Restaurant Servers - Blue Orbit Restaurant Consulting

Restaurant Gig Labor – A Solution to the Great Resignation

Consulting, General, Hospitality Consulting, Kitchen Ops, Leadership, Menu, Service / By Ray Camillo

Every day, local and national news agencies report on the state of the labor market. Governments anchor their discussion on unemployment rate, citing moving average trends or comparing today to a year ago. Business owners lament generational work ethic variances. Progressives blame a lack of career advancement opportunities while Conservatives blame liberal child rearing strategies …

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The Great Restaurant Labor Shortage…Will Be Over Shortly

General, Hospitality Consulting, Random Stuff / By Ray Camillo

The service to customer-expectation cycle has been spiraling down for decades. When service goes down, customer expectations go down with it…then service-offered achieves a new low and is met again with a new lower bar to clear. Each generation blames the next for their sloth, self-loathing, and stunted ambition. I was born in the mid-sixties …

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Elevating Your Cocktail Program Above a Sea of Competition

Consulting, Menu, Service / By Ray Camillo

In dark basements, bright garden restaurants, hotel lobbies, food courts, and all spaces in between; great cocktail programs are popping up everywhere. Everyone is getting into the cocktail business, and many are becoming particularly good at it. This phenomenon is making it harder than ever to rise to the top and gain notice for a …

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Mother’s Day: The One Day Restaurateurs Cannot Afford to Mess Up

Consulting, Leadership, Service / By Ray Camillo

“The restaurant kept running out of food.” “The manager gave us free mimosas for seating us 45 minutes after our reservation, but they never made it to our table.” “It took 25 minutes for a server to greet our table.” “Apparently water and iced tea refills are forbidden on Mother’s Day.” These are all lines …

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The REAL Reason for The Great Restaurant Labor Shortage

Consulting, Leadership, Random Stuff / By Ray Camillo

There has been a lot of chatter lately about the first few dozen states cutting short the pandemic unemployment benefit in an effort to get folks to return to work. In a May 2021 article from NBC News by Dartunorro Clark, the topic is polarizing with the right claiming that ending the program early will …

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How to Successfully Hire and Retain Staff

Consulting, General, Leadership / By Ray Camillo

As more hospitality businesses continue to reopen and grow during the COVID life environment, we are all trying to figure out how to hire and retain staff. This is a great time for owners to review some of the aspects of their business to make sure they are set up for growth and have the …

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Connecting with Guests in a Mask Wearing Society

Consulting, General, Service / By Ray Camillo

It is possible that we have all underestimated the importance of a smile in connecting with others. We spent months craving the experience of dining in restaurants and once more interacting with humans only to discover that it is not the same when all those humans are wearing masks.

What Do We Do Now? Creating a PLAN to Reopen

Consulting, General, Leadership / By Ray Camillo

In the last few weeks, I have had some very difficult conversations with a lot of restaurant owners that I consider not only clients but friends. I’ve listened to them as they have made hard decisions to close one or all of their locations, worried about their employees while understanding that they could not financially …

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Restaurant Resolutions in 2020

General, Hospitality Consulting, Random Stuff / By Ray Camillo

The holiday hubbub is settling down as Part-Time workers head back to school and holiday parties are in the rearview. Hopefully, your restaurant has fared well and all of your planning to deliver record-setting performance has paid off. But now what? Quarter 1 is notoriously abysmal and there is often a bit of a hangover …

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7 Restaurateur “Must Do’s” for September

Consulting, General, Hospitality Consulting / By Ray Camillo

You may feel all alone in an empty dining room but take comfort in the fact that almost every restaurant suffers the September Slump. For the most part no matter how much you promote your business or how big a discount you offer, it really doesn’t drive people through the doors. Last minute vacations, back …

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