Posted by Walker Thompson on Fri, Sep 03, 2010 @ 04:24 PM
Sometimes funny, but mostly about what makes the retail and restaurant industry tick, each Friday the WhenToManage team plays on our company name with a WhenTo(DO). This week's WhenTo(DO) is on the mobile front, or when should your restaurant go mobile? According to the technology website cnet.com, in the first quarter of 2010 over 314.7 million mobile phones were sold, a 17 percent increase year over year. Clearly, mobile is on the rise and now you're thinking: what does it mean to my business and how do I "use" it??? Good question, but one that doesn't have an end-all-be-all answer. The smartphone and mobile space is clearly evolving. Not to mention, all the "pads" that will soon launch. So the answer is stay on top of the trends! As committed and former restaurant executives, managers, cooks and servers, we also have some ideas on how mobile can help, and our software does just that, help...
- Communication
- Using our report creator, you can "subscribe" to any report you create. Once the report is created using our web-based excel-esque interface, sending to your managers or peers is easy. The data goes right to their iPhone or Droid and the data is now at their finger tips.
- Workflow
- Hundreds of restaurants use our report creator, and mention often how much they appreciate the SMS (text-messaging) functionality. Once a schedule is published, the employee is notified of the job and schedule of that job.
- Engagement
- Keeping every constituent engaged in operations is easy using our "alerts" functionality. If you're especially concerned about tip adjustments or cash over/short then why not have a mobility offering to KNOW NOW!
We care about how restaurant employees, managers and executives spend their day and mobile is part of it. But again, stay on top of all the trends by following these authors:
Posted by Walker Thompson on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 @ 05:31 PM
As restauranteurs we have to do two things very well: find great product and serve it. Both of these tasks involve human interaction and that means managment duties, fortunately or unfortunately. Thankfully we have web-based support mechanisms like inventory management tools and labor scheduling functionality. The features of theses solutions create a lot of effeciencies, true. We get help configuring our businesses so we are notified when schedules are not consistent with our sales goals or if inventory is low. And although we are serviced by these tools, again thankfully, one question that digs deep into both of these matters is the human side... How do we know we are working with the right people?
Now, if someone had a perfect answer to finding the BEST vendor or MOST MOTIVATED employee then no one would ever be fired. Alas, there are solutions gaining ground to solving this ever persistent challenge. Yet, the challenge remains...
Two studies, one from academia and the other from professional management consultants, tallied up the "human resources" concerns in and about the restaurant industry.
In the study "Job Satisfaction, Life Satisfaction and Turnover Intent of Food Service Managers," Professor Richard Ghiselli of Purdue University's Hospitality Tourism and Management Department discovered working conditions impacted restaurant manager to the breaking point. Ghiselli uncoverd an exodus. By the time many restaurant managers reach their forties, they have probably left the industry.
And...
According to the 2005 Datassential Operator Survey, when “decoding the profit and loss puzzle for your restaurant customers, it’s important to keep in mind that labor is nearly as large an expense as the food itself.” In fact, hiring and retention has replaced food prices as the top worry for restauranteurs”, says Hudson Riehle, Senior Researcher at the National Restaurant Association.
Lastly, in the popular Fohboh.com blog, the situation is summarized very well. Imagine the following case:
Number of restaurants in chain: 100 restaurants
Average employees per restaurant: 75
Total employees (operating): 7,500
Turnover rate: 100%
New employees: 7,500
Cost per new employee: $2,500
Total potential cost annually: $18,750,000
Total cost per restaurant: $187,500
Projected sales per restaurant: $2.8mm
Estimated cost per restaurant: 6.7%
Cost per 1% of turnover: $187,500
So what's the answer? Like we started with, use web-based tools and stay tuned for enhancements to the WhenToManage suites of services. Secondly, take time to read these great posts by management experts in the restaurant industry. They talk not just about the technology side, but emotional part of our brains...
In this post, Dr. Jerry Newman, the author of approximately 100 articles on human resource issues and the best-seller
My Secret Life on the McJob: Lessons in Leadership Guaranteed to Supersize any Management Style, details how to motivate top talent.
