What comes first The Wine or The Food?

      Ok this is something that has bothered me for years, and yes i am wearing my chef coat as i write this lol. You go out to dinner, "dinner" being the key word here and the first thing the server does is give you the wine list and offers to start you off with a bottle or glass of wine. You order the wine and then order the food with little or no thought put into the pairing of both.
     Now hear comes the chef rant! I first realized working in San Fransico learning from a great Master Sommelier Perter Granoff, that wine is meant to be drank with food and that when paired properly they enhance each other much more. I know this first hand after going to many wine classes and tastings over the years i discovered my palette never taste all the flavors in the wine until i ate some food then i was able to identify the charatneriscs and nuances of the wine. So when you sit down and you order a bottle of Pinot Grigio then some of your guest order steaks you can see how the pairing would taste terrible and ruin both the wine and steak.
    So my suggestion and i have been doing this for years with my service staff is to let the guest order their apps and entrees and then try to match up the best wine to complement the food. I know what your gonna say what if a four top orders all different entrees, easy don't push a bottle and suggest individual glasses you'll end up probably selling more wine because each person will drink two glasses each because they can drink at thief own pace not worrying about if they are taking too much from the rest of the table. More importantly everyones food will be paired properly with their wine and create a much better experience for your guest. So next time your dinning at your favorite restaurant let your server know food first then ask their wine suggestions that best match your choices or better yet ask the chef what he suggest, he created the food! Thanks as always for reading.



Chef Rocky

Do You Want To Make More Money!!

Often in the restaurant business we are always looking for the next big thing to increase profits or to wow our guest to come visit our restaurant when the ability making more money is right under our roof, in three words Training Training Training! I cant tell you how many times i have gone into a failing restaurant and gotten them back on track through some good old fashion training. Here are my Top 3 training classes


Service / Check Average
   Re focusing the staff on what great service is, attentive, courteous, anticipating guest needs, accuracy of orders, warm welcomes and fond goodbyes. Doing these simple things for your guest equals repeat customers. The Second piece to training the service staff is driving the check average. Teaching them how to read the guest needs and make sensible suggestions like sharing appetizers or grab a fellow service member walking with food and show it to the table nothing gets guest excited like seeing the food on the plate. Suggest all aspects of your food and beverage to your guest. It is proven that when a server is taught or taste a product before service their sales go up in that category. Want to sell more coffee train, cigars train, dessert train, specials train! Getting the picture.

Vino Vino
Just to show you the power of wine sales continue to read my sales equation. 2 appetizers -$7 + 2 desserts -$7 + 2 cups of coffee -$3 = $34 One bottle of Kendall-Jackson Reserve $38 Now ask yourself what is easier to sell to your guest and what one has a better profit margin. Training can be as simple as having a wine tasting with your menu items, or as in depth as having a outside trainer come in for a two hour class either one is good, but keep this in mind the more educated your staff is the the more wine sales your restaurant will do.

Daily Food Specials
Ok i have my chef hat on for this one as i have witnessed this over my chef career many times i have witnessed servers fumbling at a table with a guest trying to recite the specials for the night. Now let me say this first, it is the chefs job to teach and educate their service staff. The chefs biggest fans should be your staff and if they not, they are not going to sell your specials that you work so hard on which also means they are not going to drive more revenue for the restaurant. Now having said all that the chef must take interest in the education and training of its staff. I personally like to do post service one on one trainings with staff members that struggle throughout the night to help them do a better job of selling. They also seem to respond to the personalized training and usually bounce back the next shift with great sales.

I hope this is helpful and i promise good training will equal more revenue for your restaurant. As always thank you for reading


Rocky

How do you market your restaurant?

Let me start by telling you a story. Two new restaurants open in your neighborhood. Restaurant A puts a flyer in the mail for 10% off the purchase of an entree. Restaurant B sends you an invitation to attend a neighborhood free h'orderves & cocktail party. Now which one would you go to first? 

I can tell you from experience that people will go to Restaurant B first for a few reasons: 1) It's a personalized invitation to come in, 2) It's free and no cost to the guest, 3) It's genuine and not a marketing gimmick. Guests can see right through that and sometimes are turned off by flyers, and 4) It's different. Good marketing needs to stand out from the normal techniques to be effective.

Now which marketing plan is cheaper? I'm sure all you restaurant skeptics are saying the flyer! I can hear you now. "I'm not giving away free food and drinks. I'll go out of business!" The biggest marketing tool you have in your restaurant is food and beverage. I can throw a party for a 100 people for a buck a person. To do flyers you have to pay for graphics, postage, buying of zip codes and when it's all said and done your marketing looks like every other restaurant marketing program. I have been doing this type of low cost guerrilla marketing for years and it is the most effective marketing from a cost and return on investment perspective.

So when marketing in 2013 utilize your food and beverage. Get out there and hit the streets or a simpler way is to hire ROCinc to do it for you. Thanks for reading everyone. Stay tuned for more tips!

Rocky

P.S. Do you know how much you spent on marketing in 2012? You should!