Operating a restaurant

Anyone of you ever watch any of the “Kitchen Nightmares”, “Restaurant Makeover”, “Restaurant Impossible” or similar shows where a restaurant is failing and on the brink of bankruptcy? While the cooking and recipes can always be improved, the culprit of the failure is often menu choices, management conflicts, ingredient problems, attitude and role issues, etc.

• Menu choices – there was this restaurant that has 100s of items to choose from but the problem is that it takes about 15 minutes to even finish reading the menu. This affects the turnover rate and even more importantly, it makes it harder to stock all the necessary ingredients. It also means that every dish has to be prepared from ground zero which means that it will take significantly longer from start to finish.
• Management conflicts – most of the times, the restaurant is owned by more than one person, be it father and son, brothers or sisters, etc. When the leaders are not working towards the same goals, it makes it really hard for the employees, furthermore, it will cause resentment between each other.
• Ingredients – some restaurants take the ‘fast’ route and use frozen products. Having fresh produce and fresh meat make a huge difference. Sometimes, storing the ingredients in less than desirable conditions cause spoilage and wastage which increases food costs.
• Direct cost versus loaded cost – sometimes restaurants price the dishes so low based on just the direct cost of the ingredients and forgot totally about the hidden embedded cost like rent, labour, etc. Working for nothing cannot be sustained and certainly is not a formula for success.
• Attitude and role issues – everybody need to understand their primary roles and strive to excel in it. For example, if you are a restaurant manager / owner, you need to be able to motivate and lead and when someone is not up to par, you need to make some hard decisions and not let things slip. Sometimes, the owners are so full of themselves that they just simply refuse to listen to the feedback of their customers or of their front-line staff (waiters / waitresses).
• Theme and decor – operating a fast food takeout is quite different then a high-end restaurant. The menu, food preparation and presentation, the service and decor must matches what you are trying to achieve.

Exercise

• What is relevanance of this blog to your kung fu training? Comment on each point. (Hint: Apply some of the things you have already learn from class or previous blogs)