I didn't get anything for free... wahhhhh

Can't make this stuff up....

Two simple rules on hoow to turn a restaurant off from taking your complaint seriously.

1.  Tell them you will never be back.  This is the norm for complaints.

If you tell a business you will never be back, then there is no incentive for the business to waste any more time on you.

2.  Don't complain because you didn't receiving anything for free.

People do not go into business and sustain their business by giving products away for free.  Customers are not entitled to something for free just because they spend money.




Name:  Bob
Email:  
Subject:  Will not return!
Comment:  I was in your establishment last night 1/19 with 2 of my friends for a 5 hour period. We came there to enjoy the band Powerplay, of course we also had some food and drinks. My bill came to $192.92 which is significant but not the problem. I have been in the Entertainment business for 30 yrs. and my job requires me to travel so I visit establishments such as yours all over N. America. Its understandable forbidding your bartenders to drink while on duty, lots of places do this.  Its regrettable though when a "restrictive" atmosphere exists where they're not encouraged to recognize and allowed to "take care" of a good paying customer! Nicki and Cindy were exceptional at their jobs and very friendly but I was never offered a free shot and/or drink, not even once! Now this could be their faults but from my experience its usually means the manager and/or owner do not allow free drinks or food items to be given out. This means you're conscientiously restricting them from servicing the customers properly, which implies arrogance and total lack of regard for the customer. To me it shows that you could care less if I return to your establishment so for this reason, I will oblige. I hope this is read with an open mind and actions are taken to address the negative situation that exists.

I used to be a people person...

Fact:
If you run a restaurant/bar, everyone knows how to run it better than you.  You are just a greedy bastard.


Name:
Email:
Subject:  My visits there
Comment:  When I first went there a year or so back, it was such good food, I got stuffed peppers (4 of them then) and the philly steak salad. As time has gone on & taking our kids skating next door, we would come over on a Sat night to have a couple drinks & a bite to eat. Now you get only 2 stuffed peppers, instead of 4,  once I tried to order the philly steak salad & you did not have steak. 3 times in a row we tried to order potato skins as an appetizer and you were out of them, and then most recently when we were there you have raised all your prices, some by over $2 which is crazy. You had a nice place & good food when it was available, however now you are getting a bit big for your britches raising  prices, with not having the food on the menu readily available, and as an owner your not the friendliest owner around either. Instead of trying to think that you are somebody by walking around doing not much, try making sure you have the things you need to make the food on the menu & taking your prices back to reasonable before you have no one there anymore


My Rebuttal (If I could, this individual choose not to allow a way for us to respond):  
The menu was updated two years ago, we eliminated items and adjusted prices to inflation, this is what restaurants do.  Thanks for noticing :)

Economics of the Restaurant Dollar

I've been noticing lately that when it comes to restaurant reviews there are generally four different adjectives that are used by customers to describe the prices at various establishments. They are as follows:

1. Expensive
2. Overpriced
3. Pricey (as in 'a bit pricey')
4. Reasonable

No one will ever use terms such as 'fair' or 'accurately priced' and God forbid anyone ever refer to a place's prices as being 'cheap.' I think this is mostly due to not understanding where the money goes that they spend.

I actually have lots of thoughts on this but I'll save those for another post some day. However I do want to quickly review the general costs associate with every dollar that comes into the registers.

So have you ever wondered where the money you spend at a Restaurant goes? How much of it is profit versus expenses? Well here is a quick breakdown in terms of ours as well as many other restaurants pricing models.

