like “carbons” served family-style for the table. There will also be a large tequila- and mescal-based cocktail menu

• Among the more than 50 new restaurants that were set to open this season in New York City: a sports bar called AOA Bar & Grill; Viktor & Spoils, a taqueria and tequila bar in the boutique Hotel Rivington; and Parm, a much-awaited Italo-American lunch counter from the creators of Torrisi Italian Specialties. Even the more upscale openings have that bar-and-grill “ampersand” casual vibe going on, including Pillar & Plough in the new Hotel Williamsburg (with a Joel Robuchon acolyte at the helm) for “New York neighborhood food,” and the seasonal American Battersby in Brooklyn, courtesy of alumni from Gramercy Tavern and the Mark.

Look to Synergy Restaurant Consultants for help keeping your restaurant in step with the latest trends.

Cutting Costs in the New Economy

By Joan Lang

Everybody’s feeling the pinch these days. With the economy still shaky and food costs forecast to increase 3-5% in 2012, restaurant operators are facing a real dilemma as to how much they can raise prices or offer discounts and deals to their customers without eroding margins irreparably.

The need to cut costs is nothing new. What is new are a few ways to achieve that crucial goal, coupled with the need to double-down on such age-old concerns as reducing theft and making sure your scales are accurate.

1. Consider implementing an online ordering system

A recent study by The Center for Hospitality Research at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration suggests that as many as one-quarter of restaurant operations that accept takeout orders use an online ordering system. The issue for consumers is not so much convenience as taking control of the ordering process, while operators are finding that the savings in labor costs associated with telephone ordering contributes to ROI on the system. In addition, enhanced accuracy of the orders means less need for refunds and replacement orders. Can you say cost savings?

2. Fast-track new-product introductions

New products are the life blood of any retail organization. But the traditional product rollout process can be lengthy and expensive. Make the testing process work harder to build sales and brand engagement. Create an advisory panel of regular customers who can weigh in on potential concepts even before the actual recipes are developed, winnowing out potential clunkers at the conceptual stage. Then conduct tastings of the most well-received ideas before they’re put on a test menu; this also helps to create consumer loyalty at the local level, by making your customers part of the process. Utilize daily specials, LTOs and other new-product introduction techniques that generate revenue and excitement during the initial evaluation stage.

3. Standardize recipes, and give kitchen staff the tools to follow them

“Eyeballing” amounts in a recipe is the enemy of food-cost control, not to mention product consistency. If you haven’t already, go through every recipe produced and establish ironclad measurements for every single ingredient, including spices and condiments. Don’t forget sub-recipes like sauces and marinades. Do the same in the bar: You and your employees should know and follow drink recipes right down to the number of teaspoons of celery salt in the bloody Mary mix. Perhaps while you’re at it, you can find ways to improve flavors or better cross-utilize common ingredients.

Make the recipes available to all employees by whatever means works for you, and then put systems in place to see that they’re followed. And if that means recalibrating scales for weighing proteins and buying more 1-oz. ladles for sauces, do it.

4. Work harder to minimize “shrinkage”

The difference between the theoretical or ideal food cost that you’ve established and actual food cost is called shrinkage, and it can wipe out your hard-won margins. To prevent theft and less deliberate slipups, you need to implement such procedures as:

• Monitoring food costs on a constant basis (preferably by the shift) so you can identify problems immediately
• Reconciling guest checks and kitchen chits
• Locking the store room doors
• Making sure someone in charge checks in any deliveries, and double-check to see that you receive credit from suppliers for product returned
• Accounting for items that are sold or taken by management or employees for personal use

5. Get creative with labor costs

One of the first things many operators do when trying to cut costs is cutting labor, but that can be a mistake—you could easily erode service or fail to cover an unexpected surge in business. Figure out how to get enough people on the clock during peak hours to deliver excellent service without having to carry extra labor during the down times. Look for people willing to work 2-3 hours a day so that you can schedule them just over lunch or dinner when you are busy—moms with school-age kids, for instance, who might be available between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Split shifts for folks who may have afternoon classes. Cross-train willing employees so that they can do prep work or set up for catering when they’re not waiting tables.

6. Go casual

There’s a reason so many restaurants are more casual in the new economy: Casual restaurants are less expensive to operate. For example, doing away with tablecloths saves money on both linens and laundry. Gone, too, are pricey fresh flowers and elaborate tablescapes. Place settings and plates can be more multipurpose (no more fish forks). Menus can come straight from the computer—or even live on a blackboard—rather than printed and placed in a binder or cover. You won’t need as many production people in the kitchen, and you can probably get by with fewer servers—or at least busboys and wine stewards. And menu items that depend on less expensive ingredients (ground beef, “lesser” meat cuts for long braising, tri-tip instead of filet mignon) carry lower food costs.

