Beverage Management

In Odds n' Ends, New Jersey Dave went to "Famous Dave's" with a date and forgot his wallet. Chicago Liz's general manager at the Mexican restaurant where she works paid cash in advance for a beer and liquor delivery that never materialized, and the place only had a case of beer....for the entire weekend. Guytano told about a conversation he had with a local town board member, who didn't want to discuss why a new pizza competitor got a parking lot immediately, even though it took years for his restaurant to get one. The board member basically told him to mind his own business, implying that something very shady was going on.

I told two stories, one about the new egg cake cart-storefront that just opened near the dirty old egg cake cart run by an old Chinese guy, who always has a line. While the new cart-storefront is very nice looking, it's $2 for 8 pieces and $5 for 24 -- while the old cart is $1 for 20 pieces. Really, as you can see in the pic, he has a line and the new place got zilch.

I told the story of the Saturday we just went through at the store...an excerpt from my personal blog....

I got in at 4am, after working 14.5 hours in the restaurant then riding about 30 miles round trip to Coney Island for hot dogs and some listening to the waves. The day at the restaurant started on a high note, then slowly slipped away inch by inch until coming to a complete crashing by the end. Friday was long, and nobody got enough sleep to start on Saturday. We open at 12 instead of 11:30 on Saturday, but its still not enough time to prep. L and his family were late by an hour, and by the time they arrived, I had everyone in and prepping, moving along well, got L in a good-ish mood. Then service started, we weren't finished with prep by a long shot, and we got slammed with too many customers, a system where only 1 pizza is made at a time, kept on running out of stuff, prepping to order, L started getting yelly at everyone, and on top of it, for some odd reason the air conditioning decided to not function and the temp in both the dining room and kitchen rose close to 90. We broke for lunch and closed the restaurant for an hour and a half. I had the guys do some prepping, but the dishes were backed up and as it turned out, even with a dishwasher, there wasn't enough dishes -- we had to serve on paper plates at one point in the night! We cancelled delivery, but L took an order for 17 pizzas anyway -- at 8:30pm, at the height of the rush! Things spiralled downwards, with the refrigeration in the back failing because of the excessive heat. Between moving food between units, suffering a lazy dishwasher and a delivery person who was sent back there to help but didn't do shit, L withdrawing and losing his energy and focus, the heat rising, my guys prepping and never catching up, and just wanting to hide in the cold walk-in refrigerated room and drink lemonade until it all just stopped.

And that was that!

The next half of the class was beverage management (during which I got a call from L and spoke for a while, missing a good hunk of the accounting side of this topic). In a nutshell, McDonald's would rather sell coca cola than hamburgers. The soda is a shelf-stable product that is only made when ordered, takes very little special equipment, little training, is made by someone else but is more profitable than the stuff they make. Beverages in a restaurant simply are a huge profit center, often more than food. Liquor licenses maybe hard to get, but they can be worth the hassle.

Beverages are basically broken down into four classifications:

• Beer - fermented grain
• Wine - fermented fruit
• Spirits - fermented and distilled
• Soft - non-alcoholic

And soft drinks are further broken down into:

• Coffee & tea
• Soda
• Juice
• Dairy
• Waters

As with food, one needs standardized recipes to help predict ordering and revenue. A one-ounce pour of wine is a heck of a lot different than a 1.75 ounce pour. Richard discussed a system in which a pourer is connected to a wine bottle, and a magnetic ring is attached. After a pour, the magnetic rind locks the pourer until the drink is rung up on the register. Now THAT is beverage control!

Purchasing can be tricky, especially for a full bar -- people tend to expect their favorite brands, which can add up to a lot of inventory. A place with a specific concept can get away with a shorter inventory.

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.

Asleep again

Fell asleep in class again, will recap what I can remember with tomorrow's summary. Restaurant hours are not short hours.

Inventory

We started the day with odds n’ ends. G continued his ongoing story of the waiter who was let go last week for sexual harassment. G’s tune had changed a bit. Last week he felt bad about it, and despite having to fire him, came to his defense. This week, however, he expressed dismay at the content of some of the letters on file about this guy -– it wasn’t just verbal, it was physical, too. In addition, some of this waiter’s favorite customers were very upset at his absence, and let G know about it.

G was a little loss for words, and Richard advised him that when a customer expresses outrage and strong emotions about this situation, G should also appeal to their emotions -– tactfully say that he regrets having to let the guy go, that it’s a shame, but that it was for the safety and security of the entire staff. One thing G can NOT do is show them the evidence against the waiter, because if this case ends in court, that could be used in an accusation of slander. It’s not an easy issue, and one I hope to never deal with.

Chicago Liz had a bad experience at some old pizzeria on Court Street, Brooklyn, where she and her boyfriend ordered non-pizza items off the menu, they came out burnt, and the waiter refused to acknowledge or return the food. Russian Pam Anderson raved on about a restaurant she dined at in New Orleans over the weekend, and NJ Dave was surprised at the expense and mediocrity of “Bobby’s Burgers,” a chain with TV Chef Bobby Flay’s name on it.

