Increase Your Profit Series: Part 2 (Accurately Priced Menu)

07 Feb, 2014 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the conclusion of our 2 part series “Increase your Profits” we are going to review the pricing of your goods, aka your menu. In our last discussion we reviewed that your labor costs should not be more 18% – 24% of your sales. This will need to be monitored closely to ensure you are constantly within your target labor costs. Of course once your sales increase, you will have more customers and need to have a higher number of employees to serve those customers, while balancing this with your target labor cost. But how do you increase the profits on your menu item while maintaining your current level of customers? You can ensure that your menu items are accurately priced to give you the best possible profits.

There are many different theories on how to price menu items and traditionally you look at the food cost for each plate offered, multiple that by 3 and you have your menu price, but this is not the whole story. There are a number of questions you should ask yourself before an accurately priced menu can be truly effective for you.

  • Are you storing a large amount of capital in your freezer?
    • If a large amount of your money is sitting in your freezer waiting to be sold, your profits can be significantly affected
  • Are you offering too large of a selection on your menu causing you to have large inventory levels?
    • Evaluate the items on your menu to see what does and doesn’t sell. By removing the low sellers you will not be stocking inventory on those items and regain some of your capital for use in other parts of your business.
  • Do you have a regular inventory audit procedure?
    • While we never want to think that our staff may be stealing, you need to maintain regular inventory checks to safeguard against theft.
  • Are you sure that your staff is following the strict recipes for your food and drinks? (Or do you even have strict recipes?)
    • If your bartenders are notorious for over pouring, or if you kitchen staff is increasing the portion size of your plated food, your accurately priced menu means nothing.

Once you have addressed these concerns, you are ready to look at your menu. You want to determine what the exact food cost is for each of your items and then figure out the plate cost. Once you have this information for each of your menu items, you are now able to accurately price these menu items. The plate cost of food should be no more than 29% -32% of your price. Beverage, however are a little different, some involve recipes of multiple items and have a more complex pricing strategy:

costpercentagegraph

What Time Do I Work.com is a simple, easy to use, affordable staff scheduling software that is designed to help you save time and money managing your schedules, so you can focus on other aspects of your business (like an accurately priced menu.) Clients currently using the online scheduling software have found areas where they are overstaffed or scheduling a lot of overtime shifts and have significantly decreased their labor costs. Try it for yourself with our no obligation 30 day free trial!

Increase Your Profit Series: Part 1 (By Simply Managing your Labor Costs)

05 Feb, 2014 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We all know that sales equal profits, but we don’t always think about how much profit we get from each sale. In the restaurant and bar industries there are 3 main costs that can have a significant impact on your profits. The most successful business operators are constantly checking their budget weekly to ensure that they are hitting their target costs to equal the highest amount of profits. These three main sections are food costs, beverage costs and labor costs.

Labor costs can be the trickiest piece of the puzzle to figure out, and unfortunately it usually works out to be about 60% of operations costs. You may think that a standard, repeating schedule each week can help you, but it can be one of the biggest mistakes. Yes, you can save time in creating and communicating your scheduling, but you could be faced with over- and under-staffing. Without adequate staff you are faced with the inability to provide consistent high level service to your customers and if you have too much staff working during a slower shift, you are losing a considerable amount of money. So how do you schedule the right number of staff for each shifts/days/weeks/months?

To accurately calculate the right number of staff on each shift is through reviewing past schedules against shift sales and then forecast your sales for the upcoming weeks/months. On average a good rule of thumb is that your labor cost should not be more than 18% – 24% of the expected sales. Accurate forecasting can take a while to master, but WhatTimeDoIWork.com offers the ability to help you.

WhatTimeDoIWork.com online employee scheduling software was developed by employee schedulers from the restaurant industry. The software saves and stores previous schedules for easy access when comparing to your sales reports and for creating upcoming schedules. A unique feature of WhatTimeDoIWork.com scheduling software is the ability to track and calculate labor costs as you create the schedule, telling you while you make the schedule what your labor costs will be. There are many other great features offered by WhatTimeDoIWork.com online scheduling software to help you save time and money. To learn more try our no obligation 30 free trial today!

The secret to getting new patrons is spelled “F-U-N”

03 Feb, 2014 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Your restaurant is unique, with a style all its own. You’ve worked hard to create an atmosphere that welcomes patrons to spend some time eating good food, relaxing at the bar with a martini or glass of wine, and enjoying the company of friends.

But you’re well aware that your restaurant is not the only game in town. You vie for patrons with many other establishments in your general area. And while you have a large number of loyal locals, you need to attract new patrons from other areas of town who want to do more than just eat and run—but to eat, drink, and hang out for the evening. This is the best way to ensure your restaurant’s long-term success.

So what do you do to attract more patrons?  How about turning part of your bar area into a game area? You can place ads in the local newspapers and online, and hang a funky sign in the doorway that proclaims, “Game Room,” with a hand pointing to the new game zone. While the older crowd might have little interest in pool, younger folks will be delighted to spend their money on pool, darts, cocktails and appetizers—and you’ll be happy with your new patrons and profitable venture.

