From the Desk of Peter Graf

Salzburg, Austria 7th of June 2019

Dear Friend,

Promising and risky

The Restaurant Business is promising, but also tough and risky. Many fail and you cannot afford too many mistakes. To be successful, you need to master Calculation, Marketing and Controlling.

This handbook was made to help you

PROFIT – The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook

My new handbook can help you with this task. As I have been working in the Restaurant Business for many years, I know your Situation quite well.

Successful startup with sales of 2 M $

I also helped to start up successfully a Restaurant Café Bar with Sales of more than 2 Million $ per year. Over 15 Years I consulted and accompanied this Business until it was shut down as the lease ended.

What really counts

My Handbook focuses on Topics that really count and gives you a big Chunk from my personal Experience. If you seek this Knowledge from a Restaurant Consultant, you probably would have to pay several thousand Dollars.

Guidance for owner, founder and manager of restaurants

This new Book is especially for Owner, Founder and Manager of Restaurants, Cafés, Bars and Food Trucks. You get hands-on Guidance and comprehensive Summaries of scientific Studies on the following Topics:

How to get more Customers
How to increase Sales
How to lower Costs

In 26 Chapters and on 333 pages you can learn in Detail, what to do in order to improve your Restaurant Management and to succeed in the Restaurant Business.

In this practical Guide, you’ll find key questions and fill-in fields right next to the theory to make it easier to implement and quickly get better results.

Note your ideas in the book

Have a pencil ready and write down your ideas and thoughts right into the book.

If you plan to open a restaurant, this video is for you:

Now let´s have a look inside the Book . . .

The Content

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, CONTENT Part 1 Introduction 5 Chapter 1 Why should you read this book? 7 Chapter 2 Who is Peter Graf? 11 Chapter 3 The Invisible Wall 13 Chapter 4 Fewer and fewer guests 15 Chapter 5 Excessive Loss 18 Chapter 6 More and more audits 27 Chapter 7 Frequently Asked Questions 29 Part 2 Calculation 31 Chapter 8 Introduction and Premium Calculation 33 Chapter 9 Profit-oriented calculation 47 Part 3 Marketing 73 Chapter 10 How prices appear more appealing 75 Chapter 11 Developing a Unique Selling Point 85 Chapter 12 The 80/20 Principle 97 Chapter 13 Upselling 123 Chapter 14 Building a regular guest base 133 Chapter 15 Establishing an email list of regular customers 157 Chapter 16 How to create a newsletter 172 Chapter 17 Direct marketing of birthday dinners 215 Chapter 18 How to optimize a menu 235 Part 4 Controlling 281 Chapter 19 Key Figures and Reference Rates 283 Chapter 20 How to Control Losses 291 Chapter 21 Portioning in the kitchen 295 Chapter 22 Inventory control for beverages 299

Beware a real Problem . . . Theft by Employees

You really should think about this topic. If not, you will have to pay a high price for it. If yes, you can build a competitive advantage, that almost no restaurant, café or bar has. Building an inventory control system costs you some effort, but it brings your COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) down and lifts up your sales. Further the relationship between the owner and the employees becomes stronger, as the owner has hard facts to believe in. This is the best way I know to get rid of thefts and to strengthen the whole team, as you publicly beginn to appreciate the value of honesty. Your employees will notice this and will become more loyal to you.

PROFIT – THE RESTAURANT OWNER ́S HANDBOOK Case #1: When waiters steal almost 10,000 Euros a day and go on holiday with it 13 An ex-waiter bluntly reports on his many years of stealing and cheating in the online blog Restaurant Confessionals. This report provides instructive insights into the psyche of criminals who disguise themselves as "employees". Below you will find a summary of the main points. The cheating employees trivialize their actions and invent a justification for their crimes. Allegedly, the boss was a "nasty asshole" and treated his employees poorly. Even if these allegations were true, it wouldn't make their theft legal. As an employer, however, you should be aware that if you do not treat your employees properly, you are provoking such unlawful behavior. If you actually downplay and harass your employees, you must practically assume that the boomerang will come back somehow and at some point. However, some employees may also interpret factually justified instructions, teachings, and exhortations as insulting or nasty, even though there is no reason to do so. As an entrepreneur, you are on the front line and you bear full responsibility. It can quickly occur that you may speak a little more harshly than you actually want to. Some employees may misinterpret this as «asshole behavior» and use it as justification for theft. An interesting facet of this case is, that several employees worked together to steal like a mafia gang. As a result of the joint action, group consciousness is obviously created, whereby the perpetrators cheat over any feelings of guilt and inhibitions. There were no more taboos and the perpetrators easily got into the cash desk. 13 http://munchies.vice.com/de/article/3djaqn/ich-habe-als-kellner-geld-abgezweigt-und-bin-davon-in-den-urlaub-gefahren-541