In this post, the author describes how to use social media and other ideas to hire great employees.
In this post, famed marketing guru Seth Godin, describes the Toxic Employee - watch out!
And finally we leave you with a quote from John Quincy Adams, which summarizes leadership very well...
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 08:44 AM
I just read Michael Atkinson's post on Fohboh.com called "Why Are Restaurant Operators Such a Hard Sell?" He was talking about how resistant restaurant operators are to adopt new technology and processes.
That really got me thinking about the very question he asked. Why is it that way? I have a theory, let me know what you think.
The Management Mind Life Cycle
- Stage 1: Party Time - a new restaurant opens or a new general manager comes in to an existing restaurant and they are energetic and ambitious to grow their business. They throw money and time at different ideas to get people in the door and drive revenue (managing costs often isn't even worried about until later).
- Stage 2: Party's Over, Now What? - the party can last a week, a month, or a year. But when it's over it's over. Staring at an empty restaurant, the operator looks back at their success and says, "I either have to spend more time and money doing what I was doing or I need to try something new."
- Stage 3: Rinse and Repeat and Repeat - owners and managers will try and try new things in an effort to repeat their previous success. (for some science behind this behavior look at "schedules of reinforcement" - I know I'm a geek)
After each failure they become more and more cynical of trying new things and eventually they just resist any kind of change because the last 10 things they've tried haven't had any benefit.
The Big Secret
Well it's not that big, and it's not that secret, but the secret is MEASURABLE ROI!!! The only way to know the return on your investment is to measure the effectiveness of your investment. Of course people get burned out and defeated trying to repeat prior success if they don't really know why they were successful. Maybe the money spent the first month didn't actually bring anyone in the door, but it was the fact that their nearest competitor was closed for renovation. Imagine how empowering it would be to know why something is working or not working. It makes business decisions so much easier.
So I think the only way to really attack the problem of the resistant operator is to educate them or re-educate them on ROI. With all the new web-based software companies, an operator can try a new solution for very little investment of time or money and quickly see if it solves their problem or not.
I am hopeful that these sluggish restaurant operators can be re-energized and empowered with a few chats on ways to follow their money out the door and ways to watch if it comes back in.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Mon, Dec 14, 2009 @ 11:40 AM
Albert Einstein has a famous quote about making things simple.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."
As a software company, we try very hard to live by that quote, but it's difficult. Our first product provided online employee scheduling for restaurants. When we spoke to operators, they usually had a labor scheduling module with their POS system, but instead they were often using Excel or paper and a pencil.
There was a failing, the ROI or return on investment of their time was not enough for them to justify using their POS scheduling module.
Our challenge was to build something as simple as an excel spreadsheet, but to also provide some more advanced functionality like online shift trades, time off requests, and just general features for improving communication among the staff.
We worked hard to build something simple that people would find useful and of course fast. We were successful. But in the software business, you seldom stop creating enhancments and new features. New clients make requests for this and that and it becomes more and more difficult to maintain the "simplicity" of your solution.
It's so easy for complexity to creep in when you start adding bells and whistles. Suddenly you need to write more documentation and are getting more support requests because those new things were just added and not enough thought went into the right way to add them.
Of course, you could always say "no". Believe it or not, we've benefitted many clients by not giving in to their request and found alternate ways for them to solve their problem, which proved simpler in the long run.
We have some exciting things happening in 2010, and it's going to be even tougher to stick to our guns. But we'll just keep repeating our mantra to ourselves. KISS (keep it simple stupid).
W9AXZCKAXDX7
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Wed, Jun 17, 2009 @ 11:58 AM
I
imagine that in the current economy restaurant owners aren't lined up
with cash in hand waiting to spend money on a new POS system, but maybe
you are opening a new store or your old system isn't quite giving you
what you need. If this is you, then I encourage you to consider a few
things while you're shopping around.
