This is the kind of stuff that puts most people to sleep but can save a restaurant from certain doom. Go get some coffee cuz this is important (if you own a restaurant or are thinking about owning one). Restaurant back offices are often like giant junk drawers, with the bare minimum functionality needed to generate enough records to comply with the IRS. Someone, somewhere, stated out loud: “managers should not be in the office!”… and it stuck as restaurant lore... as if face-time with customers and employees is the only important part of controlling operations.

Let's talk about restaurants as a "risky business" for a moment. In conjunction with this article, I’m on a mission to dispel the conventional wisdom that “most" restaurants fail within the first two years. It is factually correct, but this figure is grossly exaggerated. Did you ever think to yourself “I want to open an airline” or “I want to open a toilet paper manufacturing facility”…probably not. Then why do so many people (with ZERO experience working in or managing a restaurant) think they're qualified to open a restaurant?  I make my living by teaching people how to open and run restaurants so I love to see people getting in the game, but I hate to see them make decisions based on flawed assumptions.  It is important to mention because one of the main reasons restaurants fail is that their owners / managers do not accurately track their performance and, therefore, cannot steer their restaurants clear of the rocks...indeed they often never see the rocks even after they've hit them.

Quickbooks works for your taxes and reports monthly income the way the IRS needs to see it. June is June… June 1 to June 30. February is February… Feb 1 to Feb 28. But June 30 might be a Wednesday while February 28 might be a Sunday. This doesn’t really work for restaurants. There is nothing wrong with Quickbooks…but it is not meant to be the end-all / be-all accounting platform that so many restaurant owners think it is for managing their business. Quickbooks is, however, well suited to retail businesses and production businesses.  To understand why, let’s back up and look at what a restaurant is.

A restaurant is a Production facility and a Retail store rolled into one. Much of its inventory is perishable and has a shelf life, relying on proper storage at proper temperatures. A lot can happen to the raw commodity inventory before it arrives (vendors can try to pass off aging or abused product; product specifications can be marginalized by mispicks at the warehouse; it’s a guess whether the product has been kept refrigerated throughout the transporting process; etc.) let alone abuses that occur at the hands of your staff after it arrives. Since most people can cook (or someone in their family can cook), raw commodities have value to your employees and there is incentive to steal that beautiful beef tenderloin or take home a pound of sugar. Fierce competition for good employees makes it almost mandatory that employers offer some meal benefit where the employees eat the finished product at a discount (or for free) or are allowed to concoct their own finished product using raw ingredients. It’s tough to convince your employees that “eating” the inventory is considered theft …it’s just considered “eating” so employees of restaurants have an unwritten license to steal. Hire a priest as a part-time line cook and he’ll make himself a sandwich every now and again, and never pay for it… without blinking.  And if your refrigerator goes down, your product (often thousands of dollars worth) goes in the trash, leaving you with a restaurant that may lose revenue for a day and a difficult insurance claim.  Oh...and don't forget the electricity bill from the refrigeration...and the gas bill for cooking...and the water bill for washing the egg yolks off the plate... and soap, napkins, silverware, plates, glasses, cable tv, music, ...

Texas Instruments is a PRODUCTION business. It makes calculators, among other things. They have assembly lines that produce a variety of models. Each assembly line has various piles of parts distributed along the assembly line at installation stations. The company assesses demand and sets production to match that demand. If the company has set daily production to satisfy a demand for 200 of its TI-73 Explorer calculator, each station will need 200 of each component. 200 “+” buttons, 200 screens, 200 bodies, 200 batteries, 200 processors, etc. Theft is probably not much of an issue at Texas Instruments because there is probably not much demand (or use) for “+” buttons, so there is an inherent / predictable relationship between the targeted production and the quantity of parts needed to assemble the products. At the end of the day, when the 5 o’clock whistle blows, there may be a few calculators on the line locked in the middle of production but those products just sit there until the next day. In restaurants, any products that are “in process” at the end of a shift must either be discarded (a batch of cheese grits or pancake batter), or cooled and wrapped for use the next day (meatloaf or cooked & portioned pasta). Many of these products are either eaten by employees, improperly stored, or improperly cooled, resulting in leftovers that must be discarded the next day unless the restaurant is ok with serving an inferior product.

