The senior market is composed of people who are 65 years or older. Seniors generally live on fixed incomes, from their pension or sustenance by relatives, and thus have a rather inflexible spending power. Most seniors usually go to family-oriented eating places such as lunch buffets because they offer good food and services at affordable prizes. Less active seniors usually prefer smaller portions as they may have smaller appetites. When targeting seniors, it is best to make them special by offering senior promotions, or lowered rates. You can also market your restaurant as senior-friendly by emphasizing safety features such as ramps and handlebars.

The late adult market is composed of people aged 50 to 64. They are usually the ones who are experiencing the empty nest syndrome, where grownup children have left the home. This market usually has the most stable financial status as they could be in the most advanced stages in their careers. At this point, price usually doesn’t matter. This is the age when people start trying to really enjoy life and its pleasures. So the main concern is good food and service. When targeting this market, it is good to present your restaurant with elegance and sophistication. It would be wise to invest more on ambience and class.

The middle aged group is composed of people who are around 40 to 50 years old. This are very productive years as most executives and prominent career persons fall in this market. Money is rather plentiful and thus spent with more generosity. In this age, people are quite fond of trendy and high-end, fine dining restaurants. Many people in this market already have grandchildren and thus this is also good for family-friendly eating places which that are more formal than those frequented by the senior market.

The young adult market consists of people in their mid twenties to just before reaching middle age. This is an age of great effort for established families. The main concern here is enjoying children and keeping a good relationship with them. People belonging in this market usually look for eating places that are conducive for bonding with their children. Places that offer food fast, and with bigger quantities such as family brunch buffet restaurants which are big hits for this market. It is important to offer comfort and a laid-back ambience for this type of market.

The young market comprises of those in their early twenties and younger. This is probably the most diverse market. The main concern of people in this market is instantaneous gratification with low prices. This is the primary market for the fast food industry. A good strategy for this target market is keeping updated with the latest trends and offering food services in association to what is “cool” and “hip”.

Bill McRea is the publisher of Knowninfo a premium website dedicated to providing Information, Marketing Strategies and several great informational eBooks like How to Start a Successful Restaurant Business. Visit our site daily for updated information, and unique products.

To learn what type of licenses and permits you will need for the area your business will be located in, you need to talk to your county or city clerk. You will also want to check out the zoning ordinances and sign regulations that may apply to the type and location of your business.

Before you even think about obtaining licenses and permits, you will need to apply for a Federal Employer Identification Number or EIN. You can do this by visiting the IRS website. They will ask a few questions and you will be issued an EIN. This number identifies you to the government (IRS) as a business owner. Everyone who owns a business must have an EIN.

Below are some of the licenses and permits that you may need for your restaurant business.

1. A License for Business– Depending on your restaurant business location, you may be charged a percentage of your gross sales, or a simple yearly fee to operate your business.

2. A Food Handler’s License or Permit– This is necessary for the selling of edible goods. Each state and county have their own set of rules and amount of fee charged. You will be inspected regularly by health inspectors to make sure you are running a clean restaurant business.

3. A Liquor License– having a liquor license will allow you to sell alcohol. It is essential to have one if you plan on selling any alcohol in your restaurant business. The type of license you apply for will depend on what sort of alcohol your restaurant will serve. Many states will require that you obtain a one license for beer, another for wine, and yet another for hard liquor. The state only allows a certain number of liquor licenses for an area. If none are available you, you will need to purchase the license from someone who already has one and is willing to sell. These can be renewed yearly, unless you have committed an illegal offense such as, selling liquor to a minor, or selling liquor you do not have a license for.

4. A Sign Permit– Before you put up any signs for your restaurant business, contact your city officials to see if there are restrictions on the type of sign, size, location, and how the sign is lit. You should also get written approval from your landlord before you put up any sort of sign.

5. A Music License– Any establishment that plays copyrighted music, will need one of these. Whether you have a band, DJ playing CDs, or Karaoke. The fines can be steep for not having a music license. They usually run from $5,000 to $20,000, so it’s a good idea to obtain this license.

