We’ve revamped and relaunched our Restaurant Engine Podcast!  This is the first of many interviews we’ll be doing with restaurant owners to hear the stories of how they started and grew their restaurant business.

Be sure to subscribe to the show in iTunes by clicking here.

In This Episode…

We spoke with Steve Perlstein and Jennifer Block, who started Simmer Milwaukee food truck a year ago. You’ll hear all about:

• Why Steve and Jennifer turned to Kickstarter to fund their food truck
• How local press and community engagement started their business with a loyal fanbase
• Why Steve left a successful career in journalism to pursue his dream of being a chef
• How they manage their food truck while planning their brick-and-mortar restaurant

We also learn why Steve and wife Jennifer made their decision to start with a food truck instead of a traditional restaurant. The pair expand on their menu strategies, specialty bakery items, a focus on sourcing ingredients locally and the process of delegating management so they can continue to expand their business.

Specializing in freshly-made soups and paninis with a daily selection of both vegan and gluten-free options, Simmer offers something unique for everyone – and it’s paying off. In addition to Simmer Truck, Simmer Catering is a major part of the business also – from weddings to street block parties, office lunches to charity dinners, Simmer makes the most of its’ mobility!

In fact, things are moving quickly – this November they will be opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant, Simmer Café, while keeping their food truck business going strong. We had a lot of fun talking with this creative team and know they’re only just getting started! Tune in to the podcast to hear all about Simmer’s rise to success!

Find Simmer on the web at:
www.simmermilwaukee.com

Delightful photos of food can influence the decision factor of potential customers.

This is a guest article written by Rob Stathem, a professional food photographer who works with restaurants, hotels, B&Bs, and casinos to help create mouth-watering food photographs that get people craving his client’s food. As a devout foodie himself, through the creation of Food Snaps, Rob has taken his passion for food and transformed it into a valuable food photography service that every food professional needs. For more information on how Rob can help you get the most out of your food photographs, you can reach him by phone at 949-939-0277, or visit his website at foodsnaps.net. 

Whether you’re an executive of a five-star restaurant, or a caterer of an up and coming catering company, you need to have quality food photographs that help entice your patrons to take that first bite! Here are five tips to capture irresistible food images for your website or menu:

1. Feature your best dishes

Before you start taking photographs of your menu items, you want to make sure that your images will be congruent with the marketing goals of your business.

For example, if you own a seafood restaurant and you’re marketing exotic fish dishes for the middle aged target audience, it would be a poor choice to instead photograph a burger that you feature on your menu. If your specialty is fish, you want to make sure you’re showcasing seafood!

2. Choose a good camera

If quality and creative control is what you’re after, than, it might be wise to invest in a DSLR camera! DSLR cameras will give you full creative control in how you photograph food. By choosing a DSLR camera, you have the ability to change lenses as well as what you want in focus, among other things.

A simple point and shoot camera will put your subjects in complete focus, therefore, disabling your ability to fine tune what you want to be in focus. For instance, let’s say your photographing Creme Brulee and you want to put focus on the raspberries and mint garnish, a DSLR camera will give you that fine tune focus control.

3. Dishware matters

Once you’ve determined your image marketing goals and the best camera to use, it’s important to think about dishware. What will your food be positioned on? If you’re showcasing a plate of food with vibrant colors, than, it’s best to use white colored plates. White colored plates allow your vibrant food to become the hero shot. In some instances, dull looking food (like oatmeal) can be placed in colorful dishware to help accentuate the oatmeal.

There are all kinds of dishware: bowls, plates, platters, etc, and each come in different weight, size, and style. Think about what food you’re preparing and how the geometry of the food will match or complement the dishware. If you’re preparing a few mini fruit tarts, a circular platter would follow the geometry of the circular fruit tarts. Use your best judgment when deciding what dishware to use for your food.

4. Consult a food stylist

In order to ensure the perfect image, consider the importance of a food stylist. A food stylist is different from a chef. A food stylists’ job is to ensure that the food looks its absolute best on camera!

For example, a food stylist may re-position a mint leaf or garnish to point towards the direction of the camera, or, he/she may apply oil to the vegetables to make them look fresh and appetizing. If you don’t have a food stylist to work with, make sure you coordinate with your chef on how you want to position/place food items on a dish. Communication is key!

