Restaurants are Undergoing a Renewable Revolution
Brands are making change by incorporating energy efficiency into operations. A growing number of restaurants are joining the fight against climate change, including the formulation of environmentally friendly prototypes. In April, Chipotle announced a new all-electric restaurant design, with intentions to maximize energy efficiency and use 100 percent renewable energy from wind and solar power. The brand has opened two locations with the new design and a third will open in late summer. Next year the Newport Beach, California-based chain plans to open 100 all-electric locations, and “depending on the success of these in 2024, we expect the number of all-electric locations to continue to grow as a part of our wider carbon reduction strategy,” says Lisa Shibata, Chipotle’s director of sustainability. The new design will further Chipotle’s progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2019. The new restaurants feature solar panels, where possible, which provide a portion of their power. Inside, all kitchen equipment is electric, and heat pumps provide heat and cooling. The company installed energy management systems, a smaller electric cookline, and improved exhaust hoods. Chipotle also learned to adjust the set points for the HVAC units as needed for seasonality. “In 2022, we saved approximately 65,000 MWh of energy through energy management systems in our restaurants; this is enough energy to power over 6,100 homes in a year,” Shibata says.
From Starbucks to First Watch
Lessons in people-first philosophy. Almost two years ago, Dan Jones became the first COO in First Watch’s history. But one of his first real experiences with the brand came in the kitchen. To build humility and empathy—core values that originally attracted him to the brand—he spent six weeks training in the back of house, flipping eggs, and learning every position. The second order of business was setting up meetings with every key person at First Watch who could appropriately describe what fuels the chain and pushes it forward. That involved a two-hour sit-down with founder Ken Pendery and Dave Lynch, the company’s most senior divisional president with 28 years of service. At this meeting, Jones asked Pendery about one thing that he would want him to carry on at First Watch to make him proud. Pendery’s answer was simple—be kind. “We want to honor what’s made it successful,” Jones says. “And I think for me learning, being curious, and honoring the past and what’s made it successful then helps us work together into the future to tackle the challenges of the future.” Jones is well-versed in brands with a strong culture. He started as a barista at Starbucks, which kicked off a 14-year career that covered store management, district management, and regional operations. Before Jones left, he was a market leader overseeing 90 stores in New York City and handling eight district managers, 1,700 employees, and $200 million in annual sales. The restaurant executive says he fell in love with the coffee giant because of its people-first philosophy. This is where he learned how to listen to employees, create feedback loops, and enact real change based on direct concerns. Jones also discovered the best ways to invest in the customer experience and came to understand that guests are smart enough to know when a brand cheapens the product, changes standards, or takes shortcuts—it’s all about adding value to every visit. The third lesson was impacting people and paving a path for them to achieve their goals, similar to what others did for him as he rose through the ranks.
Bielat Santore & Company – Restaurant Industry Alert
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Contact Richard Santore, 732-531-4200, for additional information.
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NJ Gov. Phil Murphy Faces Chorus of Boos at Home State Concert
As breweries bill sits on desk. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, received a chorus of boos at a concert on his home turf Saturday night. Brian Kirk, the lead singer of Brian Kirk & the Jirks, invited Murphy onstage, but the moment quickly soured at the Red Rock Tap & Grill in Monmouth County, just two miles away from the governor’s waterfront mansion. Video posted on Twitter by Matt Rooney, the founder and editor-in-chief of SaveJersey.com, showed Murphy hugging the band members while the crowd loudly booed. Kirk broke his embrace of Murphy to scold fans. “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, what did I tell you guys?” Kirk said, pointing his finger at the crowd. “Hey, listen to me,” he continued. “Listen to me, he didn’t want to hear that. He’s a buddy of mine. This is not about politics. He’s a friend of mine. Don’t do that. Out of respect for my friend, don’t do that.” Murphy’s administration imposed multiple restrictions on breweries last year, including limiting food distribution and the number of private events they can host onsite. A bipartisan bill that passed both the state Assembly and Senate last month to lift the restrictions has been sitting on Murphy’s desk, but he has yet to signal whether he will sign it. The New Jersey Brewers Association has expressed fears that the continued regulations will force breweries out of business or across state lines. The website for the Red Rock bar, where Murphy was booed, currently asks for customers’ patience due to being short-staffed. “Thank you for your patience,” it reads. “Our kitchen is short-staffed due to an unprecedented labor shortage in the service industry.”
Resurrect Your Dead Times and Fill Seats
With marketing innovations. Dead times are a hit to your wallet as a business owner as empty seats represent wasted capital investment. Now, you can resurrect your dead times and build a new stream of revenue through innovative technology providing messaging that appeals directly to each consumer on a personal level. Seeing empty seats in your restaurant is disheartening, but the impact goes beyond just losing money. It leads to various challenges, like using resources inefficiently or the fear of being perceived as unpopular. It also makes it difficult to cover fixed costs, which has become even worse due to struggles with inflation, supply chain disruptions and staffing shortages following the pandemic. As a result, a staggering 61 percent of restaurants end up failing within their first year (Ohio State). However, there’s an opportunity to turn slow nights into “grow” nights and counter declining revenue by changing customer behavior. Although it might seem challenging, thanks to modern technology, restaurants can now understand and engage with their customers in new ways, ultimately filling up those empty tables. Imagine owning a restaurant in a busy downtown area where professionals flock for lunch breaks and after-work drinks. However, as the clock strikes 6 p.m. from Monday to Thursday, your once lively space becomes almost empty. This leaves you burdened with overhead costs while the restaurant remains at best half full. Now, envision the significant revenue potential if you could fill those tables for dinner throughout the week. The owners determine the key lies in changing the behavior of customers who only come for happy hour cocktails and encouraging them to stay for dinner, bringing their companions along. It’s worth noting that altering the behavior of existing customers is far less costly than acquiring new ones, which can be up to five times more expensive, according to Invesp.