1) The Hardware Trap
If
you're upgrading your existing POS system and your terminals are in
decent shape, you should definitely try to find a POS system that will
work on the hardware you already own. There are a few companies out
there that force you to buy their hardware. Even if you're buying a
brand new system, think carefully before using one of these companies,
it's always best to give yourself options.
2) Closed Systems
I can speak as one of many businesses
offering third party add-ons and back-office products for restaurants.
We spend lots of development time integrating our software with our
clients' POS systems. Many POS systems (especially the bigger ones)
often make it difficult and expensive for you to use another company's
solution with their system. They would rather have you buy their
inventory system, scheduling program, or gift card solution and so they
put up barriers to keep you from using other solutions. Again, don't
limit your options, you never know what new shiny gizmo you'll want to
incorporate down the road, wouldn't you rather be with a POS provider
that is open to all those new ideas.
*** Free business advice for
POS companies: First, if you're not on the web, get on the web. Second,
if you're on the web, publish an API and build an app store like Apple
has for the iPhone. This would be groundbreaking.
3) Recycle
Unfortunately,
restaurants go out of business every day, so there are opportunities
for you to pick up a barely used system for a great price. You still
need to do your homework about the system so that you can avoid #2
above and also some POS companies require a license that is not
transferable should you buy used equipment, so research this to make
sure you can use the POS software after the purchase.
4) Help Me
The
good news is you're great at operating a restaurant, the bad news is
that you're not as skilled at operating a computer system. Well lucky
for you, there are lots of companies out there that will help you find
a great POS system, and companies to help you set it up and help you
fix it when things go wrong. Ask for references and see how they've
helped other customers at 3am on a Saturday night.
5) Upgrading
Software
companies are always fixing bugs and adding new features so find out
how often your prospective POS provider releases upgrades, how much the
upgrades cost, and how easy or difficult the process is (i.e. can you
do it yourself or do you need a consultant to help).
***
Web-based POS systems usually have a big advantage here, since updates
are regular, often free, and can happen without you needing to lift a
finger.
It's easy to be near-sighted, but make sure you think
long-term before making your POS investment. The wrong choice will
definitely haunt you and your staff for a long time.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Mon, Apr 20, 2009 @ 01:45 PM
Okay,
okay, you've finally broken down and decided to get in on the social
media train. I welcome you and you can relax because it's not too late,
and it's not too hard. Each of these technologies are unique, but they
all have the common goal of connecting people. In your case, it's
connecting you and your restaurant to your guests. So let's get
started...
#1 - Twitter
- Set up time - 15 minutes
- What is it? - Twitter is the newest kid on the
block and the easiest to use. It's very simple, you enter messages of
140 characters or less and they appear on your page for the world to
see. Other users can "follow" you to stay up-to-date on your updates or
"tweets".
- What should I use it for? - This is the million
dollar question and where your creativity comes into play. Businesses
are using it for all kinds of things. From customer service to
promotions, the choice is yours.
- How do I start? - https://twitter.com/signup
#2 - Facebook
- Set up time - 15 minutes
- What is it? - Almost everyone has at least heard
of facebook by now. It's a "social networking" site that allows its
users to connect and communicate with each other.
They have a special feature that allows a business to create an account
(or page).
- What should I use it for? - Once you set it up,
let your guests know about it. You can then post pictures, share
stories, and list upcoming events for all of your new "facebook friends"
- How do I start? - http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
#3 - Blog
- Set up time - 45 minutes
- What is it? - A web log or "blog" for short is a
place for you to post your thoughts, stories, or ideas about your
business or anything else you find relevant.
- What should I use it for? - While users can comment on your posts, blogs tend to be more of a one-way conversation.
The nice thing about a blog is that you can customize the look and feel
to match your brand and several companies use their blog as their
official web site.
- How do I start? - http://en.wordpress.com/signup/ (there are others, I just happen to like this one)
Extra Credit - Google Search Alerts
- Set up time - 5 minutes
- What is it? - Google has a tool that allows you to
enter a search term and then have any results that come up for that
search sent to your email on a daily basis.
