In the restaurant industry, time is an ingredient as important as salt or sugar. It’s the invisible seasoning that can make or break a restaurant’s success.

That’s why a growing number of foodservice businesses, of all sizes and categories, are exploring labor-saving products in their battle against the clock. These ingredients aren’t just culinary shortcuts; they are strategic decisions that can improve your operation’s efficiency and success.

Why Choose Labor-Saving Products?
Labor-saving products provide more than convenience. By removing unnecessary steps, streamlining prep procedures, and incorporating time-saving ingredients into your most popular and profitable menu items, you’re not just simplifying food preparation; you’re opening up a world of possibilities for marketing, social media engagement, and business growth.

The direct benefits of labor-saving products are clear…

• Save Staff Time: Reduce the hours spent on tedious prep work.
• Cut Training Requirements: Simplify the on-boarding process for new staff.
• Reduce Waste: Minimize the risk of human error and ingredient spoilage.
• Ensure Consistency: Deliver the same high-quality experience every time.

The ancillary benefits come with time…
With time reclaimed through labor-saving ingredients, your team can shift their focus from the cutting board to the drawing board. This newfound time could be used for brainstorm sessions that fuel fun marketing ideas, epic food photo shoots, fostering engagement with your audience across social media platforms, and to drive overall business growth.

“I wish I had more time…” is something I hear often from business owners regarding their marketing efforts. Marketing, social media management, and content creation are just a few of the areas that would benefit from having more time. What other aspects of your business could benefit from a little more time invested?

Looking toward the future of foodservice, in a world exploding with AI-powered advancements; it’s clear that speed and efficiency will be increasingly tied to profitability. By embracing labor-saving products, you’re not only keeping up with the times; you’re future-proofing your business.

Visit www.dennisfoodservice.com/laborsavers to explore a selection of our favorite labor-saving ingredients. For personalized recommendations and suggestions, don’t hesitate to reach out to your Account Executive. Together, let’s optimize your kitchen’s efficiency and unlock new opportunities for success.

8 tips attracting and retaining top talent in the restaurant industry.

What’s the best way to attract and retain top talent in the restaurant industry? That’s easy: show your employees respect. If you respect your employees and take steps to demonstrate your trust and appreciation, you’re way ahead of the game.

When employees feel respected and appreciated, it can improve the overall quality of your restaurant. Happy employees are more effective workers, have less turnover, and can help keep your restaurant running efficiently. Over time, this can have a powerful impact on your bottom line. Ready to create a positive culture in your workplace? Start with these pro tips:

Train Your Employees

One of the best ways to ensure that employees won’t jump ship? Take the time to properly train them.

A lot of restaurant owners and managers breeze past training, instead opting to throw new employees in the fire and let them learn the ropes as they go. Big mistake.

This approach starts employees out on the wrong foot. It makes them feel expendable and unimportant, and it doesn’t make a good first impression of your management style.

A proper training period not only helps empower employees on a personal level, but it equips them with the tools they need to be better workers and salespeople. It also shows them that you value them enough to spend the time to educate them, which can lead to better employee retention.

Get to Know Your Employees

Take the time to get to know your employees. Sure, you probably asked them a thing or two during their job interview. But if you really want to create a positive work culture, it’s important to take a continued interest in who your employees are and what makes them tick.

Taking the time to ask how school is going, how they’ll spend their day off, or asking how their kids are can help foster a more nurturing and caring work culture. These small shows of appreciation can have a big effect on the overall mood of your workplace.

Listen to Your Employees

Your employees are the eyes and the ears of your restaurant, and they can provide valuable insights that can improve your business.

For instance, if an employee notices that several customers have complained about your to-go containers, it could inspire you to find a new vendor and improve your takeaway business. Or if a server notices that a lot of people are requesting their burgers with avocado, it might prompt you to offer that modification on your menu as an upsell that can improve profits.

But you won’t benefit from your employees’ ideas and insights if you don’t give them the opportunity to share them.

Be sure to make yourself open to feedback. One way to encourage feedback without pressure? Create comment cards for employee feedback. Comment cards are perhaps best-known for soliciting feedback from customers, but they can also give employees the chance to weigh in.

Have a Time-Off Request System in Place

There are certain things that you’ll always have to contend with when you have employees, both in and out of the restaurant industry—namely, requests for time off.