Proper plating and lighting makes for a great dish photo.

5. Observe proper lighting

Last, but not least, don’t forget the importance of lighting. Lighting is a crucial aspect to getting great food photographs. If you don’t have lighting equipment, position your food in your establishment near an open window. You may also need to diffuse the light depending on how harsh the light is. If you have direct sunlight shining through, you’ll definitely want to diffuse the sunlight with muslin or tissue paper. Tape the muslin or tissue paper to the window and this will create a nice diffusion. If you photograph food that has harsh sunlight with no diffusion, you’ll end up with “hot spots” or areas in your food that are completely white washed.

Back window lighting is great because it gives dimension and depth to your food. You’ll also want to consider using a fill card such as a mirror, white foam card–anything to bounce light to the front area of your food. If you don’t have any windows in your restaurant, place your food outside on a table in the shade.

By following the above principles, you’ll end up with photographs to be proud of showcasing on your website or menu.

Photos by Rob Stathem

This is a guest article written by Susie Brown, a FastUpFront blog contributor and business author. FastUpFront offers a restaurant loan/financing alternative to business loans. You can learn more about them here. 

Your average restaurant owner hears the word recession and shudders. After all, if the economy declines people have less money and tighten their budgets, which means cutting out ‘unnecessary’ expenses – like eating out. You can let your fear lead you to the dark kitchen of, ‘can’t get people to spend if they don’t have the money to spend with,’ or you can see it as an opportunity and get cooking. As my Grandma used to say, “Ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.”

1. Know Your Strengths

While you’re struggling to keep the balance between sales and cost, there are a few changes that can help you weather tough times. There are promotional tools and menu changes you can make to attract new diners and keep loyal customers. While it’s always important to appeal to their taste buds, you need to put yourself in your clients’ shoes. What about your restaurant will make them chose to leave home, select your establishment, pay for and enjoy their dining experience?

2. Make Some Menu Adjustments

Menus that appeal to budget-conscious diners may be enough of a change to keep business moving. If there are items that are rarely ordered, replace them. King crabs may need to be dropped from the menu and replaced by something from the fresh, local catch. This will appeal to a diner’s wallet and advertising the dish as “fresh and local” will let your clientele know you’re supporting other small business owners and the community. This holds true for senior and military discounts and sponsoring a local little league. Make sure you proudly display these facts. Diners are people and letting them know that you are doing your part to help support the local community gives an additional value to what is already a great place to dine.

3. Value-based Promotions

Promotional ideas need to be value-based versus gimmick oriented. All you can eat specials, free side orders, refills or kids’ meals are a great place to start. You can consider separating menu items and pricing them for affordability. Two for one specials are always popular but if it doesn’t fit your image, try for every two entrées ordered dessert is, “compliments of the chef.”

It may be tempting to cut your advertising budget – don’t, just rethink it. Menu flyers or a take-out menu are affordable ways to get the word out about your restaurant. Put them at local hotels, chambers of commerce, popular tourist areas and other local businesses. You may even consider a co-marketing campaign with a local business. Stay at the local inn for two nights or more and get a 10% discount at your restaurant. Is there a local festival coming up? Use it! Talk to the organizers of the Rock County Pork Fest. Becoming a sponsor can get you on the back of the ticket, which can also be used as a coupon at your restaurant (which during the fest is, of course, featuring a locally grown pork chop special). Cranberry Daze every fall? Make sure you get a local vendor and get cooking. If these don’t appeal to you consider live music or display works by local artists/photographers.

4. Simple Cost-Saving Steps

In addition to innovation and creativity, there are some very real cost saving steps you can take. If there is a night of the week that is typically slow, consider scheduling less servers and letting your manager fill in for the bartender or host. Just be careful not to do anything that would reduce your customer service, which is the bread and butter that sets you apart.

There are also several small changes you may not have thought of that can add up to real savings. Take a look at your menu to make certain you have calculated food cost correctly. In general, food cost should be around 30-35%. For example, if you pay $1.00 for something, you need to charge at least $3.34. Also revisit portion control, but err on the side of too much.

