Health Check Your Business
By Stephen Millar | The Pizza Consultant

Sometimes you overlook the basics. Many times we spend all of our time addressing our marketing efforts, such as recruiting sporting clubs, direct mail and other elements of time and money that make our business a success, but are we forgetting the basics? The Health Check of the business itself can be easily overlooked.

What we tend to forget is that we spend the time to get the customers to our restaurant or shop and forget the little things that the customers form an opinion on that can determine if we ever see them again. Those things can be the general appearance of the shop before entry to the premises. Spider webs hanging off the doors or windows, the untidy appearance of the shop…these things are first impressions! Do the windows need a clean? Does the shop just look tired? These things are all taken in by the customer and it really doesn’t matter how good your product is if the customer stumbles across cleaner premises in another location…they get your business based on a cleanliness impression.

Make the premises look inviting. After all, if you were buying a home and you pulled up outside the address and saw that the lawn or garden wasn’t attended you wouldn’t get out of the car, would you? The house might have been the buy of the century but you didn’t give it a go. You might be losing business for the same reason.

Another area could be the staff. Do they look unclean or are the uniforms grubby? Are the tables left unattended with scraps from the previous patron’s rubbish still there or on the floor? Getting the staff trained and prepared to clean the tables and tidy the area is the minimum standard these days that customers expect. The rule should be: “Cleaning instead of leaning.”

Constant cleaning of the premises always receives the thumbs up from the customer when they notice this type of attention to detail. Check that the staff isn’t walking around with a dirty towel or dish cloth slung over their shoulder. Nothing is more disgusting than someone parading around with those items and wiping all the tables with them. There should be a practice that all cloths are disposable and to use a sanitizing and germicidal spray to clean ALL tables, counters, and chairs.

Another important area to consider is the preparation area that can be seen by the public. Is it as clean as it can be? Does it look organized and free from contaminations? Make sure there is no waste product lying around to attract cockroaches, flies or other unwanted guests.

Staff should greet, meet and welcome all the customers with a friendly attitude that make them feel special. General chatter with a helpful nature creates an experience for the customer. The experience is what they cannot get anywhere else and that is another reason why they come to you for your GREAT product. It is important to note that the general chatter shouldn’t be over friendly or sarcastic. Nothing turns customers off a place faster than staff or owners embarrassing someone in front of other customers.

Another important item is menus. If you have menus or special sheets make sure that they don’t have dog eared edges or are dirty in appearance, Look professional at all times right down to your paper stock and window banners. Spend the time to look at the major chains and see how they carry themselves.

Do you find the Food Costs acceptable? After all, this can be your life blood going out in the bin. This is a major area of concern in all businesses and should be addressed. The Food Cost and labor costs should be a strictly controlled environment that ALL the staff is made aware of.

ALL food production should be weighed and rigorously adhered to. I have noticed in a lot of pizzerias that there a number of staff that use their hands to free throw toppings and not measuring items to make their pizza the same each time. Not only is there inconsistencies in the making of the pizzas (staff having different size hands) the food costs aren’t controlled. It takes some getting used to, but will save hundreds if not thousands of dollars over the course of the year. Even doing something as simple as using a measuring cup help you become more consistent and controls Food Costs.

Can you deliver your product in a salable condition and the way that you would expect it to reach your door should you order from another chain supplier on your day off? It is also worth mentioning that you should take the purchase challenge and order from your competition to see how you rate against them. Is there something in the way they do it that you like that can put in place? Make up a spread sheet and use it to rate them as if you are doing an assessment of there operation.
1. Did they get the product to you when they said?
2. Was courtesy shown by the staff towards the customer at all time?
3. How was their appearance? Clean, average, good or excellent?
4. Was the order correct?
5. Did they read the order back to you as you received it?
6. Was the quality good, average, so-so, excellent?

Do you have a good Point of Sale software program that can track your labor cost, food costs, inventory and sales? This type of software can save you a lot of time and money and at the press of a few buttons it will generate all your information on sales, labour and more. If you would like to learn more about POS systems, be sure to call DJ Baum at Kilo Delta (EATA) 08 9571 0002 or Gus Wrethman at Sorento Systems (03 9523 7956). They also have advertisements in this issue.

Now, have you done a Health Check of your restaurant? Maybe it is time you do. You may be losing customers. The Pizza Consultants have done research into many of these areas. If you need to know more then don’t hesitate to call us.

Pizza Consultant
Stephen Millar
0413 902 391
pizzaconsultant@y7mail.com