Back to accounting: since the relationship between raw commodities and finished products for sale is pretty straight forward at Texas Instruments and Best Buy, as it is at most Production or Retail businesses, the costs incurred for either component parts or saleable goods are relatively static and predictable. Operating costs are still critical (labor, utilities, etc.) but managers use other measurement tools to drill down and control these areas. The Profit and Loss statement is merely a record of what happened, not a weekly tool used to steer the business. At Best Buy, all hands are on deck to control shrink including the strictly controlled “back door” and the physically imposing guy at the front door who checks your bag.

The difference in the accounting processes for Restaurants versus the accounting process for Retail or Production facilities is that it is extremely difficult to accurately control all the variables that plague food production and sales on the front end…so restaurant managers rely on a tool to measure what happened on the back end. This is the Profit and Loss Statement. Retail or Production facilities don’t really need to look at a Profit and Loss statement very often, sometimes only once per quarter. Restaurants, however, need to look at results weekly in order to steer purchasing and identify patterns that might expose theft or product mismanagement.

It is very difficult to attempt a “perpetual” inventory system in a restaurant because the Point of Sale (cash register) system’s ability to decrement inventory by an ingredient is limited by the accuracy of a recipe. Chicken salad consists of chicken, mayonnaise, celery, onions and spices.

Because restaurant sales are persnickety, it follows that the labor required to produce the finished product, and to operate the retail side, varies with those sales. Just like any production facility, the raw commodities brought in through the back door will vary with sales, but with restaurants that cook from scratch, the margin of error when following a recipe is greater than when assembling a calculator or a TV.

Quickbooks does not allow a restaurant to do several critical things:

1) Setting up a 5/4/4 or a 13 x 4 system cannot be done very easily…dates must be spread manually for whatever snapshot the viewer wants to see but there is no regard for any period spread other than a calendar spread.

2) It won’t allow the user to set up relationships between category cost of sales and category sales. A bar manager, for instance, needs to see Beer costs versus Beer sales…not Beer costs versus Total sales. It can drill down one layer but not two or three as is often needed from a tool that steers the business.

3) The labor recorded in Quickbooks is always the labor charge as it hits your bank account, not the labor cost incurred while generating the sales for that period.

Restaurants need to jive today’s labor with today’s sales. This is not specific to restaurants and most Retail and Production businesses use other tools to manage labor…restaurants can do the same but, since the P&L is being used as a weekly tool, it might as well have the ability to marry labor with the sales generated from that labor.

For corporately owned restaurants (if you have a home office and multiple units), we recommend a tool from a company called Compeat as it neatly generates weekly P&L’s based on information imported from the Point of Sales system including labor, cost of goods, direct expenses, as well as accruals for things like utilities, salaries, etc.

For independent restaurants (single location or a small, unsophisticated home office) we recommend using Quickbooks to keep track of purchases and to keep out of trouble with the IRS, but we only use it as a check register with a Chart of Accounts that matches a separate P&L. The P&L is an Excel spreadsheet that slices and dices the data from Quickbooks, the Point of Sale, and whatever Time and Attendance labor system that is in place (including time clock punches).

Blue Orbit Restaurant Consulting can get you on the right path to get a solid back office foundation and tools to help you see and steer your business.

As far as a restaurant’s profitability goes, the lowest of the low hanging fruit is often found in a poorly planned tip tracking program.  Owners and operators leave money on the table when they don’t accurately plan the incomes of their support staff and schedule employees to deliver results.  They also get into lots of trouble as the government cracks down on under-reporting tips.

The support staff I’m talking about consists of positions like busser, food runner, server assistant, bar back, front desk team, etc.  These are folks that are often new to the service industry and are paying their dues in order to earn a position as a bartender, maître ‘d, or server.  Usually they’re paid a low hourly wage supplemented by a “tip out” from the servers or bartenders. In general, most state laws forbid “tipping out” positions that don’t have direct interaction with customer service – positions like cook or dishwasher - but service support positions with direct contact with guests are fair game.  A majority of states allow a “tip credit” meaning that employers can take advantage of the fact that tipped employees will regularly earn enough money in tips to offset the amount of money the employer needs to pay through wages. For example, Rhode Island allows employers to pay servers a wage as low as  $3.86; in Maryland it is $2.77/hr; and in Colorado it is $3.02 (visit http://www.payrollonabudget.com/comp_tipscreditbystate.htm to see your state’s tip credit rules).  Some states, however, do not allow tip credits for employers and, instead, force the employer to pay minimum wage regardless of tipped status (Alaska, California, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Washinton).

