Culinary Cues

OCTOBER 30, 2023

There is a lesson here for cooks, chefs, and restaurateurs – a simple message that stands out from every other “road to success” Prophet: Whatever you do, do it well. It will take super-human effort, ample amounts of time, arduous training, and boat loads of cash. How’s that for an introductory sentence?

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Culinary Cues

MAY 28, 2022

Those who spend their days in the kitchen, or the dining room do so sometimes out of necessity, but oftentimes because it is what they love to do – to create and bring a little joy to other’s lives. Some may be just starting out while others are seasoned veterans. The most important room in a home is the kitchen.

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Front of House Back of House Employee Relations Small Business 319

Culinary Cues

DECEMBER 28, 2021

You take time to sanitize your area, firmly place a cutting board on a damp towel to keep it from slipping, draw your knives across a wet stone while honing their edge, and quickly jotting down a prep list for the next hour. You take a deep breath and smile knowing that this is where you belong, this will be a magical day.

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Kitchen Safety Front of House Fine Dining Seasonal Menu 423

Culinary Cues

JANUARY 15, 2024

I just shake my head and wave him out. It’s January in the Northeast – a time when the demands of the kitchen and the excitement of football converge. It’s the lull after the holidays in restaurants and the beginning of the NFL playoffs. So, today, a busy Friday service will be a challenge. Okay, the football lingo has begun.

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Culinary Cues

JANUARY 8, 2023

It’s the fire in the belly waiting to take charge, the anxiety being held in check, cold sweat running down your back even though it’s 120 degrees where you stand, and the nervous chatter of tongs clicking to the beat of a cook’s rhythm. What else do I need, what am I missing.”. Now everything is quiet except for the clicking of tongs.

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Fine Dining Back of House Front of House Food Order 460

Culinary Cues

JANUARY 18, 2023

Sure, luck can be involved, but luck is rarely something to depend on or take credit for. Every plate is perfectly executed, no returns or re-fires, the roast is a perfect medium rare, the grill marks are well-defined, that fish fillet is caramelized beautifully, and you never run out of prep. The list goes on and on.

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Back of House Front of House Education Café 379

Culinary Cues

AUGUST 4, 2022

People do care about value and once the splash of being able to get out of the house wears off, value assessment will be paramount once again. Well then – what will? Try apathy on for size. They appear to have thrown up their hands in defeat and are now on automatic pilot just hoping to “get by”. Is it ignorance or apathy?

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Front of House Coaching Uniforms Back of House 328

7 Shifts

JANUARY 31, 2024

It's up to the restaurant manager to maintain a warm, welcoming atmosphere and train staff to do the same. The best restaurant managers take customer service a step further, recognizing regulars and personalizing service for a more memorable guest experience. This wide-ranging responsibility is a lot, and it often leads to burnout.

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Culinary Cues

JANUARY 15, 2022

It is the ability and desire to strive for this potential that allows us to jump out of bed in the morning and face the day knowing that we can and will contribute in some way. Putting one foot in front of the other may be the right place to start, but inherently we all want to run.

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Uniforms Front of House Food Safety Healthcare 413

Culinary Cues

JULY 4, 2021

Without a clear understanding of where ingredient costs are going tomorrow and next month restaurants cannot afford to be shackled to a menu that is out of control. This will, of course, make it far more challenging to control quality and consistency, but with a movement towards on-going training and quality assurance – it can be done.

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Culinary Cues

OCTOBER 24, 2020

Far too many times the menu takes a back seat to all other planning that will lead to serious miscalculations along the way. Consider this – the menu is the most important component of a successful restaurant and once designed it can, and should, impact every other aspect of the business. YES – the menu is that important!

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Menu Seasonal Menu Front of House Café 388

Culinary Cues

MAY 23, 2021

They are, at least in part – etched into our brains from those early days in English Composition class – lines that stand out as an umbrella statement that encompasses a point in time from yesterday or today. We can easily apply Dickens profound human summary to the state of the restaurant industry today.

