Ken Burgin

Restaurant Productivity

Staff Recruitment & Management

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

March 15, 2020 No Comments

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?

March 7, 2020 No Comments

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

March 6, 2020 No Comments

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

March 2, 2020 No Comments

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

March 1, 2020 No Comments

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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Reducing the Drama When Staff Resign

February 22, 2020 No Comments

Had someone quit unexpectedly? It’s costly, especially if they hold an important position. A colleague found out her operations manager was planning to leave, when the news slipped out accidently. She moved fast to cover the gap, and reflecting on it later, said: Part of the problem is that most staff don’t know how to resign or handle these situations professionally… Sound familiar? No-one wants good staff leaving, ever, but if it’s going to happen,

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Petty Theft – Where Do You Draw the Line With These ‘Grey Areas’?

February 18, 2020 No Comments

Ever seen staff help themselves to food, drink or even cash, and they seem to think it’s OK? You call it shrinkage, waste, ‘unders’, discrepancies or theft. What do they call it? It’s the grey areas that cause problems: drinks or food for friends and family, sloppy work that results in waste, or taking home left-overs. Grey has to become black or white. Does the culture you’ve created reward honesty, or overlook those who break

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Ask Staff to Use this ‘Briefcase Technique’ if They Want a Raise

February 15, 2020 No Comments

Here’s the thing: we don’t mind giving staff a pay rise if they plan to add more value. But most times, they don’t know how to negotiate for a raise in a convincing way. Ramit Sethi’s Briefcase Technique, outlined in the video below, is a great way to help them understand what you really want to hear. If they do plenty of preparation, you only have to say yes – the case they make is

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McDonalds is retraining our customers, and it’s a good thing…

February 6, 2020 No Comments

Here’s the revamped McDonalds in Sydney’s inner suburb of Kingsford. 24 (twenty four) kiosks have replaced the queuing area, and the pickup counter is now just a small area on the side. The McCafe remains (on the right). You can order at the counter, but there are no visible registers or signage to indicate this. Cooking is now out of sight. Trays are gone, and if you choose to dine in instead of takeaway, you

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What’s your Business Plan B for when the Caronavirus hits Australia?

January 28, 2020 No Comments

I’m still trying to process and understand the implications for restaurants, cafes and foodservice – the news keep unfolding every day. I’ll keep updating this over time – so much to consider… Last year we had more than 1.4 million tourists from Chinese, many of them travelling in groups – new bookings have now been stopped. How exposed is your business to overseas tourists? Even my Uber driver this morning said he often has Chinese

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