Whether your business is in a tip credit state or not, employers can take advantage of laws that allow employers to require tipped employees to share some of their tips with a support staff, allowing the employer to save money on payroll expenses while still attracting talent through much higher earning potential. Because it is similar to a commissioned structure (the better you are at your job, the more money you will make), employers, employees and guests are all beneficiaries.

Then how do restaurants fail?

The solution requires thoughtful and thorough planning on the front end in order to create a system that is very simple to execute.

• Determine what you WANT your support employees to make per hour.

• Determine how many support employees are needed to operate at various parts of the day for average volume levels.

• Work with your projected sales volume to estimate the amount of money in the tip pool on any given shift.

• Based on hours worked by the support staff and the lowest amount of hourly wage you can pay them, work backwards to determine how much of the tip pool should be allocated to each position to close the gap between what you WANT each position to make and what you are paying them in wages.

• If there is not enough money in the pool to make sure everyone earns what you WANT them to earn, you can cover the gap by:

-  manipulating the amount paid into the tip pool by servers usually 2.5% to 4% of sales-net-of-tax
-  increasing wages
-  reducing support personnel

• Create a labor template for each level of sales that effectively pays your support staff what you WANT them to make regardless of sales volume

• Establish labor discipline to:

-  Forecast sales every week
-  Apply the right labor template based on forecast sales
-  Track everything that is earned, paid in, paid out, and consolidate onto one summary sheet that you can reference for payroll or you can send to your payroll company for processing.

Once the labor templates are set and tip percentages for each support team workgroup are defined, it can all be programmed into a tracking spreadsheet.  All that needs to be done every week is for the General Manager to tell each work group manager which labor template to apply, then manage the staff to be sure they adhere to the written schedule.  Because the homework of allocating the tip pool percentages has already been done, payroll is a breeze. Creating labor templates and calculating the tip-in and tip-out amounts is time consuming but it yields a smart labor model that limits risk, substantially reduces labor, establishes labor discipline, encourages productivity, simplifies payroll, and protects you from the IRS.  Additionally, you’ll be armed with enough data to implement a server ranking system to reward performance and you’ll be able to accurately monitor hourly earnings in order to protect your support team.

*for help creating a thoughtful tip share system for your restaurant, contact us at www.blueorbiting.com

Truly the BEST service involves giving your servers what they want: Power.   I think folks are motivated by a combination of three things –

• Affiliation (approval from others... "please like me")
• Achievement (simply a job well done)
• Power (including money, authority over others, being envied)

Let’s face it, servers in America view themselves as fallen Angels… “I was on my way to medical school but ran out of money” or “I’m really a Real Estate professional with some extra time on my hands” or “I’m going to be a famous actor as soon as I get discovered”.  I find that they generally believe they are too good for the position but can’t deny the quick buck…so they tolerate ignorant restaurant managers and quacky efficiency schemes.  Truly, servers need to be smart to be salespeople (including manipulating the manager to get what they want).  To get people that smart, they really need to have tripped on the rug on the way to somewhere else so I find that they tend to be selfish, manipulative, and clever.  Waiting tables allows them to earn at an almost-professional clip with decent effort-to-reward ratio.  Logic dictates that the better servers will gravitate to places with the best ratio (I think Ron Paul would be a better restaurateur than Herman Cain).

A lot of fuss has been made of the Hillstone Restaurant Company’s legendary “Three C’s …Circulation, Consolidation, Communication” system (Hillstone = Houston’s, Gulfstream, Bandera, Hillstone, R&D Café, etc.).  It’s mind-bogglingly efficient with its calm teamwork, speed of service, attention to detail, and ability to keep “dine time” low (lingering tables kill profits).  Additionally, it cuts down on support staff where the house doesn’t need to pay for bussers and food runners.  I could make this blog super long and discuss all of the ins and outs of a 3C’s/Teamwork System but trust me when I say the system is truly BEAUTIFUL to see in action and I’d argue that those restaurants that do it well enjoy consistency and repeat customers in a documentable, scalable, trainable, and enforceable way.  It’s bona fide.

