First and foremost, the restaurant business is a "people" business. However, to a large degree it's also a "numbers" business. Success can't just be measured in terms of smiling, satisfied customers but also in the cold, hard realities of facts, figures and finances.
Harold Geneen, former Chairman of IT&T said, "The difference between well-managed companies and not-so-well managed companies is the degree of attention they pay to the numbers."

While the numbers are certainly critical in any business, they are probably even more so in foodservice. Dealing with perishable products, lots of employees and razor thin profit margins are just a few of the factors which means you need to know where you stand quickly and often. Only the numbers can tell you if your restaurant is performing the way it should be or not.

One of the challenges in this area is that many independent restaurant owners don't have a background in accounting or finance and think that it's either over their head or that understanding the "numbers" isn't really relevant or all that necessary in managing their small business. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As you will quickly see, the following topics, ideas and tools will be easy to grasp and easy to implement in your business. You'll notice the benefits of having a financial approach and perspective to your restaurant. This section will help you set up your financial systems so you'll view and manage your restaurant like the business it is.

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Marketing resources

If your local market is typical, you've probably noticed the number of eating establishments in your area increasing at a faster rate than the number of people available to frequent them. As an independent operator, chances are you don't just have more competition but in particular more competition from chain operators who are very focused on capturing market share and have the marketing budgets to get lots of attention.

While the chains can be serious competitors, there are ways to effectively market and promote your independent restaurant without resorting to the traditional means of expensive and often ineffective mass media advertising.

Our objective in this section is to bring to light many approaches and ideas for you to consider in the area of increasing customer counts and sales volume through creative and "low cost" marketing and promotional activities.

As you know, marketing a restaurant is not an exact science. What works for one restaurant, may not work for another. But what we do know is that doing nothing fails 100% of the time.

A key component of successful restaurant marketing is to keep trying. Constantly experimenting with inexpensive ways of attracting attention and creating interest in your restaurant will eventually lead to positive results. We'll do our best at giving you a wide variety of proven ways to create more customers and enhance your marketing skills.

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Staffing service

How important is your staff to your restaurant? To a large degree your staff "is" your restaurant. The quality of the interaction of the staff with your guests is just one of many areas your people can either make or break your business.
Your staff also has a lot to do with not just the success of your restaurant but also the quality of your life. Dealing with people can be agony or ecstasy, the source of your greatest frustrations or your most gratifying accomplishments.

Besides providing you with many useful ideas and resources that deal with the routine and administrative functions of staffing the restaurant, it's our goal to enhance your ability to effectively interact, direct and work with people. Most of us never got any good people training along the way. Like Bill Marvin, the Restaurant Doctor says, "when we go into management positions we're just expected to understand what people are all about, it's like, you are one, so well you should know."

The problem is that most of us don't intuitively know what makes people tick and as a result get involved in all sorts of counterproductive and self-defeating approaches in managing and dealing with people.

In the past, some operators got away with having a people skills deficit because they were used to having a constant source of disposable labor. If an employee didn't work out, you could count on plenty of other applicants eager to jump on board. As you know those days are gone, and today the reality is that you need good people more than they need you.

This section will give you practical ideas to get more applicants, do a better job of selecting good people to join your team and how to maintain a productive, enjoyable working environment so people will want to stay and not leave you for a quarter more an hour.

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Technology Resources

During the past decade a technology revolution has taken place in the restaurant industry. What once was viewed as equipment and systems that made economic sense for only large, multi-unit restaurants is now common place even among smaller, one-restaurant independents.

Technology has had and will continue to have a profound impact on the industry. On a practical level, high tech applications have already helped operators improve ordering functions, ticket times, table turns, inventory control, kitchen organization and accuracy, bookkeeping tasks and the capture and the timely reporting of operational information. Just to name a few.

In the not too distant future, it may be possible for even the smallest operators to do their bidding, ordering and product procurement electronically, over the Internet. Once the product is received, checked-in and compared to the order, inventory levels will be adjusted, product prices brought current and up-to-the-minute recipe and ideal food costs available, to operators with no human intervention.