Recruiting / In the News / Cost Control

Before we got into the week's news, G described the ongoing saga of the server they let go for sexual harassment -- the guy has been calling his regular customers and basically saying the restaurant is going out of business and letting people go without cause. Richard recommends a lawyer send him a cease and desist order.

In the news, we discussed the silly video above and, in particular, the response video recorded by the president of Domino's the next day:



Shouldn't they maybe try some sort of education and rehab for those Beavis & Butthead types rather than lawsuits?

NY Times had an interesting article about bidders on the contract to run the restaurant which is now Tavern on the Green. The place, despite having a bad year, made over $36 million last year, and its rent is fixed by the city at 3.5% of revenue. So what's the downside? The article didn't say, but other members of the class saw the paperwork -- it seems the contract holder would be responsible for a very very crappy building that's landmarked, an infrastructure that hasn't been invested in, an inability to change anything, and rules up the wazoo. Huh.

If course you can't ignore the alleged Hamburglar who showed up at a McDonald's, recently...

We reviewed cost control, accounting for inventory inflows and outflows, the same stuff I fell asleep during yesterday....and now again today. Richard then did an hour of PowerPoint review, to help people with their product presentations next week...particularly boring for me, as I've spent a few years as a PPT designer...

The last part of the class was back to supervision -- recruiting. It's always a balance of how much work vs. how many works, and this market is definitely in favor of employers. Still, it's important to keep in mind things will turn around, and it's how well you treat your staff that determines loyalty. Food service is founded on low-paid, dirty, smelly, cramped jobs, with shitty pay and shitty hours, so it's one of the most diverse sectors, with a good deal of illegals. Richard spoke about internal vs. external hiring (and what it means when someone emails versus when someone shows up) but over all, it all sounded pretty hypothetical and up to the quality of the human resources people. It takes a modicum of common sense and awareness to conduct a good interview.