That said:  it doesn’t REALLY give servers what they want and takes constant reinforcement to deliver… in other words, managers are constantly swimming upstream as they have to break a human’s instinct to “serve yourself” in favor of “serving the team”. Remember, servers are motivated by POWER (see above).  They want to graduate from menial work… to evolve to a position of respect.  When we deploy a circulation system, we create a relatively flat succession system. Sure, there are “Lead Server” and “Server Financial” positions that lightly scratch their itch for RANK, but those come with additional responsibility…like holding other servers accountable for doing sidework or earning a free meal for doing the manager’s accounting work, allowing the restaurant to save on real supervisory salaries.  This militaristic setup ensures a precision dining experience, requiring its own language of commands, responses, and hand signals...but rare is the management team with the discipline and will to make it a reality. And when it fails, it fails everyone.  Let me be clear...I'm not knocking Hillstone's system. On the contrary, I'm praising it...while warning independent restaurateurs around the globe to "not try this at home". The teamwork model requires big boy pants and Hillstone has 'em. Your average independent restaurant that thinks they can handle this system probably doesn't understand the effort that went into making this system part of the culture from nose to tail, top to bottom. It's like putting a Ferrari engine in a Yugo and letting Fred Flintstone drive it.

Folks often ask us to help them with "training"..but  what does that mean?. Teaching someone how to do something they didn’t know how to before? Correcting a bad behavior?  Conditioning the mind to do something instinctively, without hesitating or thinking? Helping someone improve an existing skill?  Instinctively, most restaurateurs know “training” is important but they don't fully understand what it takes to get someone sufficiently "trained" to do their job. They DO know that, when someone is "trained", they can leave that employee alone and they will get the job done competently and confidently without much prompting or hand holding.  Sales go up, the restaurateur's life gets easier, customers are happy, employees are happy...a silver bullet if there ever was one.  "We need you to improve our training" they'll say.  And when we do, the ones who let us take control of their training usually say, "if I had known it would be that easy I'd have done it myself!"

However few have the stomach for the patience needed to effectively take someone from a neophyte to a professional.  They pay only lip service to the adage that "people are our most important resource".   They blame the employee or say "we need better people".  The bad news is that we encounter far more restaurants that blame their staff for poor performance than blame their commitment to working side by side with their staff to coach and reward the desired behavior.  The good news for restaurants that want to compete is that the majority of the training programs make great employees ripe for the picking. Post a Craig’s List ad offering extensive or thorough training and you’ll have a line at your door…but deny them their dream and they’ll land on someone else’s doorstep as fast as they showed up on yours.

Give them menus but don't expect them to memorize it and take a test on Day 2.  Don't give them a list of names, phone numbers, addresses, shareholder lists, etc. and ask them to memorize it by Day 3.  Instead, they should make as many things on the menu as possible as part of their training...no one has to memorize a recipe when they've made it themselves because it's locked in!  Introduce them to everyone they're expected to know.  Have them call the restaurant every morning before they come in to ask for directions...they learn directions and the phone number. Day 1 is about overcoming fear.  Fear of a new environment. Fear of using the restroom too many times.  Fear that they won't fit in. Fear that no one will like them.  Fear that they may not like anyone.  Remember, everything is new and they're scared. Control their fear by legislating welcoming behavior from your staff.  When a new face arrives, it is everyone's job to say "hello!" and introduce themselves.  Be sure their training schedule is outlined and posted. I like to have a meeting with my Trainers for a new batch of employees outlining which trainers are handling which days of training.  Then I insist that they introduce themselves, saying "Hello!  I'm Jim...what's you'r name?  Phillip?  Nice to meet you!  I'm training you on your days 5 and 7 for your wine class and your final follow shift.  I look forward to it!"

Next, make sure you don't put the new trainee in a situation on Day 1 where they have to prove themselves to anyone.  It is about where to park, when to eat and what to eat, warm introductions, orientation, a good tour, distributing uniforms, reviewing the handbook, filling out paperwork...and all of it should be done by someone dedicated to the task who will not be interrupted.  They should be made to feel like their arrival is important...that you've invested resources in training them because you're glad they're here and you need them.

