Restaurants To Add Simplicity to Quality - Eating In, Out.

Continuing our focus on the simple pleasures of life, we’re going to take a deeper look this week at what the industry has recently termed haute/casual.

Though we’ve shown a moderate gain in revenues these past few months (at least 10% higher than last year at the same time) the one trend that hasn’t recovered has been decadent dining. Diners are still avoiding upscale restaurants in favor of a more simple, independent, one-of-kind-type eateries. And, for once, the industry is changing to suit them.
 

Focusing on simple and recognizable dishes puts customers at ease, according to Lesley Chesterman of the Montreal Gazette. Finding inspiration in street food, bbq pits, sugar shacks (think of Michel Picard’s new Cabane à Sucre) and unpretentious bistros, dozens of Montreal chefs are putting out large portions that focus on the scrumptious over the luxurious. It was a hot button topic at the American NRA conference in May as well… Restaurants that specialize in Fast Casual  (Au Bon Pain, Panera etc.), restaurants that have always capitalized on a growing desire for simple foods led seminars on how to set yourself apart through a concentration on using ingredients of exceptional quality in uncomplicated combinations.

The same trend has slid in to the bar scene as well. Canadian restaurants are moving bar food up a notch with the same attitude; mac n’ cheese, fish and chips and sliders are all getting ritzy re-visits. Furthermore, these same chefs have also coped to exploiting their staff when it comes to up-tweaking older, workhorse-esque, dishes. Ask your employees what they enjoy eating when dining out or eating in and you’ll discover a wealth of information you probably haven’t ever before considered.

Across the water, Greece has embraced a tradition that had been sadly ignored for the past few decades, the time-honored taverna. For Greeks, dining has always been discourse’s sad cousin; so the reason d’être for a taverna was to provide the comforts of home while one was, well, not at home. The recession has reminded people of the joys of eating in, so it makes sense that entrepreneurs are finding success with homey dishes.

Best of all? The critics (in addition to the customers) are licking it up and asking for more; Food and Wine Magazine, for the very first time in its entire history, actually chose the owner/operator of a food truck for one of its Best New Chefs 2010!

Going With The Grain - Harvesting Local Wheat

Against most culinary adages, I'm going to recommend that you begin cutting with the grain. Not meat of course! But locally harvested, indigenous, grains. Last week's article was about salt; this week, we're talking about 'the salt of the earth’.

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There is next to nothing that we consider as simply satisfying and as fundamentally necessary as bread. When we're doing well, we're the breadwinners and the upper crust, when we're being punished; we eat nothing but bread and water. In recent years we've seen the locavore movement devour vegetables, fish and grass-fed meat, so grains must be the next great frontier.

These grain pioneers were out in force, earlier this month, at the fourth annual Kneading Conference! Skowhegan, Maine, hosted this year’s celebration of artisanal baking with locally sourced beans and grains. Farmers, millers, bakers, oven builders and random curious visitors brushed shoulders with Jeffery Hamelman, Bakery Director of King Arthur Flour as well as Fred Kirschenman, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, previously a member of the USDA's National Organic Standards Board, and many others. Demand for this kind of local northeastern grain is being fueled on both sides of the fence; consumers crave the nuttier, richer flavor, while bakers are excited by the challenge as well as comforted by the decrease in ecological impact. According to many of the conference’s key organizers, one of the greatest aims of the conference is to let people know they are not alone.

And they’re not. From bakeries in Massachusetts to flour mills in Pennsylvania to farms in Vermont, everyone is investigating local wheats. Cayuga Pure Organics is the first vendor to sell locally grown grains, beans and flours in Manhattan, while Island Grains, a grain-heavy Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) co-op in Vancouver, celebrates its second birthday this year. Even Californians are moving away from a total reliance on midwestern wheat. Everyone is excited about the benefits: from the obvious (reducing your eco footprint and contributing to your local economy) to the more obscure (heirloom wheat varieties, which offer exceptional tastes and unique textures, are in danger of being completely forgotten).