If you’re just reacting to every request as it comes along, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. Plus, that approach increases the likelihood of your restaurant being understaffed, which can make your employees feel stressed and unappreciated.

Establishing a protocol for how employees request time off can save both you and your employees a lot of time and a lot of headaches.

Sure, you’ll always have to deal with a few last-minute requests. But having an established system for requesting time off can help you reduce quite a bit of the stress associated with scheduling.

Check In With Your Employees

Regular check-ins with employees can keep your restaurant running smoothly.

Employee check-ins are commonplace in office jobs. It’s not as common in the restaurant industry, but it should be.

Even if it’s very brief, checking in with employees can give you a unique perspective on how your restaurant’s doing and where you could stand to improve. Don’t just check in with managers—check in with everyone, from the dishwashers to the hosts and bartenders. Not only will you learn a lot, but it’s a great way to demonstrate your appreciation and respect to everyone who works for you.

Give Employees Bonuses

Everyone likes to be acknowledged for their hard work. While you can’t go wrong with a cash bonus, there are plenty of other ways to reward your employees for a job well done.

For instance, you could pay for an employee night out, or give a hard-working employee a paid night off of work.

Bonuses create plenty of goodwill, but they do more than that. When employees feel “seen,” they’re a lot more motivated to continue doing good work. This can help increase employee loyalty and retention.

Feed Your Employees

Nobody does their best work when they’re hangry.

A little food can go a long way when it comes to boosting employee morale and showing your staff that you care.

For instance, many top restaurants offer a family-style staff meal before or after the dinner shift. Not only does this promote a sense of community, but it can also educate employees on your offerings, especially if you test out specials on them.

Even if you can’t offer a staff meal, do offer employees a free meal at the end of their shift.
It may seem like a small gesture, but it can have a big impact on making your employees feel valued and cared for.

Think Positive

Great employees are crucial to any restaurant’s success. They’re the beating heart of your business—they’re the ones who greet customers, sell your products, and keep things running on a day-to-day basis.

If you want to create a positive work culture that attracts the best talent, you’ve got to treat your staff with respect and show your appreciation on a regular basis. By following the tips in this post, you’re well on your way to attracting and retaining the best employees possible. Get started today.

Source: Mark Plumlee, FSR Insider via Operators-Edge.com

In episode 71, Luke LaBree talks with Christine Schindler about her invention PathSpot, which scans hands and detects for harmful contaminants on employee hands.

Christine is an entrepreneur, engineer, and inventor who focuses on using technology to protect businesses and their customers from the threat of illnesses and outbreaks. Her creation, PathSpot, is a Hand Hygiene System used at thousands of restaurants, airports, schools, offices, and manufacturing facilities worldwide. In just two seconds, PathSpot scans hands and detects harmful contaminants that spread common illnesses. Simply wash, dry, and scan hands to determine your team’s handwashing frequency and effectiveness. PathSpot lands right at the intersection of technology and food service.

To learn more about PathSpot, and the work that Christine and her team are doing to improve hygiene practices and processes, check out their website: www.pathspot.com

Dennis Knows Food Podcast   podcast@dennisexpress.com

AVAILABLE ON ALL POPULAR PLATFORMS
APPLE  |  SPOTIFY  |  AMAZON  |  MORE

Multitasking ingredients such as flavored butters, sauces, dressings, and gravies save time and money in the kitchen.

Multitasking ingredients can enhance several dishes keeps food costs, labor, and inventory in line. Ingredients that can be used in more than one item are the Holy Grail of menu management, keeping food costs, labor, and inventory in line. Dennis offers a variety of products from multiple vendors that are designed with multitasking in mind—you can use them as is, or as speed-scratch basics for multiple applications.

Consider the following examples as a template for maximizing the utilization of your own flavor-building inventory. 