Calculate Prices with the Excel Template

Calculating prices seems to be a boring task, but it is vital for your business. If you don´t calculate your prices, you have no idea where your business is headed, how you can reach your goals and whether you are on the right path or not. Put some time into it and become the best price calculator you can be. You can begin with the very simple premium calculation and then start out with the advanced profit oriented calculation.

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook - 8 PREMIUM CALCULATION The recipe template automatically calculates the effective higher purchase price including the production loss. As a result of the recipe, you receive the net cost of goods per portion in Euros, and thus the starting point for further price calculations. To use premium calculation in the Excel tool, simply enter your values in the yellow fields. The figure above shows the premium calculation tool. You get the sales price by entering the cost of goods, the premium in percent and the VAT rate in the yellow fields. As soon as you have calculated the gross sales price, you can then consider a suitable chart price and enter it in the yellow data field. You will then receive the cost of goods as well as the profit margin. The approximate premiums usually amount to 180% to 300% of the cost of goods. Of course, you may also use higher premiums.

Learn the Profit-Oriented-Calculation Step-by-Step

This calculation method starts with the end in mind. First you define your monthly profit goal, which you want to reach. Then you build the whole calculation step by step, until you have a detailed plan, how many pieces of each item you have to sell in order to reach your goal.

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook - 9 PROFIT-ORIENTED CALCULATION Step #1: The Profit Target First, you define your goal, which is the profit you want to make per month. You decide how high this amount should be. It will probably depend on how much work you continuously produce, what living costs you incur, how much you want to earn, how high the investments in the company are, and the risk involved. Think about the total amount of money you would like to earn per month. This should cover your work, your investment, and your entrepreneurial risk. For example, your target could be a monthly profit of 3,500 Euros before taxes. Your profit target per month Enter in the box above, how much profit you want to make per month. With this amount, you should be able to finance your livelihood and your investments in the business.

Plan Capacity and Utilization of your Restaurant

To make sure, that your calculation is realistic, you should calculate capacity. By this you will know, how many guests you are able to serve per day during peak times. Then you can take your sales numbers and calculate the utilization to assure, that it´s possible and not just a dream.

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, 9 PROFIT-ORIENTED CALCULATION This means that the planned sales of 120 meals every evening are within the capacity of 135 meals every evening. Kitchen capacity calculation: e.g. 3 min (preparation time per dish) * 120 meals (planned sales) / 180 min (duration of main service time) = 2 (required chefs during main service time) 3*120/180=2 So, in this example, you need two cooks. • Where do the guests come from? Passers-by or regulars? Are you currently advertising a particular event (e.g. birthday dinner)? e.g. 60 passers-by, 50 reservations, 10 birthday dinners Justify your assumptions for yourself so that you can later compare, understand and improve them. How to implement step #5: (1) Number of seats How many seats are available? E.g. 24 (2) Duration of main service hours in minutes per day How long do the peak hours of a day last in total? If the peak times are spread over several periods, then add them together. E.g. 2 hours at noon and 3 hours in the evening results 5 hours total corresponding 300 minutes.

