Why Hire Hospitality Solutions?
With over 50 years of experience in restaurant and food service management, Hospitality Solutions can offer independent professional assistance in all areas of restaurant, bar and food service operations extending from the front of house to the back of the house.
We are a full-service restaurant consulting firm serving both full and quick-serve restaurants, cafes, catering halls, bars and hotels. Our knowledgeable team specializes in successful restaurant start-ups, refurbishments and modernization. We offer start-up support such as concept development, facility design, and menu creation and execution. Our team of professionals can also improve the profitability of existing restaurants by improving vendor contracts, operational audits, and staffing and training.
How To Hire A Restaurant Consultant
Hiring a Restaurant Consultant can be a daunting process. Here are a few key tips that can make your decision a viable business strategy and potentially a life-long partnership.
Understand what you want from a restaurant consultant. What are your personal objectives and needs for the restaurant? It may be as general as increase my revenue or increase my profit margin. As the owner, it is important to have a clear picture of the benchmarks or hurdles you would like a third party to hit. You MUST have a way to continually judge the performance of the consultant so you can associate the benefit to the cost. The ROI must be completed and calculated to extend over a long period of time. A change to your restaurant that provides you a 1% margin increase for the duration of your lease comes at a cost which cannot be looked at as part of a "month". A restaurant consultant is an investment into a stronger and more sustainable concept, achieving maximum profitability forever.
Starting and running a profitable restaurant business is difficult. As a result, people frequently hire a consultant to provide them with solutions to the difficulties they are coming across. These solutions may come in two different ways:
1. Advice—Pinpointing the problems and assessing ways to solve them.
2. Service – Corrective actions are taken.
Some consulting firms only provide advice others while provide a complete solution, whereby you get the service to back it up. The aforementioned reasons leave many people confused about what a restaurant consulting company does. Do you need advice, service, or both? We might suggest that you consider engaging a firm that can tell you how to fix the problem and then take the required steps to correct the problem. Just remember that an unimplemented solution is worth nothing.
Under a blanket of "increase my revenue," there are many additional questions that must be answered.
(a) Have you already reached a profitable level of business and are simply looking to increase your check averages or efficiency? These are two very separate avenues of restaurant consulting. The first is based around the front of house sequence of service to train your staff on how to maximize a customer’s transactional volume. It takes into account inventory, the menu items and options available for your staff to sell. Your KPI in this instance is average check. This is an example of a performance hurdle on which you can judge the success of the consultant. The other avenue will be focused on restaurant science and will be investigating the efficiency of your waitstaff and kitchen to maximize transaction volume but also expedite the process so you can turn tables quicker. It will be focused on operational efficiencies, speed of the kitchen and the best products to sell your customers during different times of the day while maximizing customer volume. In first turns it may be more beneficial to not offer dessert so you can get your second turn in quicker and perhaps add a third turn to your inventory. Under this example you will perhaps use RevPASH as your KPI.
(b) If you are not at your necessary and desired level of business, and are looking for a restaurant consultant to assist in driving traffic, you need to understand this may include various marketing components. Since there is an acquisition cost for each customer, perhaps the initial program includes a KPI as simple as increasing the number of customers through the door. By default, this brings up a secondary question relating to the cost of acquisition. What is the maximum price you will pay so you are not giving away the house to drive traffic; what is the revenue versus profit?. Thus, a restaurant consultant can be judged on revenue above and beyond the value or cost of the implemented promotion. Perhaps you are not busy because you are not serving your customers what they want. In this case it is not marketing that is needed to drive traffic, its an appropriate product that your customers demand at a price they are willing to pay.
The point being made is that you must look at a restaurant consultant in business terms. What do you need and in what time frame? What is the cost and for how long can you benefit from the results? If you do not manage, guide or act as an employer to your restaurant consultant then they will be unable to provide you with the results you are looking for. By the same token, if you are unwilling to adapt or explore new opinions then you cannot expect results.