Of course there are still issues to be confronted. Frank discussions at the Kneading Conference highlighted the lack of info-structure (the mills and processing facilities) for this largely fragmented movement. There’s an increased cost to consider, as well, according to Cayuga Pure Organics’ liaison, Tycho Dan. If you bought Cayuga's local grains by the container full, you would be paying at least thirty percent more than traditional varieties. Additionally, like all “natural” things, consistency can be a problem. But bakers call it a joyous challenge, rightly claiming that an anonymous commodity isn’t nearly as appetizing!

So let’s face up to facts. The honest truth is that transporting supplies via road or rail is becoming less and less sustainable. We have to start investigating alternative options now, before we’re out of goods…and ideas.

In other words, completely abandon those old half-baked schemes and let’s get this local grain movement on a roll!

*Don’t forget! Bread isn’t the only great use for local grains; think about quenching your thirst with a locally sourced wheat beer.

Working with Low Sodium - Shaking Out That Salt.

Despite all that the Food Network, Morgan Spurlock, and the Slow Food movement, has done to improve our understanding of the food/body equation, North Americans are no closer to being healthy. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study showing that nearly 25 percent of American teens have abnormal 'blood lipid' levels - this includes high levels of LDL (the bad) cholesterol and low levels of HDL (the good) cholesterol, along with high levels of trigylcerides which can clog arteries - and that more than 1 billion adults overweight or obese globally. Surprisingly, much of the blame is being laid on those advocating a supposedly 'healthy' diet: Jonny Bowden, PhD, C.N.S, and weight-loss expert claims that it's the low-fat craze that's caused most our 'big' problems. Trying to eliminate edible fats brought on high-fructose corn syrup and partially-hydrogenated oils, leaving consumers with even greater physical fats than ever before.

These days, most people are catching wise to the hype, realizing that it's the false focus on starches and fats that are actually causing the problem and realigning their focus on a more insidious danger...Salt. According to EatRight Ontario, the Government of Ontario's attempt to connect their residents to registered dietitians and better resources for healthy eating, sodium's main purpose is to regulate the water balance and blood pressure in your body. Good in small doses, but eat too much and you dissipate all the water, leaving nothing behind but a sky-high blood pressure. 

The food industry has already started to step away from the ubiquitous shaker. Three years ago, ED Foods introduced Luda H, soup bases and gravies with 78 percent less salt, while at the beginning of this year, New York City unveiled a broad new health initiative encouraging food manufacturers and restaurants to curtail their salt use, and just a few months ago, Subways, Starbucks, Mars Food US and even Unilever agreed to cut the salt in their products by 10 percent over the next two years. 

Still, many restauranteurs have expressed concern over any possible mandatory regulation as it's very difficult to adjust the sodium content without losing flavor and/or general appeal. Sodium reduction has to be done on an ingredient by ingredient basis otherwise you risk an unpalatable product. Best to start voluntarily expanding your seasoning horizons... Lest all governments actually start enforcing a 1000$ penalty such as the one that New York State is considering.

But don't waste your salt on tears! Here's a list of great ways to avoid sodium based on food style and type. Although it's phrased to apply to the consumer, it could also be a great idea source when you sit down to write your menu. 

The Bottled Water Dilemma - Tap Water Still Runs Deep.

"Good Evening, may I interest you in a bottle of water?..."

It's the classic server push...and responsible for quite the added bit of income for any restaurant. Working as a server in my younger days, managers always made it a point to remind us to sell the bottled water. A glass cylinder of Voss (supposedly taken from an aquifer "shielded for centuries under ice and rock in the untouched wilderness of Central Norway") can be sold at the table for around eight to twelve dollars, while a case of twenty-four will usually only set the house back by about thirty; Nearly 90% of that Voss becomes pure profit, which can be awfully easy for a restauranteur to swallow. 

On the other hand, that sip might just choke you when you realize, asides from lucrative, bottled water may also be the most quintessential of all environmentally unsustainable choices. Seventeen million barrels of oil are required just to produce the containers that hold the 53 billion gallons of bottled water consumed annually (enough oil to fuel one million cars for the same period of time). And that's not even including the costs involved in shipping these bottle-shaped environmental bombs from Fiji or Évian-Les-Bains. In early March, the United Nations admitted that bottled water wasn't sustainable, right on the heels of Inside The Bottle's release of the animated film "The Story of Bottled Water", sparking international debate. 

