In the News / Business Plan Review / Sequence of Service / Other Reds

Like with the last few days of the school year every year up through high school, the last few days just feel...wistful, breezy, the last few grains popping through the hourglass. With Culinary Arts, we were jamming on our final buffet, with each student focused on pulling off three heur d'eurves. Now, we're just banging on about a template for a business plan for which much of the research will be made up, as there is not enough time to really get the information.

In the News was abbreviated, but dedicated mostly to pizza. Like last week's Bruni monologue on the state of the pie, this week brought a huge article in New York Magazine. The interview with Una Pizza Neapolitana's Anthony Mangieri made me want to just punch him in the face -- he's everything that is wrong with NYC pizza today. One thing that I really didn't like about NYMag's coverage is that it didn't really address where NYC pizza is going. Clearly, we're in a trend bubble and by this time next year many of the pizzeria's that have opened in the past 12 months will be closed.

Next up, Richard dedicated his time to reviewing the parts of the business plan template -- presentations start Monday. When mine is complete, all will be posted here.

Sequence of Service: basically what it takes to be a waiter or waitress. Up until now, I thought I could easily slip into this role with out experience. Now that we saw a training video for service staff at the Palm chain of steak houses....I definitely could be a server at a restaurant that doesn't suck as hard as the dickwads who are supposed to act like retarded monkeys towards the guests like at the Palm. I like service that is restrained and direct, clear and unobtrusive. At the Palm, they're all buddy buddy touchy feely, ick. SHUT THE F UP, I'M HERE TO ENJOY MY FRIENDS, NOT YOUR SMARMY ACTING!!

Still, there is a lot of detail work that goes into being a good server at a good place. Respect.

The class ended with a tasting of eight red wines, all of which tasted a bit like musty alchy vinegar, except for a barolo, that tasted like musty oaky alchy vinegar.

Blue Smoke / In the News

Today we met in class briefly, before heading out to Blue Smoke for a tour. The dining section this week in the NY Times was remarkably thin, and content-wise filler like what to do with left-overs were disturbingly dumb. However, Bruni's big piece on pizza was pretty cool. Richard thought he was too hasty in deciding to write about just post 2004 pizzerias (the year Franny's and Una Pizza Napoleatana hit), but I kinda agree with Bruni: the pizza restaurants that have opened up since then are by all accounts place pizza in a different kind of light that the older, classical places do. Maybe it's not totally fair to not compare them (as some older joints are simply better than the new joints), but the pretense of 'fancy pizza' is not really shared by any older places.

We briefly looked at a kitchen layout, a before and after of a real working restaurant, to point out the logics of flow and traffic in an industrial kitchen. Then we all picked up and walked over to Blue Smoke, on 27th between Park and Lex. It's part of Danny Meyer's Union Square hospitality group, which includes a lot of good and very varied places, from Union Square Cafe to Tabla to Shake Shack. We arrived around 9, and were met by the managing partner who was, simply put, seemed to have his shit together and all together happy with what he's doing with his life. He told us of his 17 years with the company, helping to open up the restaurant in the week right after 9/11, the adjustments to the concept and the systems as they started up.

He handed us off to the head of front of house, 13 years with the company, who started as a bus boy and worked his way up. He showed us the premises, the jazz club below, the prep kitchen. Then the chef showed us the main kitchen, all the stations, and the two huge smokers. Gas-fired, wood-fueled, with large flues in the back of the building that rose all the way up 15 stories to vent the smoke. The pork butts and ribs looked spectacular, I must say.

The common thread among the three people were that they started with the company many years ago at a low level position, stuck with it and rose, worked insane hours, now get paid and have benefits, with the first one actually sharing in an ownership stake. All three are clearly hard working, and get a buzz from the intensity that comes with working in a restaurant. I understand that -- when you work 6 14 hour shifts in a row, it's actually cool if it speeds by with constant action and you actually save money by not doing anything else. -sigh-

In the News / Costing Beverage / Architect

Class started with a short In the News. The NY Times had a stunningly boring article detailing the details of a superior hamburger, but didn't really add much to the canon.

There was a cool article, however, on the recent state of NYC food carts. Up until the downturn in the economy, there was peace upon the streets of NYC. Food cart permits were cheap and few and far between. They were handed down within families, as well as locations and street corners. The city was not much involved -- it only gave out 3000 licenses, and the licenses can be renewed by mail every two years, forever and ever. Because of lax enforcement, many carts are not inspected, or have expired licenses, or no licenses at all.

Now people who are being laid off from white-collar jobs and speak English as a first language are investing in food carts to deliver a different level of food to the streets. They get their permits, and then go wherever they are legally allowed to go...and into direct conflict with the underground economy of the long established immigrant class. When a new truck rolls up on a corner that has been claimed by a cart family without challenge for 20 years, there is going to be conflict. Used to be when two vendors got into a tiff, one would call the cops anonymously because everyone undoubtedly were doing something illegal. These food cart trucks tend to be on the up and up, and the old economic model is turning to intimidation and violence as leverage.

The sad thing is, because of the inadequate bureaucracy, the city is losing a ton of money and has little real power over the food carts. A vendor of a new fancy ice cream cart is quoted as scoffing that he pays a few hundred dollars for a permit, when his business model would allow him to pay $5000 a month during the warm season and still be profitable.