Flavored Butters

One of the easiest and most convenient ways to add flavor to food is by mixing seasonings and other ingredients into butter, which can then be chilled or even frozen for later use. In addition to using on steaks and other proteins hot off the grill, these butters can be used to:

• Sauté or dress vegetables
• Slip under the skin of chicken before roasting
• Include in a signature bread service
• Offer with cornbread or muffins
• Float on a bowl of soup
• Top off a baked potato
• Spread on grilled or toasted sandwich bread

Nestlé Professional Chef Mary Locke suggests the following to offer as schmears for corn on the cob, but the butters have many other uses:

• Fire Roasted Poblano Flavor Concentrate with butter, Cotija, and a squeeze of fresh lime
• Herb de Provence Flavor Concentrate and goat cheese
• Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Flavor Concentrate thinned out with a dab of good olive oil and toasted pine nuts
• Fire Roasted Jalapeño Flavor Concentrate and mashed, ripe avocado
• Chipotle Flavor Concentrate, blue cheese, and crumbled bacon

Dressings as Marinades

Many dressings, particularly vinaigrettes, include an acidic ingredient such as vinegar or citrus juice, which also serves as a tenderizer in marinades. Other common dressing ingredients that tenderize proteins include honey and yogurt (think of tandoori marinade), which also aid in flavor-boosting caramelization when cooked.

Likewise, many marinades can be used as dressings for salads and other chilled foods—perhaps with the addition of an ingredient to make them more clingy, such as oil or mayonnaise.

Creamy Sauces

Creamy, relatively neutral-flavored sauces such as béchamel, Alfredo, and cream gravies have many uses in addition to adding a luxurious touch atop cooked foods.

• Use as a replacement for cream sauce or béchamel in a casserole or au gratin
• Flavor mashed potatoes or other vegetables by substituting a creamy sauce for some of the liquid
• Customize with the addition of tomato, pesto, sautéed onions, mushrooms, crumbled bacon, and so on
• Use in cream soups, such as Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice or Seafood Bisque
• Substitute for cream sauce in a classic Spinach and Artichoke Dip recipe
• Mix with vegetables and a protein (optional) for a main course stuffed baked potato

It’s All Gravy

Talk about a menu workhorse: Gravies of all kinds are the ultimate multitaskers. in ways that go way beyond the mashed potato.

• Over hearty sandwiches like French dips, open-face turkey, and New Orleans-style po’ boy sandwiches
• As a dip for fries or tots, or for a classic poutine
• In casseroles, shepherd’s pie, and pot pies
• As a binding for meatloaf or meatball mixtures
• As a flavor-building thickener for soup
• To moisten a brunch-worthy egg strata
• In a simmer sauce for pot roast, chicken fricassee, and other braised proteins
• In quesadillas, instead of—or in addition to—cheese

Sauces = Spreads = Dips

Sauces are the true shape-shifters of the menu-making world. Depending on qualities such as flavor and thickness, a sauce can be used as-is or in additional uses such as a warm spread (for sandwiches, for instance) or a dip for finger foods.

The cheese sauce is a perfect example. The binder for mac-and-cheese and the topping for nachos and steamed broccoli can also be used to create a cheeseburger, fondue, or dip for fries. Thicken cheese sauce with a product such as cream cheese to make it more spreadable or add flavor and body with products such as crumbled cooked chorizo or crabmeat to create a dip.

Stir into scrambled eggs, mix into fritters, layer on flatbread, or mix into beer and broth with sturdy vegetables to create a soup.

Content courtesy of Nestle Professional
GreatMenusStartHere.com

750,000 jobs is roughly 6.1% of the foodservice workforce. Simply put, restaurants face a challenging path to employment recovery. And, while some progress is being made, that progress is slow to take effect. In fact, a recent report shows that one in three operators are seeing a drop in the total level of culinary skill in their kitchen staffs (Datassential, 2022).

So, what steps can you take in the while waiting for this current labor shortage to improve? Here are a few tips to help simplify back-of-house prep and improve efficiencies in your establishment.

Consider using speed scratch ingredients on your menu to help reduce prep time BOH and increase prep consistency for your staff. Examples include pre-chopped vegetables and pre-marinated and pre-seasoned proteins.

• No-prep Produce
• Labor Saving Products
• Multitasking Ingredients

Try fully cooked proteins on your menu to reduce cook and prep time in the kitchen and help all workers — regardless of skill — create entrees quicker and more efficiently.

• Hormel Fire Braised Meats
• Fully Cooked Hams
• Innovative Chicken Products
• Easy BBQ Products

Use base recipes to add cross utilization and labor-saving versatility to your operation, easily expanding menu options with only a few additional ingredients.