So, despite the lost revenue, many restaurants are choosing to either restrict bottled water options or to eliminate the option entirely. In return, these restaurants get to ride the crest of public opinion (Giles Coren, restaurant reviewer for the London Times, claims that he will only give top marks to establishments serving a locally bottled water or none at all), they get to act in the best interests of environmental stewardship, and they get to, just generally, sleep well at night. But the money aspect is certainly not a wash; restaurants operate on such a fine financial line! So how to resign yourself to this lost income?

Well, firstly, you can write it off your budget for advertising: sites like Canada's Green Table, the U.S's Responsible Purchasing Network and Corporate Accountability International, make it their business to proudly proclaim which restaurants have made the blue-green leap of faith. Local news sources will also probably jump at the chance to do a piece on your ban (like ABC's coverage of the bottled water debate, for example).


Secondly, if you'd like to put a bit more muscle behind it, you can invest in a filtration system or a CO2 injector and offer home-filtered water or house-made sparkling at a premium, alongside the option of tap like Alice Waters does at Chez Panisse. Rather than making the lack of bottled water a liability, make it a stance, and people will drink it up. Pun definitely intended. 

(For more ideas, keep your eyes on Montreal come september. Ed's hometown is hosting this year's International Water Association's World Water Congress and Exhibition). 

Teaching A Class On What You Know Best - Marketing By Putting Money Where Your Mouth Is.

A heated debate in the food service industry concerns an old adage: Catch a man a fish and he'll eat for a day...but if you teach a man to fish, will he still continue to eat at your restaurant?

Capitalizing on the popularity of the Food Network's how-to shows and the continued celebrocracy of gourmet dining, high-end restaurants have been proving that this summer, those who can do can teach as well. Lately, many restaurants have been offering special evenings where the Chef, Sommelier, or equally qualified employee, shares some cherished know-how, as well as select drinks and delectables, to a room full of eager patrons/students.

La Marea in Miami organized a two-hour interactive BBQ how-to as part of their Father's Day offerings this year, the foodie-tchotchkes shop Good Egg, located in Toronto's Kensington Market, offered classes on home-preserving and knife skills that drew the likes of movie star Rachel McAdams, while Roberta's Restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, led a dramatically well-attended seminar on Rabbit Butchering a few weeks ago.

According to the Toronto Star, Food Network Canada has grown 20% in viewership in the past year, proving that people are becoming even more motivated to watch what they eat. Or well, watch what they'll eat be made. It's not necessarily a new idea, (Seattle-area restaurants have been nourishing their bottom line by having customers put money to the Chef's mouth for several years now) but it's a great one, especially since, despite political promises to the contrary, these past months have not produced any significant economic stimulation. Offering an evening of this sort can help throw your name out as a doubly enjoyable experience; dinner and a show!

And hosting a lecture or seminar at your establishment can also help produce guests on what otherwise might be your slower nights; L'Espalier Boston, for example, offers a special wine-themed dinner on Mondays, the very popular Cheese Tuesdays (featuring captain seating, a themed lecture and a 'cheesy' parody sing-along), and they've just added a 'Mixology n' Cocktails' night most Thursdays. Front of the house staff there once confided that these events hoist numbers by a good fifty or sixty heads, an added revenue that comes without significant costs, well above traditional weeknight bookings.

Additionally, remember that encouraging your staff to contribute ideas and participate in these evenings can help motivate them through what might otherwise be a lackluster summer while also demonstrating how you value and appreciate their unique expertise.

Ultimately, proving to the public that you are worth your salt (or possibly, know it) will highlight the reasons patrons ought to be visiting your restaurant on all the other nights of the week as well. And that's definitely something worth teaching.

Avoiding the Lost Revenue From No-Shows – Some Reservations on Reservations.

It probably goes without saying that most restaurants choose to offer reservations. Although there are certain downsides to offering pre-arranged times and tables, in the long run, many restaurateurs feel that the gains outweigh the disadvantages. A well managed reservation schedule, especially on busier nights, helps move customers from peak to off-peak periods so as to better match the flow of customers with that restaurant’s staff and capacity. This means that your team has enough time and space to offer the best service to every patron: only one of reservations’ multiple benefits. 

