How to start a restaurant---- Keep an Eye on the Menu!

Image by Meef.com via Google

Most of business people are wondering that how to start a restaurant and at the same time, can make your business in no time to be rich. In fact, no matter for the restaurant owners are rich or not, however, one thing can be sure is that the key words of success for each restaurant are about its food and dish. So that it is obvious that there are plenty of options in this regard for you to choose from, but the bottom-line are that operator and marketer have to get your menu in the right order to display and attract the sight of your customers and clients.

Focus on design of menu itself:

There would be so many aspects of achieving a better menu for your customers, but two of the most essential problems are the design of the own menu itself and the prices of the dishes that you will serve to customers. Before setting the prices of your food, it is necessary for marketers that they have to move out of your living room and do some research about the food prices; focus on the other business price being charged by other local restaurants that can be categorized as your potential future competitors.

Set a suitable price for customers:

It is very important for a new restaurant not to set higher prices than what its competitors have to offer. Because no one is going to bother having a second look at what the new kid on the block has to offer if others are already offering it at lesser price!

A good way to go about setting your food prices is to carefully analyze the flow of the cost you will have to incur on the preparation of the items in your menu. All you have to do is to simply set a profit margin and once you know the cost and the percentage of profit you intend to earn, calculating the price of each food item is simple mathematics.

You also have to keep in mind that the prices you set stay the same way for quite a while or else your customers are going to get upset; therefore, price fluctuations have to be dealt with by laying out a well balanced menu. For this purpose you have to identify items with unstable market prices and otherwise.

Always keeping customers’ perspective in your mind:

It is an advice for people who are involving restaurant business that how to open a restaurant, actually they had better to start to keep the customers' perspective always in your mind! Most customers take the trouble of eating at a restaurant because they like the atmosphere and the presentation when they get into a restaurant. You can easily find out in the presentation of your menu as a factor, a beautiful menu actually will add to the overall impression of your eating place for customers. Therefore, you have to ensure that you get the right color combinations and that the printing is suitable.

Providing comprehensive description of dishes:

Lastly, the description for dishes on the menu is also very important. The secrete strategy is that when describing food items, marketer could make sure that you keep things a little inventive and creativity, try to produce difference in comparison with your competitors of the same or similar food and dish.

Successful commercial moderl 3: Modern Toilet----must-see restaurant in Taipei

The Modern Toilet is a fantastic and creative commercial model of Chinese food business. It is the first one makes use of “toilet” as the concept of restaurant in Taipei and become business people must-see restaurant.

Nowadays, The Modern Toilet has become a tourist attraction for its unique style and design in Taiwan. Owner Wang Tzi-wei opened the first Modern Toilet outlet in Taipei 2004. It includes 12 branches all over Taiwan and one located in Hong Kong.

Unique style and design

Entering Modern Toilet Restaurant, customers will see familiar items such as toilet, shower, bathtub, mirror and towels. In this themed-toilet restaurant, all the dishes are served in a toilet-shaped bowl and the drinks in a urinal-styled cup. Foods here are of the average and reasonable price.

Customers sit on toilet seats in this themed restaurant, a glass is placed on baths used as tables, the restaurant looks clean and the foods cost reasonably.

Slogan:

The restaurant chain's website says: "Our goal is to become The No. 1 Brand in Themed Chain Restaurants. In an era where creative marketing is king, even feces can be turned into gold".

From the pictures you can see that a big pile of chocolate ice cream is served on toilet-shaped bowl; children love Modern Toilet Restaurant too.

Goal of future

In general, this kind of restaurant is really popular among youth. Now Modern Toilet has many branches all over Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China. Their goal is to become The No. 1 brand in themed chain restaurants in Asia.

Video edit by Wefalcon via Youtube

The Gourmet thought that it could be a creativity commercial model for leaning, borrow ideas from and even being transmitted in UK market.

