The Restaurant Doctor - Electronic House Call

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - May 21, 1998

WHAT'S YOUR OCCUPANCY?
Is that a strange question? Think about a 120-seat restaurant serving lunch and dinner from 11:00am until 10:00pm. On an average day, they do 200 lunches and 200 dinners. Pretty good, right? Let's look at it again from the aspect of occupancy. What percentage of time is there a guest actually sitting in each chair in the dining room?

If we say the average lunch patron takes 45 minutes to eat, those 200 lunches represent 150 seat-hours (200 meals at ž hour each.) If the typical evening meal lasts 90 minutes, the 200 dinners equate to 300 seat-hours (200 meals at 1˝ hours each.)

So the restaurant has a total of 500 seat-hours of occupancy. Now if you figure that the total available supply of seats is 1320 seat-hours (120 seats x 11 hours a day of operation), their occupancy is just under 38%. The restaurant, busy as it is, has a lot of unused capacity - time when their seats are sitting empty.

I do not mean to suggest that 400 meals a day is some sort of failure in a 120-seat restaurant, but I think many operators would look at the pace of their lunch and dinner business and feel they are running pretty close to capacity. I mean, doing nearly two turns at lunch is pretty decent! But tracking occupancy will show how much room there is for improvement and that knowledge should start your marketing wheels turning to find a way to fill those empty hours.

INSTANT FAME?
I am going to be moderating a panel at the Foodservice Marketing War College (held in conjunction with the FL Restaurant Show in Orlando, August 27-30), the subject of which is "Can You Make Money on the Internet?" Do you have a website? Can you document its impact on your sales? If so, we should talk. There is no pay involved, but Tom Feltenstein said he would give panelists a free registration for the entire War College (a $900 comp!) If this is something interesting, let me know.

NRA SHOW
We rocked their world! The program was "There's GOT to Be an Easier Way to Run a Restaurant!" and the place was packed! 400+ is the official estimate. To those of you who sat in on my session in Chicago, thanks for the support. To those who didn't, buy the tape!

"GET A LIFE" LIVES
We held the first seminar in St. Louis on May 14-16 and the word from attendees is very positive. The next sessions of "How to Increase Your Cash Flow by 50% and Get Your Life Back . . . in 90 Days . . . Guaranteed!" are scheduled for Seattle (May 27-29), Tampa (June 1-3) and LA (June 5-7). For more information, go to http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/getalife.html. We will also be producing an audio tape series of the seminar. More details to follow.

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