A Restaurant Guy
@arestaurant_guy
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SMB/Restaurateur with two restaurants and a catering company. My grammar embarrasses me constantly. Not responsible for your issues with tipping.
Joined March 2021
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There's been some talk recently about restaurant inflation. Here's some comparisons between 2018 and 2023:
Our prices
Build your own Burger $12 vs $13.50 (+12.5%)
Kids Meals $5.50 vs $6.50 (+18.18%)
Average Sandwich/Wrap $12.5 vs $14 (+12%)
Pop $2.99 vs $2.99 (+0%)
Bud Light
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Got an email from a potential catering customer.
She wanted to feed 400 people, and had a list of 3-4 items she wanted included.
We told her for that many people it’d be expensive, but got her a quote.
She was shocked, and said her budget was $1,200. To feed 400 people. With
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Just got notice from our bank that they're now going to be charging us $0.25 for every $100 deposited over $5,000 in cash.
Guess who's getting a new bank?
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@ChrisUnits
Inheritance tax should be 0%.
Pay your taxes, build for your family, pass it on. Government shouldn’t get to double dip.
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When I hire someone, I tell them my only five rules to not get fired with no warning.
1) Do not lie to me. We can fix nearly every problem except that trust that will be lost if I'm lied to.
2) Do not steal from me or other members of the staff.
3) Do not show up drunk or
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Ways to steal from a restaurant:
1) Pouring doubles when a customer orders a single in hopes of a bigger tip
2) Charging for 2 shots when a customer order 5 and either (a) pocket the difference or (b) hope for a bigger tip
3) Put steaks in a garbage bag. Throw it away. Pick
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Restaurants that charge their customers a fee higher than they get charged by Visa and Mastercard should be fined heavily.
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Holy Crap.
My brother just called me and said I needed to add another "must fire" event to my list.
Last week, a server dropped a basket of chicken tenders in the kitchen-AND PROCEEDED TO PUT THEM BACK IN THE BASKET AND SERVE THEM TO A CUSTOMER.
A 2nd server saw them fall as
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Just drove 30 minutes to a restaurant that ended up being closed.
Google, their website, and all social media said they were open for another 2 hours.
100% lock I’ll never even try to eat there again.
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Kitchen manager just put his two weeks in.
The next two months we have 8 weddings.
Our college kids go back to school in three weeks, and we’re still busy.
He was offered $4 more an hour than we were paying to be a sous chef at a new restaurant. We matched it, which would
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I went into our sports bar last night to pick up some wings to go.
We got a new pool table installed, so I wanted to try it out.
As I was cashing out, I asked the server (who’s new) for change and handed him a dollar. He has no idea who I am.
He tells me it’s $2 for pool.
I
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A second core belief of mine is that the customer should never be rushed out the door.
Chairs don't go up on tables until after the last customer leaves.
If you're mopping within 10 feet of a customer at the end of the night, you're mopping too early.
Why would a customer ever
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@JasonGordonSays
Yes.
And multiple items at that.
I mayyyyy have found a way to do a cheap Mac and cheese at $3 for that amount of people. Maybe.
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I wholeheartedly believe that service animals have no business being allowed inside a restaurant.
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Gift cards make us more money than I ever imagined.
From Dec '22 to Nov '23, we sold $22,800 in gift cards. Only $14,660 were used.
Over 35% of gift cards haven't been claimed!!
If you're ever wondering why so many restaurants run buy $25/get $5 Christmas promos...this is it.
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@mhdksafa
I renamed my wifi as free (city) Wi-Fi.
My cousin was on the town board, and he kept getting calls asking what the password was.
I was so proud of myself.
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I didn't think I'd have to say this, but the 5 second rule DOES NOT apply in restaurants.
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Facebook Post:
“Sunday is Burger Night! $7 Burgers from 5 to 10!”
Facebook Comments:
“What day?”
“How much are the Burgers?”
“I’ll be there at 8, can I get the discount?”
Every. Damn. Time.
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My ten commandments for our GMs:
1) No politics or news on the TVs, ever.
2) No county music stations on the radio.
3) Closing time is when we take the last order, not when we kick people out of the building.
4) Never shut the doors earlier than what we have listed online.
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@MichaelTimoney1
Exactly!!
Like...isn't that the goal of the bank to get deposits so they can loan more money?
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A lightbulb moment was realizing that $ margin matters more than % margin.
I'd rather sell a $15 hamburger that costs $8 than a $7 hamburger that costs $1.
% matters, but $ matters more.
A wise man once said, "Percentages goes on the balance sheet; dollars go in the bank."
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Don't let an employee get leverage over your business.
No, the chef doesn't get to keep the recipes in his head.