Read more: http://www.moderntoilet.com.tw/en/about.asp

Photo credits:

Image by Zhai ting: slnllxr@163.com

http://www.moderntoilet.com.tw/en/about.asp

The Gourmet comment: 5 Tips on how to manage a restaurant business

The successes of any restaurant business are always depending on its well management. Good management strategies are necessary to obtain and maintain the numbers of customers. If one restaurant business were run and become efficient to make use of different marketing strategies, the return and reward will be a great reputation and a thriving long term sustainable future for their business.

The Gourmet giving the following tips on help you that how to manage a restaurant:

▇ 1. The ambience of a restaurant should be designed to make a customer feel welcome. When you have chosen the theme of the restaurant, the decor should consist of furnishings and design that matches the theme. When you decorate your restaurant, you have features that are professional and appealing to your customers. Consider such features as paint color, type of tables and seats, carpet design, wall furnishings such as pictures, lighting, view, and music. As well, your restaurant should be well maintained. Cleanliness is extremely important, even the washrooms. A dirty or poorly kept restaurant will only turn customers away and give the business a bad reputation. The first thing a customer will notice when they walk through the door is the appearance of the restaurant.

▇ 2. You should adopt cost controlling practices. Properly managing inventory and supplies is essential. Look for deals when making your purchases. Don't order too much of a product as it will either spoil or end up sitting on the shelf for months. You should determine what and how much you will be using each day to determine what you will need to order. You should also effectively manage your staff when it comes to costs. Use staff wisely such as bringing in extra workers during your busy times and reducing staff during your slow times.

▇ 3. Providing high quality customer service is necessary to operating a successful restaurant business. In fact, better manage your staff is very important for your business. In order to provide better service, the staff should be easy for training, respectful, experienced, courteous and friendly. Servers should make your customer feel that they pay for money is valuable. Make sure the uniforms of all the staffs are all always clean and attractive.

▇ 4. Always making difference on your dish and food to catch audience and incite customers return. Make sure the food service that you provide and the menu is attractive and will be well accepted by your major customers and clients. The material of food should be fresh and properly prepared at the time for customer to order. Restaurant chef should be experienced and cooking in the type of food that your restaurant serves. Most importantly, the dishes of restaurant serve should be consistent both in taste and appearance. What’s more, often providing specials and unique dishes is another way to attract people.

▇ 5. In order to make your restaurant a continuing success, you must implement a marketing strategy. You should be advertising your restaurant in local newspapers and magazines. You can also place menus and informational brochures in places such as hotels. Sponsoring events such as for a charity or a sporting activity is a good way to keep your restaurant name out in the community. As well, make sure you promote your daily specials and any other discount special. A coupon or gift certificate is a good advertising choice. There are a lot of tasks involved with properly managing a restaurant. Having a sound management plan and following through with the plan will help with keeping your restaurant a thriving business.

Put your restaurant on the digital way with the right marketing



Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr

These days, owning and operating a restaurant business is not just about preparing better dish on a regular basis, despite providing high quality service and food has a lot relations with the success of your restaurant. In fact, the emergence of internet and related digital technology could become a useful tool to help you manage your business better and effectively.

Operators have to also consider how to properly market your restaurant and maintain the success of your business in the digital age. In consequence, how to make use of the internet and high digital technology to promote your business are becoming the key words in the sector.

Proper restaurant marketing should consider many factors and target the areas within the particular factors. Sometime use digital systems to record valuable data would be necessary. Such as tracking the frequency of guest, what is the average amount for patrons spend, increasing customer traffic and the size of the groups of visitors to your restaurant. As if you want to increase your sales, you need a viable marketing strategy and reliable implementation plan to bring forward a workable way, finding the reason for the choice that people come to time and again, even when it means going past your competition and spending more money for the highest quality. However, it is a trend and should not be overlooked of Chinese food business to building up online official website, using the related digital skills such as email, SMS, customer’s database analysis and social networking to increase the customers' value and reach the personalization service.

Build up customer email club, using SMS to communicate with customers and harness the power of social networking to promotion online:

Building an email club is actually an increasingly popular way to market your restaurant.

Email is such a cheap and reliable way to communicate with customers by business people. It makes a very useful sense between customers and marketer, because the tech of email is highly regarded by people from all walks of life as a communication medium tool. Nowadays, people are much more rely on the email to keep them informed by what has happened in the world which related to them. However, it is certain that include their favorite restaurant.

