BUSINESS EXPANSION

There are slack times in the restaurant trade, be they seasonal or due to geography. Think therefore of adding some extra strings to your bow like cookery classes, outside catering, takeaway, writing for a local or national magazine or newspaper, or targetting the corporate market with special lunch deals.

Loyalty cards and comment cards

If you are going down the fast, casual restaurant route think of a loyalty or privilege card that many corporate coffee businesses like Caffe Nero offer. The card accumulates points against future purchases with × number of points for a free coffee, xxx points for a meal for two.

Comment cards are good for market research, the card’s tick boxes including name and address of customer and/or email address, cleanliness, service, food enjoyment, welcome etc with a few lines for customers’ comments.

Cookery classes

When is your least busy period? Just after Christmas? The dark days of autumn or winter? If you are a communicator why not capitalise on your premises and your profession to create a series of cookery classes and/or demonstrations. These can be instead of a lunch trade one day (choose a slack day) every month or if the restaurant has a weekly closing day.

Write to your customers via a newsletter, put up posters and distribute flyers in the restaurant, in libraries, shops and elsewhere in your area. Outline a daily, weekly or monthly set of classes for six or more paying students (it generally won’t pay to have less) depending on your kitchen size.

Design the classes carefully around your own prep time, leaving plenty of time to clear up, have some time off and prepare for the evening.

Possible timetable no 1: 9.30 am arrive: coffee and talk. 10 am: start students cooking a two-course meal (or whatever you have chosen to do). 12.30: lunch with a glass of wine in restaurant. 2 pm: discussion of cooking and questions and answers. Departure: 3.30 pm with pack containing recipes, restaurant menus, public relations information.

Possible timetable no 2: 10 am: arrival and coffee. Demonstration: 11 am-12.30 pm. Glass of wine with food cooked either still in kitchen or informally in the restaurant. Leave 1.30 with tips and recipe pack plus menu and PR.

Offer gift vouchers for classes and demonstrations.

Types of classes

Daily, two to three day course, weekly, occasional or seasonal. You could teach:

• The basics: soups, breads, patés, roasts, simple desserts, jams, biscuits.
• Cooking for family and friends: simple oven dishes using chicken or pasta.
• Cooking lunch with your paying cooks from scratch and eating the meal in the restaurant with a good glass of wine.
• Food from Morocco, Spain, Italy, France, Thailand, Mexico, each country covered in a series of hands-on cooking classes or demonstrations.
• Cooking with spices and chillies.
• Cooking with fish (e.g. learning how to skin and fillet fish), meat, game, shellfish, vegetables.
• Pasta day (learning how to make pasta and sauces).
• Men in the kitchen day.
• Cooking for children and with children from scratch.
• Entertaining at home day.
• Vegetarian day.
• Tap as day.
• Simple starters.
• Party desserts.
• Party buffets.
• Party canapés.
• How to get through Christmas as the family cook.
• Demo masterclass by the restaurant’s chef(s).
• Ask a local celebrity chef/food writer to do a demonstration.

The most popular cookery courses are Christmas, men, children and entertaining, but other subjects can easily grab the imagination if presented well and clearly on paper. Calculate your costs carefully before deciding on a price per person. Offer discounts for group bookings: one comes free if he or she books six friends, for example. Make sure your classes measure up to expectations, i.e. don’t promise more than you can fulfil. Ask your students to fill in a questionnaire before departure for feedback. You may be surprised how much good market research you can achieve.

Outside catering

Your kitchen is an obvious place to capitalise on your assets as well as your skills and those of your staff. Outside catering as well as cookery classes are ways forward during quiet times. Or you may be able to offer your restaurant customers and others who you target a full year-round outside catering service if you have enough space, equipment and staff.

• Do work out carefully what the staff and space can handle.
• Plan your outside catering menus around these constraints.
• You might be able to offer: hot and cold food; a canape and buffet service; three-course sit-down meals; full wedding parties; a hamper service for sporting or musical events; extra chefs and waiting staff.
• Consider whether you will hire or buy in equipment, if you have separate space for storage of food and drink for outside catering, and think about refrigeration and hygiene matters.
• Will you be able to give a fair share of your time to discuss outside catering clients’ needs? It can be time-consuming, with visits to the client’s house or where the party is to be held to be included in your schedule.
• Make a supply list, a work schedule, plan transportation and staffing.
• Communication with the client is everything. Failure to do this may jeopardise the party and your reputation.
• The day after the party can also mean clearing up and sorting out equipment.
• Don’t jeopardise your restaurant by taking on too much too soon.
• If you decide to do outside catering or takeaway service, have printed catering menus for customers to pick up.
• Open accounts with companies for breakfasts, lunches, special events or takeaway trade. Make provisos such as payment terms of 30 days, trade references, and stipulate a minimum order and a 24-hour cancellation notice.

