April 1996: A Laundry List of Bad Stuff

Couple of weeks ago, Nancy Reese, our director of marketing and strategic planning dropped by my office. She asked me to compile a list “of foodservice factors affecting operators.” I think what Nancy meant was, “What’s going on in foodservice that restaurateurs ought to be concerned about? What are the issues—both obvious and not-so—that will affect the way they do business; and what advice can we publish that might help?” 

I said, “Are you nuts? I’ve been at this desk for 25 years and I’ve never been able to get a handle on that.” “See what you can do,” she said. “I’ll give it a shot,” I said.  Here goes (issues in boldface; my advice, such that it is, follows):

Labor: the shrinking labor pool, no skilled labor, no-show labor. You want to be the best, but you can’t because there’s no one out there who can help you become the best. You are missing a few cooks in the kitchen, some waiters in the dining room. You can’t find anyone to replace them. There are no out-of-work cooks; and there is no such thing as an out-of-work waiter—that would imply status and an honorific. What to do? Some thoughts: adjust the menu to match the creativity (or lack of it) of the kitchen; or, do it yourself: cook, wait and bus tables, answer the phone, park cars, expedite; or, hire a consultant: he or she can tell you what to do (in a nice way, of course); or, buy prepared products, some are as good as what you prepare from scratch; or, limit your operating hours. Too extreme? To bad: the times they are a-changin’.

Costs: labor and food, fixed, construction, FF&E, advertising, promotion, marketing, coupons and incentives, merchandising, associations and local charitable organizations always asking for stuff, taxes, employee health and liability insurance, maintenance, renovation, energy, benefits (both fringe and implicit), rent, real estate taxes, paper goods, hiring, training, firing, and turnover. The list is endless. Your P&L has line items for every one of these costs, some of them fixed, others not so. Is there a line item for you? Is anything left for you; can you—will you—take a cut; are you, personally, making a living wage or are you doing this just for the hell of it? That’s not a rhetorical question.

Government: any legislation, minimum wage, business-meal cap, truth-in-menu, no-smoking regulations, nutrition information. You’re upset: the government thinks it knows what it’s doing, but it doesn’t know what it’s doing so what makes it think it knows what you ought to be doing? You wish it would get its nose out of your business, but it won’t because it has nothing better to do and it likes to pick on you. Your senators and representatives—the people you voted for—are responsible for all of this. Have you any idea why they do what they do? If so, have you now any idea what to do? Of course you do. Do it. Here’s a thought: if what they legislate forces you to curtail your hours or close, they wouldn’t have any place to entertain their lobbyists. How about that as incentive to insist they listen to you?

The denial consumer: fickle, demanding, unhappy, chronically complaining, no-showing, boisterous, rude.  Why do these people eat out in the first place? Don’t ask me: I have no clue. Neither do you. If you did, you’d do something about it; but you can’t. All your life you’ve been trying to figure out why customers behave the way they do. Stop trying. It’s a waste of time. How and why they behave is a mystery adding to your misery. Here’s what saves you (or so you think). It’s your Implementation of The Last Resort, The Penultimate Solution: buried within the mission of your employee manual and understood intuitively by you, your chef and your waiters is this: the customer is always right. Like it or not, it’s the bane of your existence. When you first opened your doors, there outside in the long lineup of people eager to enter, you saw it lurking, you saw it coming. Everyone had a challenge, a threat. Here’s one most of you are familiar with: “You think you’re so hot because you’ve opened a snappy restaurant? Prove it.” Here’s what you tell your friends envious of what you do, “Don’t think this is easy. Just because you like to meet people is no reason to open a restaurant.”   

