Back in February we did a webinar with Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss, entitled Reducing Food Costs and Running Safer Restaurants. This is a straight training webinar on how to use restaurant checklists to run better operations and increase profits. Ryan is a cool dude and we kept it light with real world stories and …
Tommy Yionoulis
I've been in the restaurant industry for most of my adult life. I have a BSBA from University of Denver Hotel Restaurant school and an MBA from the same. When I wasn't working in restaurants I was either doing stand-up comedy, for 10 years, or large enterprise software consulting. I'm currently the Managing Director of OpsAnalitica and our Inspector platform was originally conceived when I worked for one of the largest sandwich franchisors in the country. You can reach out to me through LinkedIn.
My Non-Scientific Prediction that Chipotle’s Sales are Still Down
The title says it all in this blog post, this prediction, some could say a safe one, is based on nothing but my experience last week.  I live in Denver and happened to be grabbing lunch on Evans Ave over by my alma mater the University of Denver.  There on Evans Ave is a shrine to …
3 Benefits of Labor Management & a Scheduling Strategy
Please enjoy this blog from our great friends at Ameego, the restaurant scheduling and labor management platform. Aside from temperature compliance and food comps, what are some of the biggest ongoing challenges for restaurant managers? If your mind envisioned next month’s blank schedule calendar, the binder of handwritten time-off requests or the stack of month-end …
National Restaurant Show 2016
This was my second year attending the national restaurant show, and as show attendee veteran. Â Here were my thoughts in no particular order. Holy hell is it a big show. Â I walked over 10 miles trying to cover the entire show. That was going up and down rows. The technology is getting more advanced. Â Last …
5 Tips to Writing Better Restaurant Line Checks
Every restaurant should be doing some form of line check for each meal period. Â The reason you do line checks is to ensure that your food is safe and ready to serve to your guests. Â Line checks allow you to catch your mistakes before your guests do, which reduces food comps. Â They also allow you …
87% of Restaurants Surveyed Plan to Invest in Restaurant Tech to Improve Operations
Great blog post from eMarketer, to see the complete article click on the title – Restaurants Invest in Technology to Improve Overall Efficiency.  “Most US restaurant IT decision-makers plan to invest in technology to improve operational efficiency.”  87% said that Operational Efficiency was important compared to 55% they were going to make investments in guest engagement/loyalty. …
How to Implement Management by Checklist with follow-up in your Restaurants
Management by checklist is exactly what you think it is; it is the art of managing your restaurants by using short, focused checklists to ensure that the most important operational details aren’t missed on a shift-by-shift restaurant-by-restaurant basis. Â The practice is modeled after airplane pilots and their use of checklists. Checklists work, plain and simple. …
Diagnosing Falling or Stagnant Sales
Too many restaurant operators mistake marketing problems for operations problems. They look at falling or stagnant sales, and they think I’ve got to increase marketing spend to get my sales back up. How do you know if your falling sales are a marketing problem or operations problem? Here are a couple of questions you can …
The Only Way to Sustainably Grow Your Restaurant’s Sales is through Better Operations
It’s time to return to basics and focus on what works for long-term sustainable sales growth, which is better operations. Nobody wants to hear better operations because they are either delusional about the current state of their operations, or they don’t want to put in the hard work and discipline of focusing on running better operations. …
Norovirus Prevention on the Disney Fantasy
In one of the best Seinfeld episodes ever, George is trying to get a bigger apartment in his building only to find out that a survivor of the Andrea Doria shipwreck got it because the coop board felt bad for the guy.  Read the script below: The buffet can be the real ordeal on cruise …