There were small pieces on the food shows -- the Fancy Food Show had a 25% rise in attendance, while the tone of the piece on the Unfancy Food Show as equal parts snobby and dorky -- why the NY Times sucks.

Next up was an exercise in costing out a mixed drink. Unlike a recipe card, each cost card is per drink, not a batch of drinks. Most booze is in liters and recipes in ounces, which is annoying, but even more annoying is perusing the price sheets for booze vendors. For a bottle of Bombay Gin, you have about 10 different prices. Half are for NYC and half for NYS (different tax and control procedures), and within each category different prices on different size bottles and discounts depending on how many cases you purchase.

The second half of the class was a field trip to an architect's office to talk about how we, as restaurateurs, would communicate and deal with an architectural firm, from initial concept up through plans detailed enough for a contractor to build from with precision. The architect went around the room and asked each of us our concept, and teased out some details that would help a design firm get on track.

Some of us had pretty clear ideas of what we were going for, and when one didn't, the architect was pretty concise in trying to get clarity. One student kind of scattershot mentioned a lot of different things she liked that she would like to see in her operation (mosiac! bar in middle of room! stage! fountain!) and the architect basically asked what is the focus? Do you want a candyshop vibe, a restaurant vibe or something else?

I had a pretty concise statement of what I wanted (Jewish Italian Grandma style filtered through an Eames lense) and didn't get any appreciable feedback. Guess I can skip hiring a design firm and just get some hacks to have the plans drawn up and approved by the city?

Richard, a few students and I went to a pizzeria nearby the archictect's office afterwards, not very good pizza but fun to be snarky about the menu, decor and oddly-pacing owner with some like-minded fellows and fellowettes.

In the News / Break Even / Cash Flow Statement

In the news rolled along nicely. Dave was excited about this French restaurant, Relais de Venise, famous for a menu that has only one dish - steak frites (which reminds me of the original concept of Kentucky Fried Chicken) They're opening a new location in NYC, and we're all a bit skeptical that it will make it here. How often do you have 4 people going out to dinner together who ALL want steak frites?

L.I. Jenni was featured in this week's LI Newsday in a feature about the best places in L.I. to get iced coffee. Spice Market, a monstrous and pretentious restaurant in the Meat Packing district, went from 3 to 1 star in a recent review in the NY Times. In optimistic news, in the "Off the Menu" section of Dining in the paper, there were no closings listed.

Since the bebe, I grabbed one quick meal at McDonalds and one quick meal at Burger King, and was impressed by how superior the former one was (but still not that good over all.) Unsurprisingly, fo the best half decade, McD's has been clobbering King, and the horrible ad campaigns that BK has been waging has not helped. Recently, a smutty BK ad from the Hong Kong market has been making it's way around the internet, which certainly doesn't help their case.

As bizarre as the gross burgers of McD's and BK are, you can always get stranger over seas. Most beverages don't involve meat and animal product, but it doesn't have to be like that....Swine placenta soda from Japan, Eel essence flavored beverages, garnishes of penis, etc...

The next part of class was working out a P&L statement and calculating various cost percents and break even points.

Dave, while working on his business plan, tracked down a quote from a contractor who is installing a restaurant kitchen from scratch. Going through the $400K item by item comparing to prices on the internet, the whole thing was outrageously padded. If one were to just buy the stuff themselves, it would probably knock a solid $100K off the bill.

The last thing we looked at was a cash flow statement: where the cash comes from, and where it goes. Pre-opening, cash comes from personal funds, loans, investors, etc, because there is no income from the business. As you move across time across the statement, business income is accounted for, but the outflow is, too. It shows in stark detail why many restaurants fail: the outflow overwhelms the inflow early on because it takes a few months minimum to get to a point where you can start paying off the debts. If you don't have a reserve to get you through the opening months, don't bother.

In the News / Student Concept Presenations

We began with in the news. After seeing a few documentaries about prohibition, it was pretty funny to see an article in the New York Times about the recent trend in new bars to be stylized after Prohibition-era speak-easies. The problem? Since the supply was illegal the quality of the booze was low and a lot of drinks had to be mixed with strong, sweet stuff to mask the flavor. I think this new trend should involve poor-quality bathtub gin, a total lack of licensing, and incorporate other illegal activities -- drugs, prostitution, and dancing without a cabaret license! Now THAT would be authentic.

Time Out New York had a pretty typical spread hyping a handful of new pizzerias in NYC, but more interesting was the recent article in Newsweek, which questioned the viability of all these new trendy pizzerias -- what about the old school slice joints that are getting squeezed out? I think the argument is specious -- the old school places have never had it so good, and the new places are riding their coattails. At some point the new places will shake out, but the places that have been around for years and years will survive.

The Times had a pretty ridiculous opinion piece about the U.K. judiciary that just ruled that Pringles are, for tax purposes, potato chips, unlike what Proctor & Gamble were calling them, "savory snacks," to get out of paying millions of pounds in VAT taxes.

Most of the day was dedicated to Jenni, Guytano, and Niko giving presentations on their concept menus. Both Jenni and Guytano's concepts were expansions to the restaurants where they are currently working. Jenni's restaurant owners are opening up a cafe and gelato shop, where they will roast their own beans and make their own ice creams, out in the North Fork of Long Island. Guytano's pizzeria is opening an attached wine bar with a small trattoria-style menu, out in Long Island. Niko gave a long and rambling talk about a Georgian wine & jazz bar, but with his thickly accented low monotone, he literally made me fall asleep.

