The Restaurant Doctor - Electronic House Call

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - December 14, 1997

LIGHT UP YOUR LIFE
Those little clear Christmas lights have thousands of year round applications in the hospitality business. I used to use them for accent lighting in catering, they can add sparkle to dark corners in your dining room or bar or call attention to your building when arrayed in the plantings or on the building. They only seem to be available around the holidays, so grab a dozen or more strings while you can. At the most, they will run $3-4 a string before Christmas. If you wait until the after-Christmas clearance sales, they can often go for as little as $1-2. Truly a bargain. Know what you are buying, however -- the colored lights are not nearly as versatile as the clear bulbs.

RECIPE AND COOKING SOFTWARE
I cannot say if this program is good or not, but it looked interesting enough to pass along. Thanks to Ed Manley of IFSEA for sending it. Food-for-Thought Software has released version 4.5 of Now You're Cooking! (NYC), its versatile cyberkitchen companion for Windows 95/Windows 3.1. NYC cuts hours off organizing recipes, creating healthy meal plans, creating shopping lists, grocery shopping, and managing grocery costs. Version 4.5 includes complete nutritional analyses of recipes and meal plans. NYC can be downloaded from its website (http://www.ffts.com), internet shareware archives (SimTel.Net, Coast-to-Coast), and food forums of the online services (AOL--Applications, Compuserve--Cooks Online).

New features in version 4.5 of NYC include:
- nutrition database based on USDA database (5941 food items)
- supplemental user-defined nutrition database
- nutrition analyses (total or by serving)
- "low price store" and "low price" in computing shopping list cost - a number of timesaver features throughout

Nutrition
Accuracy and flexibility in nutrition analyses were the development goals for NYC. Nutrition can be analysed for food items, recipes, and meal plan components using direct linkages to USDA's comprehensive nutrition database. Nutrition is available for raw, cooked, canned, and commercially prepared food items. Analyses include over 40 nutrition components, including water, protein, calories, fat (total, saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated), carbohydrates, fiber, ash, vitamins, minerals, and %calories as protein/fats/carbohydrate.

Product Support
The official NYC website includes 25,000+ free recipes that can be downloaded and imported into Now You're Cooking!, with links to sites containing 100,000 free recipes. A second product support site (http://www.ffts.com/nycfaq.html) includes responses to questions frequently asked to technical support. Registration of NYC is $27 without manual or $33 + shipping (U.S. dollars) with manual. A secure on-line link on the website makes credit card ordering safe and fast. Registration entitles the user to registration code, free upgrade to new versions, technical support, and upgrade notification via email.

More information on Now You're Cooking! or Food-for-Thought Software is available by contacting Gary Hauser, Food-for-Thought Software, 7304 Foxlair Road, Knoxville, TN 37918-6233, USA. email: ghauser@usit.net, URL: http://www.ffts.com, telephone: (423) 922-4294 or (423) 922-7722, fax: (423) 922-5768

ANY IDEAS?
I received this note from Frank Whitman of the Silvermine Tavern in Connecticut. If you have any ideas that might help, please send them directly to Frank at mailto:silvavfcw@aol.com.

"What resources do you have for banquet sales? I now have one part time (almost full time) banquet sales person but there is more potential than she can cover. We're doing well in the wedding and social events on the weekends, but have a lot of under-used space during the week. I want to go after the corporate biz to fill this in. "I'm looking for information about sales techniques, prospect development and sales person compensation. Also, I'd love to find some software that would handle the information internally and create the function sheets. "Silvermine Tavern is a 200 seat, 11 guest room country inn in Fairfield County, Connecticut. We have several private dining rooms holding up to 30, 50 or 100. We can do 150 for a wedding reception. Although things are picking up in our area, our location makes us a weekend house. We do very well Friday thru Sunday but the week nights are quiet, especially in winter."

JUST A THOUGHT
Finally, a note from Brian Bray in response to a comment I made in a previous EHC:

"I often tell people that fast food companies consume people. They promote to manager with little training and it's make or break. Good service requires good management. Good management requires commitment and training. An investment in management training will build business, reduce turnover, and cut cost of goods. More money, greater stability, less stress. Until they make that investment they will be nothing more than a convenience store. Maybe that's all they want."

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