No, the manager can't be the only one that knows how to close/open.
No, the server can't be the face of your business.
Just don't do it.
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Cocktails that take about the same time to make as pouring a draft beer, with our pricing:
Lemonade punch:
1.5 ounces of Vodka
8 ounces lemonade
2 ounces Sierra Mist
Charge $7, cost is $.35
Sex on the beach:
1 oz vodka
.5 oz triple sec
4 oz OJ
4oz pineapple
$7.50/$.40
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We had 3 weddings today.
After feeding the staff (including the restaurants) we had food left for ~100.
Would love to drop it off at a shelter, but the health board says no.
I get it. Still stupid.
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My man. You got a 24 ounce IPA, how much did you think it would cost?
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One of my core beliefs of restaurants is that a customer should never drive to our place and be surprised we're closed.
We open at the same time every day.
We close at the same time, even if we're dead.
We don't close random days outside of acts of nature.
If Google says
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How I valuate restaurants:
First, we're going to make some assumptions here due to limited info-we're going to assume that what they have posted is accurate. Normally, this is a poor assumption, but it's all we have.
My first step is looking at cash flow. I ran a poll a
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If you ask a server why they're leaving their current job, and their response is "There's too much drama at my old job", DO NOT HIRE THEM.
They are, 100% of the time, the reason for the drama.
I'm not sure there's a bigger red flag for a server.
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My process when I interviewed servers:
1) Resume doesn't matter to me. Sure, we look at it before we call someone in, but having 10 years serving experience doesn't make you a lock. I really don't care. Most serving skills can be taught; personality, trust, and demeanor
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I’ll never understand the fascination with chain restaurants (yes, Chilis included).
Five Guys has won best burger in our city the last three years.
Applebees is .1 of a mile from us. I know they microwave their food. Their cocktails and beer are more expensive than us.
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(And yes, $2 is too much for pool. It’ll be lowered)
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There's a lot of tricks to designing a menu.
- No dollar signs
- Boxing in high dollar margin items
- High profit items in top right corner
- Top two + bottom items in each section are most bought
Designing a good menu can have a huge effect on the bottom line.
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It's WILD how many people in the comment are defending theft and/or admitting to getting free stuff as customers and being perfectly fine with it.
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We've been open for 25 days. A quick summary of where things are at.
Sales: $141,200
Labor: $57,100 40.5%
Beer COGS 26%
Liquor COGS 43%
Food COGS not sure
Average ticket $30
Staffing levels are fine.
Reviews are eh--> Mostly good reviews on food, but the occasional bad one.
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@OppressedM6528
Every single wage in the world is paid by customers.
Restaurants just bill it differently.
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Restaurant employees are wild.
We're absurdly flexible with schedules-almost to a fault. We also over communicate these things.
For the most part, our core group of employees love that because a lot of places don't do either.
We just had an employee quit because he was
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Unemployment in the US is an absolute joke of a process.
We had a KM that voluntarily resigned in July for another job. We offered to match the pay bump; he turned it down.
The new job was seasonal-which he would have known.
He filed for unemployment at the end of fall. We
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Yelp sucks.
Use any other service you can find for business reviews.
They incessantly call & then try to blackmail businesses into advertising by offering to bury bad reviews (I'm 95% sure they create some of these bad reviews).
Try TripAdvisor or Google.
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It blows my mind how many people break one or more of these rules and expect to not be fired.
I'd say we've lost
~ 2 people who have verifiably lied.
~ 5 that have stolen
~12 that have shown up intoxicated
~ too many to count that can't show up on town
~ 4 that have treated
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My third core belief- the news should NEVER be on TV in a restaurant.
Imagine Joe Biden.
Now imagine Donald Trump.
At least one of the two gave you a negative reaction.
Why would you want that for any of your customers?
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Restaurants we're competing against right now:
1) Two spots paying ~2/3 of their staff in cash, likely saving 35K+ a year in payroll taxes.
2) A spot selling multiple items a week at >70% food COGs, and most of their items >50%. They owe their vendor in excess of 100K.
3) A
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Something that took me awhile to grasp:
Assume your fixed costs are $200,000.
If you have $500,000 in sales, 25% labor, and 25% COGS, you make $50,000.
If you have $2,000,000 in sales, a 40% labor, and 40% COGs, you make $200,000.
For too long, I focused on cutting costs
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Is there an industry filled with more owners that never should have gotten into the business than restaurants?
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The reality of running a family owned restaurant:
You’re going to be surrounded by people significantly less intelligent than you. You’ll have to change the way you talk, communicate, lead.
You’re going to be surrounded by people with a worse work ethic, who think calling off
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How a Nick Huber thread effected the entire direction of our company and my life:
This time last year, we were debating between buying an empty location for a 2nd restaurant and purchasing a flooring company.