Class concluded with a short P&L statement, working out the variance and variance percentages between years by costs and profits.

No class Monday, talk to ya Wednesday!

In the News / Labor Cost / Misc. Expenses / Benefits o' Booze

During today's In the News segment, I defended pizza: in the $25 and under section of the NY Times dining section, they reviewed Roberta's of Bushwick. They said it was good pizza, but despite that they offered some good interesting dishes. Hrumph!

A good portion of the class was dedicated to labor cost. Based on how busy a dinner shift was, we scheduled servers, bussers, hosts and bartenders, taking into account how much they were paid, expected number of covers and average check. I don't like exercises like this because the feedback you get from it can be guesstimated from just vibing the business of a room. In the resto biz, when things are slow, it's acceptable to send extra staff home, and it's also normal to call up people who are on informal call. Filling us students with formulas and numbers...I don't know, there needs to be a balance, an expectation that we will learn when things really need to be calculated, written and statistically analyzed, and when things can just be winged.

Up to this point, we studied cost control in terms of food and in terms of labor. Today we looked at "other expenses". While a restaurant only has one primary source of income, there are plenty of sources of expenses aside from labor and food.

• Operating expenses (linen, uniforms, china & glass, kitchen utensils, cleaning, decoration)
• Music and entertainment (live or mechanical, ASCAP, booking agents, meals to musicians)
• Marketing (mail, phone, internet, comped food, ads, signs, copies, public relations, agents)
• Administrative (data processing, office supplies, postage, cash over or under, bank fees)
• Facility maintenance (fixtures, equipment, air conditioning, refrigeration, electrical, floors and carpets)
• Occupancy (rent or mortgage, equipment lease, real estate tax, insurance, depreciation, licenses)

This is a very annotated list. If I was working up my business plan, I'd be tearing my short hairs right now...

To control costs like this, there are two key ways to categorize them. The first way is by fixed, variable or mixed. Ask this question: If no one comes to the restaurant one night, will the expense cost less? If people come, will the expense cost more?

Whether people come in or not, rent and salaries will remain the same -- fixed. If no one comes in, I can send lower level salaried people home and the food can be served tomorrow -- variable. If no one comes in, I still have to pay for air conditioning and side towels, but if people come in, I'll have to crank up the air and use more side towels -- mixed.

The other way to categorize costs is by controllable or uncontrollable. Hourly wages are controllable -- if the biz starts to go south, I can cut people's pay or lay people off to adjust in the short term. Rent for a restaurant is usually determined by a multi-year lease -- if the biz is tanking, it could be years to a lease renegotiation, therefore it is uncontrollable.

The last part of the class was more talk of our friend alcohol, which is leading to Monday's discussion on liability issues. Alcohol has beneficial qualities. The wine industry had to sue the FDA to go public with scientifically proven evidence that alcohol can be a positive influence, but still the government insists that bars post signs warning pregnant women away from booze, despite the fact that all the studies from the 80s that claimed alcohol hurts fetuses have all been disproven. It's been shown that moderate alcohol consumption through out pregnancy does NOT hurt babies, and it's been shown that alcohol abuse in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters also does not hurt unborn children. Only alcohol abuse in the 1st trimester, a time when many women don't know they are pregnant, has been shown to cause all sorts of developmental issues.

There's the whole French paradox thing, where despite eating much more animal fats than the U.S., the consumption of red wine keeps down cholesterol. In fact, in recent years the French have had an anti-alcohol (oh, excuse me, anti drunk driving) move that has directly lead to a spike in heart disease. Alcohol thins blood, letting less stuff clump up -- the same rason docs recommend an aspirin a day, only this is so much more tasty and pleasurable. Moderate (2 glasses or less for the averaged size person) on a daily basis has health benefits, but 14 glasses one day a week would lead to all the alcohol problems reviewed yesterday.

Introduction to Beverage Management

The day kicked off with a long missing in the news segment. According to daily freebie AMNY, food stylists actually take pictures of inedible things that look edible! Shocker! Down where the old Fulton fish market used to live on the old southern tip of Manhattan, a new foodie market is emerging. After seeing the new fish market up in Hunts Point, which is literally the middle of nowhere, it's nice to see a real market pop up where the people are.

Richard covered the history of the beverage -- from the dawn of man to its presence on today's college campuses -- in a few hours with enough time to spare to show a documentary about the U.S.'s 13 years of Prohibition. In the beginning, there was water, and it was good. Juice from fruit and extracts, too. About six to eight thousand years ago, alcohol was not so much discovered so much as stumbled upon. When a sugar or starch is introduced to yeast in a properly moist environment, fermentation occurs. Yeast eats the food and produces CO2, heat, and alcohol. The first naturally occurring alcohols to be consumed by man were most likely fruit-based, as the grain-based fermentation take a bit of processing of the grain.

In early history, alcoholic beverages became the go-to daily drinks for health and hydration because it was safer. No one knew why relieving one's self in the same river from which you drink was a bad idea, and they didn't know why that water made you sick (while the beer and mead made from the water did not). It was a short step to steeping healing herbs and berries in alcohol to create tonics and elixirs that also happened to get you messed up. Gin, that's simply distilled alcohol steeped with juniper berries.