6. Fire Certificates– You will undoubtedly be inspected by the fire department before you open your restaurant business. They will educate you on all regulations you will need to follow, and will do routine inspections on your business. Other permits you may need include: a Police Permit, a Sellers Permit (allows you to buy wholesale goods without paying sales tax), and a Building or Zoning Permit.

The laws and regulations of any area are subject to change, it will be important to join your local and National Restaurant Association. Keep informed on the changes in local government also.

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information on how to open new restaurant checkout his recommended websites.

This is why learning How to Start a Restaurant Business can make or break you within the first two years. However, we came across this profitable system that delivers a success rate over around 80% according to their sales page. This is enough to have us take a deeper look and find what exactly you can learn and accomplish from using this program. The results are quite interesting.

The Last Thirty Years Have Been Crazy

Let’s face it. Restaurant sales have gone up tremendously over the last thirty years. When you look on their sales page, you’ll find a snapshot of the progression that has taken place over the last three decades. What started out as 42.8 billion dollars has now risen to 558.3 billion dollars. We aren’t great mathematicians or anything, but that type of increase is definitely monumental.

The eating establishments alone brought in almost 400 billion dollars and just think about those that have both restaurants and bars within their facilities. Need we say more? The point they’re trying to make is that this type of industry has become a goldmine for those who have implemented the perfect systems for everyone to enjoy. It doesn’t matter if it’s an employee or a patron because when they’re all happy, the business flourishes.

So What Benefits Will You Receive

If you want to learn How to Start a Restaurant Business and become successful then you might want to use some of the tools this system has to offer. One of the first things you’ll enjoy is knowing there won’t be any trial and error involved. Why? Well, when you try to take on a task like this one, it’s hard to decipher the issues that will come to be around you everyday. However, if you already have the answers to all these obstacles before they happen, then the end result can only be success.

According to their sales page, you’ll learn everything from setting up a viable plan right from the beginning. This means deciding on the right restaurant, why many of them fail, how to save time, and of course, various other tips, tricks, and methods. Not to mention everything from mortgages, leases and all the boring financial stuff that pass a lot of people by.

Our Overall Analysis

From our own experience, we’ve seen restaurants come and go over the years. You probably have too, but if you are completely committed to starting your own restaurant then it might be wise to take the knowledge of several others and see what you’re missing. Things like which bank to choose, and even finding investors. Then again, you may have this all figured out. We just think if you came to this article, you were looking for more.

Let Work From Home Job Review Kings Brian Garvin and Jeff West teach you more about Internet Marketing Review Kings. Feel free to use this article but please leave all links and author bio intact.

Selling your restaurant requires quality prior planning if you are going to realize the maximum value for the business. This planning is not much different when getting out than when you first got into that business.

What things did you look for when you bought your restaurant? Of course, profit was probably the key consideration, followed by a great location, a niche market, a solid system of operations, and a vision for growth. Aren’t these the same things you need to concentrate on if you are going to market your operation to someone else?

A strong focus on the basics, about twelve months prior to getting out of your operation can take you from where you are at now, to a maximum market value. Let’s look at some of the top areas you may wish to concentrate on right away:

1. Bookkeeping. A clean, organized and understandable set of financials are critical to the sale. A close friend once said, “A business with no profits on paper has no value”, and this statement is close to being very true. You will want to show where your income came from, what you spent on expenses, and what kind of cash flow exists. If you cannot show these numbers, all the profit in the world will not make any difference to a buyer if you cannot prove it. A professional accounting firm can give you feedback on how to structure your systems.

2. Profits. You simply must be profitable and there are ways to do it. By concentrating on your highest cost areas such as labor, food and beverage, you can make good headway by making your purchasing more efficient, watching your inventory levels, and what you are charging for your products. Obviously profit generation is a very large topic and worth looking at closely. Have you had an operations analysis done on your business recently? A restaurant consultant can conduct this analysis inexpensively and give you a list of things to work on.