Sadly, many diners take advantage of this practice to guarantee tables at several different restaurants, ultimately abandoning all but one depending on their mood, while some just plain abuse the system by failing to show for no reason at all. No-show rates can be as high as 10 to 20 percent for typical evenings. Two commonly applied solutions for no-shows in the past have been to overbook and/or to call each diner to confirm. Unfortunately, both of these still offer negative consequences. Overbooking risks a foyer full of annoyed guests waiting for their tables while confirmations require manpower yet can carry similar fail rates.

As I’ve written previously, I really believe that the restaurant industry should take more cues from the other hospitality fields. Hotels, airlines, doctors…all of these have penalties for the no-show. Assuming that the charge is not astronomical, most diners find it very acceptable for a smaller scale business to charge a no-show fee. Although, don’t make your charge too negligible as restaurants in San Francisco found that patrons ignored everything until they raised the fee to 100$. Several years ago, as the direct result of negotiations with the hospitality industry, American Express began to accept dining credit charges without signatures, precisely to support this type of fee. A year after the strategy was implemented; restaurants actually reported a significant decrease in no-call no-shows! To this day, AmEx cardholders are subject to this policy.

Obviously, as a concerned proprietor, you’ll still want to be sensitive to extreme circumstances, most likely waiving the fee if a guest calls to inform you of their absence and especially if you end up filling the table. Check out the National Restaurant Association’s great series on how to handle the situation once you’re actually faced with a no-show.

Of course, you could also choose to completely chuck the old ways, and invent something new! Like Grant Achtaz’s stadium-style ticket seating or Bram Cohen’s variation on dutch auctions.

The Where and Why of Purchasing Ethical Meat - Conscientious Omnivorism as the New Black.

In view of the current Gulf Coast situation (which, by the way, still seems to have no solid solution) it seems like a good time to discuss some sources of protein other than fish.

Once upon a time, not eating meat was the easiest and most obvious way to make a moral food choice: Factory farms are among the most pollutant and inhumane of animal producers. However, as professionals, we can’t possibly eliminate such a profitable, and delicious, item from the menu. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t make ethical choices. Thanks to some conscientious and purposeful purveyors*, green sources for pork, beef, eggs and veal have become increasingly available. Proponents of these farmers argue convincingly that the methods employed do not have the same environmental interactions as industrial production. In addition, not only are these animals being raised humanely with a minimum of methane production, but they are also being raised in a more traditional manner (i.e. grazing on a free-range grassy pasture), resulting in a more complex and exceptionally tasty meat.

Admittedly, these steaks can take a cut out of your budget, but customers are also willing to pay more for moral menu items. San Francisco-based Context Marketing released a study a few months ago demonstrating that nearly 70 percent of U.S. food shoppers are willing to pay more for food that is produced to higher ethical standards. The study also asked respondents to identify which qualities and claims about moral foods were most likely to encourage their being purchased. Over half agreed that humanely raised meat with no supplemental hormones and no antibiotics were very important. In the past, abstaining may have been only way to be sure of making an appropriate dining choice but now even staunch vegetarians are choosing to eat meat in order to help promote ecologically sustainable and humanely-raised choices.

As some of the world’s largest consumers of meat and meat by-products, we food professionals have a strong hand in guiding available options. Support ranchers and farmers who are making wholesome decisions and we can make eating meat the easiest and most obvious way to make a moral choice. Long live the conscientious omnivore!

* Azaluna Brands, currently producing heirloom eggs and mother’s-milk-fed veal, originated as a project for students at Tuft’s University School of Veterinary Science and thanks to Dr. George Saperstein, professor and department chair, has blossomed into a fantastic resource for ethical animal husbandry. Here’s a great interview with the Doctor where he shares his thoughts on meat and morals.

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EDITED TO ADD:  Still no signs of improvement on the Gulf Coast. 

What The Gulf Oil Spill Means for the Foodservice Industry – Mushroom Clouds and Fish Soup.