• Turkey Breast Base Recipes
• Find more labor-saving inspiration in our blog…

Consider investing in new technologies, equipment or innovations to implement back of house that will save time in the long run.

• Date Code Genie (Ultimate Foodservice Label Maker)
• QR Codes for Digital Menus & Ordering
• DIY Digital Menu Boards

Restaurants should be picky when hiring new employees, but they should also adjust their hiring expectations and practices. Additionally, new employees must be properly trained, and welcomed into the workplace culture–not just the open position.

• How to adjust your restaurant recruiting process during COVID-19
• Restaurant Server Training Tips, Techniques, and Best Practices

Running efficiently during these lean times is no easy task, but there are ways you can get ahead without taking shortcuts. We hope these tips are a great place start.

National Restaurant Association, 2022
Datassential One Table Report, 2022

It’s no secret that COVID-19 has impacted the restaurant workforce. According to data from 350,000+ restaurants that use 7shifts at the time of publishing, while overall shifts being scheduled are still sitting 24% below pre-COVID levels, shifts for delivery-related roles have increased 38%.

According to CareerPlug, three in 10 restaurant workers are currently unemployed, and of those who are working, 56% are looking for new positions.

Restaurant recruiting during the COVID-19 pandemic can be advantageous for restaurants because so much restaurant talent is looking for work. Restaurants must be picky, however, to ensure that new hires are good fits for the long term and that they’ll work safely alongside existing staff.

It’s important for restaurant hiring and training processes to reflect new COVID-19 safety measures. When hiring restaurant employees, it’s also important to find staff that will take these measures seriously. In this guide to COVID-19 restaurant recruiting you’ll learn:

• How to adjust your restaurant recruitment process including:
• Rewriting your “Careers” page
• Adjusting job descriptions
• Learning how to interview restaurant staff during the pandemic
• What to look for when hiring restaurant staff during and after the pandemic
• How to safely train new hires

How to adjust your restaurant recruiting process during COVID-19

Bringing on employees in the new climate of COVID-19 needs to change—just like your roles, restaurant, and the industry itself have over the past few months.

“Your job postings and hiring process should look different today versus pre-COVID,” explains CareerPlug’s director of HR, Natalie Morgan.

“Revise your job descriptions to include details about how you’re keeping them safe on the job and during the hiring process — what social distancing guidelines are in place? What PPE will you provide? Will any of the hiring or training be conducted remotely? Provide answers to these questions upfront to stand out and build trust with candidates” she says.

Here’s how to implement those restaurant recruitment changes to keep your current staff safe and give job candidates peace of mind.

1. Update your careers page with a safety section

Let job candidates know what your restaurant is doing to keep employees safe during the pandemic, and what its expectations are for staff. If job candidates think your safety measures are too strict, their values don’t match yours and they won’t be good long-term fits for the team anyway.

Are you making wearing PPE mandatory? Are you providing staff with PPE? Are you conducting daily health checks and making results available to the whole team through notice? Are you offering paid sick time to ensure that staff doesn’t worry about missing a paycheck? Share your protocol with job candidates on the restaurant hiring page of your website.

“For bonus points, tell the story of how your company reacted to COVID-19 on your careers page (or at least be prepared for this question),” says Morgan. “If you were able to support employees, what did that look like?”

2. Add safety measures to job descriptions

When it comes to COVID-19 restaurant recruitment, pandemic-related safety measures need to make it into job descriptions, as keeping customers and fellow staff healthy is now an important part of every restaurant’s role.

Here’s a sample server job description with requirements for upholding safety measures and valuing the safety of staff and customers:

Server Job Description

Customer-facing duties:

• Informing guests of COVID-19 protocols and making sure that guests follow them
• Teaching guests how to use contactless ordering technology
• Recommending menu items to guests
• Upselling menu items
• Bringing orders to tables
• Professionally handling complaints and feedback from guests

COVID-19 safety duties and expectations:

• Maintaining social distancing measures and enforcing guest social distancing
• Wearing PPE and holding staff and guests accountable for doing so as well
• Maintaining sanitization procedures
• Participating in daily temperature and symptom checks
• Holding fellow team members accountable for adhering to COVID-19-related safety measures

Use this sample job description for hiring restaurant staff by customizing it for different roles.

3. Adjust your interviewing practices

Adjust your restaurant interviews procedure by reducing or altogether eliminating in-person meetings with candidates and adding new questions around health and safety.