Distillation was introduced by the Moors, most likely for the purpose of making perfume, not drinkin'. Distillation is simply cooking the fermented beverage, collecting the evaporated alcohol, and re-condensing it. This process lead to stronger, condensed alcoholic beverages that could travel longer than an unpasteurized beer. Ahoy, pirates and brandy! Colonists ditched the boats at Plymouth Rock because they were out of beer. There was nothing else safe to drink unless they went inland.

All major religions at one point or another embraced alcohol in ceremonies, as alcohol was revered for its safety and pleasure-giving qualities before the establishment of religion as we know it. That said, due to alcohol's ability to be transcendental and give relief, it was also in conflict with certain aspects of religious practice, and has been suppressed by all sorts ever since.

The young United States found that towns tended to have two social centers: the church and the saloon. In the Church, you sat there and got spoken to. In the saloon, you socialized, you pleasured yourself, and the business of the day got done. Politics were at the bar. The problem with this formula was that saloons were all male (unless you were a certain kind of lady); it was this imbalance of power that lead to the original women's movement being focused on temperance.

We watched a documentary on Prohibition, during which the United States basically destroyed all the foodways that anchored society to a healthy perspective on alcohol. The ban served to do exactly the opposite of what the banners hoped: alcohol consumption rose, a large criminal underground swelled, people drank more for the pleasure of being naughty, respect for law and government was eroded, and in the end one group emerged as drinkers where they never drank before: women.

To this day, the United States is under the yoke of the aftershocks of Prohibition. When Prohibition was lifted, a lot of the controls on booze that were introduced remain n effect today. Why? Because the government can closely track -- and tax -- all alcohol being produced. Food consumption is easy to fudge; not so with booze, from a restaurant's liquor license down to a distributor's tight controls on inventory. It's just too profitable for the government to let go of. Now imagine if the government did to marijuana and prostitution what it does to booze and ciggies! We'd fuck and bong our way out of the recession...

There is a mini-Prohibition going on in college campuses today. It's a weird situation in which part of the social community is under 21, another over, and they both hang out. Underage drinking is the standard, and lately college presidents have called for a review of the drinking laws....after which they were mercilessly attacked by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (among other naysayers) who don't appreciate that history repeats itself: ban booze, and people flout the law, drink more, and do more damage than if it was not banned. -sigh-

It's nice not to fall asleep in class!

In the News / Recipe Yield / Interviewing

A quiet Filipino kid who hasn't said 10 words in class lead the In the News segment this morning. Newsday had a silly article about the supposedly newness of the villainy of salt, and how NYC gov is trying to restrict it -- despite the fact that most people are not sensitive to salt. The flagship Armani store on 5th Ave just opened a restaurant within its own doors, which means you can eat while you shop for $500 jeans. The NY Post is predicting an explosion of cart food now that our economy is a limp fish. Pizza Hut just hired a celebrity chef to foof up their salads, and a main impersonating a waiter grabbed a whole mess of cash in NJ -- guess a uniform is also a safety measure.

Next up was recipe yield, working formulas involving AP (as purchased), EP (edible portion) and PP (portion of product) A side of meat may be $100 for 20 lbs, but cut away the inedible stuff and you may have half the material, but it's still $20, so the AP is $5/lb., but the Edible Portion is $10/lb. Yield Percent is Edible Portion / As Purchased Portion. We played around a lot more with this formula, but I was falling asleep. We also did mock interviews with each other, forcing us to think about how we would hire -- to make a decision based on 15 minutes of chatting is pretty difficult -- in the food industry, throwing people in for a day or two to shake out who is and who ain't is more appropriate.

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.

Guest Speaker/In the News/Cost Control

I played hooky yesterday to spend a full day at the restaurant for its soft opening. Didn't miss a beat today, other than feeling awfully sleepy. In the News was silly, again run round robin by a table of people who were all too scaredy cat to do it themselves. Outback Steakhouse ran a big menu promoting cheap meals in the New York Post -- is that really news, people? Man on a motorized barstool charged with DUI? What? Domino's forced to give out 11,000 pizzas due to an incorrect internet promotion? ZZZZZZ.

The only two interesting stories were about an 1825 vintage bottle of bubbly that was recently uncorked and tasted. Unsurprisingly, it was past its prime and had notes of 'rotting leaves'. Mmm, delicious. Also, a pimp paid his ho in Chicken McNuggets. 'Nuff said.

We had a great speaker, Ariane Daguin of D'Artagnan, a producer of out-there high-quality meat stuff like foie gras, buffalo sausage, and organic bacon. She described how "humanely" raised veal are treated....in an open farm house, free fed only cow's milk, never grain. The open room has a wall of nipples onto which the calves come and suckle. When they stand there, the floor acts as a scale; that, plus the digital IDs in their ears, communicates their weight. If they are too skinny, cream comes out of the nipple; too fat, skim. Purty cool! All the calves are uniform in weight when they get axed. Sigh.

We reviewed some accounting stuff, comparing receipts over time, but I felt really drowsy.

