Restaurant Lessons from a Recession (Part Two) – Marketing
Perhaps marketing is the most challenging task a restaurateur faces with or without the impact of a recession. Recognizing that there is a recession is always in hindsight and pinpointing the day it started is impossible. You don’t wake up one morning and the newspaper headlines tell you your business is down, people are losing [...]
Destination Designation – Not Performing in Economic Downturn
Many high end food operations previously positioning themselves as “destination” restaurants are getting hit hard in this recession. Almost every segment of the food service world has been affected in one way or another, but double digit declines for the special occasion operations are the norm. The same store sales decline is on top of [...]
Finding Breakeven for a New Restaurant May Be Elusive for Months
Notwithstanding the current economic conditions, which complicate projections, a breakeven revenue number may be difficult to determine for new restaurant startups. Most restaurant operators look at fixed costs, employee costs, the average cost of goods(a percentage), administrative costs and deduct those numbers from hypothetical monthly sales figure. In theory, the formula should work.
The new restaurant [...]
Restaurant Survival – Beyond the Recession
Unless you are one of the QSR chains with 79¢ to 99¢ “value” menus, your revenue is down or customer counts are down (and maybe both). Many restaurateurs have resorted to heavy discounting and coupons to drive traffic. While I am highly skeptical of this practice for the long term benefit, many restaurants have been [...]
Small Silver Lining in Clouds for Restaurants?
While all of the economic turmoil is whirling around the media, Wall Street and political forums, there is something happening in the background that may be a silver lining for the restaurant industry. If you look closely in the crevices of the commodities there are some interesting price fluctuations going on with food and wholesale [...]