Bonus: Here’s a plan for no-shows and the marginally frustrated. Sell tickets for an amount equivalent to your check average, stamped with the date and time of the reservation. We’re in the entertainment business; run it just like our colleagues do in theater and sports. When we buy a ticket to a sporting event, we either use it or we don’t. If we don’t like the outcome (i.e., the other team won), too bad. What if we buy a ticket for an event and don’t go? Do we ask for a refund? If we go to a movie or a play or a concert and decide we don’t like it, do we demand a refund? Of course not. So, sell tickets. If the check amount is more, the customer pays the difference; less, you refund the balance. No-shows? That’s not your problem anymore.

Afterthoughts Interruptus: This just in: “Thomas Keller’s Per Se . . . and The French Laundry . . . will join the small but growing ranks of [restaurants] asking guests to pay for their tasting menus at the time of booking, rather than at the conclusion of the meal . . . according to Nick Kokonas, the founder of the new ticketing service, [Tock, Kokonos’ upstart booking service] that both venues will adopt [in 2015].”—Eater New York, 12/1/2014 Update 1/31/16: even after Kokonos and partner Grant Achatz (Next’s chef) acquired Chicago’s Moto restaurant a few days ago where, presumably Tock will be in full force, Tock is still a work in progress, not yet the world-beater Kokonos predicts it to be supplanting existing reservation systems such as Open Table.

                                                      Anastasia Bobrova

The marketplace. Four trends (aka, whims) you need to be aware of: 1. Have you noticed the blurring of lines between fast food and coffeeshops; midscale and upscale restaurants? Admit it: all of us have, at one time or another, consumed a meal at a dollar-a-minute palace of haute cuisine that was not much better than what we wolfed down at the local fast food joint. No more are the distinctions among segments easy to define. 2. How about through-the-looking-glass foodservice: Dive!, Hard Rock, glorified theme restaurants, and gentlemen’s clubs? A trio of models (right) who couldn’t tell you the difference between silicone and chacuterie has opened a restaurant? Terrific! Who dreams up this crap? 3. Cope, also, with this conundrum: consumers, currently employed, are hoarding discretionary dollars fearing they may be included in the next rash of ghastly layoffs. They are eating at home more often than they used to. Your marketing, advertising, and publicity are to convince them not to do that. 4. Sustainable cuisine. Don’t ask. It’s coming, but I’m not so sure what it is. Or, why it is.   

Competition: homes, supermarkets, convenience stores, churches, employee cafeterias, colleges, schools, retirement communities, gas stations, sidewalk food carts (where do these people go to the bathroom, where to wash their hands?), rest stops on turnpikes, airports and airplanes, mass merchandisers, hospitals, etc. The list goes on and on. Is there, today, any store, place, retailer, service provider that isn’t selling something to eat or drink? Name one. Used to be that place across the street you worried about that was slicing dollars off your bottom line. Now, it’s everywhere: church-sponsored fundraisers (Jesus Christ, Superchef); upscale buffets/salad bars at the employee cafeteria; grab and go at the supermarket, the gas station, the c-store. Kiosks are everywhere; so are vending machines.
 

Restaurant critics and reviewers. Who anointed them arbiters of taste? There are three bona fide critics in the United States: Gael Greene (left), Phyllis Richman, and Ruth Reichl. Don’t pay any attention to the rest. They don’t know food; they don’t know its history. Even if they did, they have neither the wit nor the skills to write intelligently about either.   

Good weather and bad. The good sends your customers to the mall where there are food courts; to the golf course where there is a club; on hiking trails; to the backyard for a barbecue. The bad keeps them home. You are somewhere in the middle. You are no longer “top of mind.” Your job is to put them back there.

Really bad stuff: lawsuits, drugs, shootings, sexual harassment, divorce, employee theft. Do I need to explain? You know all about that. Right?

No prestige in a career in foodservice. Thousands of kids who would really, really like a career in foodservice have their hopes dashed by mindless and dull-witted managers, so possessed by their own self-importance, to care about you, your job, or your career. You, obviously, are not one of those, but you do know what I’m talking about.

Afterthought 1998: to that list of three bona fide restaurant critics, add a fourth: John Mariani.