Supervision / In the News

I spun the In the News segment of class in a decidedly pizza direction, talking up articles like the one about the Italian pizza vending machine that actually makes pizza from scratch, and news that a beloved NYC institution recently burned down, but will simply rebrick its oven and carry on. More pointedly, the restaurant where I've been working as manager got a very brief mention in New York magazine. I told the class how I'd brushed this mention off as too minor for noteworthiness...but the day after it hit the newsstands, we had a steady stream of visitors who saw the mention and wanted to know what was up. Publicity, ain't it a bitch! We're not open yet, hope to be soft opened next week, so we'll see.

NY Times had a creepy article about too many cooks in the kitchens -- unemployment is hitting the restaurant sector hard. Richard noted that when there was a slump in the 80s, a lot of Wall Street types found refuge in transferring their skills to food service. Now those refugees are getting the pinch again.

Our friends over in Arizona's Heart Attack Grill are offering unlimited free food every day for anyone over 350 lbs. Nice. God Bless America! But we're not the only scary ones... In Milton Keynes, England, the squirrels there are going nuts for....squirrel-flavor potato chips.

We moved on to supervision, looking at the case study of Bernie, a line cook who got promoted to supervisor then got steamrolled by all this coworkers, because he was too nice and wanted to be their friends at the expense of being their boss. We applied scientific management style (shape up or ship out, fire the evil ones), human relations (sorry you don't like me, how can we help you to be happy?), participatory (what do you want changed and redesigned to help you do the work?) and humanistic (using any style that makes sense to the situation.)

We spoke a bit about the difference between management and leadership. The former is all about organization, the latter is all about inspiring with a vision for the future to be worked towards. Upper management needs to have the leadership thing, the lower level supervision needs to have the management thing. We read through a case study of a new supervisor laying down the law to an established crew, leading to the conclusion: leadership is manipulation.

In the News/Marketing Case Study

We kicked off with whats in the news. Its a bit aggravating because Richard asked a table to choose someone to lead the conversation -- public speaking and selling yourself and your ideas are part of the curriculum. But these students are so spineless and wishy washy, they can't choose someone so they all go up, 4 people timidly present one little article then the one comfortable person dominates for the rest of the exercise. If one of these scaredy cats were actually go by themselves, maybe they'd get the experience to be more comfortable! Anyway...

In Britain, dietitians are attacking poor old Nigela Lawson for not giving a flying f@ck about limiting fat at the expense of flavor. Judging for the picture above featured in the article, I'd say Nige is a bit pudgy and I'm quite all right with that!

The Times had a cool article on Cashew Chicken, the Chinese fast food staple that was invented by a Chinese cook in Missouri about 50 years ago, and it has gone on to become a signature dish of a whole region near the Ozarks. Weird.

The NY Post features some bon mots from a doctor touting the benefits of drinking alcohol. Can I get a "what-what?!" Can I get a "who da hat?!" With all the bad press booze has gotten since the beginning of time, there must be SOMETHING good about it to cause people to still drink it year after year.

The next part of the class was a video about three people opening a restaurant, an owner, a chef and a manager all with debt up to their eyeballs. They all have different visions, the are don't really communicate, the budget goes from $300k to $1.2 milly, and when the date to open arrives, they have no seating, an untrained staff, and no parking for a large suburban location. WTF? And yet, some how, they are successful. These videos only seem to show restaurants that thrive despite all the retarded mistakes they make, not because of them. Hmmm.

Next up, Richard ran through a marketing plan for a restaurant he consulted for, from SWOT analysis to analysis. We received a new text on supervision, which will be a new topic starting on Monday.

ServSafe

We did a short 'In the News' before rolling into an extended lesson from the ServSafe text -- we're taking the national test on Monday. It seems because the French are so concerned about alcoholism and drunk driving, not only has their consumption dropped from the #1 spot in the world (that now goes to the booze-loving Brits), but their rate of heart disease has skyrocketed. I thought the French were supposed to hate Americans, so why are they acting like us?

According to a blurb in Restaurant News, our culinary school's main competitor is cutting tuition on select programs by thousands of dollars. Richard noted that in tough economic times, c-schools usually do extraordinarily well, but because of the credit crisis, people are having an extraordinary time getting the loans and money required to attend.

Starbucks is in crisis mode -- the niche of "good quality but expensive" was a great place to be in the go-go 90s, but today they have eliminated decaff and now have started selling packets of instant coffee to take home. Sanka, anyone?

To close out was a trio of McDonalds stories. Anyone with an internet connection already knows all about the Crazy Nugget Lady, who called 911 three times when the McDonalds she was at ran out of the McNuggets she ordered. When the cops arrived, they McArrested her dim-bulb butt.

Then theres this shmuck who ordered employees to eat 2 day old McDonalds burgers after scolding them for not appreciating how lucky they were to have a job.

Finally, a poor shlub working at the Golden Arches sees a dude delivering a smack down on a lady, escorts dude outside, and gets shot 3 times for his trouble. After months in the hospital and 300 large in bills, McDonalds rejects his workman's comp claim. Classy!

The first story was handled well, with the company apologizing for the crazy lady, giving her a full refund and free meal. The second was neutral, with them releasing a statement about how McD's should always be eaten immediately. The third, however, was a huge opportunity to celebrate a low-rung worker, get much more than $300,000 in free advertising and turn a tragedy into a feel-good branding opportunity. Instead, they just look like an evil corporate empire. Which they are. F@ckers.

