With the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act today the restaurant industry is still looking for some changes to be made as their situation is very different than most businesses. I’ll post a full article from nrn.com on the subject from today. The provisions in the act that cause concern for the restaurant industry …
June 2015
St. Louis Minimum Wage Increase
Here locally in St. Louis, like many other cities in the country, the discussions around the minimum wage increase to $15/hr have been going back and forth for some time now. The St. Louis Business Journal posted an article today on the subject, “Facing business backlash, the city plans tweak to minimum wage hike“. I’ll …
More Tech Is An Expectation From Consumers
NRN.com posted an article highlighting early results from a survey currently being conducted by Technomic out of Chicago. The survey focuses on how certain restaurant brands are performing as it relates to using technology to better the consumer experience. The four categories the survey focuses on are; loyalty programs, free WiFi, online ordering, and mobile …
Simple things that make an impression
It’s interesting what you notice when you are out eating or having a drink with friends or at Disneyland with the family. I took my kids to Disneyland for the first time last week. I have always heard that it was expensive once you start adding up admission, food, and extras for the kids. But …
How to Handle the Press after a Bad Health Inspection
On the OpsAnalitica blog, we have written about this trend of local news stations reporting on restaurant’s health inspection scores. It makes sense for the news stations to do these reports because the data is readily available, it advertises well, it’s easy content to produce, and my guess is that it drives viewership. In Denver, Fox 31, has their restaurant report card segment and website. As we have been following this in the media, we have seen a ton of these restaurant health inspection segments all around the country. If you operate a restaurant in Florida, watch out, they seem to have these reports in every major city.
For the restaurant industry this good and bad. I believe that more transparency around health inspections and health inspection scores puts pressure on the industry to do better, and it increases the restaurant cleanliness standards in that area. When LA moved to letter grades system, one of the results was that there were less foodborne illness cases over time. What they found is that bad letter grades affect revenue, a C resulted in a -1% sales dip and an A resulted in an 5 to 6% increase in sales. The market rewards clean restaurants and punishes dirty ones. We got this data from a grand jury report when Orange County was looking at moving to the letter grade system, click here to see the report.
I also understand the concern of restaurant owners when it comes to making this data public, it affects their business and sometimes it is hard to get a reinspection promptly. I don’t feel bad for restaurant owners that lose revenue for being dirty, they should. I do feel bad for restaurant owners that fixed their issues, but have to wait a considerable amount of time to get reinspected. Counties have to provide the ability to get reinspected very quickly even if they have to charge a convenience fee.
I’ve embedded the Fox 31 report from June 12th in this blog. There are three restaurants mentioned in the report. 2 of the restaurants got F’s, and one got an A. According to the Fox website you have to have 5 critical violations on your last two health inspections to get an F. To get an A you have to have 0 critical violations on your last two health inspections. This video is amazing and shows you how to and how not to handle an inquiry from the media at your restaurant. It is 100% worth watching to see how the Blue Bonnet handled their bad score compared to Chubby’s.
Here are my feelings after watching their segments:
- Chubby’s
- Didn’t answer repeated phone calls – could have been trying to evade reporters
- Manager had face blurred – guilty and wrong
- Written statement that was summarized – too little too late
- Verdict: I probably will never eat at that restaurant after seeing that report. In fairness, I don’t live close to that restaurant so my chances of popping in were low to begin with.
- Blue Bonnet
- Owner got interviewed – She was taking responsibility
- She showed the media her kitchen – open nothing to hide
- She mentioned the all the staff meetings – she took action
- Verdict: I may eat there again in six months or so after they have had a chance to be inspected one more time. In fairness, we used to frequent Blue Bonnet when we lived close by and really like the food.
I hope you find this video helpful in crafting your crisis plan and how you would handle this type of interview. Also, kudos to Johnny Rockets in the Cherry Creek Mall for getting an A, I’ve eaten there several times and will be back.
Operations, Data, & Reporting in Restaurants Part III
Thank you for following this blog series on restaurant operations, data, and reporting. In Tuesday’s post, we discussed BOH data collection and what items you could be tracking that could help you improve operations and run more profitable businesses. To read Tuesday’s post click here. One last thought on BOH operations data collection. A lot …
Operations, Data, & Reporting in Restaurants Part II
Yesterday we explored the importance of operations data, different ways to capture operations data, and where it could be used to make better decisions. If you didn’t see, yesterday’s blog post clicks here. A quick summary of yesterday’s post, the restaurant industry needs to be collecting and analyzing operations data with the easily available register and …
Operations, Data, & Reporting in Restaurants
This week we are going to be doing a deep dive into restaurant operations, data, and reporting in the industry. We are going to be exploring areas of the restaurant business where operators could be collecting more data, what that data could tell them, and strategies to collect data. The restaurant industry as a whole …
How much will minimum wage hikes hurt restaurants?
CBS News posted an article today “How much will minimum wage hikes hurt restaurants?”. They site a Moody’s Investor Services study that took a look at the effect on the industry. They mention in the article that the restaurants are going to have to eat this costs out of their profit. I don’t see that …
Restaurant Operations Survey
I caught this on the Missouri Restaurant Association website. The National Restaurant Association and Deloitte are looking for participants in the Restaurant Industry Operations Survey. By completing the survey you will receive, free of charge, a copy of the next edition of the Restaurant Operations Report. The Restaurant Operations Report is a “must have” for …