Want to know how to interview a restaurant manager, server, or cook remotely? Stick to phone or video interviews until it’s absolutely necessary to bring candidates into the restaurant. When candidates come in for restaurant interviews, conduct temperature, and symptom checks.

Use 7shifts’ Manager Log Book to ensure that all restaurant recruiting managers understand and follow the new restaurant interviews process.

Restaurant hiring in a pandemic: What to look for in job candidates

There’s a new layer of qualities you need to look for while hiring restaurant employees that you either haven’t had to think about before, or need to emphasize now.

For all roles, it’s important to ask how strictly job candidates adhere to COVID-19 safety measures in their personal lives. If they understand the importance of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, they’ll take pride in doing that at your restaurant too.

Here are other qualities you should look for while hiring restaurant staff based on role:

Management

• Not afraid to enforce safety measures.
• Will report rule violations.
• Able to swiftly adjust staff schedules if staff members fail health checks.
• Able to carry out traditional restaurant manager skills and responsibilities.

FOH

• Care for customer wellbeing.
• Can maintain appropriate distance from customers.
• Not afraid to hold fellow staff accountable for following COVID-19 safety measures, like wearing PPE.
• Not afraid to enforce COVID-19 safety rules for customers.
• If you’re considering asking FOH staff to work as delivery drivers, make sure they have valid drivers’ licenses, access to cars that are in good condition, car insurance, and clean driving records.

BOH

• Care for customer wellbeing.
• Not afraid to hold fellow staff accountable for following COVID-19 safety measures, like wearing PPE. Wearing masks is of utmost importance for food handlers, even if it’s hot in the kitchen!
• Able to maintain strict hygiene standards, including ensuring up-to-date food handling certification.

Candidates will also be curious about how your restaurant reacted to and fared through COVID-19, so be ready to answer questions about that.

How to adjust new hire training during COVID-19

You should aim to complete as much new staff training remotely as possible. Conduct a virtual training with all new hires that covers general procedures, like your COVID-19 protocol, employee handbook, rules and expectations, and shift scheduling. With 7shifts’ chat and announcement functions, you can share procedures and organize training sessions with staff quickly and efficiently.

Conduct in-person training on an as-needed basis.

• Keep cooks-in-training safe by staggering training times, doing one-on-one sessions, and conducting them when the restaurant is closed to ensure the kitchen isn’t crowded.
• Keep servers-in-training safe by conducting one-on-one shadowing trainings and asking trainees to maintain 6 feet/2 meters of distance between themselves, their trainers, and customers.

Once employee training has been completed—whether onboarding new employees or providing more training to existing ones—you can use the Manager Log Book to keep track of which employees have been trained on what and when. That way, any manager or owner can search the log at a later date to find which employee has what training to schedule or further train accordingly.

Wrapping up: recruiting during COVID-19

Hiring restaurant employees during the coronavirus pandemic presents new challenges for restaurants. However, it also presents an opportunity to find candidates that are great long-term fits for your restaurant’s team.

Update your job descriptions, restaurant interviews process, and training process to reflect COVID-19 safety measures to find new staff who are as serious about the health and safety of your team and guests as you are. You can easily weed out candidates who object to your new way of doing things.

Source: Ana Cvetkovic, 7Shifts

In addition to simply staying solvent in the year to come, restaurants’ challenge will be to somehow reinvent a warm, happy social experience—which is why most people eat out in the first place, as the consultancy Baum + Whiteman puts it.

To understand what may help drive restaurants’ comeback, FER combed through the predictions of some of the foodservice industry’s leading forecasters to round up trends they see just over the horizon in 2021.

1) Virtual Brands

Expect more brands, big and small, to test the waters with virtual restaurant concepts in 2021, predicts AF & Co.’s “Do the Hustle: 2021 Hospitality Insights & Trends Report.” Cases in point: Brinker International launched It’s Just Wings in June 2020; and Meso (San Jose, Calif.) introduced Meso Kebabery in August. AF & Co.’s Andrew Freeman says, “Virtual brands are becoming the ultimate market study, allowing restaurateurs … to see how a concept resonates in a particular community.” But transparency is key. Consumers want to know who is behind the brand, although in most cases, convenience reigns king.