Energy efficient light bulbs and keeping lights off when you don’t need them are both fiscally wise. If you don’t start serving until a certain time, keep the lights in the dining area off. Consider replacing older equipment with energy efficient models (many come with tax credits and other incentives). Turn down the thermostat a bit; 68 is just as comfortable as 72 in winter and vice versa in summer. Install low flow faucets and toilets, soak your dishes instead of rinsing food off and only run the dishwasher when full. If you use plastic or other disposables, consider replacing them with china, glass or silver – good for the environment as well as the budget.

5. Keep the Focus on Great Service

According to the National Restaurant Association, the first step to opening a restaurant that offers great customer service is hiring people who love to serve and training them with examples of great customer service. Above and beyond the servers, your staff should understand they are a team. Think of a Broadway musical; the leads may get the applause but the show would never happen without the combined effort of musicians, stage techs, lighting, costume, make-up, etc. The choreography isn’t just onstage during musical numbers, but behind the scenes as well. This is true in your restaurant as well and as Director it is your place to let your staff know this. Your servers may be your leads but they rely on a support staff of bus boys, cooks, dishwashers, etc. to deliver the show and take a bow, so to speak.

Changing economic times can be nerve-wracking for small business owners, but they are also an important time to remember that small businesses are the nation’s best job creators and help the economy recover. So take a deep breath, make some adjustments and be ready for a curtain call. It could come at any moment.

Photo from St. Louis Magazine

This is a guest article written by Jessica Oman of Write Ahead. She’s a business plan writer, consultant, and trainer for entrepreneurs everywhere. Her free checklists for business launch and growth will help your company get from ‘idea’ to ‘open’ in record time – you can grab those here. 

In the restaurant industry, cost control is critically important. Expensive ingredients, or very small orders from suppliers, can significantly drive up the cost of producing each plate you serve. But in order to keep your menu consistent and give diners what they expect without drastically raising prices, you might have to soak up those extra costs.

Meantime, your customers dine on, blissfully unaware that the sweat dripping from your forehead is not from the heat of the kitchen, but from the stress of watching your profits get consumed – literally – with every bite they take.

Fortunately, if you plan your food costs carefully, you can avoid eroding your profits and have a contingency plan for when things change – such as a supplier going out of business. A business plan for a restaurant needs to contain a careful cost analysis – this helps lenders understand how you’ll reach your target profits, but it also helps you benchmark your own costs and keep track of what you’re spending on ingredients. Here are a few ways to plan food costs for a new restaurant:

1. Know the industry standards.

The more local you can get with this analysis, the better. For example, industry statistics tell us that in Canada, typical direct costs for restaurants (that’s food and packaging) are about 30% – that is, a $10 plate of food costs $3 to make. Industry standards give you a good starting point for your cost planning, so you know if you’re in a healthy range. For local data, talk to an SBA advisor or a SCORE chapter who may be able to help you.

2. Get Detailed Supply Contracts.

Suppliers will change their wholesale prices from time to time, and the more you can hedge against that, the better. If you get a good price on an ingredient you use a lot of, you might consider locking that price in for a couple of years. Also look for secondary suppliers for all of your essential ingredients and packaging, so you can switch easily if your primary supplier goes bankrupt or otherwise terminates your contract.

3. Weigh Everything.

Yes, it’s tedious, but you need to know how much of each ingredient goes into each dish. That’s the only way you can get an accurate picture of what it costs to make one plate. If you discover that one menu item costs a lot more to make, you’ll either need to raise the price on the menu or use different (or fewer) ingredients to bring costs down. For more on making your menu better, check out this excellent resource on menu engineering.

4. Don’t Overbuy.

Spoiled product is money in the trash for a restaurant. With local, fresh ingredients now the rage in restaurants across North America, you have to be careful not to buy more food than you need. To plan for this, first estimate how many seatings your restaurant will turn in an evening. If your 100-seat restaurant opens from 5-11, you might turn each table three times and serve up to 300 plates an evening – but you won’t reach capacity every night. You’ll need to make adjustments during your first few months of operation to find out when your busiest days are and what your most popular dishes are, and then make changes to your orders as needed.