The next critical factor is the training schedule.  The schedule should be distributed on Day 1 but should be accurate.   It should show who is training them, when they're being trained, what they're learning, what uniform they should wear, what materials they should bring, and what they will be expected to learn.  Days 2 and 3 should happen in stations/departments of the restaurant that takes the trainee out of their element and away from pressure that they're used to.  I know this sounds counter intuitive so let me explain:  If a new employee is a line cook, their first day should be spent bussing tables.  They should bond with the front of the house.  They will have a BLAST doing something they know they were not hired to do but that is a learning experience.  A few messages are sent.  1) WOW!  they're paying me to bus tables and I'm not even expected to master it, 2) My training is going to be thorough, 3) They're investing in me.  That line cook may end up being the best busser you've ever had because there is no pressure to excel at it.  Servers?  Start 'em in dish for a few hours then move them to prep.  Their homework is to learn the names of the people they work with along with something interesting about them.  When your line cook moves to "Server follow" and your Server moves to "Prep Kitchen", you can layer on more expectation..."draw a diagram of the prep cooler" or "list 4 items you made today and how to make them" or "what are the table numbers" or "how should a server stand when addressing a table".

Pay:  Make sure you pay the trainee a respectable wage.  If they're a server, try to protect them with a wage equal to what they'd make as a fully trained server.  It's expensive but you'll have the employee's undivided attention.  You'll also gain a reputation as a company that is serious about a job well done... which leaks into your community and sculpts your position in the market.  If they work for an hourly wage (not tipped) pay them their full negotiated wage, not a training wage.  The money you save with a training wage will set a negative tone in the new employee's mind that you won't recover from.

Lastly, since you've started the process by being thorough, continue it through the rest of the training.  Give that employee two or three days to touch positions in the restaurant for which they will not be responsible.  Sure, they get an amazing lesson in how to do other people's jobs, but more important, when they get to the job they're expected to master, the "fear" is gone. They know where and when to eat, where to pee, who works where, how to clock in... they're part of the team now and...get this...eager to repay you for protecting them.  They'll gobble up the training materials for their actual job and want to prove to you that you've made a wise investment.

Why don't more restaurateurs do this? Because it costs money...because their budgets for training are blown...and they're blown because they operate a revolving door...because they don't invest in their people on the front end.

Whether working in a garage, on Wall St. or in an operating room, we need fuel when we’re away from the nest.  Around, oh say 11:30, we want something fast, easy to eat, cheap, and most of all, tasty.  Since I can remember, the usual hand-to-maw fare has been burgers, pizza, bar-b-que, fried chicken, or traditional deli sandwiches. “Saying” we want something new and actually “Seeking/eating” something new are two different things.  As Millennials take the gastronomic-direction-setting mantle from Gen X they seem almost completely unfamiliar with the family meal.  They’re barely familiar with raw ingredient shopping (I’d say “grocery shopping” but today that means visiting a place where prepared foods outnumber raw ingredients) let alone with the notion that the shopping expedition itself wasn’t the end of the hunt/gather process…ya still gotta turn groceries into a meal. The burgeoning lunch business has crossed into dinner territory.

