Should I Serve Food in My Bar?
21 Jan, 2014 |
For any bar owner, the choice to serve food has its ups and downs, and is a decision that should be carefully looked at from all sides. Depending on your business, the benefits could far outweigh any cons. The investment into adding food items to your menu is one important aspect to consider. You need to get the proper licensing to serve food, possibly increase your staff, purchase kitchen equipment, as well as comply with strict health safety requirements. Serving food could however be another profit center that helps to increase traffic and sales.
Take a moment to stop and think about what you like to do when you go out with friends. Do you find yourself going out to eat and enjoy some drinks? Offering food in a bar tends to increase the length of the customers stay, and therefore increases ticket sales. Also, consumers find that bars that serve food offer a more enjoyable atmosphere entices more traffic through your door.
If you decide to serve food in your bar and want to be successful, consider the following:
- How much room do you have for food production?
- What foods can you offer that will match the general theme of your bar and your local demographics? Fried foods are generally accepted as bar food and offer a high profit margin, but don’t suit all types of bars.
- Make sure you match you foods to your signature drinks (this can increase sales).
- Determine the hours when the kitchen will be open
- Think of how you need to change your staff to ensure that customers still receive the highest level of service.
Once you have incorporated food into your bar’s menu, take a look at your scheduling process. With more positions to manage and an increase of staff, this can be quite a task. What Time Do I Work.com online employee scheduling software offers many unique features that can decrease the time spent on scheduling with a few simple steps.
An important feature, for any bar owner, is the ability to determine exactly when the busy and slow hours of the day are so that you are not over or under staffed during these times. When adding food service to your line of tasks, you will want to schedule the most number of employees during the hours that the food menu is available. The scheduling software also offers the ability to track employees’ availabilities, time off requests and skills and make this immediately available when you begin creating a new schedule. The program also includes automatic alerts for any scheduling conflicts. You can also track labor costs and get alerts for overtime hours. The best part is that you can try it free for 30 days!