The rest of the class was dedicated to rote lecturing about cleanliness and safe habits in a commercial kitchen. Monday will be dedicated to this, so I'll resume blogging on Wednesday. Until them, mi amigos, stay classy!

Consumer Behavior / Ming Tsai

The second half the day was a guest lecture from celebrity TV chef Ming Tsai, so our In the News rollcall was shorter than usual. The New York Times had an interesting article about an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side that serves rich people, many who pay on a tab basis. Richard said that in these situations, the rich are notorious for not paying their bills.

A few opening in the city were notable, including 'Absinthe Wine Bar', which is odd, since Absinthe is a liquor, not a wine. Tom Colichio's Craftsteak is reopening as 'Halfsteak', in which the steaks come in 6 oz portions, with fries on small plates, for around $15. That sounds great to me -- I can go eat at a steak house and eat (and pay for) a portion that I'd cook for myself at home, a portion that won't block my colon for a week.

Finally, some kids got smart and built a transmitter to take over a speaker system at a drive-through Taco Bell. They shouted obsceneties or whatever at customers. Taco Bell is threatening to press charges, but Richard feels if they really wanted to spin the story to their advantage, they should get the kids to do some high-profile charitable work in leu of pressing charges. The Taco Bell is in a small town, and if you start prosecuting your customer's kids, there could be unintended consequences.

The next section of the class was dedicated to ServSafe and the introduction to the concept o f the flow of food. In a nutshell, when one follows the flow of a food item from entering a restaurant to leaving it, the trips through the temperature danger zone can be traced. An item can arrive frozen, brought into the danger zone to prep (41-135 degrees, where bacteria live and grow), refrozen, brought back through it to cook, cooled into the zone to be served, thrown into a doggie bag and into the back seat for hours, so when the customer eats it tomorrow and gets sick, thinks it's the restaurant's fault and not you. Talk of lots of thermometers, temperature logs, etc., stuff that's nice in theory but not horrendously applicable to the real world restaurant settings.

Consumer behavior is studdied to figure out how to manipulate customers into deciding to buy from us. This study is based on the assumption that human behavior is not random, but can fit an identifiable pattern.

A decision making model can be seen like:

Need Arousal --> Info Retrieval -->
Evaluating alternative choices --> Consumption Decision -->
Post consumption feeling.

There are two sets of influences along this model, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic include culture, socioeconomic level, reference group and household. Culture includes subculture, which if identified can help sharpen marketing. Socioeconomic level is directly related to the frequency of dining and reference groups are for comparing thoughts and feelings with others. Example, after a meal, someone says, "I thought that was great, don't you?" -- it colors perception. Friends, media, and subculture are all parts of the reference group. The ultimate reference group is the household, the immediate family who may be doing the real decision making for the individual consumer.

Intrinsic influences are needs, experience, personality/self-image and perceptions/attitudes. Needs are charted in Maslow's hierarchy (illustrated at right.) Starting at the base is basic needs, and as you go higher you get more ego-driven. At the base is 'physiological' needs -- the drive to kill hunger, to feed. A hot dog cart aims for this. Next is 'safety' -- the need for security. A chain restaurant like McDonalds is safe, as it's always consistent and you know exactly what your getting. In the middle is what Richard called 'Social', though to the right is 'Love/Belonging'. A neighborhood joint with lots regulars or a country club with a membership policy targets this need (and all those below it.) Next is 'Status' (or 'Esteem'), something a fine dining establishment which offers pampering service targets. Finally, 'Self Actualization', when the client identifies personally with the subject to the exclusion of other needs. When some one says, "That was the best -insert food item- I ever had", that's self-actualization. For example, DiFara's of Midwood, Brooklyn, is dirty, has ugly Formica tables from the 70s, the service is painfully slow, it's very expensive for what you get and it's hard to get to. however, it's the best NYC slice pizza I've ever had, and will continue to try to go and talk it up as long as I perceive it to be that good.

Other intrinsic values are experience, where projections of the past determine future behavior. There's personality/self image, where one reinforces self image by the choices they make. And then there are perceptions and attitude. For example, the Amex ad in which they show a couple talking to the camera, all snuggly and warm, saying something like, "We didn't even pack a bag, we just went to the airport, chose a warm destination and just charged everything" is a total play on the perception and attitude of the product.

The second half of the class was a visit by well-known restaurateur and TV food host Ming Tsia, of the Simply Ming show on the food network and chef/owner of Blue Ginger in the Boston area. I'm not his fan, only watched his show for about 10 minutes, and am not interested in Asian-fusion food (a term which he hates -- fusion is for nuclear particles, not food -- he refers to his style as East/West). However, he was charismatic, told funny stories, and worked the room to make us feel like he was talking to his long lost best friend. Seriously charming without being smarmy, it's easy to see why the guy is a star -- if he wasn't a cook or a TV host, he'd be the CEO of an international firm, y'know?