Until you operate your restaurant for a little while, you won’t know exactly what your food costs will be. The best you can to do prepare is to test out your proposed menu and determine what your costs will be at launch. Get detailed quotes from suppliers and find out what volumes you need to reach in order to get a better price. Compare your costs to local industry standards, and then project that out for three years in three scenarios – worst case (costs rise), expected case (costs stay relatively flat) and best case (costs go down).

Perhaps most importantly, try to find a mentor in your area who has operated or consulted with a successful local restaurant. The advice you’ll get from an expert will save you a lot of money in the long term, and keep a lot of delicious food out of the trash can!

Photo by pgoyette

When you’re opening a new restaurant, or refreshing the design and brand of your established restaurant, your restaurant’s logo design is a key piece of the puzzle.

It’s the brand and visual identity that customers — new and old — will connect with. It’s the recognizable mark that represents your restaurant everywhere, from your signage, to your menu, and of course on your website.

It should also represent you on social media as well. Make your restaurant’s logo the avatar image on your Facebook page and Twitter profile.

You’d be surprised how many restaurants fail to include their beautiful logo design on their website. Maybe they had trouble adding it to the top of the website and changing their website’s colors to match. Of course, if their website were powered by Restaurant Engine, that wouldn’t problem wouldn’t exist.

In need of a logo design for your restaurant?

If you already have a logo and need help inserting into your website, we do that as part of our Full Setup Service at Restaurant Engine. We’ll even tweak your logo to fit with the background etc.

But if you need a brand new logo design for your restaurant, here are a few places you can go to get yours professionally designed:

Ready-Made Logo Designs at 99Designs – a low-cost, quick, and easy way to get your restaurant logo done.

Dribbble Designers Directory – The best of the best designers are listed on Dribbble. They’ll charge a bit more for their services, but you’ll get amazing results.

FreelanceSwitch Freelancers Directory – Price quotes will range quite a bit here, but you can connect with lots of freelancers, many of which are logo designers, using this directory.

Without further ado, check out these amazing restaurant logo designs we rounded up. Tell us which is your favorite!

1. Habibi Mehza Restaurant

View at Dribbble →

2. Aberdin Restoranas

View at Dribbble →

3. Moka Coffee House

View at Dribbble →

4. Almeda Bakery and Restaurant

View at Dribbble →

5. Salty’s Original

View at Dribbble →

6. Patachon Café & Bar

View at Dribbble →

7. La Touche de Provence

View at Dribbble →

8. The Rock Sports Bar & Grill

Visit Website →

9. The Last Unicorn Restaurant

View at Dribbble →

10. Pirelli’s Italian Restaurant

View at Dribbble →

11. Burrito Brothers

View at Dribbble →

12. Chicagos Bar & Grill

View at Dribbble →

13. Orange Resto

View at Dribbble →

14. Pomodoro

View at Dribbble →

15. Bar du Gaspi

View at Dribbble →

16. DeGreys Café & Restaurant

View at Dribbble →

17. Amavelda Wine & Dine

View at Dribbble →

18. Palomino Bar

Visit Website →

19. Masala Craft

View at Dribbble →

20. Sushi Today

View at Dribbble →

If you’re having difficulty navigating the topic of SEO (search engine optimization), you’re not alone. You have probably received at least one scammy email in the past month about how to increase your search engine rankings. These emails usually promise to get you to the top of page 1 in a week for the low price of $100! Don’t take the bait, there’s a better way. 

In this post I’ll give you 5 quick and dirty tips on how you can increase your local SEO efforts.

1. Claim Your Google Plus Page

When you search for restaurants in your area, you will see Google plus listings at the top of the results (see image below).

To claim your Google plus page, do a quick search for your restaurant from Google Maps to see if Google has already catalogued your restaurant. If you find a Google plus listing for your restaurant, click on ‘Manage This Page’ on the bottom right of the page. You will be asked to sign in with a Google account. If you don’t have a Google account you can set one up easily for free.

Once you have signed in, Google will ask you to verify that you are the business owner by either calling the phone number they have on file or by sending a postcard to the address they have on file with a code you will need to enter for confirmation. I have found that verifying your address by postcard is the best way to ensure you have the ability to manage your Google plus page.