A few weeks ago there was an environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico that made the Exxon Valdez oil spill look like a few dark drops in a very large bucket. The BP deep-water oil rig explosion on April 20^th is being called America’s Chernobyl, not just because the extent of the consequent ecological damage is being estimated as the worst in human history, but also because the disaster has thoroughly exposed the corruption and rot at the core of the United States economy. On a smaller scale, the restaurant and food service industries are in for one heck of a bumpy ride

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Unfortunately, the worst part is that there is really no telling what the long-term effects of the spill will be. The seafood industry is already reeling, with a ten-day offshore fishing closure by federal officials, starting on May 2^nd. This covers Louisiana waters at the mouth of the Mississippi river to waters off Florida's Pensacola Bay. Chef John Besh, of Restaurant August and long-time Louisiana produce proponent, wrote in an article for The Atlantic, that he expects his supply of Gulf shrimp to be cut in half, that is, only if he’s lucky. Considering that, in 2009, Louisiana exported nearly 4.6 billion dollars worth of shrimp and oysters to Canada, there will probably be plenty of less lucky people.

Although Besh’s numbers may be a little on the pessimistic side, you should expect all seafood prices to skyrocket, no matter where they’re coming from.  Not necessarily because of a genuine lack of supply, but a perceived lack of supply will have prices jumping (P.E.I. oysters are already set to rise charges). Also, as Louisiana is a huge port, you can expect any produce that usually docks there to have to compensate for the added cost of docking elsewhere.

Additionally, be prepared to field questions regarding the safety of the shrimp, crab and oysters currently on your menu and in your house.  Remember, seafood that hit the market before the closure is perfectly safe to eat. Besides which, the waters west of the Mississippi River are still open and represent more than three-quarters of Louisiana seafood production. A great concern is the media misrepresenting the situation and convincing people to boycott seafood in general. Make sure you do your part to allay fears and maybe we can keep the nuclear fall-out from this Chernobyl under control.  

Sous Vide Cookery - Doing It Under Pressure and In A Bag.

Anyone growing up in the early sixties should be familiar with the boil-in-a-bag dinner. Before the widespread advent of microwaves, a short-form re-heating method was to drop your entire meal (carefully sealed in plastic) into a pot of boiling water. Of course, vacuum sealing has been recognized as a valid preservation technique from even farther back. But the combination of the two, their subsequent adoption by your higher-end professional kitchen, and the consequent coining of the term molecular gastronomy, has been sliding around the edges of the culinary scene for only two decades or so. These days more casual restaurants, and even some home cooks, are experimenting with what we’re now calling cooking sous vide. Sam Gundy, co-owner of Olliffe, a high-quality meat shop in Toronto, wrote a list of the top 10 carnivorous trends to watch in 2010. Right at the top? Sous Vide.

But will it be more than just a fad? A curriculum advisor from the Culinary Institute of America once told me that culinary schools have to be incredibly careful when choosing new courses; as respected institutions, they really can’t afford to chase a trend that might disappear tomorrow. So I think it speaks of the enduring nature of this particular cooking method that I’d like you to check out The French Culinary Institute’s primer on sous-vide cooking. Great temperature guides, thorough explanations and it’s well written to boot.

Now, unquestionably, as a technique, sous vide cookery has certain problems; it's much more reliable when applied to vegetables than to certain proteins, it creates a unique product but doesn’t necessarily always taste better than more traditional methods, and the professional-grade tools are quite expensive (my favorite is Polyscience). On the other hand, when used appropriately, sous vide can definitely create the sublime. So why not make up your own mind? Follow these instructions for making an immersion circulator out of a beer cooler, stage a competition, and see which technique will have it in the bag.

How Servers Represent Your Restaurant - Some Tips on Tips.

Now that I’ve covered why you should work on dealing with allergies, and I’ve covered how you can do so in the back of the house, there’s just one last frontier to deal with…though it’s the first frontier to face your guest. Your server. Or, well, at this point it becomes their server. And according to restaurant marketing firm You Got Meals, for better or for worse, to your customers their servers are your restaurant. So it’s absolutely no use taking the greatest of care in the kitchen if it isn’t reflected out on the floor.