You can expand on the “fun” theme by adding activities like trivia nights, comedians, musicians and other “bar” games such as darts. Trivia nights are sweeping the nation and bringing large crowds to bars. Many patrons will remember happy days in college, when their on-site bar sponsored a weekly darts league. They’ll fondly reminisce about the Thursday nights they spent with dozens of students and friends, vying for the top spot on the leader board. Like many restaurants, pubs, and bars, your games atmosphere has the potential for huge success—not only in terms of bringing in new clientele, but also in significantly boosting bar revenue.

At the end of the day, you’ll benefit not only from excellent earnings, but also dozens of new and frequent patrons looking for good food, good drinks, and a good time. So the moral of the story is, “To get patrons to spend more time—and money—at your establishment, you don’t have to spend a lot of money—just spend it on things that spell F-U-N.”

Don’t forget that What Time Do I Work.com scheduling software can assign duties and tasks to your staff to ensure that all patrons receive excellent customer service and that you bar is adequately staffed at all times. You can try it out free for 30 days!

How can Scheduling Software Reduce Employee Labor Costs?

31 Dec, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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As a business owner, you want your organization to thrive. An important part of ongoing success is tracking every aspect of operations—from facilities management to supplies ordering. You must also keep track of costs—including labor costs, which many analysts claim is your highest expense.

To control labor costs, you must understand who works when for how many hours at what rate. Gathering this type of insight requires careful:

  • Planning
  • Scheduling
  • Analysis
  • Reporting

But here’s the problem—finding the time to complete all these necessary tasks, when there are so many other things on your list of things to do.

If these business analytics seem beyond your reach, then maybe it’s time to consider something new—such as an online-work schedule solution that not only helps you create accurate work schedules quickly and easily, but also shows you at glance:

  • Employee pay rates
  • Weekly costs per employee
  • Overtime warnings

Rather than spend time performing in-depth manual analysis with paper and pen, online scheduling software from What Time Do I Work automates the entire process and creates a real-time 360-degree view of your labor costs. Offering point-and-click simplicity, What Time Do I Work is a comprehensive yet easy-to-use online scheduling solution that enables you to:

  • Enter employee information, including names, emails, phone numbers, preferred shifts, and requested time off
  • Create a new schedule by simply moving time slots to the appropriate names on your schedule template
  • Immediately correct mistakes, if you happen to select a name for a time slot that the employee requested off; simply move the time slot to a different name
  • See real-time labor hours, labor costs, and overtime hours; this information automatically updates directly on the schedule
  • Improve profits and boost your organization’s success

To discover for yourself just how much time and money you can save by using our web scheduling software, you can test drive it for free. There’s no obligation, and no credit card is required to sign up.  For complete information on our web scheduling software, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/features/

Why you should use Online Employee Scheduling Software

19 Dec, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Our new digital world is bringing us new, more efficient ways to complete jobs that were once thought of as time consuming, and until now inefficient.  We have phones and/or tablets that are basically computers that fit in your hand. Every day there are 300 new apps created to help improve our lives. You probably use many of these each day, playing games, checking email, checking your favorite social media sites all the way down to seeing what your dog is doing all day while you are at work. However with all these programs you have to download the app. With the growth of the “cloud” (internet) companies are finding ways for you to use their software without the hassle of downloading programs. The advantages are being able to access the program and information from anywhere at any time, automatic access to any upgrades to the program and ensuring that your information will not be lost if something happens to your computer.

Today you can leverage the power of the cloud to complete your weekly work schedules with advanced yet easy-to-use What Time Do I Work online scheduling software. Here’s how it works.

  • Load all the pertinent information about all your workers—names, emails, phone numbers, preferred shifts, time-off requests, hours/week, skill sets, etc.
  • Employees are able to enter their own time off requests that are logged and stored in the program for the next time you begin to work on your next schedule.
  • Create weekly work schedules from your office or at home.
  • The software will alert you to conflicts, such as scheduling a worker in a timeslot he/she requested off or if you have accidently scheduled one employee for overtime (saving you time and money).
  • When the schedule is complete, click Save, and the schedule is automatically stored in a secure cloud environment, where your employees can access it from anywhere at any time.
  • Click Send, and the schedule is automatically distributed to your employees’ email addresses and/or cell phones. No more paper schedules required and no need for employees to call and ask “What time do I work?”
  • Easily contact your entire staff when you have an open shift, without having to call down a phone tree

Cloud-based scheduling is faster, more efficient, and best of all, it removes you from the emergency-schedule-changing equation. Your workers can “self-serve” using the cloud.

What Time Do I Work.com taps into the strength of the cloud to deliver a solution that not only stores your schedules, but also makes them available to your employees 24×7. The What Time Do I Work.com online scheduling software offers many time saving features to aid in the schedule creation process, while also improving your business and your bottom line. Some of the top features include:

  • Notifies your staff immediately when new or updated schedules are posted
  • Automatically alerts you about scheduling conflicts and overtime hours
  • Saves old schedules for reuse when creating new schedules based on the history of the needs of the business
  • Stores time-off requests in the system; your employees enter the requests, so there’s no work for you
  • Reduces “no-shows” by automatically alerting your staff of upcoming hours

To discover for yourself just how much time and energy you can save by using our online employee scheduling software, watch the video.