3. Location. This includes making sure you have a lease that is of value to your prospective buyer, or terms on the real estate that will provide enough profit for the buyer at the end of each month. Imagine the interest level of a buyer who finds out that you have only 4 months left on the lease. Hard to get too excited about that, especially when most states require certain minimums on the lease terms if you are selling a liquor-beer-wine operation.

4. Appearance. Just like a home that needs “Street appeal” to get buyer interest, your restaurant is the same way. Fresh paint, neat landscaping, clean windows, an organized office, a clean kitchen…you get the idea. Put a checklist together of what you will get done each month, and by month twelve, you will have completed the list.

5. Legal. If you operate as a corporation, would you consider selling the stock in your corporation to the buyer, allowing you to simply walk away? For some sellers, this option may make sense. Seek the services of a qualified attorney on how best to structure your business for a future sale. While one structure may work for one type of operation, it could spell financial disaster to another. This is a good time to seek professional legal advice.

6. Staffing. If you have been running the operation on your own, doing a lot of the work yourself, are you simply selling a “Job” to the new buyer? Think about what your buyer will be looking for and set up your systems now for maximum value in the near future. You will want to hand over a smooth running, fully staffed, profitable operation to a buyer. Now, what the buyer will do will be anyone’s guess!

So far, we have concentrated on a twelve-month exit plan. What if you need to get out of your restaurant quickly, like thirty or sixty days from now? If your need is that pressing to get out of a business, you will undoubtedly have your reasons for this pressure. An immediate lack of profit, a terminated lease, costly repair problems or something else is triggering this pressure.

You will be hard pressed to realize the maximum price for your business if you are a desperate seller. It makes sense at this time to enlist professional services of a restaurant consultant to walk you through your options, and how you can get the maximum value out of the operation.

Should you simply hand over the business sale to a realtor or broker to sell? Not right away if you want the maximum long-term value. Prior planning, a vision for what type of transaction will best serve your purposes, and consulting advice on how to squeeze every last dollar out of that operation are all critical components of getting your just rewards.

Kevin Moll is a noted author and President of Restaurant Consultants, Inc. Specializing in restaurant startup ventures and troubleshooting, his services are available worldwide. He can be reached at 1-800-961-6005 or through the Internet at http://www.restaurantconsultant.org

Increasing sales volume (getting more customers to your venue)
Increasing price (put up your prices on your menus)
Cutting costs (decrease your food, beverage and wage costs)
Increasing the average spend (get your customers to buy more every time they buy of you)
Combining price and sales volume will no doubt post increased revenue. Cutting costs will also result in savings.

Restaurant marketers (ie you the business owner or manager) mistakenly assume that the only means of increasing sales is to net more customers. While its true that selling to more people will definitely make your sales go up, there can also be several other, more innovative ways of increasing turnover, such as increasing frequency of sales to the same customer or making higher value sales to him/her.

It does follows that turnover also increases when customers spend more each time they buy from you (increasing spend) and when they do it more often (increasing frequency). McDonalds used this technique to great aplomb when it taught its sales force to prod customers with the seemingly innocuous poser: “Would you like fries with your burgers, please?” A simple question like that, marketers testify enabled the snack food giant to increase its turnover worldwide by $19 million a day!

Hence the four variables that impact sales in any business are:

1. The Prospects -, i.e. the number of people who express an interest in doing business with you (people that call you or look at your website etc…)

2. The Conversion Rate, i.e., how many actually buy from you and become your customers

3. Their Average Spend, i.e. the average amount that each customer spends when they buy from you.

4. Number of Transactions or Frequency of Sales – The number of times, on average, that customers buy from you in a year

If we were to express these four variables as a mathematical equation, it would look somewhat like this:

Sales = Prospects X Conversion Rate X Average Spend X Number of transactions

Clearly, sales can be increased by improving any combination of these four variables. Now let us examine each of these sales drivers more closely.

Increasing Sales, i.e. Increasing Conversion Rates
Buying decisions are seldom made on the first contact. In fact, according to the National Sales Executive Association, US, you can increase your sales by up to 80% simply by following up on the same, old customer!