Synergy Restaurant Consultants can help you find ways to cut costs and build sales throughout your operation. Call us for a free evaluation.

Best Practices in Architectural Design: Going Green

By Gary Wiggle, AIA, Architectural Design

In the world of design, the current hot color is green. I don’t mean green-colored upholstery or green-colored paint: In the context of facilities, “green” is the common term used for sustainable design. Sustainable design offers a solution that minimizes the environmental impact of the end product. That impact can be using less energy to operate, being recycled or recyclable, choosing materials that protect the air that we breathe, or even using materials that are more durable and therefore will not need to be replaced as soon or as often. “Going Green” is not an all-or-nothing decision. Every aspect of the design seems to have a more sustainable solution available, and each decision has to be made based upon the client’s requirements, the financial implications, and the suitability to the overall project.

New sustainable products are being introduced in the marketplace at a rapid pace. LED lighting is a great example of a technology making significant strides in a short amount of time. Historically available only as a blue white lamp source, you can now specify the color temperature of most LED lamps, allowing you to approximate the warm glow of an incandescent source that is still dimmable. This feature allows us to use a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient light source and still achieve the warm look that we are accustomed to when setting the atmosphere in a dining room.

As a part of their standard workflow, architects and designers make decisions that impact people on many different levels. When a component of a building, such as a cabinet, for instance, is designed and specified, this can affect the people who live near the forest where the raw materials are harvested. (Using wood that comes from a forest certified by The Forest Stewardship Council can help to address this.) The craftsmen who assemble and finish the cabinet can be exposed to glues and finishes that may have volatile fumes, and staff and customers may be exposed to poor interior-air quality by these finishes, especially if they wear out too quickly, requiring reapplication or replacement. (Selecting finishes with low- or no-VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds, will help to address this issue).

Designers are able to easily research online the available products. Manufacturers are very anxious to let you know the sustainable qualities of their products, many with cross-references to their entire product line, and most with references to many of the third-party independent sources that monitor the claimed compliance. The U. S. Green Building Council, GREENGUARD Environmental Institute, and The Forest Stewardship Council (mentioned above) are examples of these organizations.
As a part of the Synergy Design Team, we recently completed a prototype restaurant, LYFE Kitchen, in Palo Alto, CA. Our client specified at the start of the design process that sustainable design was to be the minimum standard we look at, and be “more green” whenever possible.

As a new concept restaurant, the design phases spanned a period of about 14 months. Within that timeframe, we were able to consistently upgrade many of our design choices as new and upgraded products came to market. Paint choices went from Low–VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) to No–VOC. Design decisions were made that moved heat-creating equipment to the exterior so that we did not need to add additional air-conditioning to handle the extra heat. Light sources included compact fluorescents and LED sources. Furniture cushions were specifically selected to eliminate any off-gassing that could compromise the indoor air quality. Energy Star-rated equipment was used throughout the kitchen. All of these were small pieces of the whole design. When combined, we were able to achieve the client’s goals of great indoor air quality, energy-efficiency, and a commitment to sustainable practices in the day-to-day operation of the business.

As an architect I keep reminding myself that every one of these small decisions towards sustainable design makes a difference, today and in the future.

Let Synergy Restaurant Consultants help you achieve more sustainable design and operational standards by calling us for a free initial consultation.

Tip of the Month

If you’re thinking about tapping in to location-based services, make sure you do your homework. From well-known GPS-enabled market leaders like Yelp and Foursquare to newer startups, there are a lot of different options. To get you started, here’s an article from American Express’s Restaurant Briefing Newsletter to help lay some groundwork.

Greetings!

Can you feel it? The holiday season is in the air. The period from Halloween straight through to the New Year can be a boom or a bust, depending on your attitude and how well you plan for it. Profitable and energizing, or stressful and poorly organized—the choice is up to you.

We also offer some thoughts about why some older chains fail (like Friendly’s, which recently went bankrupt), while others (can you say In-N-Out Burger?) become icons, as well as an update on where the whole sustainability thing is going.

To your success,

Dean and Danny

Lessons from the Chains: What Becomes an Icon?

Friendly’s declares bankruptcy, while other heritage-brand chains barrel on—and the dance of who makes it and who doesn’t twirls on. One chain is viewed as being behind the times, the other is all about them.

By all rights, Friendly’s (which was founded in 1935) could be a cult classic. The Friendly’s menu, after all—with its burgers, SuperMelt sandwiches and over-the-top ice cream sundaes —is comfort food central, and we all know how popular comfort food is right now. Why isn’t Friendly’s an icon, instead of a struggling old-timer?

