Floored! NRA Show 2008 News

Floor talk: Collecting ideas for a new venture

Cesar and Colleen Miranda, Miranda’s Peruvian Restaurant, Centerville, Ohio:

We’re getting ready to start our restaurant, so we’re here looking at products and equipment, and picking up marketing ideas. We’re at the idea stage right now—we may make some buying decisions, but mostly we’re just seeing what’s available.

We’re really impressed by some of the payment options — for example, a receipt folder that lets you swipe a credit card right at the table. Because we’re opening a family restaurants, we’re also looking at ideas for kids, like the triangle crayons and different kinds of sippy cups.

Being a Peruvian restaurant, we’re looking for ideas on where to get ingredients, and seeing just what’s available.

Finding and keeping great employees

The best food in the world won’t keep a restaurant going if you don’t have the right people. Joleen Flory, president & CEO of the Elliott Leadership Institute, shared tips for finding, hiring and keeping the people you need. She also gave ideas on the best ways to get rid of the people you don’t need at one of the  many recruitment and retention educational sessions at the NRA show. 

Hire from a position of strength. It’s hard to hold out for the perfect person when you’re desperate for a warm body to plug a staffing gap. Flory recommends staffing at 105 percent. That will give you a cushion if someone leaves suddenly or you get a quick uptick in business after an advertising campaign or a great review.

Beware the perils of understaffing. Flory warned of the vicious cycle that kicks in when you don’t have enough – or the right – staff: Customers get poor service and complain; the remaining staff has to scramble to keep up; staff faces burnout; morale plummets; and more people quit. Yikes!

Understand how adults learn. You’re not hiring kindergarteners (or if you are, you’re going to have serious problems with labor regulators). Don’t treat your staff like 5-year-olds. Adults want relevant information: what do you need me to do, and how do you want me to do it. “Give them a goal and the ability to achieve that goal, to check it off the list,” Flory said.

Just the facts. If you’re not getting what you need from a staff member, they need to understand exactly what they’re doing wrong, and how to correct it. That means you’ve got to come to them with facts, not emotions. Example: “You’ve been more than 20 minutes late for your shift five times in the last two weeks.” Not: “You drive me crazy with your crappy attitude! You suck!”

Lay out the facts of the case, come up for solutions to problems, and let employees know what will happen if things don’t change. Follow through if you don’t get the results you need.

Be healthy, but be somewhat quiet about it

Au Bon Pain thought its customers would be thrilled when it cut trans fats from all of its cookies a few years ago. After all, Americans are looking for healthier choices, right?

“As soon as it said no trans-fats on the signs, cookie sales went through the floor,” Ed Frechette, senior vice president of marketing at Au Bon Pain said. When they took that information off their signs, sales bounced back. The cookies remained trans-fat free, but “it’s kind of on the QT,” Frechette told a packed room at one of the many food and beverage education sessions at the NRA Show.

Unfortunately, many Americans still equate “healthy” with “bad-tasting.” The solution? Pursue healthy choices, but don’t shove that information down your customer’s throats.

That’s because healthy choices do make business sense, said Paul Lynch, executive chef at Firelake Restaurant in the Radisson Plaza Hotel Minneapolis. “Whenever I put whole grains on the menu, they sell,” Lynch said. He uses whole grains in breakfasts, side dishes and even desserts, and customers literally eat them up, because the dishes taste good. “You can’t look like you’re just going to sit down and sing kumbaya,” Lynch said. “My food doesn’t look like some health ... craze menu — it’s real food.”

And real food tends to be healthy without trying too hard, said Rick Bayless, chef/owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo restaurants. His restaurants are built on the principle of creating authentic flavors with real ingredients, and it’s a formula that works from business and health perspectives.

That’s not to say you should deny your healthy credentials to the people who want to know. More and more consumers are actively searching for healthier choices when they eat out, and they want to know what you’ve got.

Web sites like healthydiningfinder.com can help you target the customers who are looking for better choices without scaring off the patrons who still think healthy can’t coexist with tasty. Erica Bohm, vice president of Healthy Dining, said the site highlights and gives nutritional information for four to 10 better-for-you dishes on your menu. Folks who want healthier choices will know you’ve got something for them to eat. The customers looking to indulge won’t need to know that they’re actually eating something a nutritionist would approve of.

Floor talk: Looking for organic options, new recipes

Millie Das and Cecilia Pearce, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Mich.:

We’re looking at the organic and healthy options here at the show. I saw some biodegradable tableware that we’re considering buying. There’s also some great equipment for picking up hot trays.

We’re also collecting new recipes. There was a peach crisp we’re going to try to use in our dining room.

Floor talk: "If you can't find it here, it doesn't exist."

Brent Poulton, St. Louis Bar and Grill, Ontario, Canada:

I run a chain of 22 restaurants in Southern Ontario. This show is great for anybody in the industry: there’s such a variety of exhibitors and products. If you can’t find it here, it doesn’t exist.

Something we’ve been searching for for a year and a half is an inventory management system that interfaces with a POS system. We're hoping to have better luck here finding one here.

I’m attracted to all the Louisiana food here — it’s very distinctive, with great flavor. We’d think about adding that to our menu.

Floor talk: Finding farm-to-table options

Brenda Franks Hale, Peggy Franks and Erin Battaglia, Boxwood Bistro, Franklin, Tenn: We’re opening our restaurant, a contemporary American, farm-to-table spot, in August. This is out first time at the show, and we weren’t expecting so much! This is the most professionally run show we’ve seen.

We’ve been looking at the coffee machines from Switzerland, the New Zealand sparkling water and organic carry-out containers. We’re also looking at a lot of the chinaware exhibits: We’ve been going through catalogs, but it’s so much better to feel and touch things instead of just looking at it.

Spirits? Lifted.

As we walked past the velvet ropes and into the International Wine, Spirits and Beer event, it was like gaining entry to an exclusive night spot. The black curtains, the comfortable, loungey seating, the hand-stamp for re-entry.

At least, this is what we imagine that would feel like. (We don't have a lot of practice.)

That sensation remained once we stepped onto the floor, once it became apparent that everybody else in the room knew a whole lot more about this stuff than we did: everywhere we turned there were operators and distributors looking for the next big thing in beverages.

"It's very exciting," said Charlotte Rowell of Noble Union, a beer importer with some renowned Belgian ales in their stable. "The thing that impresses me is the selectivity, it's people who are going to buy our product. It's who we want to be talking to."