🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:28:53 GMT, "Chloe" <justsayno@spam.com> wrote:


>I'm curious, too, having had a couple of close friends in the restaurant 
>business. Neon John, do you have a lot of hired help? Because the guys I 
>knew worked really really hard during the hours the restaurant was open, but 
>that was just the tip of the iceberg of time they spent on planning, 
>ordering food and supplies, bookkeeping, personnel, taxes and other 
>paperwork--not to mention food prep, cleaning and other tasks when the 
>restaurant was closed. I'm sure the routine can be simplified, but it would 
>seem only up to a point.
>
>Matter of fact, I've never heard it described as easy work before by 
>anybody. What's your secret?

Probably the biggest secret is that I long ago realized that I'm not
running a fancy restaurant but simply a little BBQ joint.  I don't
serve anything that requires cooking in real-time, french fries and
onion rings excepted.  Every dish I serve can be prepared in bulk and
flash-frozen and steam-reheated as needed.  I make Brunswick Stew, for
example, in 30 gallon lots that last a week or so.  I run the pit once
a week.

I also don't serve anything that is perishable.  What isn't sold at
the end of the day can be refrigerated and re-heated the next day with
no loss in quality.

I've actually scaled down considerably over the years.  I started out
with a very fat menu, BBQ, hamburgers, meat-and-three and homemade
deserts.  And a staff of 7.  The huge difficulty in finding decent
employees initially started my downsizing.  Then I realized that as I
eliminated an employee and the dishes that went with him, my life got
easier and profits went up on lower sales volumes.

My menu now is basically BBQ, Ribs, traditional BBQ sides and a couple
of non-BBQ things for the BBQ-hating spouse :-)  I operate the place
by myself during the week (about 50 tickets/day average) and have a
high school kid who comes in to do the labor part of cooking on the
weekends.  I operate the pit and prep up a whole week's (or more)
worth of other food in the two days I have the helper.

I'm at the point now where I have to do almost nothing outside normal
business hours except for large catering orders.  I'm open 5 days a
week and actually get to have a normal weekend, though it falls on
Sunday and Monday.

There are a couple of other things I can do because of the large
amount of space I have in this building.  I have my inventory spread
out so that there is space between each item.  That lets me whip
through each room and quickly see how many empty spaces there are on
each shelf and thus what I need to order.  I don't have to try to keep
any sort of fancy inventory tracking system that way.  No paperwork
other than the yellow pad that I write down what I need each week.

Another trick is to make up "spice packs" in volume that contain all
the spices and minor ingredients for a dish.  I'll make up a couple
hundred at a time, packaged in zip-lock bags.  Then when I make, say,
sauce, all I do is put the ketchup, vinegar and water in the pot and
dump in a spice pack.  Even the high school kid can do that without
screwing up, most of the time at least.  That also helps keep my
recipes from walking out the door with ex-employees.

I've gone to almost all disposable tableware except for the metal
silverware.  Plastic plates are uniquely acceptable in a BBQ joint.

I changed from table service to counter service about a year ago which
allowed me to eliminate my last employees.  Pretty much the same as at
Captain D's, people come to the counter and order and pay.  They then
self-serve their drinks and pick up the order when it's ready.  I have
the register on the cookline beside the day freezer so I can cook,
take orders and accept payment all at the same time.  Oh, and answer
the phone via a cordless phone and headset.  I occasionally use a time
clock to study my processes.  The average cycle of
order-to-fulfillment is about 3 minutes.  This includes taking the
order, accepting payment and preparing the order.

I've optimized my cookline to eliminate every possible step.
Everything I need is within 3 steps of the center of the cookline.
Every step I eliminate is reflected at the end of the day by being
vastly less tired and by faster service.

I barter/trade/cajole or otherwise obtain certain labor-intensive
services such as floor care (no %*&^&*^ carpets!) and janitorial work.
For instance, I have a customer who mentioned in passing that she'd
like some part-time work who now comes in every other day and cleans
my bathrooms.

I've approached other jobs with a decidedly engineer's approach.  For
instance, cleaning the large 15 gallon stock pots that I make sauce,
stew and other things in.  Rather than wrestle these pots around in
the sink and have to scrub off baked-on stuff, I put the pot in the
sink and fire away at it with a fairly low power pressure washer
hooked to the hot water supply.  The pressure washer will remove even
the worst cooked-on deposits in seconds.  It's messy but I usually
come back up into the restaurant right before bed and do that stuff
right before my shower.

Rather than having to bend down and rake stuff out from under each
table with a broom, I use an electric leaf blower.  I blow all the
debris to one end of the dining room where I then sweep it up into a
dust pan.  I have the blower on a long cord that stays plugged in all
the time so it takes me no more than maybe 5 minutes to "sweep" the
dining room.

Another major labor saver is my refrigerated steam table that I built.
It contains a refrigeration system and a high powered heating system
controlled by a programmable logic controller.  At the end of the day
I top off the steam table pans and put the table in the refrigerate
mode.  This quickly cools everything off to a safe temperature.  About
an hour before opening time, the system switches over to steam heat
mode.  When I arrive, everything is at serving temperature.  Every
other day I discard what is left and start out with new stock to keep
everything nice and fresh.

This system takes care of my BBQ meats, sauce, baked beans, Brunswick
stew, chili and my jalapeno cheese soup.  These dishes plus fries and
onion rings cover about 95% of my traffic.

A major seller is my MegaSpud(TM), a BBQ stuffed baked potato.  I've
developed a process for very rapidly "baking" potatoes.  I use 50
count (1 lb) bakers.  9 minutes per spud in the microwave, followed by
15 minutes in a steam bath results in a spud that is indistinguishable
from an oven-baked spud.

That should give you a good idea.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.johngsbbq.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN