Ken Burgin

Restaurant Productivity

Employees

Love Problems at Work: Is Your Restaurant at Risk?

Many people found a partner where they worked, and we need more happy relationships in this industry, not less! But in the steamy, late-night world of hospitality, love and lust often flourish and they can cause problems. Legally, it could be regarded as discriminatory to say ‘no relationships between staff’, but clear rules need to be in place to avoid disruption. Harassment and discrimination. Your duty of care for staff means you should make sure

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Measuring Staff Costs – Go Deeper for More Control & Better Results

Wages costs and productivity are everyone’s big issue. To track performance, you need figures that are accurate, easy to find, and easy to explain to people they affect. Managers need them to benchmark rostering and hiring decisions. Staff need to understand the productivity that’s expected, and how they contribution to business success. Important Staff KPIs: Total cost of labour – wages plus all on-costs. Some aren’t paid at the same time as wages, but are

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Understanding and Using ‘Influence Patterns’ with Restaurant & Cafe Customers

Ever fallen into the trap of doing things you didn’t want to do? You may have given money to someone hustling in the street; signed up for products you had absolutely no need for or let a person cut ahead of you in a line for no justifiable reason. In most instances you responded more or less automatically. They ‘influenced’ you in a way that caused you to act differently to what you thought was

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Resources for reflection and action on Black Lives Matter…

We’re all watching what’s happening in the USA, Australia, UK and around the world with Black Lives Matter protests. There’s much to reflect on, and there are many times we see racism within our own hospitality industry. People of colour, immigrants and vulnerable refugees have traditionally done much of our hot, heavy and dirty work, only sometimes rising to take on better-paid jobs as trained chefs and managers. Here are some links to articles and

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Why The E-Myth is Still So Relevant for Cafe & Restaurant Owners

It was published 24 years ago in 1986, and reverberated like a thunderclap in the world of business. You’ve heard that saying ‘work on your business, not in your business‘ so many times you could scream. That’s from the The E-Myth!, and author Michael Gerber’s message is still electrifying, even in a world run by digital systems… and facing virus restrictions and dislocation. Years ago I ran one-day management events for restaurant owners and would

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How Hospitality & Restaurant Trainers can Work Remotely: a Survival Guide…

Hospitality training has usually been done in person – we hospo people like to ‘stand up and do it’. With the restrictions and closing of many restaurants and cafes, there’s an urgent need to present training in new ways. We need very different tools and completely new methods – traditional workbooks with pen & paper don’t translate very well. Here’s a bunch of tools, resources and ideas to use and experiment with… Understand the world

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Planning for a 50% loss of restaurant sales – what will you do?

We must plan for the worst. Now’s the time to be like swans – floating calmly on the surface, and paddling very quickly under the water. This is real folks – take a lesson from what Chinese restaurants have gone through in the last 3 months, with customers almost completely disappearing. What if half your business disappeared in two weeks? You need to plan for a specific scenario. This is not like ‘sales are down

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Tips for Video Meetings – Setup and Etiquette

Video conferences and meetings are becoming a part of daily work life, allowing remote staff to share and interact more fully. There are many opportunities to use it in restaurant, cafe and event management – any opportunity to work from home is a good one! Skype has been around for a long time, and Zoom is very popular. Other conference systems include GoToMeeting, Join.me, BlueJeans and Google Hangouts Meet. Conference Etiquette: Integrate meetings into work

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Sharing ideas about how to make Webinars more interesting

It was great to share my thoughts with the Facilitation Queen Leanne Hughes, about how to make webinars more engaging and interesting. With looming restrictions on live gatherings, they have to be in the toolkit of every trainer and meeting facilitator. The SilverChef webinars I’ve started have had a great response, and this method of teaching and learning is becoming much more familiar and popular. Here’s Leanne sharing her experience, and drawing on the ideas

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Show the Sparkling Cleanliness of Your Business to Reassure Anxious Customers

News about the spread of Coronavirus is not good, and people are starting to panic – we need to stand as islands of calm and true hospitality, while taking important precautions. It’s also time to take urgent management action to protect your profitability. You can stand out from the crowd by being spotlessly CLEAN and HYGIENIC. Here are some quick ways to make this obvious to customers. There also need to be special precautions with

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