Challenges Faced and Solutions Provided

By: Robert Schwob, President of Legacy Hospitality Solutions.

I was hired in the role of consultant to launch a new restaurant that previously had housed two distinctly different concepts; a four star, fine dining restaurant and later, a sports bar each catering to a vastly different clientele.  Specific responsibilities of my assignment included:

• Researching the immediate area to determine primary and secondary competitive restaurants
• Obtaining the demographic and psychographic data of the surrounding area to determine the most appropriate audience(s) to target that would generate the most traffic, revenues and profit margins on a consistent basis. Seek out new clientele bases to increase traffic
• Reviewing the performance of the sports bar’s operation to determine their strengths and weaknesses, challenges they faced, their customer base and financial history
• Based on data gathered, develop recommendations on a concept that would best generate a maximum return on investment
• Once the concept was approved by ownership make recommendations on the name, theme, general menu options, specific service standard levels (casual vs. upscale), front of house uniforms, on-going promotional ideas and thoughts on décor
• Upon discussion and approval of my recommendations develop an action plan to implement the launch of the new concept
• Oversee the renovation and re-design of the facility
• Evaluate both front and back of the house staff and make changes where appropriate
• Interview and, after taste testing sessions of selected candidates, hire an Executive Chef
• Working with the Chef, development of a menu and determine food costs
• Implement a training program for the front of the house staff which would ensure consistency in service standards
• Re establish working relationships with food and liquor purveyors, credit card companies, POS provider and other vendors
• Establish and finalize food, liquor and labor cost standards
• Development of a marketing strategy to launch the opening of the new facility
• Interview and select an advertising firm to design the restaurant’s logo, menu design, newspaper ad shells, website design and other social media applications
• Develop and execute the launch event

Restaurant Specifics:

• Outdoor, patio seating for 85-90
• Small bar with seating for approximately 25-30 patrons at the bar or at high tops
• Main restaurant seating for approximately 175
• Upstairs martini bar and holding lounge seating approximately 40-45 with adjacent banquet facilities for 150
• Located on a busy, 4 lane street directly across the street from a multi-unit hospital facility that employees in excess of 25,000 full time employees and surrounded by multiple office buildings housing primarily medical offices as well as single family homes and condominiums within a 3 mile radius.
• For the past 2 years catering to the sports enthusiast crowd offering bar food and beer specials
• During the college and NFL football season the restaurant enjoyed good traffic and revenues from the loyal football enthusiasts on the weekends however the lunch, dinner and bar business on other days of the week was virtually nonexistent.

 Challenges Faced:

There were numerous challenges/problems that we needed to address and overcome in order to be successful:

• The restaurant was located in a primarily blue collar neighborhood directly across the street from the largest, multi facility hospital in this large metropolitan area.  Accordingly, we needed to ensure that our menu options and pricing would be obtainable to the immediate target customer.
• The previous tenant, with limited knowledge of the food and beverage business, let the facility decay in every aspect causing the reputation to plummet and ultimately the loss of traffic and revenues.  Specific areas of deterioration included:
  • Food quality; there was no consistency in taste, portions, presentation and specials were never offered
  • Service standards; each server wore whatever they chose to work in, had no formal training, were not familiar with the menu offerings and lacked any enthusiasm or chemistry with the customers

The physical facility was in shambles; filthy, depressing colors with only dated sports posters and beer signs as wall designs, old, grease stained menus with hand marked changes in pricing and invested with rodents.  The kitchen was especially in decay with no history of maintenance to include periodic hood cleaning

• The previous tenant did not take food or liquor inventory therefore had no control of his costs
• No advertising or promotions to stimulate trial or repeat patronage

Solutions Provided:

Upon consulting with the owner it was recommended and decided that the first order of business was to shut the business down to deep clean and renovate the entire facility (kitchen, restaurant, bar area, outdoor patio, upstairs lounge and banquet facility).  At the same time we needed to effectively communicate to our current client base as well as the business that we’d lost that the restaurant was under new ownership and management and share our vision for our exciting new concept.

I had recommended that we not abandon our current sports enthusiast client base as, especially during football season, they were a foundation on which to build.  Accordingly, in working with the new chef, we maintained some of the select, better selling sports fare as well as beer specials.  However, in our desire to grow the business, it was obvious that we needed to regain the trust and confidence in the markets that we had lost; business men and women, families and couples coming in for lunch, drinks and/or dinner.  Therefore I recommended that the overall concept be changed to include décor and menu selections.

Specific recommendations made and actions taken in order to meet our objectives included:

• Deep clean of the entire facility followed by a renovation to include repainting with warm, inviting colors with accented recessed areas, new, more generic themed wall décor, new and vibrant lighting and a re-arrangement of the seating areas to offer more privacy yet in an open air atmosphere.
• Identify the primary and secondary competitive set, their offerings, strengths, weaknesses and our best opportunities
• Develop a new and exciting concept  and name that would not abandon our current client base but would attract incremental target markets

Once the theme and name were finalized, in working with the new chef, develop a menu that, in addition to some of the select “bar” items we’d agreed to keep, add items that would cater to a wider variety of clientele to include healthier and higher end choices and daily specials.

• Evaluate the current kitchen, server and bar staff and make changes where applicable.  Hire new staff.
• Develop and execute a front of house training program to establish uniformity in dress code and service standards.  Every staff member with the same uniform offering consistent service offerings
•  Develop and execute a launch and on-going marketing plan
• I made the recommendation to investigate the potential of soliciting the 24,000 hospital employee staff as a market for lunch, cocktail hour and dinner business.  This was a previously untapped market due to their varying schedules and having only 40 minutes for lunch or dinner dependent on their shift.  I shared with the owner that if we only tapped 1% of their employees that it would generate an incremental 240 customers a day.  Further I recommended that there was an additional untapped market in the families visiting patients in this multi unit hospital that through positive word of mouth from the staff in conjunction with mini menus at nurse’s stations would generate even more incremental traffic.

In my meetings with hospital administrators and some of their employees I learned that there were some challenges with the time that they had for lunch or dinner so I established a system where they could place their orders either via telephone or email and with a limited, yet comprehensive menu selection, would guarantee that their food would be delivered to their table within 10 minutes of their arrival or their meal was on us.  In addition we set up a delivery system with hot boxes and chillers to deliver food to the nurse’s stations with a nominal delivery fee to compensate for our additioinal labor costs.

• Based on my recommendations and implementation of the new concept and menu offerings we now had 5 distinct target audiences:
  • The local residential and business community to include doctor’s and affiliated medical offices surrounding the restaurant
  • The employees and visiting families from the hospital
  • Civic associations that utilize the previously unused banquet facilities (Rotary, Toastmasters and other groups that meet weekly)
  • Solicitation of social events for the banquet facility to include weddings, corporate/medical seminars with lunch or dinner, reunions, etc.
  • The existing and newly acquired sports fanatics

Once the new concept was determined, the new target markets identified and effectively communicated too, the staff trained and in place with an inviting décor and inviting menu, the restaurant has turned itself around enjoying great traffic and a positive bottom line.  I have found that the hospitality industry in general isn’t really that tough if one is willing to put in the long hours with a dedicated goal of offering the customer a good product at a fair price point with superior service standards on a consistent basis.

To me, the hospitality industry isn’t really rocket science.  In addition to a dedication to exceed every guest’s expectation on every visit, I believe that the restaurant business consists of only 3 basic ingredients:

• Anticipation
• Observation
• Common sense

Robert Schwob, President of Legacy Hospitality Solutions ras@legacyhospitalitysolutions.com