Here are some statistics from their survey:

2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact

This implies that 80% sales are made on the 5th-12th contact! In other words, that’s the amount of time, energy and resources that you have to spend on ensuring full conversion rate from every prospect!

Increasing your conversion rate can increase sales substantially, especially if you are starting from a low base. So how many pieces of marketing do you need to send from your restaurant?

Increasing Frequency
This is by far the most powerful sales driver. You have already attracted and converted a prospect. A more formidable challenge is selling to the same customer over and over again. This is well worth your time and effort as research indicates that it costs six times more to attract a new customer than it costs to re-sell to someone who has bought from you before. So, even if you are unable to sell to the same customer, do lot of and cross selling. Turn him/her into your brand ambassadors and through him/her sell to his/her friends, family and colleagues.

Increasing Spend
In marketing parlance, this would imply up-selling. The Average spend from a customer can be increased both by cross-selling and up-selling. Cross selling simply means selling customers a different but related product, in addition to what they asked for. This is as simple as up selling to a more profitable and higher prices menu item.

Increasing Price
Realizing that the increasingly affluent and demanding consumer now comprises a very large spending force at the top end in all developed economies, clever restaurateurs have subtly began to increase price on the same value of product. This strategy is being effectively deployed across sectors in the food and beverage industry. Price increase however is a risky strategy and should be resorted to only when there is a perceived (if not real) enhancement in the value of the product in the consumer’s mind. This can very effectively be done through a media blitz, before and after announcing a price hike that presents you as a very exclusive, well differentiated brand from the low-priced, run-of-the-mill competing products.

Restaurant Marketing Ideas is the most comprehensive restaurant marketing toolkit available for your business and is packed full of pre-designed, ready to go marketing promotions to dramatically increase sales to your restaurant, café or hotel.

http://www.squidoo.com/restaurantmanagementtoolkit

So in case that you are not familiar with the term, let’s start by defining coopetition. If we check Wikipedia, we find the following definition:

“Coopetition or Co-opetition is a neologism coined to describe cooperative competition. Co-opetition occurs when companies work together for parts of their business where they do not believe they have competitive advantage, and where they believe they can share common costs. For instance, the cooperation between Peugeot and Toyota on shared components for a new city car for Europe in 2005. In this case, companies will save money on shared costs, while remaining fiercely competitive in other areas. For co-opetition to work, companies need to very clearly define where they are working together, and where they are competing.”

Your long-term business success comes not solely from competing successfully against other restaurants, but also by working with them to your advantage.

Coopetition is part competition and part cooperation. When restaurants work together, they can create a much larger and more valuable market that they ever could by working individually. Restaurants can then compete with each other to determine who takes the largest share of the increased number of potential customers.

A good example of coopetition between restaurants is when there is section of a city or town that has several restaurants concentrated in a relatively small area. If you look at this area from a traditional business point of view, opening a food service establishment there looks like a bad idea.

Why should anybody open a restaurant in an area already full of restaurants?

The reality is that the abundance of places to eat attracts customers who may visit the area without any specific restaurant in mind, and make their decision when they arrive.

This is where the competition starts.

Typically, the restaurants with the best ambiance or most attractive menu or the best quality/price, that are filled with the most people, usually bring in the most customers…

There are many typical examples of coopetition such as:

• Food courts: All the restaurants are placed together in places like shopping centers – sharing tables, trays, cleaning services, etc. Customers are brought to the same spot (cooperation), and then they compete for their business (competition).

• Advertising: Sometimes restaurants collaborate to put together a food magazine or similar publication where they each contribute (both in money and in content) to the publication.

• Special food events: Sometimes several restaurants organize food events where they all contribute food or display their items at food stalls. Because of the participation of many restaurants –and good marketing — crowds of people attend these events (there is usually music involved and often many other activities as well).

• Etc.

