The multiple award-winning Restaurant Manager’s Handbook is the best-selling book on running a successful food service. Now in the fourth completely revised edition, nine new chapters detail restaurant layout, new equipment, principles for creating a safer work environment, and new effective techniques to interview, hire, train, and manage employees. We provide a new chapter on tips and IRS regulations as well as guidance for improved management, new methods to increase your bottom line by expanding the restaurant to include on- and off-premise catering operations. We’ve added new chapters offering food nutrition guidelines and proper employee training.

• Click here for The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook

The Fourth Edition of the Restaurant Manager’s Handbook is an invaluable asset to any existing restaurant owner or manager as well as anyone considering a career in restaurant management or ownership. All existing chapters have new and updated information. This includes extensive material on how to prepare a restaurant for a potential sale. There is even an expanded section on franchising.

You will find many additional tips to help restaurant owners and managers learn to handle labor and operational expenses, rework menus, earn more from better bar management, and introduce up-scale wines and specialties for profit. You will discover an expanded section on restaurant marketing and promotion plus revised accounting and budgeting tips. This new edition includes photos and information from leading food service manufacturers to enhance the text.

This new, comprehensive 800-page book will show you step-by-step how to set up, operate, and manage a financially successful food service operation. The author has taken the risk out of running a restaurant business. Operators in the non-commercial segment as well as caterers—and really anyone in the food service industry—will rely on this book in everyday operations. Its 28 chapters cover the entire process of a restaurant start-up and ongoing management in an easy-to-understand way, pointing out methods to increase your chances of success and showing how to avoid the many mistakes arising from being uninformed and inexperienced that can doom a restaurateur’s start-up. The new companion CD-ROM contains all the forms demonstrated in the book for easy use in a PDF format.

While providing detailed instruction and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success, learning how to draw up a winning business plan, how to buy and sell a restaurant, how to franchise, and how to set up basic cost-control systems. You will have at your fingertips profitable menu planning, sample restaurant floor plans and diagrams, successful kitchen management, equipment layout and planning, food safety, Hazardous and Critical Control Point (HACCP) information, and successful beverage management.

Learn how to set up computer systems to save time and money and get brand new IRS tip-reporting requirements, accounting and bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting and profit planning development. You will be able to generate high profile public relations and publicity, initiate low cost internal marketing ideas, and low- and no-cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales. You will learn how to keep bringing customers back, how to hire and keep a qualified professional staff, manage and train employees as well as accessing thousands of great tips and useful guidelines.

This Restaurant Manager’s Handbook covers everything that many consultants charge thousands of dollars to provide. The extensive resource guide details more than 7,000 suppliers to the industry—virtually a separate book on its own.

• Click here for The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook

This reference book is essential for professionals in the hospitality field as well as newcomers who may be looking for answers to cost-containment and training issues. Demonstrated are literally hundreds of innovative ways to streamline your restaurant business. Learn new ways to make the kitchen, bars, dining room, and front office run smoother and increase performance. You will be able to shut down waste, reduce costs, and increase profits. In addition, operators will appreciate this valuable resource and reference in their daily activities and as a source of ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can be easily applied to their operations.

As a young operator, I always hated complaints. Complaints often seemed like a personal affront. I tried very hard to make it right for my guests and when they complained, it felt like a knife in the heart. I always wanted to sit them down and set them straight about what it really takes to run a restaurant!

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Complaints disrupted the daily routine. When a complaint came in, it meant that I was going to lose productive time to investigate, ask questions and write letters. If it was a complaint that someone made in person, I would have to drop everything else to deal with this person and since I was already pushed to my limit, complaints were intrusions.

Complaints also always seemed to throw me off track, sometimes for days. I would be depressed when we dropped the ball in an area where we should have known better. Often I would start questioning whether or not I knew what I was doing. I looked at my staff with suspicion. I know I was far more critical for awhile, both of my staff and myself. The service lapses hurt . . . and those were only the ones I found out about!

Why are complaints important?

Based on a survey by the National Retail Merchants Association, 14% of the people who stop patronizing a business do so because they had a complaint that was not handled well. That is a lot of business to give away due to lack of skill and understanding when it comes to dealing with guest complaints.

If people would tell you when things are not right, that would make it a lot easier but every complaining guest could represent 24 other diners who had the same problem and chose not to tell you about it. Worse than that, a complaining guest will tell 8-10 people about their problem. One in five will tell twenty. (One in a hundred will probably tell a thousand, but that is another story.) If you run the numbers, you can calculate that the cost of losing a single $50-a-year guest could exceed $50,000 over five years!

If you grasp the significance of these statistics, you can see the potential income you have at risk if complaints are not properly handled. If you grasp the significance of these statistics, you can see the need to get aggressive about identifying and solving any potential difficulties before your guests even become aware of them.

The Positive Side of Complaints

We tend to think of complaints as bad news. While nobody likes to get a complaint, there is a lot to be gained from them. Here are a few of the positive aspects:

Demanding guests force you to be your best. It is easy to get complacent and let down on your standards. The demanding guest keeps you honest by telling you every time your attention wanders or your standards slip. They are always right (at least from their perspective) and they do not let anything slip past them.