- What should I use it for? - This is a great way for you to see what others are saying about your business.
- How do I start? - http://www.google.com/alerts
With any of these things it's very easy to use them for a week
or so and then let them die off from neglect. For any of these tools to
work you need to commit about 60 minutes a week. An hour a week is not
much time when you consider the potential benefit. I promise you, you
have some guests out there that would love to hear what you have to say
and will be all the more loyal if you will only reach out to them.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Thu, Mar 05, 2009 @ 12:14 PM
What is business intelligence anyway? According to wikipedia:
Business intelligence (
BI) refers to skills, technologies, applications and practices used to help a business
acquire a better understanding of its commercial context. Business
intelligence may also refer to the collected information itself.
BI applications provide historical, current, and predictive views of
business operations. Common functions of business intelligence
applications are reporting, OLAP, analytics, data mining, business performance management, benchmarks, and predictive analysis.
Business intelligence often aims to support better business
decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support
system (DSS).
You may have read about BI tools and are maybe even using some.
Typically, business intelligence software has been looked at as
something for a large enterprise. Big company = lots of stores = lots
of data, and so they invest lots of money in a software system to
crunch all of their data to tell them things like their burgers can be
priced higher or that they are wasting labor dollars due to inefficient
scheduling or where in the country to open the next 10 stores.
I am here to tell you that things have changed.
- It's Easier - with the growth of the Internet,
it's much easier to move your POS data from each store to a centralized
place for processing.
- It's Cheaper - the Internet has also allowed
web-based companies to build less expensive infrastructures and methods
for collecting and processing the data. They require no large up front
investment and you just pay as you go.
- Size Doesn't Matter - now that business
intelligence tools are easier and cheaper, there's a high return on
investment for independent restaurant owners to load up their sales
data and finally get some assistance with business decisions.
As an example, the company I'm affiliated with offers a product that
fetches your POS data and gives you multiple reporting tools for
analysis of your data for less than $3 a day and there are other great
BI tools out there as well.
Even a well-designed spreadsheet
can do the job, but the point is that your restaurant generates a large
amount of very useful data. This data can tell you about the past and
just as importantly tell you about the future.
As the old saying goes, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it," and in a recession, you'd better be measuring.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Tue, Jan 27, 2009 @ 10:32 AM
Just because something isn't broke, doesn't mean it can't be
improved upon. I can hear some of you now, "I have things that are
obviously broken, let me take care of those first." By all means, fix
those things, however, it's easy for us to maintain the status quo at
the risk of missing out on bigger and better things.
I have a
relative that had the same cell phone and cell phone plan for 7 years.
Now I'm sure his phone worked fine, and hey, who needs more than 100
minutes per month anyway, but things change a lot in 7 years and he was
missing out on something much better than what he had. That's how
technology works, it keeps getting better and cheaper and easier. But
before you go out and buy a bunch of new stuff, let me clarify a few
things.
Technology doesn't only progress is a straight line, it
jumps. And it's the jumps that we need to pay attention to. Businesses
were happy using the telegraph to send messages back and forth until
the telephone came along. It's the new technologies that can be
challenging to adopt but they usually have the largest return on
investment.
Computers made their way into restaurants, first for
accounting, then for POS, and there have been incremental improvements
ever since. Then several years ago their was a "jump" to this new
Internet thing. At first, it was used primarily for communication , but
since then it has evolved and industries have evolved to take advantage
of all the possibilities it has to offer. The banking industry jumped
on early to connect their operations together and connect with their
customers. The early adopters saw it as a competitive advantage.
Restaurants
have tight margins and they are always getting tighter. Take the time
to look at what you are doing and see if there are some opportunities
to make it better. Today their are web-based POS systems, labor
systems, inventory systems, and more. It's time to embrace this
"Internet thing" and take advantage of what it has to offer. Your
competition certainly will.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Tue, Jan 13, 2009 @ 02:15 PM
This is a follow up to my last post about the top 5 things that restaurants should be doing online. There are several good reasons for using online applications or software as a service (SaaS) as it's sometimes called.
