r/restaurantowners

I'm thinking one of two categories:

Category A: Buy it once, have it for life. $$$$$

Category B: Cheap out, replace when needed. $$$

(For Category B, not TOO cheap. I don't wanna buy another one in two months.)

I'm all ears.

I have catering drivers use their own cars, and they get paid well, hourly and mileage wise

In over 20,000 deliveries (yes, legit number) had a first happen- driver typed in address correctly but choose the wrong city. Went an hour north, not 45 minutes south

obviously customer got a refund, PLUS I had to call a local restaurant in the small town and pay for the sandwiches I sent there in our stead

And my driver wants full pay. Hourly plus mileage

Lol

I see it like this - I offered you pay for 123 main street Southsville, NOT 123 Main st NORTHSVILLE

you didn't go to where you were told. Thus, no mileage reimbursement? I'll pay the hourly but no more...

Thoughts??

I work in a restaurant group with over 300 employees, an outside HR management firm AND two salaried employees whose role is for people management but they still have chefs, directors and outlet managers responsible for chasing down and inputting all their personal info and receiving/uploading Id's and SS cards. is this normal? Seems like chefs and managers should be able to send an email or fill out a form with basic contact info, job role, and pay rates then HR or the internal office people should chase down the new hire docs.

Are you guys having to do all this? Am I crazy for thinking this should not be something already overworked floor level managers should not have to do?

A customer who comes in every week brings a coupon that expired three days ago. They didn’t notice the date, and the discount is small enough that you’d still make a profit.

Do you make an exception, or stick to the same policy for everyone?

Curious where restaurant and small business owners draw the line between looking after regulars and setting an expectation they’ll regret.

In the market to put a chef base under the griddle and I don't wanna cheap out.

Anyone brand-loyal? If so, what brand?

Cheers!

Sales have been lackluster this year, operating in a winter bird seasonal area and this year just wasn’t the same, overall year over year down 6%, best was back in 2023 and it made sense because how stimulant the economy was now all i hear from customers is how difficult it’s been for them this past year, cost of living and as well for me cost to operate, I sit and look and old invoices of meat suppliers and it’s way different in price terms. All we can hope is a recovery.

Three months ago, my friend came to me asking for my help to get his cafe some much-needed traffic. I looked at his website, which looked like it was built during the first few days of the internet. I was horrible. So, the first thing I did was rebuild it and create a backend that allowed him to edit and manage every bit of it from his own admin panel. Then, using my growth hacking background, I started building tools to help him turn every customer into his marketing team. Here's what I did that you can do as well:

1. Video Reviews - We placed tabletop cards with a promotion... "Create and Post a Video Review of your meal for $5 Off Your Order". The QR Code brought up a simple app we built, which was just a landing page with some Social media API integrated to track posts and suggest Hashtags for the local area. When the video was posted, they would get a coupon code to show the waiter for the discount. It also prompted the customer to enter their name, email, and phone number to sign up for our rewards program, which also compliantly opted them into our list to remarket to.

2. Give $5, Get $5 - We implemented another program where people could send a $5 e-gift card to a friend, and when it was redeemed, they would get $5 credited to their rewards account.

3. Google and Yelp Review Prompt - On their website, we built a pop-up that asked people to leave a review for the Cafe. We didn't offer a reward or incentive, just asked them to leave one.

4. Reward Program - The underlying engine behind our entire strategy was our rewards program. Every promotion we run feeds new members into our rewards program. We track customer visits, offer incentives for repeat visits, and can send out email and text blasts to fill empty seats with limited-time countdown offers that expire in two hours.

Since the launch of these systems, they have had over 2300 people join their rewards program, driven $100k in attributable sales from the program, and generated over 240 new reviews on Google and Yelp and over 230 social media review posts.

All of these tools were vibe-coded in just a few days and added to the site I built for them. With the advent of AI, it's easy to implement any of these ideas into your local restaurant and turn your customers into your marketing team for free!