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Guest Recovery Front of House Employee Relations Food Truck 444

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

I relish great restaurant experiences, take pride in the operations where I have worked, feel connected to nearly anyone who works in professional kitchens and restaurants, and admire restaurant folks who find comfort in being the best that they can be. Find out everything you can about your guests and potential guests.

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Fine Dining Front of House Customer Service Customer Experience 392

Culinary Cues

OCTOBER 20, 2021

Some from each group have been (are) quite successful while others stumble along not quite sure what steps to take next. I was thinking the other day how we may be taking away from the opportunities that the school of hard knocks provides. Make sure the mop head is clean and changed frequently. Clean floors are happy floors.

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Front of House Uniforms Back of House Kitchen Safety 421

Culinary Cues

FEBRUARY 22, 2021

At least the real bad news is out of the way. Now, let’s think about the purpose of restaurants so that current and potential restaurateurs and chefs can choose the direction they want to take. There are numerous multi-billion dollar chains along with countless mom and pop operations that do a great job on this front.

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Culinary Cues

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

The chef will likely be the most experienced culinarian with responsibility for the financial operation of the kitchen, menu planning, ordering and inventory control, training, and quality control. It is this dichotomy of experiences that draws people into a career behind the range and keeps them there for decades.

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Seasonal Menu Back of House Customer Service Front of House 517

Restaurant365

DECEMBER 6, 2019

A mobile POS can help any restaurant looking to improve server productivity, increase revenue, and overall streamline their front of house operations. If they’re trying to remember all the refill requests and extra sides of ranch, they may forget to upsell items while taking a pen-and-paper order. What is a Mobile POS?

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Culinary Cues

MAY 15, 2021

If the stakeholders in this important industry do not take the opportunity to learn from the lessons encountered, then a return to those exciting decades of growth and media glory will be difficult to envision. The glory days of the restaurant industry have been laid to rest and they may never return to any semblance of normalcy.

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Culinary Cues

JULY 12, 2020

It is an uneasy feeling that was pronounced as those cooks who were already at work – looked cautiously at their teammate, nodded, and turned their heads back to the work in front of them. The kitchen lights are back on, deliveries arrive, the battery of ranges is fired up, and cooks (some of us) are welcomed back.

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Culinary Cues

DECEMBER 3, 2022

, I shout while frantically rubbing my calf trying to work out that Charlie horse pain. I spend 15 minutes on the stationary bike still trying to work out that leg cramp, rush through50 sit-ups, take shower and shave, and down two more cups of coffee. It has all become too commonplace and as such has little meaning.

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Back of House Hotels Front of House Book 337

Culinary Cues

JULY 31, 2023

If your direction is planned out then work can be, and will be, enjoyable and rewarding. A few years back, I posted an article about the UNWRITTEN RULES of the kitchen. It was an attempt to outline those universal guidelines for success in a kitchen, those attributes, and expectations of anyone who ties on an apron.

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Kitchen Safety Back of House Front of House Food Safety 324

Culinary Cues

JULY 9, 2022

I take a minute to balance the knife on my finger at the center of the bolster – amazing. It’s the start of another day in the kitchen. Seven in the morning and aside from the baker and breakfast cook, I am alone with clip board in hand and my roll bag of knives placed strategically at a workstation.

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Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 14, 2019

Great chefs take this opportunity seriously and plan the time for this to happen, at some level, every day. Great chefs take this opportunity seriously and plan the time for this to happen, at some level, every day. Time, finances, and business volume will always threaten your standards of excellence – don’t take the bait!

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Front of House Communication Leadership Back of House 292

Culinary Cues

JANUARY 6, 2020

White tower decisions without a grasp on the systemic impact of those decisions is a common flaw of leaders who are out of touch with reality. Those who are proponents of systemic thinking know that even the smallest decision, especially one made in a vacuum, will domino and cause havoc on numerous fronts. A short while back the U.S.

