As far as a restaurant’s profitability goes, the lowest of the low hanging fruit is often found in a poorly planned tip tracking program.  Owners and operators leave money on the table when they don’t accurately plan the incomes of their support staff and schedule employees to deliver results.  They also get into lots of trouble as the government cracks down on under-reporting tips. The support staff I’m talking about consists of positions like busser, food runner, server assistant, bar back, front desk team, etc.  These are folks that are often new to the service industry and are paying their …

Truly the BEST service involves giving your servers what they want: Power.   I think folks are motivated by a combination of three things – Affiliation (approval from others... "please like me") Achievement (simply a job well done) Power (including money, authority over others, being envied) Let’s face it, servers in America view themselves as fallen Angels… “I was on my way to medical school but ran out of money” or “I’m really a Real Estate professional with some extra time on my hands” or “I’m going to be a famous actor as soon as I get discovered”.  I find that …

I pulled this morsel from chef Graham Duncan’s blog "From the Kitchen: Graham Duncan" and couldn’t resist throwing in my two cents. The “dine and whine” has become the new “dine and dash” except instead of sneaking out to avoid paying for a meal(which in some restaurants it becomes the obligation of the server to pay for the meal)patrons sit right there in the restaurant and tell the restaurant management to their face that they are going to walk right out of the there without paying for a damn thing and there is nothing the management can do about it. Every restaurant manager is very familiar with this scenario, the …