Almost all critics and patrons agree that service will often prove more important than the food. A caring and passionate staff can even erase the memory of an overflowing plate of culinary missteps. So you can imagine how powerful that might make a problem-free kitchen! Moreover, that server pride usually ends up having a positive effect on customers’ financial appreciation as well. So it should be easy to convince your front of the house to adopt a positive attitude. According to the critics (and founders!) of ChefSeattle.com, a great site dedicated to food and foodservice in the Northwest United States, there are eight key tips to stand out, service-wise, from the rest of the culinary crowd. Here are the ones I think we most often forget, but you should definitely head to the article for the complete list: 

-       Your opinion as a server does matter: If the guest asks for your opinion they probably actually want it!

-       Learn your wines; surprisingly, people drink wine without knowing that much about it, which means that they’re going to look to you for expert advice. Be ready with some.

-       Learn how to handle the negatives. Lord knows that customers are going to complain, sometimes with validity, sometimes not. Handling these moments with verve and professionalism is the mark of a truly great server.

-       Smile! 

Working with Gluten-Intolerance - The Wheat Wasteland.

In 1922, T.S. Eliot wrote that April was the cruelest month of the year but, no offense to the great poet, it just happens to be my favorite. Besides the promise of summer, April offers two great holidays to keep us occupied: Easter and Passover. And since Passover, among other things, concerns a huge dietary restriction, it seemed like a great time to discuss the Gluten-Intolerant Guest as part two of my series on staying allergy conscious.  

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There are several different strains of the gluten-constrained breed, and, according to this LA Times article, the ranks are swelling fast: The doctor-diagnosed Celiac, the self-diagnosed Celiac, the Wheat-Sensitive and the Carb-Free. Yet, with a little planning, it’s easy for the restaurateur to come up with one common, economical system to deal with any gluten-related contingency. Considering that you’ll be well re-paid with free advertising on sites like the Gluten-Free Restaurant Awareness Program (which will even send you helpful info free of charge) and the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness, it’s entirely worth it.

Obviously, I’m not recommending you close up the bakery and go totally gluten-free. I’m just saying that an occasionally over-looked component of the food service industry is the effort to make people happy. Moderating our tendency to declare: “Take it or leave it!” might just help us in the big-picture sense of the long run. So, with that in mind, here are a few helpful hints at satisfactorily satisfying the gluten-intolerant, courtesy of Gluten-Free Cooking For Dummies:

-       Line cookware with foil and bam! Sterilized for gluten-free work.

-       Think of arrowroot, cornstarch or tapioca starch before you automatically reach for the flour. All of these work just as well as thickeners (and in some cases, better!)

-       Cornmeal or Masa can double as a breading in the fryer, plus they have a better flavor and a neat texture to boot.

-       Be wary of crumbs. Even 20 parts per million of gluten can make a celiac sick, so that means thinking about using typically un-food related areas of your kitchen to plate their dish and turning off the convection feature on an oven or toaster to avoid gluten-y dust.

-       Finally, be aware that gluten, like radar traps, can lurk in some surprisingly places. Amusingly, Passover Matzah is actually on the list of gluten-full items…and less obviously, so is soy sauce, malt vinegars and couscous. Here’s a small list of surprisingly unfriendly foods and here’s a more comprehensive list of banned items, if you'd really like to pore over it.

Dealing with Allergies – Put on the Ritz, but Hold the Cracker, Please.

Once upon a meal, somewhere out there in the restaurant-wilderness, a picky eater decided to ‘save time’ and pretend to have an allergy. Pleasantly amazed by the server’s understanding looks, and exhilarated by the careful exorcism preformed by the kitchen on the hapless ingredient, this picky, and as it turns out, loudmouthed, eater decided to spread the word. Flash forward to 2010 and servers are constantly faced with supposed allergies, which, nine out of ten times, are just the labels finicky diners give to their dislikes. Sadly, this has led to a backlash against the truly anaphylactic, those who aren’t just “breaking out in chives” as journalist Ruth Samuelson put it. I say sadly because, when treated with the appropriate care, fastidious customers can become the most loyal (and lucrative) of patrons.

So, with that in mind, consider this post the first in a series on staying allergy conscious, both in the front and back of the house.