Admittedly, demanding guests can drive you crazy sometimes. But pleasing them is the only reason your restaurant exists and they are in the best position to tell you how you are doing at it! Your guests will always see things that you will never notice. Rather than driving off demanding guests, I suggest you seek them out and use them like an in-house shopping service (but more on that at another time.)

Every complaint is an insight into how to make your business better. Every problem has a gift for you in its hands. People go out to eat expecting to have a good time. They want it to be great. Since you are in business to make sure that your guests are happy, the comments and suggestions they give are invaluable research into how to do your primary job better. This is where the gold is. Even if a complaint is entirely off the wall, there is still a nugget of truth in there somewhere. If you can dig it out, you can profit from it.

Guests are more likely to complain if they think you care and listen. If you don’t want to hear it, nobody will bother to tell you. The more interested you are in the truth of your guests’ experience and the more receptive you are to suggestions on how you can do better, the greater the chances you will get the feedback. Some will be good news, some will be bad news, but it is all news that will help you prosper. I acknowledge that being this open requires a degree of vulnerability that many operators find uncomfortable, but if you have a problem and do not identify it quickly, it will cost you a lot of money. It could even cost you your restaurant! Now that is uncomfortable!

Resolving complaints satisfactorily increases guest loyalty. Statistics suggest that if someone has a complaint that is handled well, they are more loyal than if they never had a complaint at all. I do not mean to suggest that you make mistakes just so you can fix them – there are plenty of errors that will happen without any special effort! Perhaps it is because handling a complaint well is a personal statement of caring that establishes more of a personal connection between the guest and the restaurant, but complaining guests can often become your most loyal patrons.

Most complaining guests care about you. If people did not care, they would not take the time to let you know when you have a problem – they would just never return. Most complaints, particularly written ones, are cries for help that are really saying things like these: “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” or “My feelings have been hurt by an old friend” or “You probably didn’t know about this, but . . .”

General Rules for Handling Complaints

I think every manager should have the following message posted prominently in both the office and staff areas:

Stamp out inconveniences before they become irritations.
Stamp out irritations before they become complaints.
Stamp out complaints before they become problems.
Stamp out problems before they become crises.

Complaints, unlike fine wine, do not improve with age. A minor inconvenience can become a full-blown crisis (at least to the guest) if left unattended.

The most common mistake in handling complaints is getting defensive and wanting to explain. It never helps and almost always makes things worse. Handling a complaint well is not about determining who is right and who is wrong. It is about saving a disappointed guest and retaining the business you would lose by alienating them.

Statistically, seven out of ten complaining guests will do business with you again if you resolve the complaint in their favor. My suggestion is that there is no way to resolve a complaint other than in favor of the guest.

Another interesting statistic is that if you resolve a complaint on the spot, 95% of complaining guests will do business with you again. The only people on the spot are typically your service staff. If you need a case to give your crew the authority to do what they have to do at the table at the time, this is the case – 95% retention vs. 70% retention.

Goals when handling complaints

It helps to remember that you only have two goals when handling a complaint: Your first goal is to calm the complainer so they will not bad-mouth you to others. Virtually all of your loss comes from the people that a disgruntled guest influences. For example, of the $50,000+ we calculated that it cost when you lose a guest, all but $250 of that came from people other than the person involved.

Your second goal is to get the complaining guest back as a patron if you can. If you can’t get them back, you at least want to make sure they don’t go out and do you any damage. These are your only two goals – do not get confused by thinking there is a winner and a loser.

When handling complaints there is only win-win or lose-lose. If you can resolve the problem successfully, the guest will come back and you both will win. If the problem is not handled well, the guest will never come back and you both lose.

Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor™
http://www.RestaurantDoctor.com

All too often we hear managers say things along the lines of “My store would be successful, if it weren’t for . . . “.

These managers can give you a long list of reasons for their operation’s poor performance, but offer very little in the way of solutions. To them, there is always some other reason “out there” that holds them back.

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What they fail to understand, or chose to ignore, is that they are the ones who are responsible for producing results. Even worse, there are some of them who do realize this, but are uniquely skilled in playing “the blame game” in order to draw attention away from the fact that they aren’t effective leaders.

Stop for a moment and honestly consider your current situation.

When your food cost runs out of standard, is it your employees fault or is it your own?

When your sales drop, is it because your prices are too high, or have you been neglecting your service program?

When your employee turnover skyrockets, is it because you can’t find good help or is it because you haven’t been following through with your team building responsibilities?

As manager, do you play the part of the “victim” when P&L time rolls around, or do you stand up and hold yourself accountable?

The restaurant industry is filled with managers who make excuses for their performance, but the successful managers are those who won’t tolerate that behavior in themselves.

Why?

Because they have a strong sense of responsibility, not just to their company, but to themselves!

Because they have an overwhelming sense of pride . . . not just in themselves . . . but in the results they produce.

Because they have a have a deep desire to bring about success . . . not just for the company they work for . . . but for themselves.

Accepting personal accountability doesn’t mean that you will always be successful, but it does provide you with the tools necessary for future success. It enables you to evaluate you own performance and actions and say, “Hey, I messed up but I’ve learned something from it, and I won’t make the same mistakes again.”

To bring it all to the bottom line:

Excuses may sound good, but they never make you a profit!

(c) Troy Brackett, RestaurantNews.com