But first the essentials

Marketing, selling, planning and organisation are essential tools.

• 1.Do your homework first. What do local catering companies offer?
• 2.Identify your market and communicate with them by letter, flyers etc.
• 3.Create business cards and general menus to go onto flyers.
• 4.Don’t give out prices over the phone but offer the caller a tailor-made menu to be sent in writing after initial discussion of the event, with several price and menu alternatives.
• 5.Have all the arrangements in writing and agreed on both sides.
• 6.Ask for a deposit. Some outside caterers ask for l/3rd when booking, l/3rd two weeks in advance and the balance on the day of the event. Others ask for ten per cent when the booking takes place, then half minus the ten per cent, then the balance on the day. If dealing with corporate clients you may decide on invoicing them after the event, following an initial deposit.
• 7.Inform your client of a deposit forfeit should the party be cancelled.
• 8.Inform your client too of cancellation charges closer to the event.
• 9.Also inform them of the need to know final numbers one week before the party.
• 10.Keep any letters of recommendation and testimonials to show to prospective clients.
• 11.Take photographs of food, events and staff for your records and for marketing.
• 12.Keep the dialogue going by contacting customers who you have sent information to. Don’t expect to win them all though!

Corporate lunches

Service, service, service can often supersede location, location, location thanks to a fast turnaround at lunchtime in the restaurant trade. Business lunches need to be snappy and well managed. It is, therefore, worth considering attracting this market if your restaurant is close to a number of large or medium-sized businesses.

Draw up a list of businesses in the area. Contact the administration or human resources department and find out a name to write to. Prepare a welcoming letter outlining what you can offer the company at lunchtime or for other corporate entertaining, either at your restaurant or as outside catering at the business.

Discuss with your chef (or you may be the chef) the type of dishes that can be offered with swiftness and good value in mind. Prepare some sample menus and send them with the welcoming letter to the member of staff you have located, adding business cards and copies of good reviews or testimonials from other companies. Cold starters and desserts are obvious choices that can be quickly plated. Simply cooked main courses such as grilled fish, meat and pasta are ideal. A simple plate of the best charcuterie with pickles and salads is also popular.

Some restaurants, like Bistro Montparnasse in Portsmouth, offer a lunch which offers little in the way of profit to them. The reason? This lunch is to showcase what the restaurant can offer. Business people will return in the evening with friends and family for a more relaxed meal, having been assured of good food and service. This is excellent marketing.

You may be able to offer food delivery to companies’ boardrooms. Offer food like croissants filled with ham and cheese, cream cheese and crispy bacon, tortilla wraps with a mix of fish, meat and vegetarian fillings, salad bowls, specialist bread sandwiches, bite-size fruit bowls and drinks.

Set up corporate credit accounts, stipulate a minimum order with 24-hours notice and a 24-hour cancellation notice to safeguard your business and your blood pressure!

Writing a column or a cookbook

These are two excellent means of keeping your restaurant’s profile in the media market place. But you must examine your skills and your time. Can you write clearly, concisely and interestingly? Will your column’s recipes be user-friendly for the general public? Think whether you can fit in the writing as well as cooking and/or running a restaurant, and whether you have something offbeat or unusual to impart in a cookbook.

If you believe that you have many of these attributes here are some steps to take:

• Contact your local paper, magazine or radio station and talk to the features editor or programme producer about a column.
• Or find out their name and write to them outlining what you have in mind.
• Write a one-page letter, outlining your column in clear, concise language and your culinary attributes and other background which may be of interest – but only if relevant. No need to add your five A levels, your prowess at mountain walking, your bookbinding course.
• Go to a good bookstore and look at the cookbooks on offer.
• Which books would you like to emulate and why? Get their publishers’ names.
• Highlight a good story you have to tell about your restaurant: how you grow your own vegetables, herbs and salads, raise chickens for the pot, all in the back of beyond. Describe your expertise with unusual puddings or terrines, your exotic culinary pzazz, or that yours has been a family-run restaurant for generations, for example.
• Contact the commissioning editors by name either in writing or by phone.
• Invest in The Writer’s Handbook (MacMillan www.panmacmillan.com) for UK publishers, agents, national and regional newspapers and other useful information or The Guardian Media Guide (Atlantic Books) for similar guidance and other media information. Both available at large bookstores.
• Contact the Guild of Food Writers (www.gfw.co.uk) for advice.
• It takes time and perseverance to get on this particular ladder, as I can testify to, but dogged determination can pay off (as I can testify to!).

Don’ts:

• Do not write complex recipes to which only chefs can aspire.
• Do not write a book unless you have a distinctive, different ‘voice’.
• Do not take on too much media work – writing a column, a book, tv, radio – as it may take you away from those stoves for too long, and your business will suffer as a result.