Every restaurant has a middle tier in its guest base: people who have been in once or twice, who liked the experience, who think of you positively — and who visit three or four times a year rather than every few weeks. They are not disengaged. They are not choosing a competitor. They simply have… Read more

Online reviews are not a marketing problem. They are a revenue problem. For most independent restaurants, the star rating on Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor is one of the most significant factors determining whether a new guest chooses to walk in the door — and the economic impact of that choice, multiplied across thousands of potential… Read more

There is a number on your POS report at the end of every shift, and there is a different number on your P&L. Most operators know these figures do not match, but fewer can explain precisely why — or why the gap between them is one of the most important things to understand about your… Read more

If you could look at your entire guest base and sort every person who walked through your door in the last year into groups based on how often they visit, what you would find — in virtually every full-service restaurant — is a distribution that follows a predictable pattern. A relatively small group of guests… Read more

Pricing a restaurant menu is one of the most consequential decisions an operator makes, and it is usually made once — at opening — and then left largely undisturbed until costs have risen enough that the financial pain becomes impossible to ignore. That reactive approach to pricing is one of the more reliable ways to… Read more

Every restaurant has them: guests who came in regularly, then gradually less frequently, then not at all. They did not necessarily have a bad experience. They did not choose a competitor in a deliberate, conscious way. Life changed, habit drifted, a new restaurant opened nearby, they got busy — and gradually your restaurant fell out… Read more