Profitable Hospitality Podcast

Meet Ben Higgs, chef/owner of Wild Oak Restaurant  in Olinda, Victoria, a picturesque small town near Melbourne in Australia. Ben has been running the restaurant for more than 10 years and has built a great reputation for the food, hospitality and his cooking school. In this Success Interview, Ben tells us about starting the business, recruiting and managing staff, marketing, cooking classes and building customer loyalty. 

Pinterest is an online pinboard – a hugely popular social bookmarking service that lets you highlight photos on your own website or blog, or on other sites that you like. A hospitality business can share photos of their food, cocktails, parties, facilities and events, chefs at work and the produce you buy. Smart tactics will also have you sharing images from your local area and all the other reasons why people should visit your neighbourhood or town. And for some people there’s an extra bonus – you hardly have to write anything, just click the photo and share! In this podcast, Ken Burgin talks with Cynthia Sanchez from the Oh So Pinteresting! website and blog. She has been following Pinterest from the beginning and knows everything there is to know about marketing tactics, setting up Pinterest for business and how to keep fans and customers coming back for more. Don't forget there is also the Member Question of the Week (this time on recruitment) and a Tech Tip straight after the interview – more useful conte

Some restaurants, cafes and bars assume staff will hear about everything, and others think that notices and emails are enough. But so many hospitality managers and owners complain that staff don’t listen, don’t care or don’t notice – communication with employees needs a shake up! There are many ways to improve: with print, email, online, social media, meetings, noticeboards, financial reports and well-written memos. Written, spoken, signs and discussion. In this podcast,  Ken Burgin shows you dozens of ways to improve internal communication at your business – so staff switch from ‘I don’t know’ to ‘I got it!’. 

Leanne Kitchen is a professional chef, food stylist, food editor, recipe developer, cooking demonstrator, travel and food photographer. She is a also a cookbook author with numerous volumes under her belt.  In this interview with Ken Burgin, she talks about her career, changing trends in the publishing industry, and her recommendations for chefs and restaurants that want to publish their own cookbook. The industry is changing rapidly, but cookbooks are still very popular with food lovers, cooks and for gifts. Publishers and the public are always hungry for something fresh and original. Leanne’s latest cookbook is ‘Turkey – Recipes and Tales from the Road’, and she is currently working on a new book about Chinese food. You can find her at www.smartmouthonline.com

Tired of the eternal drama of friction between floor staff and kitchen? It's boring, unproductive and expensive. If you need to make changes, here's your action agenda: Ken Burgin discusses key areas such as improving the flow of information, revising Job Descriptions, better meetings, more training for floor staff, removing kitchen frustrations and creating a shared understanding of 'teamwork'. 

Ken Burgin talks with hospitality marketing expert Heather Turner about the latest developments with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Plus updates on newer social media services Google+, Pinterest and Instagram, and the many ways to share photos and images online. We also talk about how successful operators are integrating social media communication into their busy lives, whilst still running a business – there’s always a juggle!

Ken Burgin talks with productivity expert Helen Crozier about how to handle business communication and online activity more efficiently. The interview focuses on four key areas: bringing email under control, managing your calendar for events and meetings, keeping track of contacts, and finally passwords - important in so many areas of modern life, and so easy to forget or handle insecurely.

Email newsletters have many advantages for communicating with customers - they're personal and private, and can be full of details. You can target particular groups, and measure the effectiveness of different messages and topics. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram may get the glamour vote, but email does the heavy lifting for regular communication about events, menu changes, special offers and community news. In this podcast, Ken Burgin looks at a number of successful newsletters and describes what makes them so effective - features that are easy to incorporate in your newsletter.

Ken Burgin looks at how to prepare your business for sale including quick profit improvements, plus how to put the best face on your business so it's immediately appealing to a buyer. Areas covered include recording recipes, menu simplification, review of staff productivity and reducing utility and service costs. Plus short-term marketing improvements, and how to make your business 'easy to love' for a first-time buyer - a significant proportion of the market. They're looking for turn-key systems, manuals and documentation so they can hit the ground running and be confident of success. 

In the first of two podcasts, lawyer Peter Panagiotopoulos of PNA Legal (the 'cafe lawyer') talks with Ken Burgin about the important players in the sale process: landlords, lawyers, brokers, buyer and seller. He also explains what should be in the key documents: lease of the premises, and the contract for sale of the business.  Other topics covered include legal terminology, how to work out the value of your business, the best time to sell, the best way to use a broker and lawyer, lease problems that prevent an easy sale and negotiation tactics with a potential buyer. In the second podcast in this series (#12), Ken Burgin looks in detail at how to prepare your business for sale including quick profit improvements and how to put the best face on your business so it's immediately appealing to a buyer. Peter has been specialising in the buying and selling of foodservice businesses for more than 10 years.  IMPORTANT: this podcast contains information of a general nagture on point of interest to cafe, restaur

Meet Paul Smith, successful chef/owner of Green Zebra Cafe in Albury, NSW. Albury is a large inland town in Australia. Paul and his partner have had the cafe for more than 10 years and have built a great reputation for their food, coffee and the fresh pasta they make on the premises (also sold retail). In this Success Interview, we cover setting up a business, managing staff, marketing, technology, business growth and the kitchen garden that supplies an increasing proportion of the cafe's produce. You'll also hear some of Paul's music - he says he's actually a musician disguised as a cafe owner!

January is a great time to look with new eyes at marketing, cost control, staff skills, bottlenecks and your own personal efficiency and satisfaction. Here are dozens of tips and resources to get the new year off to a great start - share these with your team! 

In the first of the Outsourcing podcasts, we looked at how to prepare a brief, find a contactor and manage the project. In this podcast, we look at 10 different restaurant, hotel, bar or cafe projects that you've probably had on the 'to do' (or 'too expensive') list that are perfect for outsourcing. They range from managing recipes, menu design, brochures, posters, market research and website updates to newsletters and video. Now it's time to put ideas into action: start with a small project to build your confidence and very soon you'll have outsourcing as an important tool for efficient business operations and marketing.

Outsourcing services are great for getting design and admin. jobs done quickly and at low cost - people from around the world can bid on your job and usually have it done within a few days. Projects could involve writing, design, photo editing, data entry, website updates or other work that is tedious or needs skills you don't have. There are excellent online services that will post your job, rate the skills of applicants, monitor the job's progress and organise secure payment. In this first of two podcasts, we will go through how outsourcing works, how to prepare a brief for a job, and how to find and hire a contract worker. The job could be as small as fixing the design of your menu, updating spreadsheets, or getting someone to write articles for your website. Or a regular project like an email newsletter. In the second podcast, we will go through 10 projects you could outsource for all areas of restaurant, cafe and hotel marketing and management - for both front and back of house. 

Do your staff understand what's involved in delivering high quality customer service? Here are two very effective ways to demonstrate the issues and train for better delivery.

Professional images of your food, beverages & venue are essential for modern hospitality marketing. Here's how to get great photos to show the quality of your products, service, staff & atmosphere - ready to use for digital, online & print. We live in a very visual world!

Sometimes poor performance is quite logical! Many of these 16 reasons are obvious, and so are the solutions once the cause is identified.

How to create more profitable business in November and December, and boost customer numbers in the new year. Plus a question on recipe costing and the Tech Tip of the week.

Promotional ideas for the weeks before and after the actual day.

How to ensure staff manners and presentation enhance your brand.