Make your Restaurant unique and leave Competitors behind

As I read, there are about 15 million restaurants in the world. Of course they are not all in your neighborhood, but I´m pretty sure, that you will experience a strong competition. There is almost no need for new restaurants, café or bars, as there are already a lot of them. So for each new restaurant business a weaker business will have to leave the market sooner or later. Developing a unique selling proposition is a proven way to become and stay competitive. In a nutshell, you should find at least one feature of your business that makes it unique. This can be anything your customers like. A special food, an extraordinary service, a great location, a cool brand, social interaction or a combination of some elements or whatever your creative entrepreneur mind can think about. If you look for ideas, try to identify concepts that already work. You don´t have to reinvent the wheel. Maybe you can take a proven concept, combine it with one or two elements and present your business in a complete new and unique way.

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, 11 DEVELOP A UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION Chapter 11 Develop a Unique Selling Proposition The good old USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is not exactly new. The reason why so much has been said about it is that, in marketing, the USP is a very effective building block. What's behind the USP? In short, a special promise about what you offer. The USP is your answer to the most important question in marketing: Why should a guest visit your restaurant and not the others? In essence, it is a matter of working out the uniqueness of your company and then combining it with the right range of services. Take a look at the Yellow Pages and look for restaurants. You will probably find many «cozy», «traditional» or «beautiful» restaurants, which, at least in their advertising, do not differ from each other. In fact, such advertised restaurants are often boring and unappealing. With such generalizations, you hardly attract a guest. If you want to stand out from your competitors, you have to come up with something special. Let's look at two practical examples of how to communicate a USP: Example 1 comes from an individually managed restaurant. The operator advertises with the promise below: «HUGE BUFFET - Feast Across Asia» 26 26 Restaurant «Cooking Khan», Austrian Yellow Pages (Gelbe Seiten Telefonbuch Essen & Trinken Salzburg Stadt) 2017/18, Page 186 R4

Discover the Power of the 80/20 Principle

Don´t miss out this secret sauce. 80/20 is a very powerful tool, that very few businesses really use. Find out, what your customers love most, build several variations, test them, keep the best and multiply your sales.

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, 9 ways to apply the 80/20 Principle in the Restaurant Business #1) 80% of the turnover comes from 20% of the guests Wouldn ́t it make sense to filter out this particularly important 20 % of guests, to look after them even more intensively and to respond even more specifically to their needs? Find out what kind of guests bring you the highest sales. You can observe the behavior of your guests and take notes. Or you can simply ask your staff about them. And, of course, you can also directly engage in conversation with your guests. What do they particularly like and what could be done even better? Who is the most consumer-happy and why is that so? What do these guests have in common? Are there any additional services that make your offer even more attractive for this special group of guests? Is it possible to derive a USP from this?

Find the few Items, that generate 80% of your Sales

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, #3) 80% of sales are made from 20% of the products If you generate the highest sales from a few items, a provocative question arises: Why burden yourself with the remaining 80% of the products? That is, of course, an extreme position. But how would your business look and run if you were concentrated on the particularly successful 20% of your products? Maybe that's a good argument for a small menu. Print out a cash report for the last month or quarter in order to find out the distribution of sales across different products.

Expand the few Marketing Activities that produce most of your Growth

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, #6) 80% of growth comes from 20% of marketing What would happen if you invested the weak 80% of your marketing costs in the high-growth 20% of your marketing measures? You would multiply your growth! To achieve this, you need to know your figures. Therefore, evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing activities. The best way to achieve this is with direct marketing. You can find out more about this in Chapter 17. To burn less money through useless ads, you should stop general image advertisement, since you cannot determine how effective your campaign is. You can use your advertising budget much more effectively if you place advertisements with a specific offer or with a (discount) voucher and record the sales generated by this kind of ad. This way you can find out which ad works, and which does not. With each placement, you receive new data which you can use to improve your campaign. The key, however, is that you practice direct marketing, collect data and constantly improve your campaign. MARKETING GROWTH

