Hey /seekay/ I need some advice. Also any unrelated restaurant advice/stories, dream restaurant stories, etc are welcome.
A friend is giving me and another friend their restaurant. I've no experience but my friend has over 14 years of restaurant experience. This place has been in business for years but our friend admittedly sucks at managing it and is changing careers anyway. It has an amazing location, steady customers(locals, tourists, all foot traffic), and a liquor license, however it also has a huge pretentious menu that is a significant cash drain, so we've decided on streamlining everything when we take over. We've so far theoretically cut their 33 worst sellers and have the menu down to 39 items and saved roughly 5k a month in inventory.
Here's some things I need an opinion on. It was mentioned that sudden streamlining of the menu might scare local customers somehow, but 70+ food items seems like a lot for a bistro. Would it be safer to trim the menu items over time or rip them off like a bandaid?
Also kids items just don't sell but they require ingredients for only those items. Coffee doesn't sell either but offering it is actually wasting almost 150/200 a month because it's pot brewed then dumped or the staff drinks it. Should these items be cut also or is it expected for a middle class business lunch restaurant to have a kids menu and coffee?
Jason Adams
>A friend is giving me and another friend their restaurant ...What?
Noah Carter
The fact that you expect us to be able to say anything meaningful without knowing a damm thing about your menu, your clientele, your location, your personel, your climate, your market, your mood other than "middle class business lunch", tells me that you're more clueless than you think.
Carter Cox
>menu Lunch focused. Imported and local specialty meat and cheese plates and sandwiches. Also afternoon tea selections(tea sandwiches, scones, mini gateau). There are pasta lunch entrees too that don't sell. No brunch or dinner options but it operates at those hours.
>clientele Well-off hipster tourists and young business professionals. Also lawyers and judges, we have a grand jury client that meets regularly and also host events. Showers, weddings, bachelorette parties.
>climate/location whatever you would call the climate in upstate NY
>personnel Owner, three servers, two cooks
>market Target market is current clientele
Ryder Gomez
>Coffee That crowd buys it, and you've got the right weather for it. Ask why aren't they buying yours, and whether you want to compete for those dollars, or cut back to some vestigial coffee service?
Do you need to push coffee with the deserts/tea times? Advertise it more? Better/fresher coffee?
>Kids You're clearly not catering as a draw for small children, but you've got a bunch of finger food shit like little sandwiches already. Why not use some of that as a kids menu, and drop the extra ingredients? Imagine serving the same shit on your regular menu, a flight of tiny sandwiches, a scone, desert and tea or whatever with a little princess tiara and call it a pretty princess tea time special.
Some places actually are better off being almost hostile to kids, if you're trying to drive away parents, but that's unusual.
Zachary Anderson
I’d say cutting the stuff that doesn’t sell like ripping off a band-aid is the way to go. Most of your regular customers won’t be miffed because the items they usually order are still on the menu and still made the same way. You might lose a few customers because they only came for the pasta dishes no one else buys, but those losses will be nothing compared to the money saved. Reducing or modifying the kid’s menu to only include ingredients you use for the regular menu is the optimal decision, but it also sounds like you could cut it entirely. A lunch bistro in upstate NY frequented by businessmen and layers hardly sounds like a place that attracts a lot of business from parents with kids in tow. Especially since you already said the kid’s menu doesn’t sell. Maybe consider upgrading an item or two from the kid’s menu to the regular menu. This way you’ll have a contingency for the odd kid and/or tastelet manchild who comes in without wasting too much cash. As for coffee, it’s obvious that either your current coffee sucks or tea is simply much more popular with your customers. Consider getting higher-quality beans and reducing the amount of coffee brewed each day. Worst comes to worst your cook throws another pot on when they run out.
Ryder Hernandez
A small hipster lunch-focused bistro with 39 items on the menu? Keep cutting til you're below 20. That's absurd. I've been to buffets with fewer than 20 things spread out.
Also, start doing the "under new management" thing. Be sure you're announcing changes on social media and in your restaurant. A sudden removal of long-offered entries is a death sentence for a restaurant established on local regulars.
Also also, your friend might know what he's doing but you should be prepared to spend endless time, effort, and money into this. It's a restaurant and not the only one in town. Very aggressively interrogate everything about the operations, including where you get your ingredients to the hours of operation to how the kitchen gets cleaned.
The previous owner literally threw it away because it was hemorrhaging money. Don't keep anything the same (except menu successes) unless it works for you and you can prove it.
Don't do cocaine and don't tolerate it from any of the employees.
Elijah Cruz
There are five coffee focused shops within two blocks of us who cater more towards the cafe crowd and get the morning coffee rush. Only one of those is a legitimate café, one is a dunkin, one is a Starbucks, and two offer pot coffee and breakfast. We get the business lunches so we really do well with sparkling water, wine, and tea service. I'm thinking people just don't typically follow those with coffee. We average just one coffee purchase a day in the last six months, but those numbers could be inflated from events. Think we might just drop it. The cakes and desserts didn't sell either until combined with tea service, but even that couldn't push coffee. Probably because it isn't as novel as tea.
I'm with you on the kids tea service. Great idea.
Jason Reyes
don't piecemeal it, scrap the whole menu and pick a theme or style and build a menu of maybe thirty items around it.
Jack Rodriguez
We offer a brie grilled cheese and two specialty mac & cheese dishes. Both are phenomenal sellers, and grown up versions of the kids menu. If it isn't orange and gooey though I'm not sure if kids would go for it. Troublesome.