+$1.00 Gross income into the register
-$0.09 take an immediate 9% and give it to New York State for sales tax.
-$0.30 for employee wages, most restaurants aim for a 30% payroll cost vs gross sales. Most are actually higher.
-$0.15 on average we pay 15% of our gross to utilities, ie water gas electric
-$0.02 for insurances. Restaurants and bars carry lots of liabilities from fire, to disability to general liability all the way to workplace injuries. Basically when you're serving the public and employing the public you need to be insured to your eyeballs.
-$0.02 property/city taxes. Some people say that you never really own your property, you just lease it from the government.
-$0.05 mortgages, maintenance, service, repair, upgrades. The restaurant industry requires that you use a lot of equipment. From computers for the front of the house, to freezers, stoves, etc for the back of the house. Then there are repairs and updates and paying for the building in general.
-$0.33 Cost of Goods Sold. Our target for pricing is so that every meal you have, the items you consumed cost 33% of what you paid for. Most places target this 33% to be the standard. This factor is not a variable and the prices customers pay are not an arbitrary number. They are formula driven to fit this percentage so that restaurants can maintain a profit margin.

So add those up, you get $0.96 of expense for every dollar you receive in the restaurant industry. Leaving you with only $0.04 in profit out of that $1.00 payment.

Now Uncle Sam comes along and takes his cut in the form of corporate income tax. Which as of April 1, 2012 is the highest in the world at just over 29%. Meaning that of your $0.04 profit, the government gets $0.01, leaving you with $0.03 net profit.

So in real terms what does this mean? Say you have a seemingly successful restaurant that grosses $1,000,000 this year... Which for all intents and purposes is a very successful year. You as the business owner walk home with a whopping $30,000 for the year. Not horrible but certainly not going to get you that private jet you had your eye on when you opened your restaurant.

Oh and by the way, you'll probably be putting in up to 80 hour work weeks on a regular basis to earn that $30,000 and to make sure employees are not giving away your shirt.

Side Note: If you were keeping track, you might have noticed that the Government gets $0.10 out of every $1 you make. So in my example where the business grosses $1,000,000 and nets only $30,000... Uncle Sam gets $100,000 just for being a nice guy... And if you don't give him his due cut, he takes your Restaurant.

I'm back, with a new complaint: Why do I pay more for beer?!

Beer delivery just came in from a local distribution company, the same company that we have been dealing with forever, who also services all other restaurants, bars, gas stations, beer stores and grocery stores. There wasn't a problem with the order, or the service, but there was something I noticed yesterday when I was buying some groceries for home that has had me somewhat annoyed over the past 24 hours.

You see, the liquor and beer distributors work in a sort of monopoly like manner when it comes to the products they sell. For example, if you wanted to buy Budweiser, there is only one distributor in the region that has the rights to sell Budweiser. So in a sense, that particular distributor has a monopoly on each particular brand that they sell. If you want to buy Budweiser Beer, you have to buy it from that distributor in one way or another. No matter where you buy it, a restaurant, gas station or beer store, all those businesses bought their Bud from the same distributor.

Why is this? Well it's not necessarily the fault of the distributor. From my understanding of how the setup works, Beer & Liquor companies sell their rights to their products to individual distributors. They never give two different distributors in the same region the rights to sell their products at the same time. This would cause competition in the market which inturn would result in price reductions. Therefore, companies like Budweiser are able to maintain their pricing models and never let competition alter their costing.

I think their argument why this is ok, is due to that there are multiple different beers in the market. And if you didn't like the price of one, then you can purchase a different brand of beer.

Whatever, fine, kudos to them for figuring out how to back into a legal monopoly.

Anyway, this all now brings me to my original point, and the issue that caused me the frustration yesterday. And being in the restaurant business, this is a point that most people outside of the industry, more specifically outside of the pricing and purchasing side of the industry don't understand and refuse to believe.

It is more expensive for Restaurants/Bars to buy liquor and beer from the distributors, than it is for individuals to purchase beer from a grocery store, which gets its beer from the distributor. Meaning that in this particular case, factory direct does not result in savings, and in all actuality results in far higher costs.

Let me explain futher:

Yesterday I was at the supermarket and saw that 28, 12oz bottle cases of Labatt Blue were on sale for $16.99, which by all means is a pretty good deal. This grocery store, purchased this beer from the distributor that I use to buy my beer for my restaurant, and they are selling the case, at a profit none the less, for $16.99.