“Hand-food” exists in every culture – essentially some sort of flour or grain based product, mixed with water, baked/fried and filled with meat or meat substitute (pizza is really just an open faced sandwich built on raw dough and all cooked together, if you think about it).  Taking a step back it’s easy to see why street vendors and food trucks have become so popular – every culture has their version of the “sandwich”...portable food.  For some reason we think this is an American phenomenon because we’re oh so on-the-go and so important to the spinning of the globe.  Maybe notsomuch.  The world gets hungry three or four or five times a day, whether folks are reinventing the world or watching TV.  Some parts of the day are supported by cultural/tribal rituals where perhaps Mrs. Cleaver (or her cultural equivalent) create large meals to feed the family…but that’s traditionally been only one (maybe two) meals per day.  What about the other meals?  At some point someone slapped some leftovers in some bread/tortilla/flatbread so they could wolf it down because mom was punched out for that shift and they inadvertently created the sandwich.  There seems to be no end in sight for hand-food.  In fact, if you walk into a Five Guys or Chipotle or a Taqueria at 7pm (when mom is supposed to be making your dinner), you’ll likely wait in a line to get your hand-food…for dinner.  As we get used to the idea that there is more to a quick meal than burgers and pizza, it follows that the rate at which Americans mainstream hand-food from other cultures increases.  Ubiquitous taquerias are old hat and Indian curry stands, Chinese steam bun shacks, Ukrainian Bikti joints and Alcapulcan Empanada/Tamale joints are likely to garner more attention today than they would have twenty years ago.  Chipotle helped us embrace the Burrito as more than something we eat when we go out for “Mexican”.  Starbuck’s helped us embrace the two-dollar cup of coffee, raising the bar on our expectations and making it possible for the local coffee shop to get in the game.  So what about burgers and pizza?  Sure, they’ll always be there and every time a new culture’s sandwich is introduced to our culture, someone else will re-invent the burger and the pizza.  They’ll likely remain the kings of hand-food in our country but we have a long way to go before we stop discovering great hand-food from around the world.  The “meat and three” no longer defines what we eat after 5pm and the sandwich is more than a quick bite to eat at midday.  It’s becoming what we eat, period.

People often ask me, “What’s your favorite knife for a professional kitchen?” It always makes me pause because there are a bunch of things to consider before I can answer:

All great questions and they mostly center around what you plan to use it for. I’ve never met anyone, for example, who lists the meat cleaver as their “favorite knife” but try to cut through bones with a paring knife and you’ll wish you had one.

Asking a chef to choose one knife is like asking a golfer to pick one club to use for driving, chipping and putting…or asking a carpenter to choose one tool that is best for cutting, measuring and drilling. However, if you let a golfer choose 3 clubs or a carpenter choose 3 tools, it gets a lot easier for them.
So here are my 3 favorites …and why.

Buying great knives won’t make you a chef. You have to know how to use them. Futz around with a whole chicken using a dull knife or the wrong knife and you’re bound to wind up in the emergency room getting stitched up. Chop chives with your Chef Knife instead of slicing through them and your razor-sharp prize will become as dull as a butter knife (ever hear someone “whack-whack-whacking” through a case of mushrooms, showing off how fast they can chop…whadaya think is happening to their knife edge as it strikes the cutting board over and over?). Use your 6” utility knife to cut through that confounding plastic packaging that entombs your daughter’s new Barbie and you’ll wonder why you threw out your “Laser” knives from COSTCO. Buy three smart knives, protect your investment and use them correctly.

Ray Camillo is a restaurant consultant for Blue Orbit Restaurant Advisors

The interesting thing about small towns is that their business community inhabitants often don’t know how they measure up against their counterparts in larger metropolitan areas.  In Milledgeville, Georgia, the owners of a small coffee shop had no idea if they were doing the right things.

Blackbird Coffee’s owners called BORA to assess operations and to help them establish systems to make the business more predictable and viable.  However, they had no idea what pieces of their business were “keepers” and which were “duds”.  After two days of observing operations, reviewing bookkeeping statements, speaking with guests and getting to know the business’ nuances, it became clear that Blackbird Coffee was a concept ripe for growth, selling a world class product through a keen and bright service staff.  But it wasn’t yet profitable.

Poor through-put flow, point of sale protocols, merchandising, and assortment rationalization were at the root of Blackbird’s problems while the brand, logo, vibe, and service were all as good as any big-city coffee house.  They even roasted their own beans.  BORA prescribed new menu and merchandising philosophies, service flow, and an inexpensive physical change to the counter and menu structure.  The owners followed the advice and have reported a significant and steady increase in sales.  They are also preparing to open more Blackbird Coffees around Georgia and, hopefully, around the country.

A few years ago, in Greenville, South Carolina, a group of successful businessmen decided to open and operate a sophisticated jazz club, evoking the upscale steak houses and speakeasies of Chicago’s prohibition era.  The club was beautiful, the wine selection was immense, but the restaurant was struggling.  No expense was spared on the design, fit, and finish, yet the restaurant failed to drive the foot traffic it needed to thrive.   The owners, admittedly, underestimated what it takes to operate a restaurant. They had chosen poor leadership based on flawed assumptions and they had no restaurant operations experience on which to base their decisions nor did they have measurement tools to help them pinpoint what was wrong.