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Most restaurateurs see an allergic customer as a hassle, an annoyance, someone better left at home but surprisingly…the allergic customer sees us the same way! A diner with a sensitive palate can rarely enjoy a simple meal out, always having to rigorously barter with the staff, often watch their companions eat while the kitchen fixes an inaccurately prepared dish and even, for the very severely limited, face unpleasant physical reactions. If you can prove yourself to be as accommodating to these tables as you are to any other, well, there’s a whole community out there just waiting to shower you with business! So, what to do?

First, you should check out FAAN, the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, and their comprehensive program on welcoming guests with food allergies. Second, you should read this article about how a frustrated father couldn’t find a restaurant that would cater to his allergic sons and then, you should review your restaurant on his brainchild, an online guide to allergy-friendly restaurants across the United States. Finally, you should tune in next week for the second installment. Or at least…that’s what I would do!

Deciding on Menu Prices – How to Jet Yourself into Profit.

Everybody knows that the restaurant industry has one of the greatest fail rates of any service-related field. Think about it; when was the last time you heard of the immense attrition facing massage therapists? Taxicab companies? Movie theatres?! So why not start taking a page from one of their books and adapt our, considerably less-successful, marketing and pricing schemes?

One of the more lucrative and unique of our peers is the Airline industry. Even with the ever-increasing, ever-confusing, regulations related to the ‘war on terror’, companies such as WestJet, British Airways and Delta still manage to fill a remarkable amount of seats. Restaurant Business magazine recently broke down four great high-flying promotional pricing approaches that could easily be redesigned for foodservice. Of course, they do warn you not to take it too far…Don’t forget what the meals up there taste like!

And once you’ve decided HOW you’re going to price your menu effectively, you can actually choose those prices. Here’s a great description of the four most commonly applied pricing formulas. Just determine what it’s going to cost you, or decide how much you want to make, plug the number in, and ta da! Instant menu prices.

Happy Pricing!

(And, remember, if a Captain Kirk look-a-like tries to push you into some sort of priceline negotiation, just stand your ground!)

The Soaring Costs of Hazardous Food-Handling – Up, Up and Away!

Salmonella, Listeriosis, Norovirus: The microscopic villains of the food service industry. Make the wrong move and these no-goodniks will give you sick customers, bad press, recall edicts and expensive legal hassles. As if you weren’t already concerned about the negative consequences of unsafe food handling, take a look at this article published recently in the LA Times. According to a new study by Georgetown University, the health-related costs of food-borne illnesses come close to a whopping $152 billion…a year. The study was released in an effort to push a food safety bill that would increase U.S. inspections, fund research and force the American food industry to ramp up record-keeping efforts, a bill which has stalled since last November.

But bill or no bill, making a heroic effort to keep supreme control over the food safety of your establishment is a smart choice. Fight BAC®! Fight bacteria that is, with these four key techniques as established by the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety program Be Food Safe:

                                     - Clean carefully
                                     - Separate to avoid cross-contamination
                                     - Cook to appropriate temperatures
                                     - Chill in a timely fashion

Remember, we professional foodies genuinely know what evil lurks in the hearts of romaine, so it’ll always be one of our most important tasks to keep those nefarious pathogens at bay.

Changing Portion Sizes to leave Guests Happier and Healthier – A Small Bite for a Man, a Large Leap for Mankind.

There’s no doubt about it, people are finally paying more attention to what they’re putting in their mouths. What they’re putting into their mouths and, consequently, into their bodies. Offering healthy (or at least healthier) choices isn’t really an option for the industry anymore. Unfortunately, if you’ll pardon the pun, customers want to both have and eat the cake, which makes transforming an established menu an awkward process. Enter portion control and enter a solution: Offer tiny tastes of your traditional dishes and find that happy medium to satisfy your customers. Mignardise, Amuse-Bouche, Canapé, Oh My!

There are several leaders on this trend: T.G.I.Friday has had amazing results with their “Right Portion – Right Price” menu, now heading into its third year. Fashion Week 2010 in London unveiled an impressive new crop of canapé-centric catering companies, while chefs like Gray Kunz, Wylie Dufresne, Anito Lo and Jean-Georges Vongerichten have always used the tiny taste to test-drive a new composition before committing to it on a menu.