There was 72 items before. A big part of the menu is imported meats and cheese selections for build your own cheese boards. It sells consistently well but yeah, you're right, the whole menu needs to be condensed even further.
The under new management idea is a life-saver, thank you! I'm starting classes with the local SBA, and my partner works at the location currently. Between the two of us gathering info in the ways you suggested, hopefully we can keep this thing afloat.
>don't do cocine Pic related
Thanks for all the great advice so far guys
Bentley Flores
Sounds risky. All the numbers and legwork establishing the location has been done already.
>typo I'm a phone poster who sucks dicks
John Hill
Get on social media. I can't stress this enough. Pay some local business undergrad intern if you have to but you need a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and you need to be updating it like twice a day at least.
Lucas Watson
while it sounds risky it's actually less risky than what to customers will appear to be just randomly cutting shit from the menu. I mean it's gonna be your restaurant, are you really gonna be satisfied with just modifying what someone else started instead of making it your own?
Jacob Reed
You make a good point. But the stuff left has consistently good sales. It would be tough even to condense it even more and and then add more items I'd think would sell, let alone trying to reinvent the wheel. Having rotating menu items like a chefs recommended item that changes weekly or something is an idea I've been toying with.
Camden Perez
Also, this was my initial desire when the takeover was first brought up, but after we get a feel for the industry and can manage above water for a while.
Cameron Collins
I would bet the hipsters aren't even considering your coffee.
Whether you WANT to compete with fucking starbucks is a different question entirely. My gut is to save it for the events, or make the stuff on request only or go with a keureg, but I don't know your sunk costs.
A local sandwich shop near here went counterprogramming to try to get the hipsters to buy coffee. They advertised a "kay cup"
>The Kay cup is a cup of coffee served by Kay. It's made in a pot the same way for the last 30 years. We don't have any soy milk or stevia, but she will call you sugar if you like.
Kay being a massive milf I imagine helped.
Of course going with shit like that is always risky.
Kids menu or maybe adults menu idea. Build your own mac and cheese, which is your mac and cheese topped with cheese selections, maybe some meat as well, so picky kids can choose what cheese if they want. Even throw in some "government cheese" if you want to go all out on this.
It sounds like you have shit with your existing ingredients that's already great for kids.
Meme food idea: Cheetos mac and cheese.
Blake Turner
Luckily they already have a great social media updater who will stay with us through the transition. Waiting for ubereats or doordash to come to the area and maybe that'll help get our name out with the college kids too.
The Kay cup story is cute. Think I'm convinced at this point to drop coffee all together except for events like you suggest. Definitely going to use the Cheetos mac and cheese as a special one day though.
William Wood
Rip it off like a band aid. With a rebrand you go hard or go home.
Depending on location I'd argue kids menu should definitely go. If you aren't in, say, a mall where mums taking their kids shopping might stop for a bite or in proximity to childcare or something I'd say ditch it.
Jace Hall
I'd use the new management publicity to update your beverage program. Drinks are really profitable. Wine by the glass sells for the wholesale price of the bottle. So once you sell one glass the bottle has paid for itself, the three remaining glasses in it are profit. If you know someone who is good with wine it's not all that difficult to get a short list of wines you could sell for $7-9 a glass that are probably better than what you're currently serving. And if part of the revamp is getting a reputation for having good wine you'll have to train the servers on which wines go best with which dishes, but it's easy money. I would then look at the beer and cocktail offerings the same way. Could you up your game in a way that wouldn't alienate your customers, instead encouraging them to spend a little more on drinks?
Nathaniel Murphy
You're going to fail hard if you just try to "fix" what you've already got if it's losing money.
Tyler Young
>Could you up your game in a way that wouldn't alienate your customers, instead encouraging them to spend a little more on drinks? The current owner is literally paying the business because of the menu as it is. They have a solid nest egg so it's not a problem for them but I'm not looking to spend money over making money in this. Most of the menu has got to go anyway. I did manage to cut it down to 22 items after the suggestions here.
They're already in partnership with a winery which is pretty good publicity. Small batch or craft beers and novel cocktails sounds like a good direction. As far as incentives, two of the teas have upgrades for "festive" which is just adding a glass of prosecco. We don't do brunch which would be great for mimosas, bloody marys, and the like, but the wine already flows hard on weekends or when the courthouse let's out.
>With a rebrand you go hard or go home. That is extremely motivating advice. Thank you.
After talking it over, we're offering a kids tea at around 10$ more than any of the kids items(which were cutting) with items already offered individually or in house. Steers them to either purchase that or full priced items.
Asher Foster
After going through the numbers I feel confident we've got a good idea of why and where it's losing most of the money. 72 menu items, a third of those actually sell, the rest goes straight in the trash. It's not the location, it's not the entire concept, its not above average rent or faulty equipment or empty tables. It really just appears to be poor management.
Nolan Roberts
Still with the money you'll spend changing the menu you aren't doing yourself any favors by keeping the same stuff you had before.
Jace Turner
Heeeeey, who's the artist
Angel Bennett
Streamline the menu no matter how big the menu only like 12 items will be your big money makers
Nathan Butler
Try
Brayden Collins
>cashdrain Stopped right there. Sounds like they're giving you their headache and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Colton Ortiz
>get a free restaurant that he can just sell if he really hates it >HURR DURR IT'S A TRAP Retard
Oliver Flores
OP doesn't even have experience. He stands to lose money even if he somehow hangs onto it long enough to sell