In 2009, BORA was called in to assess the operation and make recommendations.  The prognosis was grim as we discovered food quality issues, rampant theft, poor leadership, non-existent cost controls, and other operational misfires that spelled certain disaster if allowed to continue.  The restaurant was completely dependent on support from the parent company.  Following the assessment, The Brown Street Club engaged BORA to fix it.

BORA immersed in operations to take control of all management functions (culinary and service) while recruiting competent talent to learn our systems.  While we hired and trained a new Chef and new General Manager, BORA developed and rolled out a new menu with recipes and costing, re-vamped the bar assortment, established new culture protocols, and put the owners back in control of a restaurant befitting their original dream.

From there, BORA was retained to provide strategic support for the management team including several menu rollouts.  We also provided operational accountability for the owners through developing accounting systems and tools that allowed them to measure results. BORA taught the owners how to measure and assess operating performance…and what to do to resolve problems.
Since beginning the project with The Brown Street Club, we have seen sales increase by 90% while costs have come in line to the point of being self-sufficient.

Today, the City of Greenville has re-vitalized the alley on which the club sits, calling it “The Brown Street District”, adding wrought iron archways, piano key inlays on the street and an expanded sidewalk on which the club can add outdoor seating. The Brown Street Club’s Chef and General Manager are a dynamic team of professionals, operating with simple systems that work and keep them in front of their guests…and the previously inexperienced owners are now proud restaurateurs.

Opening JCT Kitchen was a full-service immersion.  Working closely with Chef/Owner Ford Fry, BORA assisted with full concept development including branding/naming, menu style, use of space, design elements, throughput engineering, and company culture.

JCT was interesting because it was a concept created around a great location.  Generally, a concept is developed and then a location is sought to compliment the concept.  JCT was built around a unique location in Atlanta’s hip West Side trade area near a massive railway junction. Since railroads define Atlanta’s origins and history, the location presented an opportunity to showcase Chef Fry’s culinary gifts. We helped the owner create, refine, and launch this vision.

From “idea” to “open”, BORA was with JCT every step of the way, including setting up back office protocols, hiring and training the staff, developing all print material, defining uniforms and service protocols, creating wine and beer assortments, selecting and evolving the point of sale system, driving PR initiatives, and writing manuals and handbooks.

Along with preparing for and executing JCT’s opening, BORA was instrumental in incubating JCT through its first few weeks of operations, helping fine tune systems while refining operating protocols until the operation could stand on it’s own.

Today, JCT Kitchen & Bar is considered one of Atlanta’s top restaurants, garnering significant local and national attention.   JCT’s success has placed Chef Fry onto the world stage and BORA’s efforts were a critical ingredient to their success.

Alon’s Bakery & Market retained BORA to assess operations, standardize service, re-merchandise retail floor, develop operational systems, evolve back office systems, and refine management and training protocols. This project required full immersion for several months where BORA worked side by side with management and staff to fully understand operations. During the assessment process, BORA established benchmark targets for operating model. From there we went to work, evolving the management structure to support the model and to prepare for a hub and spoke, commissary system for a new store opening.

We developed training methodologies that immersed operators in multiple venues, giving them a comprehensive overview of interdepartmental synergies. From this vantage point, newly trained managers were better equipped to see and understand how their responsibilities impacted the entire operations. Additionally, BORA developed manager communication protocols to ensure that managers were on the same page.

With a significantly intertwined catering operation, BORA worked with owner and newly hired catering director to implement and streamline ordering protocols and sales team compensation model to drive sales through incentives while improving communication with kitchen for product ordering and production setting.

Overall production setting was evolved from a heuristic approach to a forecasting and prep-to-shelf life system, which reduced waste and trimmed labor schedules. BORA also re-vamped back office systems including Profit and Loss Statement reporting, chart of accounts, and accounting protocols.

Finally, BORA applied Areas of Responsibility to the management structure to implement merchandising philosophy and structure to improve the operations “shopability”.

Within three months of BORA’s operational immersion, Alon’s was able to successfully launch its much larger facility that served as its commissary production facility and main brand outlet. The operation thrives today in Atlanta’s bustling Dunwoody and Morningside neighborhoods.