Whether you let your patrons choose to have a dish pared down, or whether you space out smaller dishes with intermezzos and the like, just make sure that you let your customers take their time. No matter the size of the bite, guests who feel as if they have the time to literally pay attention to what they’re putting in their mouths, definitely leave happier.


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Confused by the lingo? Here’s a great summary of their history and definitions.

The Better to Convince You With – Understanding what Makes Us Say “Yes”

When it comes to sales and marketing, it’s hard, sometimes, to realize how similar we all are. At heart, we each want to be seen as likeable, as reasonable, as an authority on our given product, as committed and consistent. Surprisingly, this is true whether you’re the seller…or the buyer. Understanding these frequently unconscious desires can help you better position yourself as a quality purveyor, and, more importantly, better your chances of convincing your customers to make appropriate purchases. The principles of persuasion are simple and finite and, thanks to Dr. Robert Cialdini’s seminal work Influence: Science and Practice, easy to put into practice.

Written in 2001, Cialdini’s book reflects the three years he spent working, undercover, with restaurant servers, car salesmen, and pink ladies, trying to determine how the best in the biz close their sales. Additionally, the just-recently-retired Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University assembled an enormous amount of empirical research supporting these same methods.

My personal favorite? The principle of social proof or consensus: When uncertain, people tend to look around and mimic what other people – similar to them – are doing. Just watch an indecisive table all order the same entrée! Practically, this means that we are susceptible to sales pitches that invoke a comparable majority. Think of Amazon.Com’s “Customers Who Bought This Also Bought…” link. Cialdini himself found that just by adjusting the wording on a sign requesting hotel guests to reuse their towels – from ‘Help Reuse for the Environment’ to ‘The majority of People who stayed in this room Helped Reuse’ – nearly 20% more guests complied.

Ultimately, Cialdini defined a total of seven persuasive principles that, when properly employed, tend to color the bottom line black. Here’s a great summary of all of those techniques; you’ll be amazed at how recognizable they are! Truth is, they’ve been probably been used on you before…Or, you can watch the Doc explain them himself in the video below.

The Facility of Sustainability - Which Fish are the Right Fish?

It’s easy to make the decision to focus your menu towards more renewable proteins: You’re helping to replenish the environment and you’re saving money – without the big name, a fish rarely costs the big bucks. But how to implement the change? Loblaws, for example, has announced plans to only sell eco-friendly fish by 2013. Yet which fish are the right fish and what are the right words? Navigating the murky waters of sustainability can definitely be a challenge.

Thankfully, there is the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) to help! A U.K.-based non-governmental organization founded in 1977, the MCS is dedicated to protecting marine wildlife and preserving future fish stocks through educational outreach and proactive conservation campaigns. In my opinion, their best contribution is a frequently updated list of which fish to purchase and which to avoid – including an explanation why. Actually, their website is an absolute potpourri of information designed to educate the food service professional looking to go green. They even have a handy guide that you can print out and keep with your other purveyor-related papers. So it’s easy…once you know how!

Brilliant Thoughts - Hot Food Trends in the New Year

Bienvenue à 2010!
This month marks the very welcome beginning of the second decade of the 21st century. Although there will likely still be a bit more walking in the dark in 2010, most of us are starting to feel the situation brightening. No better time then to implement some bright new ideas! Every year, the National Restaurant Association (a U.S.-based advocate for the professional culinarian) polls over 1,800 chefs to determine the up and coming trends for the next twelve months.

Unsurprisingly, locally sourced products top almost every category for the industry. Equally unsurprising, most respondents cited food items that concentrated on health, in different forms, as an important trend in the upcoming year. These items ranged from creating entrée salad options for children to investing in gluten-free beer! Yet the best consensus in my opinion? Nearly three-quarters of the chefs surveyed agreed that creating menu items around underused cuts of meat and non-traditional fish - read inexpensive and readily available - is going to be super-hot in 2010. Save the environment and save money? Makes bright sense to me!


EDITED TO ADD: Check out how restaurants, supermarkets and cookbooks are putting these trends to work in Calgary!