As you can see, these are some of the possibilities for coopetition. However, there are some other intriguing ideas for you to consider. Here you have a few to think about:

• Cross-promotion with restaurants that offer different food than yours. Often your menu doesn’t compete directly with other restaurants. If a person is in the mood for Italian food, for example, she won’t go to an Indian restaurant to dine or vice versa.

Perhaps you can join forces with restaurants in your area that have other styles of cuisine, and together create a coupon book that you can distribute to the regular clients of the participating restaurants. Or maybe you could create a discount card that your customers could use in any of the restaurants in your area. This will attract more customers to your neighborhood.

• Cross-promotion with restaurants that offer the same kind of food than yours, but are not located near your place.

Again, usually people prefer to go to restaurants that are near their homes or workplace. If there is a French restaurant nearby and they are in the mood for French cuisine, they won’t typically travel far to a different French restaurant… unless the other French restaurant is so superior that it’s worth the trip — and this where the competition kicks in.

So what can you cross-promote? Well, if you have an ethnic restaurant you could create a newsletter sharing printing and perhaps distribution costs with similar restaurants and distribute it to clients of all the restaurants involved. The newsletter should cover articles about the foods, culture, geography, etc. of the restaurant’s native country.

But what if your restaurant is an all-American place? Give unique information about your areas. You still can have trivia about the specific states, some local recipes, etc.

• Join forces to negotiate better deals for linens, food and beverage products, menu printing menus, etc. Imagine that you talk to the owners of nearby restaurants, and you make a deal to use the same distributors for common things like linens, candles, dishwasher maintenance and supplies, garbage and/or grease disposal, exhaust filters, printed menus, etc. You could then request a volume discount from these distributors and everybody will benefit.

These are just some quick examples of coopetition. Joining forces with your competitors could be a win-win proposition. Just be smart about it and think about areas where both of you could benefit.

Can you think of more areas for coopetition? I would love to know. Please visit my web site and let me know.

Happy Co-opetition!

Jose L Riesco worked in the IT for 18 years and co-owned an Italian restaurant in Bellevue, WA.

By applying his many years of experience working for corporations and his marketing skills to the restaurant business, he has created a unique and groundbreaking marketing system. Jose has brought top proven marketing practices from other industries to the Restaurant industry, making a unique contribution to this business that he knows and cherishes so much.

Restaurants have traditionally used advertising and coupons as the main marketing vehicle. His Restaurant Marketing Strategies changes all of that. By creating a unique Strategy client centric (instead of food or Chef-centric), restaurant owners will be able to dramatically increase their sales while creating happy and recurrent clients.

You can find more about his Restaurant Marketing Strategies by visiting his web site at http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com.

Now almost all of these creative options have frozen up and or are simply gone. What’s left are traditional loans. Primarily SBA commercial loans and a few, scattered, and only for very strong borrowers, conventional commercial mortgages. With these types of options, restaurant owners are going to have to start planning for the future and be more conscious of playing the traditional game. In other words, you’ve got to show some income! If you don’t show any income on your tax returns you’re not going to get a loan.

If for example you know you have a loan ballooning soon or if you’re in the process of expanding locations you’ve got to tell your CPA now to start showing some income. Yes you might increase the amount of tax you will have to pay but the alternative could be much more expensive.

We get calls all the time from borrowers that have had a restaurant loan balloon, and have now simply not been able to secure a new loan. They go to multiple banks and lenders and all say the same thing “you don’t prove that you make any money, sorry”. Their existing lender starts the foreclosure process and the borrower continues to shop with no luck. The existing bank hikes up their rates in an effort to further “motivate” them to find another bank and to cover their risk. It goes on and on and gets uglier for all involved.

Bottom line, despite restaurant owners enjoying cash related business; you’re going to have to start playing the game to secure traditional SBA loans and conventional financing. In addition most banks will want to see a debt coverage ratio of a 1.3 on restaurant loans, so you’ll have to show a decent amount of cash flow.