As the same time, so many people are starting to focus on the technology of mobile devices, the advance mobile internet technology make people could surf on the web for all kinds of information by their mobile phone.

So that mobile internet is another high tech way to send email, and most of customers could get your news information through their mobile phone immediately, if they want right now information just at their fingertips. Operators can set up social media channel on popular social media such as Twitter and Facebook, publishing to the minute daily menu blasts to your clients.

Instant publicity and staff training are never overlooked marketing strategy:

While for public relations, the role that your marketing plays in the restaurant is an undeniable one. Often times, instant publicity can make the difference between exceeding your sales quota and barely making ends meet for the quarter. The right marketing mix will allow you to host community events, extend invitations via the Internet to people from all walks of life and use many different advertising mediums for everything from grand openings to anniversary celebrations.

Another facet of marketing that is often overlooked is the complete and effective training of your staff. From bartenders to servers, cooks, cashiers, hostesses and wait staff, it is important to make sure that your staffs know how to market your restaurant in ways such as selling more drinks, appetizers, entrees and desserts. With the right marketing plan, you can increase the bottom line of how much each guest spends every time they visit.

Beyond question, restaurant marketing provides a means to research and analyze sales techniques, product sales, strengths and weaknesses, your menu and everything associated with how to take your restaurant to the top of game and put you on the map with people from everywhere by building powerful restaurant marketing techniques that work. Isn't it time your restaurant received the recognition it deserves?

Interview with Tracy: location is the key words for opening a Chinese supermarket business

Tracy is the manager of Kwong Fatt oriental supermarket which is the largest Chinese supermarket in Preston. She has already operated Chinese supermarket business more than 10 years.

In this interview, Tracy talked about her personal view, experience for a manager of a big supermarket and pointed out "choosing an appropriate location is the key words for opening a supermarket, meeting customers’ need is also important. Most important, facing the trend of supermarket-style deals and establishes a big Chinese supermarket with Chinese restaurant under one roof is their next plan.”

The Gourmet's exclusive Q&A with Tracy

▇ Q1: Could you please introduce some background information for your business, such as when did you begin the business and why did you choose the Chinese supermarket, not restaurant or takeaway?

A: our shop located near the university was opened since year 2000. The other one located in the market was opened since 2010. Chinese restaurants and Chinese takeaways are everywhere in Preston now, so we are taking the advantage because of this reason open a Chinese supermarket instead.

▇ Q2: How do you think your currently business, satisfied, good or bad?

A: our business is getting better and better as we are located in town centre and in the Preston market. Our target customers are not just Chinese students. We also target on western customers, Thai and Philippine.

▇ Q3: If they were not very satisfied, what is the problem in your mind?

A: the only problem in my mind is finding a bigger shop around this area. As we are planning to open a bigger shop and Chinese fast food restaurant under one roof.

▇ Q4: What are threatens or challenges you gonna facing in your currently business, maybe the financial crisis or the increasing VAT, how did you face them and adapt to survive?

A: we always want to keep customers happy and make sure they will come back and shopping with us. All our products are with reasonable price, we sometimes do special offer to attract more new customers.

▇ Q5: As we all know that, you are supposed to have a lot of competitors in Preston and surrounding area, so comparing to other business, what is your difference, competitive advantage?

A: our shop is in a good location, we are located in the market, near bus station, in town centre, and attract more local people. We have another shop located near the central Lancashire University as well, which is convenience for customers who are uclan students.

▇ Q6: So what are the key words or necessary elements do you think of establish a successful supermarket business in UK?

A: location is the main elements for opening a Chinese supermarket. Meeting customers’ need and requirement is also important.

▇ Q7: Lastly, looking for the future, what is the next step for your business?

A: planning to open more shops in different area. Moreover, according to the trend that consumer demand for supermarket-style deals while dining out is delaying a recovery in the UK restaurant business, we are planning to establish a big Chinese supermarket with Chinese restaurant under one roof in the future.