We we knew that we could only logistically take on one.
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Reminder to not talk politics with your staff or customers.
Nothing good can come from it.
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I've managed to monetize Twitter in a different way than a lot of people: I crowd source our restaurant's biggest issues.
On Friday, I posted a thread referencing COGS. Someone I'd never interacted with before DMed me. He ended up giving me an idea that will save us 20K/year.
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There’s nothing that turns me off a product more quickly than “request a quote” or “request demo” instead of just giving me the pricing so I can quickly see if I even have interest.
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@madison_tayt
My favorite part of this thread is everyone screaming “servers need to be paid more!” when the reality is this table was probably there for 3 hours.
$70/3=$23/hour
Plus all of the other tables she had during this time. With a $700 ticket, she’s likely making $80+ an hour.
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I have two younger cousins (16 & 15) that want jobs.
Outside of occasionally washing dishes, I’ve refused.
I don’t trust them to take it seriously.
I don’t trust myself to hold them accountable.
I don’t want to have our relationship go from one where we play video games
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I was supposed to be a hands off owner.
Our first partner:
~ sold cocaine out the back door
~ thought 45% food COGs was fine
~ thought 35% labor was cool
~ tried to gas light me at every turn
~ spent 5k on a CC on fast food when we had less than 1k in our bank
~ likely stole
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I thought the Bud Light boycott was going to be something that lasted a month, three at most.
I was dead wrong.
In November of 2022, Bud Light was 13.5% of our bottle and draft sales.
In November of 2023, Bud Light was 8.86% of our bottle and draft sales.
A 35% drop in sales
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@c_gro
I worked at a job once that was 12 hours shifts where you only worked 50% of days.
Christmas time I’d take 3 vacation days and get 16 days off.
Pure bliss.
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@neil_wyles
I wonder if they'll put us on tag us on their Instagram that has 700 followers too?!
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Well designed menus have a lot more science behind them than you think.
1) Eye Movement
There's some differing research on this, but the general consensus is that the most profitable items need to go in the "Golden Triangle" (pic 1 is Chili's menu)
In order: Top right, top
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The downside of Twitter is that with all the good content, I get shiny object syndrome & want to change fields.
It's taken everything in me not to open up a business selling fireworks out of a vending machine based in a storage facility washed by a company owned cleaning service
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@Ernieiceman
100%
A customer that comes into our establishment is trusting us to feed them without getting them sick.
Repaying that trust by acting like this has no place in our industry.
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We hired a GM for the sports bar about two months ago. I said then I was cautiously optimistic, as it was one of the best GM interviews I've sat in on.
We paid him 70K (top 2% for GMs in our area) plus a sliding bonus of up to 20% of yearly profits.
Since then:
The good:
~
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If
@MrBeast
gave me 5 million dollars to fix Beast Burger, here's how I'd turn it into a billion dollar business:
1) Style
Ghost kitchen gone, obviously. Focus would be as many locations as quickly as possible. That leads to QSR style fast food setup. Limit the square
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Everybody says this.
And then, when restaurants try “no tip” and raise their prices-they fail.
It’s been tried over and over again.
The market has decided they want to tip.
Let me play "Devil's Advocate." If Americans refused to tip, I guarantee you that the business owners would pay their employees more. Because they'd have no employees at all. I'm willing to pay more for a meal. But, as long as we make up the difference, it'll remain the same.
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What I hope to see from a salesman who is trying to get our business:
1) Come prepared. Have at least an idea of what our menu is, because pitching Chinese food to a sports bar just doesn't make sense.
2) Don't bash our current supplier. I use them for a reason. I trust them
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One time I was serving and two people were fighting over the bill at a table of 8.
The table had been great, we were joking back and forth the entire meal.
I said “I’ll start the bidding at a 15% tip”
Awkward stares.
I never made that joke again.
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We changed our menu 2 weeks ago and were able to increase average ticket cost without increasing sticker shock. Here’s how:
1) Have our sandwiches default to fries as a side, with a $2 upgrade to other sides. Our burger and fries is still 12.50, but our burgers and Mac is 14.50
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We’ve struggled for months with food costs. Every week, we bring it up in our meetings.
We were making zero progress. We weren’t getting any actual ideas, or at least not many.
Three weeks ago, we instead told our GM, KM, and EC they all needed to bring 2 actionable items to
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Offered a server $50 for 50 google reviews with her name.
6 reviews in 4 hours.
Just ask for reviews, guys. You’ll get more $ in your pocket.
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My process when I interview cooks:
Did they show up on time?
Hired.
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Had a 17 year old cook ask me today why she shouldn’t go to Walmart and get paid more to do less work.