The rest of the class was dedicated to food purchasing, which gave me bit of a giggle -– the systems that Richard described were all 'ideal world' scenarios –- and I interjected several times during class what really happens at the restaurant where I’ve been working (in which the chef/owner is computer-phobic). Quite a different story.

We went line by line down the story of how food enters the store, gets processed and accounted for, and finally out to the customer or into the trash. In an ideal world, one develops spec sheets from the menu -- every ingredient has a file in which it is exactly described. A tomato is not just a tomato, it is a canned tomato of a certain brand and can size, salt, and herb content, either whole or diced or pureed, from a certain area or country.

Inventory -- how much we need on hand at all times, or 'par level' -- ordering should always be done to maintain a par level, which can be a lot for shelf-stable staples like flour or very shallow for things like fresh fish. Once that is determined, a bid sheet can be created, also known as a "market quotation sheet," in which prices from various sources can be compared. Then comes the purchase order, or P.O., which is sent to the purveyor, and copies sent to the end user (the chef or manager who made the menu, or is cooking the menu), accountant, and the receiving department. The receiving log accounts for when the stuff comes in, and directs good into either 'direct' (for working now) or into store, which is inventory. Here, what is received can be matched with the P.O. Now inventory can be recalculated and the whole story can repeat itself.

One of the tasks I've been working on at the restaurant is keeping inventory. L's style is all about being quick; it's based on instinct and visuals. He calls it in, doesn't write anything down. I'm developing inventory check lists, so as things arise during the day, I can check it off, and when it comes to the end of the night, when I'm all frazzled, I know what to look for, and know what I don't know yet...

Cost Control / Cheese tasting (Cheese, Tasty and Nutritious)

Sorry for the skipped day, I did go to class on Monday but pretty much had to put toothpicks in my eyeballs just to stay vertical. Didn't take notes and in retrospect, should have stayed home and slept -- the restaurant is kicking my ass, in a good way. Opening week, I put in 83 hours. Today, however, I took off to attend a Passover Seder.

Since we're off tomorrow for the holiday, we started off with an abbreviated In the News, oddly all pizza-related. The Bruni reviewed Co. and gave it a single star, which is quite good for the low expectations that pizza brings to the table. Another article, from the past Sunday, was about how Cobble Hill's South Brooklyn Pizza is hosting a gay disco on the night they are closed. Insert perverted pizza joke.....here!

The next part of class was a continuation of the discussion of food cost control. It starts with a standardized 'recipe' -- what you need, how much you need it, and how much it costs per serving. Computer programs like "Chef Tech" will tie in to a point-of-sale system that the servers use to register sales and calculate how much is spent to generate exactly how many sales. No fuss no muss.

After a talk about weights and measures (which was also covered in Culinary Arts), we discussed inventory control. Capacity of your storage (refrigerated or not), perishability, vendor delivery schedules, savings on quantity, the potential harm of a stock outage -- all are part of puzzle that comes together to keep a restaurant running profitably. Par level, or the build-to level, is the amount of stock you want to achieve your minimum -- when you go below, you order more. Some is easy; dry goods like flour and sugar are "stores" (that can be stored indefinitely), and you can seek the absolute lowest price via quantity. Something like fish, however, has to be of the moment; no matter how good the price, ordering too much will probably be wasted.

"Spec" was discussed -- what exactly should be ordered. You can call a purveyor and order a loaf of bread, but unless you specify exactly what your looking for, what you get could be almost anything -- how large, what kind of style, how thick the slices, etc.? Providing specs (everything for quantity and style to grade and use) means less waste and less wasted time in inventory.

The second part of the class was dedicated to the series of silly videos above, and a taste of a variety of cheeses, from plain cream cheese to stinky Maytag blue. This was all stuff we hit up in culinary, only in culinary, Chef M did the ordering and got us some fantastic things (I'm still a fan of tallegio due to that day.) The aged goat cheese was surprisingly tasty, the cheddar too ordinary, and the blue way too strong, though pairing it with a fortified, sweet port proved the power of a good matching.

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.

Cost Control / Odds n' Ends

The day started with odds n' ends. Japanese cooking dude spoke about his weekend, his first cooking at the new Fatty Crab uptown -- only 2 weeks old and doing over 350 covers on a Friday night -- with only 60 seats. That figure made me nervous since the restaurant that I've been involved with is opening up....tomorrow.

Long Island Guy spoke of the new video screen system his restaurant bought for the chef, so the chef can see what orders are going to what station in real time, and cook his pizzas accordingly, making it easier to coordinate the different cooking stations with the front of house staff.

I spoke a little about the pizza class I took the day before, and how one of the wine pairings actually kind of rocked my word -- Lambrusco and pizza, a fantastic combination.

The rest of the class was dedicated to the Profit & Loss statement, a master spread sheet to record money coming in (few) and the money going out of (many) a restaurant operation. It went from easy-to-understand principles (revenue minus expenses equals profit!) to a bit more complex (the cost of good sold for food and for beverages must be kept separate as they are very different and if calculated together will skew the final figures.)