How to Maximize Brand Experience in Your Restaurant Marketing Strategy
Through digital and social media platforms. We know that people’s trust in advertising is waning—Nielsen’s 2021 “Trust in Advertising” report showed that 66 percent of consumers in North America ignore mobile ads and that the most trusted “channel” for advertising are recommendations from people you know. As a result, marketing strategies built for broadcast are decreasing in effectiveness every year as customers exert more control over your brand than ever before. So how do customers exert that control? They talk. They tweet. They write blogs, post YouTube videos, TikTok clips, Twitch streams, actual conversations with other human beings in real life. The topic of those conversations, real and virtual, is the experiences they have with your brand – good, bad, ugly and just as importantly, how that experience lives up to what is promised to them by the marketing that they know you paid to have them see. These unpaid voices of your brand carry more credibility than your marketing—they may (usually) have less reach, but the reach they do have carries exponentially more weight, and more virality; and we know that customers who actively participate in brand experiences will create more value for the brand in the short and long-term. If experience and participation is so critical to brand growth, measuring it and refining it must be at the core of any quick-service marketing strategy, and with so many digital and physical touchpoints for your guests, it has never been more complex. At the heart of this quest for experience optimization are a set of tools that make understanding, mapping and prioritizing your omnichannel guest experience rigorous and actionable.
The Secret to Finding and Keeping Great Employees is Not Difficult
The new generation of employees are far more demanding of their employers than we ever were. Do you want to find and retain great people? I discovered the secret to finding great people and keeping them about 15 years ago. Since, I have never had to go find people. They come to me. If you are serious about finding and retaining employees, then continue reading. I’m going to share the secret with you now. The secret is a combination of three strategies I personally use as a restaurateur and share with my coaching clients. These strategies worked for me 15 years ago, they worked during COVID, and now they are even more important as we enter the “new normal” of restaurants. The new generation of employees are far more demanding of their employers than we ever were. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The new generation wants to feel like they are making a difference in this world, and they expect their employers to respect and appreciate them. The first step to becoming the employer of choice is to create a great culture. Anyone can do that. I’m talking about deciding how you want your guest and employee experiences to be and then showing up every day and executing on that promise. You should BE the Mission Statement. You should be leading the charge. This will help you RETAIN great people. How does that ATTRACT great people? Let me pose this question. When your employees are out at the post-shift watering hole and they are with employees from other restaurants, do your employees speak highly of you? Are you spoken of by your employees better than how the other restaurant employees speak of their boss? If so, those conversations get others to want to join you. Your people become your recruiters.
The Future of Operational Excellence
A radical reimagining of continuous improvement and feedback. Brands of all sizes must conduct regular safety and quality audits to ensure all locations are consistently compliant. In these traditionally in-person audits, inspectors often find issues that need to be corrected, and would tell the brand location’s operator what was wrong. The operator would then go correct the problems. With this approach, location operators often felt like these audits were punitive and they’d “get in trouble” for any non-compliance issue. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way brands audited. As travel restrictions prevented in-person inspections, brands pivoted to virtual auditing. Now, we predict that the future of operational excellence will be collaborative, virtual auditing, and encourage more food brands to adopt this model and enjoy many significant benefits. Focus Brands International, a division of Focus Brands LLC, has united seven iconic brands across more than 1,850 locations in 60 countries. For years, they conducted traditional, in-person, third-party audits. However, because of their sheer size, they were only able to visit and audit 10% of their brands’ international locations per year. When the pandemic made in-person auditing a challenge, Focus Brands International pivoted to virtual visits out of necessity, developing their Customer Experience Center of Excellence (CECE) and Operations Excellence Reviews (OERs). In their quest to develop a new auditing solution, Focus Brands International sought a more collaborative approach, and developed a virtual collaborative coaching model for store reviews. The new system is a radical reimagining of what continuous improvement and feedback can look like. Focus Brands International, a division of Focus Brands LLC, has united seven iconic brands across more than 1,850 locations in 60 countries. For years, they conducted traditional, in-person, third-party audits. However, because of their sheer size, they were only able to visit and audit 10% of their brands’ international locations per year. When the pandemic made in-person auditing a challenge, Focus Brands International pivoted to virtual visits out of necessity, developing their Customer Experience Center of Excellence (CECE) and Operations Excellence Reviews (OERs). In their quest to develop a new auditing solution, Focus Brands International sought a more collaborative approach, and developed a virtual collaborative coaching model for store reviews. The new system is a radical reimagining of what continuous improvement and feedback can look like.
Did You Know?
Is your ice supply a health disaster waiting to happen? When you think of health and safety measures at your business, your ice machine probably doesn’t come to mind. But the FDA classifies ice as a food for good reasons: under certain conditions, ice can make people sick with bacterial or viral infections. Consumers are most likely to encounter a contaminated ice supply in healthcare facilities, but it’s also possible for ice to sicken customers and staff in restaurants and bars.
Employee Tip
5 ways to increase productivity in the kitchen. In an environment where everyone needs to be on the same page for a smooth service, communication is one of the key components of a productive kitchen. To combat slim margins, restaurant kitchens should prioritize efficient and productive kitchen operations. With over 15 years of experience as a chef, and thanks to some of the new developments in tech, I’ve picked up a few tricks along the way to help increase productivity and increase the bottom line in your restaurants. Here are five of them:
