One of the great faults of restaurants and servers is the end of the meal. Guests come in and have a great time. They love the ambience. They love the cocktails and wine. They think that the food is great.

Well, not it’s time to handle one of the big ones. Over the years, I have had a number of guests tell me that “The Customer is always right!” one said it in a tone that wasn’t going to get him what he thought he would derive from making that statement to me. In truth, the Customer is not always right, BUT, they are always the customer.

Managers are famous for working the room and asking guests, “How was everything?” The guest will generally respond with, “Fine”. At that point the manager moves on and in their mind they think that they checked in with the guests and got positive feedback. Great interaction; end of story.

I have a bit of a running joke with my staff where I ask them if anyone saw the dead moose in the vestibule to the restaurant. They all ask in shock “is there really a dead moose in the vestibule?” I would reply, no, but how would you know. The entire staff comes in the back door to the kitchen and they don’t see what the customer sees.

The answer is, “YES, we are always hiring”. There have been times in my career where I had assembled a really good staff and things were going smoothly. It’s tempting at that moment to think that things are great and you don’t need anyone else to fit in the schedule. But then, a staff member announces they are moving, that they have decided to go back to school, They are pregnant or they have some other life choice that means that they are leaving. Suddenly, that server who handled five shifts a week is gone.

I always loved when Billy Crystal did his Ricardo Montalban impression when he said “You look Mahvelous!”. Of course, I like most of what Billy Crystal did! However, there is something to be said for appearances. Now I know that everyone is lining up to tell me that it doesn’t matter and that everyone has the right to be an individual and look like they want. And I agree, on their time they do. But when your employees are in your restaurant, they represent you, and then, Looks are important.

Years ago, we opened a second unit to our flagship restaurant 2 hours away in another state. It was a difficult thing to do and then after opening our executive chef/ Manager left to get married and we were in a bit of a bind. My partner and I began to split the shifts and I would work Monday and Tuesday, he would come down and relieve me and work Wednesday and Thursday and I worked Friday and Saturday. Thankfully we had someone who managed Sundayfor us.

I always ask myself who have I spoken to in the course of the day that will help me to grow my business. I talk to a lot of people every day because it’s my job. Some are brand new individuals who I just met. Nice people that just happen to have come across my path. Some in the restaurant and some in the check-out line at the grocery store. All are just people when you first meet them. But then, I find out more about them. Recently I had a couple at one of the bars in the restaurant and I was chatting with them.

I have a friend who is also in the restaurant business. He and his partner own 85 units of an east coast chain, all privately held by the two of them. They have been wildly successful and maybe two of the nicest guys on the planet. They used to live near one of my restaurants, but have since moved to Florida.

You run your business 24/7. You are always marketing, thinking about ways to make your business more successful. It’s an all the time endeavor. However, sometimes you need to take a break and get a little break from the day to day challenges. But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t able to look for ways to make yourself more successful.

We owned a bar that featured Rum. Lots of rum. To be fair, 134 different rums from all over the world. We had a tropical theme and people who came in enjoyed the rum cocktails and easy going vibe. Jimmy Buffet, God rest his soul, would have been proud. But we wanted to create something that would keep the guests coming back. Out of that desire, an idea was formed. We started a Rum passport club.

Years ago, we partnered with our friends at a very famous Irish Beer company to hype our St. Patrick’s day celebration. We were a bar that wasn’t necessarily an Irish pub, but we were close enough to get some traction out of the Holiday. And St. Patrick’s Day, when everyone is a little Irish, is a great day for food and beverage if you market it correctly.

Every great restaurant starts with a great story. Who are you? Where did you come from? What is it about you and your business that makes a great story? How does your story connect with your guests to make them more likely to support you and your business as you grow? By telling your unique story, you create a connection bigger than just the food and drinks that you serve.

At one of our restaurants, we serve oysters. Big, Juicy, wet, raw, briny oysters! I love them. We offer the standard cocktail sauce, Horseradish, and a Mignonette sauce. But we also have a green pepper sauce that pairs beautifully with the taste of the raw oysters. It goes well on a lot of dishes, but I love it, particularly on the shellfish. Everyone talks about it and so, we ended up having it bottled for us as a way of being unique and notable.

Every restaurant needs a “mayor”. Not the political kind, but the small-town model of that individual that everyone knows. It's great if your staff develops a relationship with the customers in a way that they come back to see them specifically, but it’s best to have someone who everyone recognizes as the “personality” of the business. In some businesses, it’s the owner who is always on the floor greeting guests and treating everyone like an old friend.

