Electronic House Call - February 7, 2003

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - February 7, 2003

We have raised $11,000 for Share Our Strength with the Year of the Guest program. Not bad for the first month! If we are going to make our goal of $50,000, however, we will have to expand the network. Let me know if you have any ideas of who else we should be contacting.

Click here for more information on the Year of the Guest.

BEYOND LOW FAT
My comments last week about getting proactive about the fat level of your menu drew an interesting observation from subscriber Mike Hohnen. Mike originally subscribed when he was in South Africa and stayed connected when he relocated to France. He thinks I am behind the times when I talk just about paying attention to fat levels. He writes ...

The discussion will move away from diet-this and low fat-that to the questions of low carb/high carb or good carb/bad carb. As I understand it, several New York restaurants are already offering low carb menus as clients switch their focus from fat- free or 'light' items to the apparently much more interesting issue of low carb.

If you do a quick search on Google for "low carb menu" you will see how much attention this subject is getting. The problem with a traditional fast food meal (Coke, burger, fries) is not so much the fat content as the very high (bad) Carb content. I enclose a brilliant (in my opinion) article from the New York Times that illustrates the issue very well. I predict this Low-Carb trend is going to be a major client focus in the years to come.

A note from the Doc:
Since the press is screaming about fat, we certainly have to be aware of it. Speaking to Mike's point, it would make sense to make the staff (servers and cooks) aware of the dietary requests that guests are likely to make ... and have a plan on how to accommodate them.

MAKE THE WAIT WORTHWHILE
This could easily be one of the tips in our Year of the Guest program, but since we are a week away from Valentine's Day ... and since it happens on a Friday night ... it seemed appropriate to mention it now.

In a seminar at the Virginia Restaurant Show several years ago, I told the story of the Pacific Cafe in San Francisco that has had a line out the door for 20 years because they offer free wine if guests have to wait. An operator in the audience that day told me how he adapted the idea.

He had a restaurant on the strip in South Richmond with Chili's, Applebee's and all the mid-scale players. Valentine's Day was on a Friday night that year and he knew it was going to be busy. He remembered my story and figured, "Why not?"

"So we bought two cases of cheap champagne," he said. Whenever a party came in and we were on a wait, we told them, "It is going to be a few minutes, but as long as you have to wait, the champagne is on us!" The guests were delighted, had one glass of champagne and went back to their regular drink of choice. He estimates that they did $4000 worth of business that would have walked ... and it cost less than $50 to do it!

PIZZA EXPO
Big Dave Ostrander and I are putting together a program called Pizza Insight, an amazing monthly flow of inside information focused specifically on the needs of the pizza industry. The program will be officially introduced at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas in March, but if any EHC subscribers want a sneak peek -- and the opportunity to be a charter member -- you can click here to get the whole story.

THE PERPETUAL QUESTION
What did you learn from your staff today?

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