Build up Regular Guests fast and simple

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, Have I aroused your interest? Then the next thing we'll look at is how you can make your guests regulars. The key is the relationship you build with your guests. However, you are not alone in this endeavor. Thousands of new cafés, restaurants, and bars open every month. This means that your guests are constantly attracted to new offers. The best way to maintain customer relations effectively is to set up a system. There are various software solutions that are sometimes connected to the POS system. If you are interested in this possibility, I would recommend you contact the manufacturer of your POS system. Maybe there is a solution. Instead of one computer software that might be suitable for one person and not for the other, I would like to present three specific concepts for guest retention that every restaurateur can implement himself using relatively simple means. Fast and Simple The following three concepts are based on the principle that a guest receives an additional incentive for returning to your business within a short time. You will be much more successful if your guest feels that he or she will enjoy an advantage either immediately, or at least very soon, and if things are not complicated. For new guests, it can be less motivating if the benefits of the incentive are in a distant future. This could be the case, for example, if you need ten visits to finally earn a glass of wine on your eleventh visit. The effect of the incentive is much greater if a new member of your loyalty program benefits immediately or at least in a very short time. For example, a voucher or a one-off discount, which you can use right away on your next visit, can be used for this purpose. A tangible advantage that is close at hand arouses much more interest and will, therefore, attract more guests to your loyalty program.

Increase Sales with a high Profit Birthday Party Campaign

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, Concept #2: A Birthday Party This is a variant of the voucher, whereby the birthday of the guest is the occasion for a small gift. In this way, you can express your appreciation and at the same time position yourself for the birthday dinner. You can send the guest a gift voucher about 3 to 4 weeks before the birthday and combine it with a package offer for a birthday dinner. Of course, you can design the gift voucher to match your concept. You can also congratulate them on their birthday. If you use this campaign with your regular guests, high booking rates of 30% or more are possible, since you have already established a trusting relationship. Example of a birthday party campaign If you have 1,000 regular guests in your database, you can organize about 25 birthday dinners per month at a booking rate of 30% just with this concept (1,000 guests / 12 months * 30% booking = 25 birthday dinners per month). This can lead to an increase in sales of 3,200 Euros per month. See the table below:

Use Vouchers to grow your Email List

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, information from time to time. It is likely that many guests will follow your request as you already maintain a trustful relationship. The email address query should become a standard procedure for all waiters; for example, when presenting the invoice. Strategy #2: The voucher A voucher can be combined with email in various ways. You can design the voucher in such a way that the guest must enter his email address so that he receives a certain advantage. In addition, one could provide on a voucher a small field for the email address of the guest and you could distribute such vouchers simultaneously with the bill. In order to increase the success rate, one could point out the special advantage to the guest when paying the bill and cordially request him to fill out the voucher. Alternatively, you can ask your guests whether they would like a voucher for their next visit. Then you can ask for their name and email address and then send them the voucher via email.

Discover Storytelling to attract more Customers

Learn to apply Direct Marketing

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, 17 DIRECT MARKETING OF BIRTHDAY DINNERS advertisement by expending 500 Euros for the ad. With this framework, your advertisements are no longer expenses in a conventional sense, but rather an investment with a predictable return on investment. This gives you the ability to turn ads into sales and profit. Next, we'll look at the nuts and bolts of direct marketing. How does direct marketing work? In order to sell your service or product, you need a specific offer, a qualified demand, and the right medium to connect the two. Qualified demand comes from people who want your product and can pay the purchase price. We can also refer to these people as the target group. In order to find your target group, you must first describe it. If you don't know your target group, you can't find them either. This may sound obvious, but it is fundamentally important. More about that later. The right medium gives you the opportunity to present your offer to your target group. Basically, every medium can be considered in order to reach your target group. E.g. newspaper ads, pay-per-click ads (Google, Facebook, Bing), banner ads, flyers, direct mail

Increase Sales by Making your Menu the best Salesman

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, 18 HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR MENU 10. Does it make a difference whether the currency symbol is showed beside the price? Leave out the currency symbols with the price as they only remind your guests of the «pain of paying». Just list the price as a number. The scientists Yang, Kimes, and Sessarego 52 tested three different price labels in a restaurant. First, the prices were shown on the menu with dollar signs and cents ($ 20.00), then only as a number without currency signs and without cents (20) and finally in written form (twenty dollars). Pricing Sales Variant 1 $ 20.00 same as for V 3 Variant 2 20 + 8.15% sales compared to V1 & V3 Variant 3 twenty dollars same as for V1 52 Yang, S.S., Kimes, S.E., & Sessarego, M. M. (2009). “$ or Dollars: Effects of Menu-price Formats on Restaurants Checks”, Cornell Hospitality Report, 9(8), 6-11.