A few anecdotes: A customer greets him at his restaurant and says, "I hope this is going to be the best meal of my life!", to which he replies, "I hope you eat at McDonalds a lot!" "Keller is an artist. I am a craftsman." As much as he hates to admit it, service is 70% of the reason someone comes to dine, and what they'll remember more than the food. He told a story of the only customers he ever through out of his restaurant, a pair of ladies in their 50s dressed like they were in there 20s on a busy Saturday night, picked over a single salad for 1.5 hours, and when the server tried to clear the table so the main courses could come, they shooed them away, saying they were still working on it. They were being rude, noticeably making the surrounding tables uncomfortable. Finally Ming had to come out with the main dishes himself and convince them that their food would get cold if it didn't come out now. As they were eating, they snapped their fingers at a busser for water. At this point, Ming came out and told them to "just get out." He didn't bill them for their food, and told them that he doesn't care if they tell their friends that they were treated unkindly, because anyone with a friend like them would not be welcome here. The surrounding tables thanked him profusely. Ming said it felt great, but doing something like that regularly will probably kill a business.

Market Segmentation / Field Trip

In the news, in the news, what's not in the news? An article in the New York Times about the home cooking of immigrants in NYC, led me to talk about a taxi stand on Houston and A, which has the most amazing Punjabi Indian food, made by women in saris at home and brought in to feed all the single taxi drivers. And of course, the 10 for $2 dumpling joints in Chinatown.

Chefs yanking peanut-based desserts off their menus underlined the ongoing drama of the safety of our food supply. Details emerging point not just to one freak incident but a much larger underlying problem. It seems these factories down South have few standards and fewer methods of oversight. Raw peanuts stored next to finished peanut product, minimum wage disgruntled employees wearing uniforms outside of plants, leaky roofs full of bird poop, and on and on. In 2004, a whistle blower informed the FDA that ConAgra found salmonella in their peanut butter and...nothing happened. Three years later, 100 or so people got sick and the FDA took action...and ConAgra refused to release their test results because they were deemed 'proprietary' and 'trade secrets'. WTF? The FDA didn't have power to make them release them or make their own tests! Thank you, George Bush.


In the Post, a stack of restaurants got busted for tacking on gratuity to the bill without properly informing customers. I was surprised to find the River Cafe on there, as it's a pretty well-known, supposedly legit spot. Part of this trend is because many tourists come from places where they don't tip....which is the way it should be here. Pay your own damn staff, you cheap f@ck owners!

The next part of the class was about market segmentation. Any population can be broken down to its target market. The ultimate unsegmented market is the entire world, but to develop a product that appeals to every single person the world is a bit unreasonable. A restaurant will probably not serve the entire population of the world, no matter how much they'd like to. A restaurant's market segment first and foremost is determined by a limited geographic segment. Richard broke it down thusly:

• Geographic Variables: How far will someone travel for it? One will travel farther for an internationally-know 4-star restaurant than a neighborhood diner. Additionally, what is the source of the people in the geographic segment? Residents? Office workers? Tourists?
• Demographic Variables: Age, class, income, family size, education, occupation, ethnicity -- all hard census facts that help define the aspects of potential segments.
• Psychographic Variables: "Lifestyle". Made from bald stereotypes, like 'yuppies' and 'dinks' (dual income, no kids). This is where those silly books about 'Gen X' and 'Gen Y' come in.
• Behavioral Variables: What triggers a buy? How much is a segment likely to spend?
• Benefit Variables: What benefits are people looking for in your product? Value, experience, atmosphere, etc.
  

What makes for a good market segment? Three things: first is sustainability -- there has to be enough of a market to make it worth while. Measurability -- the market has to be quantifiable. And Accessibility -- how to communicate with the market.

The second half of the class was a field trip to Daniel, a four-star French restaurant on the Upper East Side that is the flagship of celebrity chef Daniel Boulud. We were guided through the restaurant by the very Fraaaanch assistant general manager, from the beautifully appointed dining room to the spacious main kitchen. There is a skybox hovering over the front of the main kitchen, where for $1000, you and three friends can have a private 8-course tasting menu while watching the scrum below. The REAL scrum, of course, is in the basement, where a series of rabbit-warrens are linked together to create a massive series of prep rooms, storage, and cooking spaces. It was clean, but the low ceilings, the crowded crevices, and total lack of natural light would drive a normal person mad, especially if you were doing 12-hour shifts 6 days a week. Lesson learned: I don't have much interest in eating this kind of food, much less working to make it.

The Critical Path (Sherpa & His Hot Dog Mountain)

Richard opened the class with "In the News," in which the class will bring in food-related bits from the media and chew them over. Since none of us were prepared, Richard expounded on bits that caught his eye -- much of it from the dining section of Wednesday's NY Times. Squirrel in British cuisine, City Wine's concept of a wine bar that partners with a winery (to allow customers to 'make' their own wine and store casks in the basement), crushing drop in private parties for the big Meatpacking district restaurants, Bruni's review of a restaurant. Richard is open in his dislike for what many food blogs call "the Bruni," because he feels Bruni's critiques are a bit over-the-top. From a restaurant trade magazine, an article about corporate chains looking to incorporate rice as a central starch in new dishes because it's cheap.

The one article that caught my ear was about a hot dog vendor who recently won a bid on a location in front of the Metropolitan museum. He is going to pay $360 grand a year for the right to sell hot dogs on the northern end. That means he needs to generate about $1000 a day just to pay for the license. With a $2 hot dog, we guess his average sale will be $3. On a 10 hour day, he'll need to make 657 sales a day 7 days a week to cover that nut. That's 66 sales an hour. More than 1 sale per minute. A cart can't possible hold that much inventory, so someone has to be hired to restock multiple times a day. And perhaps another person to cover some shifts on the cart. To just break even. And let's not mention the other hot dog cart a few feet away who is sharing the corner because it's run by a veteran, who by law does not need to have a license!