I don’t have an answer to that question.
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@wanyeburkett
Facebook post: “Wing special, $5 off on Thursday’s from 5 to close”
Comment section: “what day?” “$5 wings?! NICE!” “I’ll be there at 8 do I get the discount?”
Every. Damn. Time.
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If I had to restart our process from day 1:
1) I'd buy an existing restaurant with >1.5 million in sales
2) Make sure I planned on being the GM for at least the first year, and serving/bartending at least 20 hours a week.
3) Focus on revenue, not labor
4) Interview HARD for
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Generally, the worst customers will fire themselves.
Accept their resignation.
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Getting HAMMERED this week.
Last year we did 31k or so
This year we may break 40k.
Our 2500 ft facility is not meant for a 2M a year run rate. Our 2 fryers are getting crushed, I’m worried about our septic, our freezers are packed but I’m not sure it’s enough.
My “I’m
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My cousin turns 16 tomorrow.
He’s spent the last 3 years under the misguided impression I’m buying him a car for his birthday.
I bought a big red ribbon, rented a car, and it’ll be parked in front of his house tomorrow morning. I’m going to drive it away after his party.
I’ve
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@VijarKohli
That’s fair. I guess I’m weird, because when I’m out of town I specifically look for non chains to try.
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The easiest way to make sure your employees know you’re on the same team:
If a piece of equipment breaks, fix it ASAP.
If it needs replaced, replace it.
If they need a tool to do their job, buy it.
Don’t make them struggle. You’ll make more $ in the long run.
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@MrBeast
@StoryAviraTime
@MrBeastBurger
You’d be better off starting actual restaurants/QSRs with a head of ops. Higher up front cost, but significantly more controls on product.
Hit me up if you’re interested, I might know a guy.
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I pay for my food when I’m not working. I get weird looks from the new servers when that happens.
I think it sets the right tone though of:
1) if I pay for my food, I expect you and your friends to pay for yours.
2) I’m not above the rules of the restaurant
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We do trivia nights on Tuesdays. Usually do ~$1700 in sales for it.
Last week, we paid $100 more for a theme night-The Office.
Ended up being standing room only and people left because they couldn’t find seats.
Sales ended up at ~$2800.
Not a huge number (because zero
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If other industries/vendors were judged in the same way as restaurants and expected to deliver timely service, 95% of the businesses I interact with would fail.
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Prior to posting the poll on charging for sauces that don't come with a meal, I would have argued quite hard that it's ridiculous to NOT charge for the extras.
~ I don't expect to go to Walmart and get a candy bar for free because it just doesn't create friction and the costs
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Things we've stolen from other restaurants:
Specials
Bar Design
Menu Pricing
Menu Design
Food Recipes
Cooler Layout
Kitchen Design
Celebrity Chefs
Posts for Indeed
Cocktail Recipes
Advertising Copy
Tipping Processes
Advertising Design
Training Processes
Social Media Posts
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A week after we opened, we got a review from Mark saying we wouldn’t be open in a year.
I have a reminder set in my phone for February 15th.
On that day, I will be commenting on Mark’s review, inviting him for a free dinner at our one year anniversary party.
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Our GM was out last week.
Our liqueur sales were down a significant amount.
We did some digging; one of our server’s percentage of sales attributed to liquor went from 12% to <4%.
She’s getting fired today, even with no one catching her actually stealing.
Numbers matter.
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Ahh, Christmas Eve!
Time to go hang out with the Kitchen Manager we fired last year who's now dating my cousin!
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The funniest bad reviews are the ones complaining about being shocked when they got the bill.
Sir? The prices are all on the menu.
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Basic server tips that have worked very well for me and our staff:
1) If there's no host, immediately say hello when someone walks in the door. Tell them you'll be with them shortly. 60 seconds with no acknowledgement will feel like 5 minutes.
2) Ask how the customers are
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Restaurant employees are going to steal. Doesn’t matter if they’ve been with you for 2 days or 20 years, there’s a chance they’ll try. Here’s some ways to try to stop it.
Prevention
Everything starts with prevention. If you aren’t doing these things, you’re making your life
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We added Door Dash last week. Nobody in our organization had ever used it before, so we weren't sure what to expect.
Total sales first 7 days: $675
That's with us not being able to do any on Saturday due to no drivers because of snow.
Some benefits:
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Our historical July 4ths and my thoughts at the time:
2018 $4,774.60 “Fuck yeah we’re rich!”
2019 $5,205.01 “Eh, could be better.”
2020 $3,748.21 “God damnit, Covid”
2021 $7,850.36 “Fuck yeah we’re rich!”
2022 $8,660. 81 “I like this new normal”
2023 $9,699.97 “Really
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