If you can’t find a Google plus page for your restaurant you may need to set one up. To set up your Google plus page, go to google.com/places and click on ‘Get Started For Free’.

2. Fill Out Google Plus Page Completely And Accurately

Once you have claimed or created your Google plus page you will want to make sure all of the information is completely filled out and there are no duplicate listings. If you find duplicate listings that you do not own, you will want to report them using the instructions found on Google’s support.

Take the time to make sure that your restaurant name, address, phone number, and website are correct. I’d recommend doing a Google search on your restaurant’s address and use the exact format that Google provides. 

Make sure you have added categories that best describe your restaurant. Add photos, hours of operation and any additional details that would be helpful to customers.

3. Claim + Complete Local Business Directory (Citation) Listings

Claiming and removing duplicate business directory listings sends signals to search engines, helping them increase the degree of certainty they have about your business’ contact information and categorization. Here is a list of the citations that I have found are valuable for restaurants to claim.

• Bing Places
• Yelp
• Superpages
• City Search
• Urban Spoon
• OpenTable
• Yellow Pages
• Angi
• Express Update USA (formally infoUSA)
• Yahoo Local
• Trip Advisor
• Merchant Circle
• Dex Knows
• Insider Pages
• Localeze
• Shop City
• Judy’s Book
• Yellow Bot
• Kudzo

If you have more money than time, I’d recommend submitting to multiple citations at the same time with Yext. Yext will submit to listings for you and let you know the status for each citation. You can always track this on your own in an excel spreadsheet if you cannot afford this service.

4. Do Keyword Research

Use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to learn how people are searching. Try entering 5-10 queries you think would be used to find a restaurant in your category and region.

For example:

• “your city restaurants”
• “your food category your city”
• “restaurants in your city”

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool was designed to help people buy ads for keywords and will show you the number of times a keyword is searched for every month with the keyword’s overall competition. Higher competition keywords are more expensive to rank for in paid results, and in general, harder to rank for in organic results as well. The search numbers are not completely accurate, but they can help you determine what keywords have the most opportunity in your region.

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool also gives you keyword ideas. Often times this will reveal opportunities to target multiple keywords on your site.

Pro Tips:

1. Use ‘Exact’ match type when searching for keywords so you can see the volume for a specific query.
2. Select ‘Local’ so you are only looking at results for the U.S.
3. Define the category to limit the span of keyword ideas.
4. Use ‘Include terms’ or ‘Exclude terms’ to narrow your keyword ideas

5. Optimize Your Homepage For A Specific Keyword

When search engines crawl and store your website, they don’t see everything the same way we do. Instead of seeing pretty pages and stunning slideshows, search engines see raw HTML (the stuff that Restaurant Engine does behind the scenes to make your site look good).

Search engines break down the structure of the HTML to determine what the page is about, and use cues in the content to help them determine if your pages should be served to a user that is searching for “restaurants in milwaukee”, as an example. Optimizing the content on the site is often overlooked, but it shouldn’t be because you have direct control over the content.

After you have done some keyword research, and have found the keyword with the most opportunity you will want to optimize your homepage for that query.

You’ll need to use a tool to analyze the raw HTML of your page for a specific keyword. I’d highly recommend using Juxseo, a free tool that gives you a clear checklist of the things you need to do to optimize your on page content for a specific keyword. If your site is built on WordPress, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to check and optimize your content for specific keywords.

Avoid optimizing for more than 1 or 2 keywords on any page as this will boost your chances of ranking for the terms you are going after.

I hope this short guide has helped give you actionable things you can do to improve your local SEO. If you have any questions please comment below!

MP3 Audio

In this episode of the Restaurant Engine Podcast, we discuss the essentials to starting your own food truck business. You’ll learn what type and size of truck to go for along with the proper starter equipments you should prioritize on acquiring. You’ll also be introduced to what paperworks are required to running a food truck plus business suggestions and marketing tips to get things rolling. All these are covered in this episode of the Restaurant Engine Podcast.

Run a food truck?  Find out more about Restaurant Engine’s food truck website design solution.

