Barry Chandler – The Bar Blogger

If you’re not measuring, you’re not managing. This old adage is the first thing I learned as a trainee hotel manager. The same is true now for any business. If you want to measure the success of your bar or restaurant, then this simple method that I came across in Washington DC last weekend will help you out.

I got my copy of Entrepreneur Magazine today and to my delight, the cover story was “The 50 Best Business Bars” in the US.

I thought this was a clever and thoughtful list, primarily because we don’t often think of bars when we think of business, however the piece does a great job of explaining why a bar is the perfect place to do business as well as giving some helpful tips as to how you can make your bar more business-friendly.

According to the author: If you’re in business, choose the right bar and you’ve found the place to deepen a connection, make a pitch, close a deal–and, not least of all, enhance a client’s opinion of you.

Some of the criteria they used to measure the business-ability of a bar included:

- Discreet Seating

- Friendly attentive staff

- Compelling Crowd

- Manageable din

- Full range of liquor

- Good lighting

- Good food

- Decent decor

How ready is your bar for doing business? Could you make any changes? Check out the full article as well as the full list of the 50 Best Business Bars here

I got an email from on of my subscribers today asking if I had any advice relating to leasing out/franchising out the kitchen operation to someone else to run. Well, it just so happens, I’ve come across this before so put together a quick video on what to consider if you’re thinking about this as an option:

Following on from our earlier post about a Robotic Bartender, it seems that the foodservice industry is trying to remove the human touch from service altogether!

Naples Tomato, a nationally known restaurant in Naples, Florida, today announced that it will provide guests with personalized, expert wine recommendations via an Apple iPad instead of a traditional sommelier.

According to their press release, The restaurant is currently testing its Personal Sommeliers for iPad application with the restaurant’s 550-selection, Wine Spectator-recognized wine list. The iPad application will be regularly available in the restaurant beginning in August. Other restaurants will be able to license the application later this year.

I love this idea, but would prefer to see it backed up by professional human sommeliers. We dine out for an experience and for a show, not for a lesson in technology!

Read the full press release here.

Over at ManageYourBar.com today I spoke about a recent experience I had in a bar where I calculated the bar was losing $200/hr through theft. This wasn’t a flash in the pan, most bars have a level of theft, but the difference between profit and loss can be how you manage loss and what your threshold is for allowing it to happen at all.

What’s your threshold? The most profitable bars follow three simple steps to maintain their profits

I recommend you head over and get the 3 steps here

If you’ve been following all the tips on this website with regards to staffing and training then you may have trained your staff so well that they end up leaving the business and setting up a competing business in the area. I’ve seen it happen before and it can have a big effect on your business, so there are a few things you should think about today to prevent too much disruption.

How much confidential information is available to your staff?

The higher level the staff member, the more information they will likely have access to including supplier pricing, phone numbers, entertainment contact details, staff phone numbers, recipes etc. While it is difficult to create a working environment that prevents access to ALL confidential information, the fewer staff members that have access the better. If employees use your confidential information for their own benefit, then you may have legal recourse.

Are your contracts iron-clad?

Do you have contracts in place that prevent senior staff from contacting staff members and suppliers for a certain period of time after they leave? Depending on your area, this may be illegal, so check the law before implementing this. You may also be able to prevent staff members from working their notice period so they can’t spend a week or two after they have handed in their notice in your place of work when you know they are planning another business to compete.

All said and done, it will be near-impossible to prevent a former employee from setting up and competing with you. Competition can be good for business sometimes and cause you to up your game while more customers might be attracted to your area with increased food/beverage offerings. As long as parting is amicable and the law has been observed, game on!

While this list could go on and on and on, these are my five top tips for running a successful bar promotion. I’ll be publishing my next 5 top tips shortly, so be sure to come back and visit!

Plan the Logistics in advance

With any promotion, planning is the key. Make a list of all the equipment, glassware, uniforms, promotional material etc needed well in advance and set about preparing a timeline to obtain these bits and pieces. Also look at the schedule you have planned for the night and work out the logistics with staffing and any guests that might be appearing. If you are using audio-visual equipment, make sure it is well tested in advance. Have you booked the band?

Budget first, then spend

Any promotion needs a return on investment, Work out whether you want your return in cold hard cash on the night of the promotion or whether you will run at a loss to gain exposure, build awareness and collect contact details. Whatever your reason (and either is fine…it’s your business!), write down your goal and the cost associated with achieving it. Then price each aspect of the promotion from staffing, equipment, free drinks etc. If it all makes sense and the figures add up, create a system to track each of these parts of the pie as the promotion so that you don’t run over budget.

Right staff, right result

Create a plan for the number of staff required for each part of the promotion and figure this cost into your budget. There may be certain staff members who are more suitable to certain promotions than others.

Take a Reality Pill

It may be worth your while checking your plan for reality. How realistic is it to achieve your targeted result? Calculate how many custoemrs are needed and how much they each need to spend to make it happen. Is this drastically different to your normal busiest nights? If so, what are you doing differently and additionally to make the promotion work? Its no sin to back pedal before the spending gets out of control. A reality pill can save a lot of money sometimes.

Market your backside off

If you and your staff are the only ones that know about this promotion, is it really a promotion or is it a spending exercise? A promotion needs to be promoted! This is where your social networking skills come into play and your facebook fan page, twitter page, myspace page, email and text contacts need to be hammered hard. Build up the anticipation of the promotion and run offers for signing up or buying tickets in advance. Do you use external promoters? Ensure to involve them early and give them the tools needed to do the selling for you. Are there any local businesses that could help and benefit accordingly? You’ve heard of pre-theater dinner combos, what’s your opportunity?

It’s certainly been a crazy week in the world. Who ever thought that something that we can’t see, can’t feel or can’t hear could cause so much mayhem to world travel? It’s going to take a long time before the effects of Iceland’s unpronounceable volcano wear off and before everyone can get back home.

Looking through the newspapers today and listening to the radio reports, in the midst of all the doom and gloom were stories of extraordinary humanity, stories of people helping their fellow man; stories that would bring a tear to your eye! I often think that times like this bring out the best in people who dig a little bit deeper to ease the burden of others.

Apart from householders near airports putting up weary travelers for the night, I also read about the telephone companies that were waiving the cost of text messaging if you were stuck overseas, the theme parks in US cities offering free admission to anyone with a flight ticket and the hotels that offered discounted rooms to those stuck without a bed because of the chaos.

Before you say it, I know there are still businesses that think an event like this is a reason to price gouge and rip-off the most vulnerable and needy, but I won’t waste any more time on them.

Instead I want to ask you to look at how your business responded and how you could respond to a local, national or international incident in the future in a way that could help out those who need it while ethically growing your business.

Here are a few examples that I can think of off the top of my head: [...]

Well, I’ve been keeping this quiet… A few weeks I decided to finally take the advice of some trusted readers of this blog and have written my first book!

I say written…What I’ve done is take more than 100 of the most read, commented on and re-tweeted blog posts since I launched the blog not nine months ago and compiled in an easy to read paperback!

I have followed lots of the suggestions and tips taken from the more than 500 comments left on the blog and the almost 100,000 visitors to the blog in putting this together and I’m delighted with the result. I hope you will be too!

Readers of the blog will be able to purchase the book from next week (sooner if the first print run arrives this week!).

Thanks for all your feedback and keep the comments coming!

Cheers,

Barry