With over 50 years of experience in restaurant and food service management, Hospitality Solutions can offer independent professional assistance in all areas of restaurant, bar and food service operations extending from the front of house to the back of the house.
We are a full-service restaurant consulting firm serving both full and quick-serve restaurants, cafes, catering halls, bars and hotels. Our knowledgeable team specializes in successful restaurant start-ups, refurbishments and modernization. We offer start-up support such as concept development, facility design, and menu creation and execution. Our team of professionals can also improve the profitability of existing restaurants by improving vendor contracts, operational audits, and staffing and training.
How To Hire A Restaurant Consultant
Hiring a Restaurant Consultant can be a daunting process. Here are a few key tips that can make your decision a viable business strategy and potentially a life-long partnership.
Understand what you want from a restaurant consultant. What are your personal objectives and needs for the restaurant? It may be as general as increase my revenue or increase my profit margin. As the owner, it is important to have a clear picture of the benchmarks or hurdles you would like a third party to hit. You MUST have a way to continually judge the performance of the consultant so you can associate the benefit to the cost. The ROI must be completed and calculated to extend over a long period of time. A change to your restaurant that provides you a 1% margin increase for the duration of your lease comes at a cost which cannot be looked at as part of a "month". A restaurant consultant is an investment into a stronger and more sustainable concept, achieving maximum profitability forever.
Starting and running a profitable restaurant business is difficult. As a result, people frequently hire a consultant to provide them with solutions to the difficulties they are coming across. These solutions may come in two different ways:
1. Advice—Pinpointing the problems and assessing ways to solve them.
2. Service – Corrective actions are taken.
Some consulting firms only provide advice others while provide a complete solution, whereby you get the service to back it up. The aforementioned reasons leave many people confused about what a restaurant consulting company does. Do you need advice, service, or both? We might suggest that you consider engaging a firm that can tell you how to fix the problem and then take the required steps to correct the problem. Just remember that an unimplemented solution is worth nothing.
Under a blanket of "increase my revenue," there are many additional questions that must be answered.
(a) Have you already reached a profitable level of business and are simply looking to increase your check averages or efficiency? These are two very separate avenues of restaurant consulting. The first is based around the front of house sequence of service to train your staff on how to maximize a customer’s transactional volume. It takes into account inventory, the menu items and options available for your staff to sell. Your KPI in this instance is average check. This is an example of a performance hurdle on which you can judge the success of the consultant. The other avenue will be focused on restaurant science and will be investigating the efficiency of your waitstaff and kitchen to maximize transaction volume but also expedite the process so you can turn tables quicker. It will be focused on operational efficiencies, speed of the kitchen and the best products to sell your customers during different times of the day while maximizing customer volume. In first turns it may be more beneficial to not offer dessert so you can get your second turn in quicker and perhaps add a third turn to your inventory. Under this example you will perhaps use RevPASH as your KPI.
(b) If you are not at your necessary and desired level of business, and are looking for a restaurant consultant to assist in driving traffic, you need to understand this may include various marketing components. Since there is an acquisition cost for each customer, perhaps the initial program includes a KPI as simple as increasing the number of customers through the door. By default, this brings up a secondary question relating to the cost of acquisition. What is the maximum price you will pay so you are not giving away the house to drive traffic; what is the revenue versus profit?. Thus, a restaurant consultant can be judged on revenue above and beyond the value or cost of the implemented promotion. Perhaps you are not busy because you are not serving your customers what they want. In this case it is not marketing that is needed to drive traffic, its an appropriate product that your customers demand at a price they are willing to pay.
The point being made is that you must look at a restaurant consultant in business terms. What do you need and in what time frame? What is the cost and for how long can you benefit from the results? If you do not manage, guide or act as an employer to your restaurant consultant then they will be unable to provide you with the results you are looking for. By the same token, if you are unwilling to adapt or explore new opinions then you cannot expect results.