The bulk of the day was dedicated to reviewing 'the Critical Path,' the framework that will be explored over the next six months. Here are the bare bones of it:

• Market Research: all about the needs and wants of the client. Who there are, how they communicate.
• Mission & Concept: Goals and key elements. What your business is going to do and how it's going to do it.
• Site Selection: Many variables are determined by the where. Rent, size of location, traffic patterns, competition -- all will determine whats served and for how much.
• Revenue Projections: Sales = # of seats x turns x average check (turn means how many times the tables are turned over for new customers over the length of a time period.) This can be worked out with a mix of assumptions and observations of similar places.

Financial Analysis: This is made up of a number of critical statements

• Capital Budget: start up costs. Research & Development, construction, equipment.
• Working Capital: salaries, inventories, money to cover expenses until break-even.
• Investment: Capital Budget + Working Capital. What you gotta get to get going! Hi there, rich person! Want to take a risk?
• Income Statement: a.k.a. Profit & Loss statement. Sales - costs = profit(or loss). Costs from actual material, labor, operating expenses (napkins, flowers), fixed & occupancy (insurance, rent, etc.)
• Break Even Analysis: at what level of sales does profit and loss equal each other? Higher the break even point, the higher the risk to the investor. The hot dog vendor in front of the Met has a ridiculously high break-even point.
• Cash Flow Statement: the timing of when the money comes in and when it goes out. The profit and loss statement is about what was gained or lost in a specific amount of time, while the cash flow statement is just about the money -- you can buy enough eggplant for three months, and the P&L will reflect that, but the cash flow will just say you just spent a lot of eggplant money in one day. A cash flow statement is, at it's simplest, the most recent accounting of your checkbook.
• Balance Sheets: Assets - Liability = Owner Equity. Everything the biz is worth - everything owed & all the debt = everything you actually own. Like the P&L, but a comprehensive look at the whole thing. The other statements kind of dwell in the past or project the future, this is the one that says where you are right now.
• R.O.I.: Return on Investment = Profit / investment. If you make $50G profit in one year, and Mr. Investor gave you $500 grand, 50/500,000 = .1 or 10% R.O.I. It'll take Mr Investor 10 years to recoup before seeing a profit on his money. A while ago that was considered low. Today, people may be happy with that.

All these numbers can be fudged, especially early on when it's based on projections and assumptions. The best numbers are accurate, truthful, and salable to investors.

The second half of the class was dedicated to the mission statement. The statements gotta say:

• what you are
• how well you do what you do
• who your clients are
• where you and your clients are
• which needs of your client your meeting

AND

• do it in one or two sentences.

Oy! It is from the mission statement that the next step develops from: the concept is directed by the mission to determine 1) design & decor, 2) service and 3) food & beverage product.

So the class broke into four groups. We each threw out a concept, chose one for the group then attempted to write a mission statement through brain storming. I was sitting with Jazzman, Lenin-pisser, Chicagoette and Pastry. Both Chicagoette and Jazzman mumbled something about a family-style casual restaurant of indeterminate cuisine, Pastry mumbled something about a bakery of no specific style, and Lenin-Pisser spoke of a Georgian wine bar with live jazz and small plates. I announced my pizza concept which I sketched out last night, but I dismissed it as not being a restaurant and not ideal for this exercise. So we went with Lenin-Pisser.

What: a wine bar with live jazz that serves wine from the Georgian region of the once Soviet Union and small plates of fusion Georgian food. How well: very well! We were a bit stumped on this one. Who: younger couples, adventurous singletons, expats, jazz fans, evening crowd. Where: someplace urban with a good 24 hour residential/commercial mix. Like the Village or he L.E.S. Needs being met: Georgian food outside of the Brooklyn enclave. Limited non-tourist jazz option on the Lower East Side.

By committee, this is the sentence we produced. English is Lenin-Pisser's third language.

Georgian Wine & Jazz introduces an elegant mix of Georgian small plates, fine Georgian wines and live jazz to adventurers in the Lower East Side.

Richard tore it apart, but kindly with good humor -- I remember cringing whenever Chef Al would give criticism, it was always so harsh. Anyway, where to begin? The names doesn't say 'what' exactly. Perhaps adding 'Lounge' or 'Cafe' will be more descriptive. Adventurers on the Lower East Side do NOT look for elegance, they look for excitement, fun. What kind of jazz? Really loud in-your-face stuff that's the center of attention, or quiet background stuff good for conversation? IS this more of a bar where the food is secondary and in service of the wine, or do people come here to eat, with focused wine-drinking just at the bar? Just because the LES doesn't have a Georgian wine-jazz bar doesn't necessarily mean it needs one. Is this concept appealing to the customers on the LES or to you? Georgian theme and jazz seem to be eclectic -- it doesn't seem to make sense together, but the vision of the proprietor seems to make it make sense. This doesn't seem to be eclectic, it just doesn't make sense.

I guess a mission statement made by an uninterested committee in 5 minutes will never be that great, but it's the process. For Monday, we all have to deliver 4 to 8 sentences. One to two sentences each on a mission statement and the three factors of a concept.