Click here to see current commercial loan rates Jeff Rauth is President of Commercial Finance Advisors, Inc out of Birmingham, Michigan. He has a STORE for commercial loan brokers. Contracts, spreadsheets, books, etc. Products starting at $4.95! Check it out commercial mortgage loans http://cfa-commercial.com/

You can find websites who offer templates and resources to help you devise a workable business plan. This approach to writing a restaurant business plan, will help you to think about all of the major and minor costs that you will need to attend to. All of these things are vital in a restaurant startup. You can use the resources on these sites to make the process easier, and get your restaurant business plan out there faster. They provide templates that will allow you to write a professional business plan that will attract investors to you.

Many of these sites will provide you with checklists for your startup, and other resources for budgeting and to stay on track. You will also have access to tools to develop how your business will operate and procedures to help you get organized and be ready when the day comes to open your restaurant business.

You can find sites that will provide you with customizable documents and detailed business plans, to make everything faster and easier to formulate a concise and professional restaurant business plan. They also provide guidance for the preparation of a business plan. This includes business concept, market analysis, marketing strategies, operational plan, and more. You will have access to everything you need to produce a professional restaurant business plan.

You will also have access to current research that you can edit and use in your business plan. These sites also have resources to learn new trends and ideas, and provide absolute credibility to yourself and your plan.

You will be provided with instructions to fine tune the financial section of your restaurant business plan, including projections for your finances, startup and operating budget, and analysis of the return on investments.

These templates usually include– Executive Summary; Company Description; Location; Organization; Business Concept; Concept Statement; Capitalization; Sample Menu; Layouts and Design; Management Partner/Owner; Management Team; Kitchen Manager; General Manager; Management Agreements; Confidentiality Agreements; Market Analysis; Industry Assessment; Competitive Analysis; Target Market; Location Analysis; Marketing Strategy; Customer Database; Frequent Diner; Mail Campaign; Email Campaign; Charity/Community Involvement; Public Relations; Marketing Resources; Business Relationships; Operations; Advertising; Training; Staffing; Daily Operations & Production; Customer Service; Suppliers; Administrative Systems; Management Controls; and many more sections to guide you through the process of formulating a winning restaurant business plan.

Remember, you are responsible for making your restaurant business plan a concise and professional report to submit to potential financial providers. Your business plan is the most important part of opening your restaurant business, and should be the first item on your to do list. Once you have enough funding for your business in place, you will find that a big weight will be taken off your shoulders, and you will be able to concentrate on other aspects of the opening of your new restaurant.

Patricia Farnham – Restaurant industry veteran, owner/operator, author and enthusiast. She recently put her considerable expertise (gained from many years of managing other peoples restaurants), to the test. She purchased a failing operation and turned it around quickly. If you’re considering starting your own restaurant, or buying an existing operation, there are vital concepts you need to know to make it profitable. Check out her opinions regarding opening a restaurant on her website.

Once you have the “right” person hired, there are some key things that you should keep in mind.

1. Develop a training schedule. Unscheduled training will lead to extra hours and lower productivity. Explain daily objectives for each trainee and trainer. Create a training program and checklist. Have the trainee and the trainer sign off each shift that the objectives have been completed. This also helps to ensure that they trainee is staying on schedule and your training is consistent. Keep the sheets in the staff’s file in the office.
2. Provide a free meal each shift to each trainee. Allow them to order from certain sections each shift. This will give them a chance to try different items. Example: Day 1 – Apps, Day 2 – soup/salads, Day 3 – mains… How do you expect them to sell the items if they have never tried them? “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve never tried that.” Would you order it?
3. You need to compensate the trainer as their productivity will be lower. They will not be able to take as much of their normal workload. Less tables for them = less money. See if giving a free meal to the trainer is enough compensation for training vs. extra hourly. If not, perhaps you could let them make their own schedule the following week. Look for something that they will find a bonus, without costing you extra dollars. paying them more is an option, but the most expensive option.
4. Document the training. This will save you piles of money if you end up in Labour Court down the road. See point number 2.
5. Spend some time explaining to new staff that you understand they will make mistakes and this will cost the store money. You expect mistakes, but excessive, unnecessary mistakes will not be tolerated. Explain the cost of everyday items to the staff. Example: This plate costs $32.50, this knife, $2.87, this napkin $0.04. Restaurant/bar staff seem to think that the store makes about 80% of every dollar sold. Explain that the average net income is about 5%. When they sell a dollar, the store makes a nickel.