2) So Long, Buffets

Few, if any, industry watchers expect to see a wave of new buffets, salad bars or self-service areas in grocery stores or cafeterias open any time soon. But attention is being paid to alternatives. AF & Co. notes that new technologies are allowing customization while keeping food safe, behind barriers and under temperature control. Chowbotics’ Sally, the fresh salad-making robot, is now being piloted in seven major grocery stores around the country to replace self-serve salad and prepared-food bars, where customers can order a customized meal through a contactless app.

3) Touchless Technologies

Speaking of low-to-no contact technology, Technomic, in its 2021 preview, notes that leading chains have been rolling out drive-thrus that make use of digital voice assistants for ordering and payment, license plate recognition software and dedicated lanes for app orders and delivery. “In an environment where contactless transactions are more crucial than ever—and convenience remains a core guest expectation—the newest digital tools will be central to keeping the experience safe and seamless,” Technomic predicts.

4) The Great Outdoors

Nothing like a global pandemic to send people outside to safely socialize. Even in areas where the climate can prove challenging, AF & Co.’s team predicts lasting interest in outdoor options for dining, entertaining and events. As cities relax or expand guidelines for outdoor structures and heating elements, expect more covered and heated outdoor areas that open up in good weather. Kimpton, in its 2021 Cocktail and Culinary Trends readout, foresees creative outdoor solutions in the form of winter gardens, bubbles and domes. “Distanced, intimate and private dining is here to stay,” the boutique hotel brand says.

5) Cocktails Heat Up

Hot cocktail? Yes, please—especially when it’s being served in restaurants’ outdoor dining spaces during the bracing temps of winter and early spring. AF & Co. expects restaurants to be offering more of the traditional Hot Toddy, Hot Buttered Rum and Irish Coffee, as well as creative new additions featuring hot tea, mulled wine, and cider. And this will call for equipment ready to keep hot drinks hot, insulated servingware and more.

Creative Heights

From microbakeries to pop-up restaurants to brand extensions (see the “virtual brands” trend above), the year ahead will see culinary creativity soaring to new heights. AF & Co.’s analysts have identified a trend where out-of-work chefs “work out of their homes and in rented or borrowed kitchen spaces” to bring food to customers. Established restaurants are trying things they never would have tried before, as well, including drive-in movies screened in a parking lot, virtual cooking classes, and more. Baum + Whiteman puts it succinctly: “Star chefs will be doing gigs.”

6) Adios, Printed Menus

Printed menus could become a pre-pandemic relic as they are increasingly replaced by QR codes on restaurant tables. According to Baum + Whiteman, restaurants will save printing costs and enjoy better order accuracy as customers, not waiters, do the work. QR codes are also good for touchless ordering and faster checkouts.

Sources: Janice Cha, FES, AF & Co., Baum & Whitman, Kimpton 2021 Culinary & Cocktail Trend Forecast, Technomic

The restaurant industry is just one market of the many that are struggling during the COVID-19 outbreak, especially locally owned and operated eateries. Most recently, the National Restaurant Association reported the pandemic has affected more than 8 million restaurant jobs, causing thousands of restaurants to temporarily or permanently close—a devastating shock felt across the country.

Talk of reopening, however, has given the industry a glimpse of hope. As states begin to lift restrictions, restaurants are preparing to welcome customers back—all while determining what a new normal will look like and how to operate under new guidelines.

Look for Operational Efficiencies

It won’t be uncommon for restaurants to have a limited wait staff upon reopening. Due to mandates such as reduced seating, that scenario has already proven to be true in some of the first states that reopened such as South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia.

With a reduced wait staff, it will be more important than ever to find operational efficiencies whether they be timesaving solutions or ones that allow for improved planning, such as the following three ideas:

Require reservations to better plan staff and inventory; consider third party reservation apps to provide digital natives easier ways to book a timeslot.

Rethink rolling cutlery. Rolling cutlery takes time and creates an additional touchpoint between the employee, and the utensils and napkin a patron will be using. Alternatives such as premium disposable napkin pockets to protect the silverware or pre-rolled napkins and disposable cutlery exist to improve cleanliness and convenience.

Consider a communication board to streamline in-house updates. This will allow for fewer points of contact between employees and will allow for efficient updates between shifts.