MP3 Audio

In this very first episode of the Restaurant Engine Podcast, we discuss six important steps to think about when you’re building your restaurant’s business plan.  Building your business plan is an important step for any new restaurant business and shouldn’t be taken lightly.  From the concept to branding and marketing to financials.  It’s all covered in this opening episode of the Restaurant Engine Podcast.

We just launched our new Affiliate Program. It’s an easy way for you to earn some extra cash, for every new customer you refer to Restaurant Engine.

I know many of you are friends of restaurant owners, or consult with restaurants to help them improve their business. We’ve been especially grateful that so many of you have chosen to recommend our service because of the quality and trust we’ve built over the past couple years.

Now, we want to sweeten the deal for you and give you an added incentive to recommend Restaurant Engine whenever someone you know needs a new website for their restaurant.

Here’s how the new Affiliate Program works:

First, you’ll need to register as an Affiliate (costs you nothing). Then, you’ll get a unique tracking URL, which you can paste into emails, share on social media, or post on your website or blog. Every time someone clicks the link and eventually becomes a customer, we give you your 20% cut. Pretty sweet, huh?

The best part? Your commissions are recurring. That means you get paid for every subscription payment (every month) for the lifetime of each customer you send our way. There are no limits to how many customers you can refer, or how high you build your recurring revenue!

And for those of you who have websites or blogs, we also provide you with a variety of banners and images you can use to promote Restaurant Engine on your website.

Learn more and register as an Affiliate here »

As always, we’re here to help in any way we can, whether it’s answering questions or bouncing around ideas for how to earn more with Restaurant Engine. Just ask

You know how important your staff is to your restaurant.  They not only keep your operation running, they interact with your customers and make the face and personality of your restaurant.

So you know how crucial it is to hire the right people.  But that’s easier said than done.

You can’t hire just anybody off the street (or off craigslist).  They must have the right experience, the right personality… the right fit. It takes time to post your “Help Wanted” ads all over town, in the newspaper, on the job boards, on craigslists, etc.  After all of that legwork, you have to sift through the responses, narrow down your search, schedule interviews, then narrow down your short-list.  And we haven’t even begun training yet!

I’m exhausted just writing about the process of hiring restaurant employees!

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easier way to staff up your restaurant?

As it turns out, there is.  I came across this website called Shiftgig a few weeks ago.  You know by now that I don’t usually promote a single site or service here on the Restaurant Engine blog unless I think it delivers a real benefit for restaurant owners.  ShiftGig is one of those rare exceptions

Shiftgig makes it easy to find hourly and salaried employees for your restaurant. Restaurant industry candidates have profiles that include work history, education, photos, and reviews/references. You can browse through thousands of great candidates or post a job for free.

You read that correctly – Stop paying for job boards or staffing agencies, because this tool costs you nothing. That should be enough, but let’s dig in a bit, shall we?

Browse and sort thousands of candidates that fit your criteria.

Shiftgig leverages its online community to simplify the often daunting task of finding qualified staff. With 240,000 members and over 7,000 businesses using the site (as of April 2013), Shiftgig provides employers and workers exactly what they need to find a perfect match. When restaurants post jobs, Shiftgig automatically shows them candidates who are most qualified for the position, thereby shortening the frustrating, time-consuming search process. Instead of combing through hundreds of resumes from Craigslist and walk-ins, you can use Shiftgig and save yourself the hassle, find more choices and get a better staff.

Detailed profiles for each candidate.

Here are few of my favorite aspects:

• Free distribution to other job sites  — Job postings on Shiftgig are automatically included on more than two dozen “pay-to-post” websites for free
• Create “Apply Now” Button on Craigslist and manage your craigslist applications through Shiftgig to reduce spam, limit inbox clutter and manage your hiring process online
• Schedule and track interviews easily through Shiftgig’s online messaging system
• Create filters to organize applicants based on experience, geography and other relevant information
• Find the best applicants by easy accessing work history, references, photos, education, certifications and other critical hiring information
• Re-post previous jobs easily with one click
• Browse thousands of candidates based on keyword or geography

Get your staff search on at Shiftgig.

What do you think?  Will this be helpful in your hiring process at your restaurant?  Tell me in the comments.