We discovered an idea maybe 15 years ago that may be the best marketing idea we’ve ever conceived. We call it the Red Envelope giveaway. Here’s how it works. We actually print red envelopes that have our logo on the front. On the flap, it has instructions in large bold type. It starts with “Do Not Open This Envelope!” Here’s how it works. Each sealed envelope holds a card that lists a prize. Free glass of wine. Free appetizer. A free dessert.

There is a saying that goes, “The way you onboard your staff sets the tone for your business”. In short, set eh ground rules for new employees and be diligent about making sure that they understand who you are as an organization and what you stand for. If people come on board the organization without knowing the ground rules and what is expected of them, they tend to do whatever they like. That, is a recipe for disaster.

Believe it or not, the decision as to where to dine is often made by the kids. Do you think that the happy meal happened by chance? Kids often influence the choice of food venues because they like or have fun at the establishment. Though they don’t account for a large part of the total check, they are the ones who bring parents and family along.

There used to be a business axiom that you should spend between 5 and 10 percent of your yearly sales total on advertising and marketing. Now, whether that was created by Park Avenue is ripe for discussion, but businesses worked somewhere around those numbers. Back in the day of print media, restaurants advertised in the Newspaper, Magazines and other publications. The pitch was always that 52,000 subscribers will see your ad. Some high end publications would pitch us with ¼ page ads at a price of $3,500. Why, because all of these people were going to see my ad. Of course, these people were from all over the market, many 50 miles from my location.

Information is money. But how are you going to get your customers to offer up theirs? The more that you know about your customers the better you can create additional revenue. Who are they? Where are they from? What is their Birthday or Anniversary? What did they think of their visit to your restaurant? All of this information is extremely valuable and so you need a way to secure that from your customers in a way that they want to give it to you. We devised a card that allowed for all of that, and gave them a chance at a reward at the same time.

Everyone knows that gift cards are the fast and easy way to sell your business to your guests. They fit in a wallet and they look like a credit card, which of course, is really the whole idea. They are clean, neat and easily issued on your POS system. There was a time years ago, where gift card sales where a billion dollar industry particularly around the holidays. Businesses were hawking their cards and packaging them so that the last minute shopper was eager to use it instead of spending a great deal of time shopping for that “Perfect Gift”. With the use of gift cards, of course, the way they were issued and the restrictions changed. You can no longer put an expiration date on a gift card. They are good forever.

Years ago, we had a chef, we’ll call him Larry, and he made a crab dip. It was pretty good, but we decided to highlight it by always saying that we had “Chef Larry’s World Famous Crab Dip!.” The title always accompanied the dish. On Catering menus, on the restaurant menu, when we were hosting a fundraiser, it was always the same. Chef Larry’s World Famous Crab Dip. After a while, our customers picked up the mantle and began to say, “and oh yeah, I need some of that World Famous Crab Dip”. Once in an argument with Larry, he told me that he had a world famous Crab Dip. I responded that it was only world famous because I told everyone that it was! Remember, we were a local restaurant and not a National Chain and so everything is open to one person’s opinion. But Larry’s, was World Famous.

More and more businesses are creating an identity through color. A certain national donut shop is about the Pink and the Orange. Those trucks that deliver packages overnight highlight the purple and the orange. The world’s largest sales and delivery company has a particular blue grey and white. All of these companies no longer even need to say who they are on their signage because we all associate them because we recognize the color scheme. Our minds automatically say, “oh that must have something to do with FEDEX” because we see the colors and fill in the blank. These massive companies spend billions developing the color recognition because they want to evoke recognition at first glance. But what can you do to achieve the same thing, without spending millions in marketing?

Everyone has seen the Food Shows where Adam Richman goes to a restaurant and eats the 12 pound hamburger or the 8 pound burrito, or some over the top challenge that a mere mortal could not achieve. And truth be told, 99% of the people who visit those restaurants on a regular basis are not there to complete the over the top challenge of a ridiculous dish. But, the restaurant doesn’t care. All they want is for people to talk about it in the community so that the word of mouth makes people come in.

A business card is a way of introducing yourself to someone. Your logo, address and Phone number. Maybe the website address and an email. I should know, because I have a stack of them that I collect all of the time. But what makes yours memorable? If your card is just going to end up in a stack of others, why go to the trouble of having them and handing them out?

Over the years we have learned that sometimes, you need to think outside the box. Does it make sense to give away things to try and win a new customer? Absolutely! We have a supplier who does all of our embroidery and our shirts and hats. I told the owner once that he should consider doing a little something for free and include it in the delivery of the goods that we ordered.

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