Today, I received my invoice for my weekly beer purchases from the same company that sells to this grocery store. I see that I am being charged 21.45 for 24, 12oz bottle cases. Meaning that it is essentially $5 less for me to go out and buy a case of beer at a grocery store, than it is for me to buy directly from the distributor... not to mention that I would get 4 more bottles.

So why wouldn't I just go out and buy beer from the grocery store and sell that if it's cheaper? Well, because it's illegal. In New York State, as a restaurant or bar you must purchase all liquor and beer from certified wholesalers who have a license to sell to retailers.

All in all, it's just annoying.

Golf Promotion gone bad

This is a good one.

I just got in a heated argument with 65 year old guy that resulted in him screaming at me, and threatening to leave and take all his friends with him. I said, that is fine with me, so he left.... but his friends stayed. :) hahaha

We have a promotion for golfers that if they come in and bring their scorecard, we offer them a buy one get one free drink special on their first drink.

Meaning that they have to purchase their first drink to receive the the second free drink.

This guy came in with a drink chip, and insisted that he get another free drink because he has a golf score card and is technically purchasing a drink with his drink chip.

My argument was that he actually wasn't purchasing the drink chip, that it could have came from someone who gave it two him days ago, so he still had to purchase a drink to receive a free one.

This resulted in him telling me I treat my customers like shit because I don't honor a drink chip.... My response was, how does giving customers a free drink constitute treating them like shit. He then responded by saying because the promotion is buy one get one free and he has a drink chip that is equivalent to buying a drink, so he should still get another free drink. I then responded that he actually didn't buy that drink chip, so technically he bought nothing in regards to this promotion, so he is not entitled to a buy one get one free discount.

From here, the argument got even more confusing. He started arguing that the drink chip is considered a legal tender because at some point it was purchased. My response was not necessarily because you might have received that drink chip yesterday in another buy one get one free promotion, which indicates that it is not the same as purchasing a drink.

Ultimately, he started yelling at my mom and my bartender janet, who are both over 65 so I had to ask him to leave. All his friends stayed and are here right now making fun of him.

Also, and for the record, I gave him a free drink just like he wanted, but he continued to be a jerk regardless.

They come in all shapes and sizes I guess.

What day is it?

Where has the time gone.

It appears I have not posted much in the past year. No real reason for this other than that I got lazy and let the posts slide.

But a lot has happened, and I don't really know where to begin.

I guess I will just list some thoughts, and come back at a later date to explain.

• Planned, Designed and Organized large expansion to the Restaurant.
• Approvals began in October 2008, and we received final approval in April 2009.
• Construction began in June 2009.
• Construction estimated to be completed in July 2009.
• It is now September 2009 and we are still under construction.
• New kitchen has been growing and growing.
• Everyone excited about the addition.
• Brought Pub Trivia to Buffalo!
• Took on more of a role at the business.
• Rainy Summer of 2009
• Perpetually oscillating door for staff.
• Life is good!
  

Bar League... Football??!!!

What a great concept!

The term "bar league softball" is commonly refers to a group of people who are old and out of shape, pretending to once again be athletes while playing the game of slow pitch softball. Don't get me wrong, I do love this concept, and I myself even patron several 'bar league softball' teams. However there is something lacking from the luster of a sporting event that provides only limited amounts of actual activity.

Luckily for me, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon 'Bar League Football.'

Much like bar league softball, bar league football is a group of past their prime individuals who once were athletes trying to relive the glory of their younger days. However this game involves actual physical activity! You are required to run, catch, jump and all those other things that you only have to do on chanced occasions while playing softball. And best thing about it, is that you get to do it every play!

It's kinda like a club sports team in college. You get together with a bunch of friends every week, run around for a while, and then after the game (sometimes during the games) you have a few drinks with the people you're playing against. Stress levels are low, and fun levels are high... and better yet, you may actually even get a good workout from it!

If you're in the Buffalo, NY area and looking for a fun coed league to join for some laid back football on the weekends, I highly recommend M/ile Sports.

They're good people and do a good job of keeping things loose and fun.