ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - September 24, 2004

I am recovering from hosting a wedding at my home on Wednesday. My colleague Marv Hunt married Miao Zhang, a woman he met when we both went to China a couple of years ago to talk with a restaurant group about management training. We never got the project ... but it looks like something good came out of it anyway. They are both wonderful people and I wish them all the love and success possible.

Back in the Saddle Again?
Marv Hunt is truly one of the best restaurant operators I know ... and we have talked on and off about doing a project together. Now that he is married and less inclined to continue as my mobile restaurant SWAT Team, could it happen? It is still too early to tell, but I am getting increasingly intrigued by the idea of developing a restaurant project here in Gig Harbor.

Now when a client calls and says they want to do something like this, I always tell them to first "lie down until the urge passes." I may still take my own advice in that regard ... but I am getting excited about creating a restaurant that designs out the limitations I see in most operations and lets me actually implement most of my best ideas. I can also see the place functioning as a lab environment where we could train other managers (yours?) under real operating conditions in some sort of intern-like role.

We came up with dozens of other very cool touches that would allow us to do things that have never been done in the industry before ... but that was on our sixth bottle of wine so a second and third look is appropriate. We even kicked around some ways that some of you could participate in the project as a sort of "fly on the wall" from the very beginning.

When he gets back from his honeymoon we will revisit the idea again. For now it is fun just to explore possibilities.

Blocking and Tackling
What ever happened to the basics? For example, I rarely see a server who knows the proper way to carry a full tray (one-handed, above the shoulder). The other day, I watched a waitress carry a fully loaded tray of food through a busy dining room. She had a hand on one side of the tray and the other side of the tray was sitting on her shoulder.

This technique is dangerously unstable. Her ability to move among tables in the dining room was limited and if the tray started to slip, she would not have been able to stop it. OK, there may be a strength issue here, but if the tray was too heavy for her, she should have asked for help.

Improper carrying techniques also put unnecessary strain on the back, sapping energy from the shift and risking injury.

A friend just sent me a video clip of a new restaurant that was opening in Shanghai. The construction crew was still in the restaurant so the staff was training on the sidewalk ... carrying full trays of food and drink through an obstacle course over and over again. Try it, you'll like it.

Good News/Bad News
You already know about Bill and Joel's Most Excellent Restaurant Marketing Birthday Bash in Las Vegas on November 15-16. The good news (aside from the startling fact that we are not charging for this event!) is that the response to date has been terrific and we are nearly half full already!

There is more good news. Several operators are using the event as the reward and creating incentive programs for their managers. Hit your numbers, achieve certain results for six weeks and you get to go. But that is where the bad news starts to surface. If the contest winners are not identified for six weeks, the odds are that there will not be seats for them!

What to do? What to do? My suggestion is to have the managers come up the seat deposit money themselves. (It gets returned when they attend anyway.) Now in addition tof having something to gain if they make their numbers, they also have something to lose if they fall short ... and they are guaranteed that their seat will be available.

How can YOU use our Birthday Bash to provide some motivation to YOUR key staff? Whatever you do, get on it quickly. The hotel meeting room will only hold so many people and when the seats are gone, you are out of luck.

Click here for the full story on the Las Vegas Birthday Bash

The Perpetual Question
What did you learn from your staff today?

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