Reduce Menu Offerings

Due to decreased sales while the country sheltered-in-place, restaurants don’t have their normal cash flow to afford traditional expenses.

Womply data shows that by March 27, 16 percent of restaurants had already stopped collecting transactions, implying they had ceased operating. Meanwhile, by March 28, listings were down 28% compared to last year.

As a result, restaurants are now looking to cut costs beyond reducing staff and hours of operations. To prepare to reopen, restaurants can analyze their POS data for food cost savings. Before ordering a smaller amount of food or supplies, start by pulling recent purchase history and look for which menu items can temporarily be eliminated.

With a reduced menu, operators can also replace reusable menus with throwaway options or disposable placemat menus. Disposable options allow for a condensed space for your food and beverage menu and are proven cleaner.

Research shows that the most unclean item on a restaurant’s menu is the menu itself, with one study proving an average of 185,000 bacteria on menus in one test of restaurants in three states.

A disposable placemat menu also allows for an additional barrier from the table and a safe place to set silverware.

Recognize Consumers’ Concerns

Many patrons will be weary of sanitation practices upon returning to restaurants. Establishments must make sanitation a priority. A few ways restaurants can instill sanitation practices may be to:

• Provide antibacterial gloves and masks for your team, especially if they handle cash. In the meantime, consider going cashless;
• Pay special attention to any surface customers touch, like door handles, bar rails, and chairs; and
• Schedule weekly professional cleanings to take every initiative to keep the restaurant disinfected.

Overly communicating the steps being taken to ensure sanitation and safety to customers will ease these fears, as will visible precautions, such as gloves, sanitizer stations, and sustainable single-use utensils. Presenting covered and rolled utensils and wrapped straws, as well as disposable menus, will minimize the appearance of communal goods.

Prove It: Seeing Is Believing

Even though people are still concerned about eating out, a recent Datassential report notes that the fear of eating out is starting to soften. Forty-three percent of consumers surveyed either have no concerns or are nervous but will still eat out.

Much of this fear is surrounded by contamination from surfaces in restaurants such as countertops, napkin dispensers, chairs, cash, and countless other surfaces.

How restaurants reopen will provide a key opportunity for winning customers back. The need for trust post-coronavirus will be based on the same principles pre-virus. Previously, they dined at their favorite restaurants because they knew they could trust the staff to provide them with a positive experience and quality meal. Now, they will expect a similar experience but will choose to dine where they feel most safe.

The silver lining is that seeing is believing; proving how your restaurant is ensuring cleanliness will ease fears and regain the trust of customers, make them feel safe, and allow them the peace of mind to return.

The restaurant industry may not look the same today, but it’s important to be flexible when dealing with new initiatives and practices. When trying different strategies, make a point to give customers a chance to voice their concerns and find out what can be implemented to make everyone feel comfortable and safe.

Source: Andy Romjue for Foodservice Director

Create, supplement, or simplify BBQ takeout with premium, prepared products that are designed to reduce labor while delivering authentic customizable flavors. For example, a simple pulled pork sandwich can easily add trendy appeal to any menu. You could choose the convenience of pre-sauced or go plain and add your own. Easily customize prepared products to create a few menu items or an elaborate BBQ lineup.

Here are a few popular items perfect for summer menus. Be sure to visit our Barbecue Season page for information, recipes, and products, and to ask your Account Executive for more ingredient suggestions.

POULTRY

BEEF 

PORK

SIDES

Need more inspiration? Check out our selection of BBQ Recipes.

The restaurant industry is in a chaotic and difficult situation due to the coronavirus outbreak. As a result many operations are seeing significantly lighter traffic, or have temporarily closed their doors, and are facing prolonged periods of downtime.

In this episode podcast host Luke LaBree, and 4 other foodservice professionals share ideas and advice to help restaurant owners and operators make the most of this unfortunate situation.

Topics discussed include reviewing menus to maximize profits, improving operational efficiencies, training staff, marketing and more. If you own own or operate a restaurant this episode, this advice, is for you.

LISTEN ON ITUNES LISTEN ON CASTBOX LISTEN ON OVERCAST

For the video version visit: dennisexpress.com/making-the-most-of-downtime

Subscribe to the Podcast – Subscribe Now (Subscribe with iTunes)

We look forward to your feedback, send an email to podcast@dennisexpress.com!