Take back Control over your Inventory and reduce COGS

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, 22 INVENTORY CONTROL FOR BEVERAGES Chapter 22 Inventory Control for Beverages Imagine a supermarket where all kinds of goods, from yogurt to computers, are sold. What do you think will happen if the doors are open and nobody watches the goods? Exactly, the store would be empty and broke in no time! Opportunity makes thieves! In the restaurant business, the situation is the same. An average catering business loses about 20% of its turnover through employee theft and waste! If one compares these values with an average shrinkage of 1% to 2% in the retail business, the magnitude of this burden becomes clear. Increasingly, restaurants, bars and cafés are using control systems to reduce these unnecessary losses. Is there a 100% control? Hardly. However, inventory control has been a tried and tested instrument of combating shrinkage for decades. Individual caterers, as well as large companies (e.g. Hilton or Marriott), use inventory control systems in order to operate successfully. The damage caused by shrinkage can easily wipe out the entire profit of a restaurant business. Thus, many have to fight for their own existence, even though they work diligently and honestly. With inventory control, one at least can bring shrinkage to a bearable single-digit range. Inventory control is simple and can be used in any catering business as it follows the natural flow of goods: + Opening stock (OS) + Stock up and sale (SUS)

Get 7 Excel Tools for Free

PROFIT - The Restaurant Owner´s Handbook, Excel-Tool #6 Shrinkage Check With the shrinkage check, you can quickly determine the actual amount of shrinkage in your business. Excel Tool #7 Inventory Control With the inventory control, you can introduce a simple, low-cost, and effective control system for beverages and reduce your cost of goods.

If you plan to start or open a Restaurant, than this book can save you of big problems.

If you struggle with running your Restaurant, your Bar or your Café, than this Book can be pure Gold for you.

The Concepts and Tools in this Handbook can be used in any kind and any size of Food Service Business.

Watch the Video to Uncover the Secret of Compelling Menu Design

You can improve your Restaurant Business with the following Insights

How to use the profit-based calculation to get your prices, motivate your employees, control your sales, and plan your profits (Chapter 9)
How to increase your sales by 30 %, 59 % or even 100 % through upselling (Chapter 13)
How to optimize your menu for maximum sales (Chapter 18)
25 points sales checklist (Chapter 18)
How to improve the use of drinks (Chapter 22)
Excel calculator with 7 tools, which you can download for free.
Learn how the guest views the menu in order to improve readability (page 238).
Read how, in a real case, the sales of fish dishes increased by 86.6 % (page 242).
Benefit from the results of a practical study in which food sales increased by 69.5 % (page 245).
Learn a simple but effective referral technique that has nearly tripled the revenue of the recommended dish (page 249).
Discover the secret, how the scope of the product range influences sales. In one case, the researchers from Columbia and Stanford recorded even a seven-fold increase in sales (page 252).
A Cornell study provides insight into a simple and remarkable marketing strategy. Sales of a cafeteria were improved by 27 % simply by using a different product description (page 254).
Discover a simple pricing trick that boosted restaurant sales by 8.1 % (page 261).
Scientists found a simple way of presenting products, which increased the turnover in a bar by 4.1 %(page 263).
Take advantage of a Yale study that discovered an increase of purchase propensity by 67.3 % using certain selling prices (page 269).
Asian restaurant managers found a simple trick, which increased sales by 13 to 20 % (page 271).
According to a US study, willingness to buy can be increased by 122 to 379 % by overcoming purchase inhibitions (page 275).
American behavioral researchers found that the use of colors increased the consumption of food by 77 % (page 276).
Researchers tested various types of background music in a restaurant and found a way to improve beverage sales by 40.9 % (page 277).

How much money can you make, if you increase your Sales by 5 to 20% ?

E.g. if your Sales are 200,000 Dollars per year, your Potential is at least 10,000 to 40,000 Dollars per year. And the Investment in this Handbook is only 57.