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Government Front of House Small Business Back of House 244

Culinary Cues

JANUARY 23, 2021

In the restaurant business there are really only two ways to view profit: a very small amount of profit balanced by very significant volume, or a significant amount of profit on far less volume. How you approach the design of your restaurant in this regard will determine nearly everything else. So what is contribution margin? SP = $43.33.

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Point of Sale Front of House Back of House Fine Dining 450

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 26, 2020

They may not be encumbered with as many critical issues as you – but they know the customer, they see the operation through a less cluttered lens, and they are able to tune into immediate changes that might just pull you out of the weeds. The question is: “What’s the answer?”

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Kitchen Safety Back of House Front of House Customer Experience 331

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

For the past six months I have been committed to an exercise regimen thanks to my Apple Watch. Closing the rings of movement, exercise, and standing has been a goal since I first strapped on the watch, a goal that consumes my attention and cannot be broken for fear that I will simply fall off the pattern if the rings fail to close for one day.

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Fine Dining Dine-in Front of House Design 315

Culinary Cues

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

I know how much time, energy, money, and heart goes into that first day when a proud operator and/or chef looks up at the front door sign that proclaims they are open for business. Every year, a significant number of new restaurants open and almost as many close their doors for good.

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Fine Dining Employee Relations Front of House Small Business 433

7 Shifts

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

The easiest way to get your food out there is by partnering with a third-party delivery app. But when it’s so dead simple to get listed on third-party delivery marketplaces and take orders, why do all the other work to create your own system when you are a time-strapped restaurateur? It will still cost you to run your own delivery.

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Online Ordering Ordering Customer Service Food Order 341

Culinary Cues

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

That moment in the early morning when a chef steps out of bed with the knot of mixed emotion in his or her stomach is – yes, something that is missed. They say that hindsight is 2020 – that being so, there is plenty for us to reflect on and determine how we might have done things differently. After time, this is a highly anticipated feeling.

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Culinary Cues

MAY 26, 2020

Let’s put on our restaurant hat and take responsibility for doing what is right for both the health and wellbeing of our families, staff, and customers, and help in bring our communities out of the deepest economic hole since the Great Depression. Let’s assume, for a moment, that we actually are all in this together.

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Kitchen Safety Leadership Food Safety Front of House 267

Modern Restaurant Management

DECEMBER 10, 2021

Providing top-quality food and service should remain your restaurant’s foremost priority, but you also need to get the word out and attract new customers. While you are waiting to be seated, the hostess fans out a deck of cards containing four jokers. If you pull a joker, the meal is on the house. Net result?

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Marketing SEO Front of House Website Management 227

Culinary Cues

OCTOBER 31, 2019

As a short-term “dues paying” endeavor, it makes sense for cooks to take their licks in this type of operation so that they can help to qualify their worth and personal brand. Restaurants find it increasingly difficult to find and retain good employees – both front, and back-of-the-house.

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Front of House Point of Sale Healthcare Back of House 200

Sling

APRIL 27, 2023

How to improve your restaurant operations management 1) Make clear plans Many things need to go right for your restaurant to open its doors each day — everything from accepting orders, prepping food, and readying the front of the house to running staff meetings and ordering supplies for the next day.

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Restaurant365

AUGUST 27, 2021

And as many restaurants are finding out, it generally isn’t compelling enough to post a basic restaurant job description and watch the applications roll in. And as many restaurants are finding out, it generally isn’t compelling enough to post a basic restaurant job description and watch the applications roll in. What will they find?

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Recruiting Social Media Front of House Hiring 151

Sling

MAY 9, 2023

They take purposeful planning and work to build and maintain. Then, reach out to your staff, get to know them on a personal level, and create a positive company culture. Efficient and effective restaurant operations don’t just happen. Table of contents What is restaurant operations? Here’s how to achieve that. and storage spaces.

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Operations Loyalty Program Food Safety Front of House 78

Restaurant365

JUNE 22, 2021

Training your store-level managers and your kitchen staff about food waste reduction is critical to improving overall Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS). Training your store-level managers and your kitchen staff about food waste reduction is critical to improving overall Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS). Train your store-level managers.

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Compost Food Waste Front of House 88