The Restaurant Doctor - Electronic House Call

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - March 9, 2001

What fun! I have actually been home all week! Tomorrow night I head for Columbus and the last Winter Roundtable, then on to Dallas to continue my project to re-invent bowling center foodservice.

FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED
It hasn't hit my e-mail box yet, but there is a dangerous virus going around, received as an email attachment named nakedwife.exe. It will arrive from someone you know but don't click on it. What appears to be a Macromedia Flash movie is really a virus that destroys critical system files, making your system unusable. You can find out more about it at http://antivirus.about.com/library/weekly/aa030601a.htm. As a good general precaution with attachments, if you receive an EXE file, ask the sender what it is before you open it. If the sender doesn't even know it has been sent, that should be enough to tip you off.

SPEAKING OF THE WEB
Joel Cohen, our MIS interview of last September, has published the first ever restaurant Internet marketing book that helps restaurants increase their sales by pro-actively using their website. The 150 page book is called, "The Ultimate How-To Guide To Increase Your Sales Using Your WebsiteThe Restaurant Internet Marketing System." For more information, contact Joel Cohen, jcohen@restaurantmarketing.com or click on www.RestaurantMarketing.com. Joel is probably the leading authority in the country right now on web marketing for restaurants. If you are thinking about e-commerce (and you should be) this might be a good addition to your library.

TWENTY QUESTIONS
How many questions do your guests have to answer during their meal? This may sound like a silly question, but in the MIS teleconference with Coach Don Smith this week, he relayed a story about one restaurant where the count was close to twenty! It starts with "Smoking or Non-Smoking?" continues through choices of salad dressings, starch, etc. and ends up with coffee and dessert questions. An enjoyable and effortless dining experience creates the good time your guests want. Logic seems to suggest that the more choices you give a guest, the more likely they are to be get exactly what they want. This could be true, but the process of making all the choices can be cruel and unusual punishment! Giving people unlimited choices does not necessarily enhance their dining experience. In fact, it may only allow them to eat what they would eat at home and restaurants ought to be more special than that. There is a lot to recommend a unique house dressing, signature soups and distinctive side dishes. It is easier on the kitchen, faster for the service staff and more interesting for the guest.

ON THE MESSAGE BOARD
A new string just opened on what people do to give their guests a memorable experience. This gives five active discussions underway. Check it out at www.restaurantdoctor.com under The Doc's Message Board.

A PARTING SHOT
Spring is starting to make its presence known, meaning it will soon be time to adjust menus away from the heavier winter fare and into more salads and lighter selections. (You WERE planning to change your menu with the season, weren't you?) Remember, too, that you can determine which items will sell the best by which position they occupy in the listing. In a list of six items, #1 will sell the best, then #6, then #2, then #5 and so on. You may want to re-order your menu listings seasonally as well, burying the items that you need to have but don't want to push by putting them in the middle of the list. There is more discussion of this and other menu engineering principles in the book, "50 Proven Ways to Build More Profitable Menus." See my website for more information.

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