- Save Money - First, you'll have lower IT costs
since you no longer need to employ people to worry about servers and
software. Second, there are economies of scale at work. The vendor can
allow several clients to share servers and resources resulting in a
lower cost to the end users. Finally, most services are pay-as-you-go.
There's no big investment in new hardware and software as with the
typical on-premise systems. Just pay your monthly application fee and
you're off to the races.
- Save Time - Let's face it, any new software system
is going to take some time to get setup and in place, but with most web
applications, you can start using it the first day.
- The Latest and Greatest Innovations - Most online
services are being upgraded every few months if not every few weeks.
With online software, you get all the new features as soon as they are
ready. This is one of the things I really enjoy at WhenToManage,
we get some great opportunities to delight our clients. Someone may
make a suggestion to us on Friday and by Monday they could see it in
production.
- Global Availability - You can access your data
from anywhere at anytime. And furthermore, your data is typically much
safer in your vendor's world-class data center, than it is in your
overcrowded office/closet in the back of the store. Most vendors
provide highly available systems with several backups of your data.
- Community - The companies providing these services
are typically very close with their customers. With a product that gets
updates so frequently, there is usually an online dialogue or
conversation between the company and its clients that results in a type
of collaboration. This public back and forth really opens things up and
allows the client be involved in the direction of the company.
I'm sure there are a few more reasons that I have left off my list, but
in the end, it's simply a choice between embracing the future and
hanging on to the past. Those who board the train early will have the
competitive advantage. Don't wait too long.
Posted by Jeff Schacher on Fri, Jan 09, 2009 @ 05:37 PM
These
days there are several vendors offering web-based solutions for
restaurants. The more units a restaurant has, the more benefit to
using an online solution. In my next post, I will dive into the details
regarding all the benefits to using software as a service (SaaS), but
first let's take a look at what is out there.
- Labor Scheduling - this is the first place for any
restaurant to start. Let's face it, you're online and your employees
are online. With online scheduling, everyone can get their schedules
via the web, email, or cell phone. They can make requests, trade
shifts, and just basically communicate with the staff. At WhenToManage, this was our first product that we launched. HotSchedules is another company that offers a solution.
- Inventory Management - one great thing about
web-based inventory is that more and more suppliers are offering online
ordering, so it only makes sense to allow these systems to talk to each
other. For a restaurant company with more than one unit, an online
solution allows them to manage their recipes from a central location as
well as manage the entire supply chain from any laptop in the world. WhenToManage offers online inventory, if anyone knows of another web-based solution out there, please let me know.
- Reporting - getting the numbers from a single
location is one thing, but when you start multiplying it by 5, 10, or
50, you really need a system to pull everything together from your POS
systems, inventory systems, payroll systems, etc. Just imagine
automatically getting an email on your Blackberry every morning at 7am
with all your sales data from all your stores for the previous day. WhenToManage offers this as does a company called Guest Metrics.
- Marketing - this should actually be #1, but I
thought it was too obvious. Unfortunately, it's probably not obvious
enough for a lot of companies out there. There is not an easier or
cheaper way to reach your customers than email. At the very least, you
should have a customer database and send them an occasional email about
your latest and greatest promotion. From there, you can upgrade to a
loyalty program and stored value cards. There are lots of great companies that offer these services. Fishbowl and Stored Value Solutions are two that come to mind, but there are many others.
- POS (Point-of Sale) - POS
systems are the core of any restaurant operation, and a web-based POS
solution may strike fear into your heart, but rest assured, there are
some amazing products out there and they all have systems to secure
your data and keep everything working when the Internet goes down. How
great would it be to update a price a) from home b) for 20 stores at
the touch of a button? How great would it be to open the store in the
morning with the latest POS upgrade that installed itself before you
got in (and did I mention that your other 20 stores were also
automatically upgraded at the same time)? NetPOS offers a fantastic solution that I know quite well, and Halo also offers a web-based POS.
Hopefully, this will get you thinking about making the next step in the evolution of your restaurant.