Again, you will always be hiring and training. Sure, May and September are the busy times for turnover, but if you have a system in place and a plan…you should be good. Remember that they want to work for you and they want to be trained. When they are trained properly, they are less likely to quit and go and work for your competitor.

Top Shelf Consulting has been helping Ontario restaurants increase profits since 2000. Specializing in Menu Engineering, Cost Controls, and Service Selling, Top Shelf offers both one-on-one consultations as well as full-day seminars.

Check us out at http://www.topshelfconsulting.ca

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Since the creation of food service waiters and servers have been pouring coffees, teas and sodas for their customers. A tradition of service that dates back as far as history records serving food.

Nothing new for today’s restaurant diner except maybe a bit more variety in the choices of drink. And with servers and waiters vying for more and more tip income it only stands to reason that they are pouring more and more free refills.

So where is the problem? Your customers are getting better service and your wait staff is getting better compensated. All looks good on the surface.

But the question arises, are you getting paid for all those drinks, sodas and coffees? You certainly are paying for all the ingredients. Do your sales reflect the prices that should be charged?

The Need to Control Server Prepared Drinks

But what happens when the server forgets to ring up the soft beverage? Your servers and waiters are already pouring the same amounts of soft beverages so your food cost takes a hit. If they don’t ring the drink to begin with (even if by mistake) then you are out the income that is supposed to offset the heavy pouring that is already taking place.

What you need is a way to enforce the ringing of at least 1 beverage/drink per person ordering food. Sounds simple, but not all point of sale systems can do this.

The Solution to Control Server Prepared Drinks

Some restaurant point of sale system have a feature that will allow you to establish items on your menu that will require a beverage, beer or drink be rung to match. For instance, you can set entree’ items to require a beverage, beer or drink be rung to match. Of course, your software company should make a provision that a “No Drink” button be on the screen for those rare instances when a person doesn’t even have a water to drink.

Prior to sending the order to the kitchen the software will scan the ticket to verify that items requiring a beverage do have a corresponding item. If not the software should display a warning message prompting the server to ring the appropriate item before allowing them to proceed.

If the guest does not want a soft beverage or simply wants a water then the appropriate key should be depressed, this will then allow the order to proceed. Management should inspect the nightly sales reports to observe how many “No Drinks” or waters are being served by each server. If one server seems to be out of line with the others then a problem may have been discovered.

The Benefit To You

The benefit to you is simple. You get paid for what is served.

The cost to you is nothing extra. You are already paying for the beverages being served. You are just not getting paid for them.

Take a look at what you could be loosing right now.

• $1.50/Drink
• $90/Mth 2 Drinks/Day
• $135/Mth 3 Drinks/Day
• $180/Mth 4 Drinks/Day
• $225/Mth 5 Drinks/Day
• $270/Mth 6 Drinks/Day
• $2.00/Drink
• $120/Mth 2 Drinks/Day
• $180/Mth 3 Drinks/Day
• $240/Mth 4 Drinks/Day
• $300/Mth 5 Drinks/Day
• $360/Mth 6 Drinks/Day

Mistakes happen. Items are left off the ticket and after the customer is gone it is too late to recover. Your restaurant point of sale system should help reduce your loss by reminding your servers and waiters to properly ring all soft beverages, beers and drinks.

About the Author

Jerry D. Wilson is Director of Internet Sales for DirecTouch Restaurant Point of Sale. 25 years of hospitality experience has given the knowledge to write several articles about restaurant point of sale software and how it can enhance your restaurant or bar operation. Please visit DirecTouch Do It Yourself Restaurant Point of Sale or DirectRetail Do It Yourself Retail Point of Sale for more information.