Look at the popularity of In-N-Out Burger, which has been around since 1948—not such a big age difference when it seems that both are now part of a long-ago past. And if it seems unfair to compare a full-service, family-inclusive restaurant with a drive-thru concept that has all of four items on the menu—three of which are burgers—how to explain the fervor with which some people regard Cracker Barrel? The 42-year old Southern-themed chain made it handily to the top 10 in a recently released survey by Market Forces of consumers’ favorite casual dining restaurants. I have hipster Gen Y nieces and nephews who like nothing better than to go Cracker Barrel and chow down on hashbrown casseroles and sausage gravy—the same ones that revere Dairy Queen over the latest high-tone gelato palace.

This brings up the whole interesting point about why some older chains achieve a kind of retro-classic status, while others simply start withering away and dying. Denny’s declares itself “open, honest and friendly since 1953,” and in fact the chain has embraced its own Eisenhower-era, dawn-of-the-Baby Boom, everything-was-possible-back-then roots.

You see it in the menu, with such over-the-top new hits as the Mac ‘n Cheese Big Daddy Patty Melt, and with post-Millennial touches like sophisticated use of social media, hip ads, and webisodes featuring comedians like Jason Bateman, Sarah Silverman, and Will Arnett. Even the way Denny’s pushes its open-all-night status appeals to college students and the young guard, helping to ensure the chain’s continued popularity. This “America’s Diner” positioning that started it all is still brilliant as we head into 2012.

Or take White Castle, which set the stage for creating America’s first hamburger chain with its debut in 1921. Like Denny’s, White Castle also pushes its all-American heritage —not just with a website timeline that intersperses opening dates with events like the repeal of Prohibition, but more importantly by sticking by its iconic sliders, even as it adds breakfast and jalapeno cheeseburgers. The fact that just about everyone else in the world has adopted and adapted the mini-burger trend is rampant proof of the Castle’s influence.

Want help making your restaurant company will stay around long enough to become an icon? Contact Synergy Consultants for a free consultation.

What Sustainable Means Today

New hear this: sustainability is moving out into the mainstream. A new report by Forum for the Future declares that businesses of all kinds should be offering more sustainable goods and services by 2020, no matter what the economy does, or risk being seriously out of step with reality.

In fact, what seemed like a fringe movement just a few years ago has moved out into the mainstream to become a distinct marketing advantage. But what does sustainability mean in the context of today’s restaurant operations? Is it local sourcing? Green design? Recycling? Corporate social responsibility (aka CSR)? “Cleaner,” less-processed food? Offering gluten-free or vegan options?

It’s all that and more. And it’s not just high-end chefs at haute-cuisine restaurants that are leading the charge. Efforts range from initiatives to implement more energy-efficient operational systems, to full-scale farm-to-fork programs, and encompass operations at every conceivable price point. For example:

• Riverpark Farm, Tom Colicchio’s newest project in New York City, aims to become the city’s “most urban farm”—using a site where building development is stalled due to the economy. The 15,000-sq.-ft. plot, which will be moved to the rooftop when the tower is eventually built, provides vegetables, herbs and flowers for the adjacent farm-to-table restaurant.

• Bon Appetit Management, already a leader in the sustainable sourcing arena, has just instituted the industry’s first “fish-to-fork” program, with clear guidelines for sourcing and utilizing wild, farm-raised and underutilized species.

• A KFC unit in Indianapolis has been awarded the state’s first LEED Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, reflecting the highest rating for energy efficiency, environmental friendliness and productivity.

• Dunkin’ Donuts has engaged in a pilot program to evaluate the energy efficiency of its coffee brewing system

• Over the past two years, the Souplantation chain has implemented a number of different programs to reduce waste and decrease energy use, including serving food on reusable dishes, installing low-flow water systems, and boosting recycling, in addition to offering more vegetarian items

All this, despite the fact that many consumers are still confused about the meaning and import of certain sustainability tenets—they may understand “eco-friendly,” but “fair-trade” is another matter. No wonder there’s a movement afoot to implement One Green Score, a universal sustainability rating.

Having taken a lead in the adoption of sustainability practices, the industry also needs to help educate consumers about what they’re doing, as two McDonald’s franchise groups are doing with interactive multimedia and other efforts that explain what makes them green.

And make no mistake: Employees need to get on-board as well. Companies that have instituted clear sustainability policies and practices—and share them with all team members—tend to benefit from more employee engagement and buy-in.

MORE READING
Forbes, “Sustainability from the CEO Perspective”

Where food comes from: The Food Dialogues

Tip of the Month

To learn more about how restaurant operators can join the sustainable food movement, download the report “Responsible Restaurants: How Operators Can Leverage True Sustainability to Their Advantage” here.