Blogs

The kitchen is the heart and soul of a restaurant. The food that comes from the kitchen is the main factor whether customers will go back to your restaurant or not. However, the work that comes with making the food also takes a lot of preparation. And it all begins with a restaurant kitchen design […]

Restaurant branding is more than just a logo. It is the personality that the restaurant exudes. In the competitive world of restaurants, restaurant branding can boost name recall and attract new customers. A successful restaurant brand is visible in all customer interactions. For example, a restaurant’s brand can be its menu design or food styling. […]

Restaurant owners often look at their sales figures as the only barometer for success. However, sales figures do not tell you the entire story. Looking at food cost metrics should also be a priority for restaurants. Most importantly, a low food cost will have a major impact on your bottom line. In this article, we […]

Digital marketing strategies have been highly sought after since the pandemic started. For restaurants, this means sharing restaurant & food images online to stay connected with their audiences. After all, out of sight quickly transpires to out of mind. This led to an increased demand for restaurant photography that can compel customers to order online.  […]

The COVID19 pandemic made business owners across the globe realize the importance of investing in the physical and mental well-being of their staff. While corporates adopted the work-from-home culture, restaurants had to opt for the delivery-only model to survive the crisis. In 2020 alone, more than 110k restaurants went out of business. Since the restaurant […]

Restaurant accounting is a topic most restaurant owners dread. All restaurant owners want to do is operate the restaurant and find ways to earn profit. But what if we tell you that restaurant accounting is an integral part in restaurant operations? Hiring an accountant for your restaurant accounting will help with the books. However, the […]

The pandemic has turned the entire world upside down. For the restaurant industry, this led to a lot of losses apart from the sudden need for a digital transformation. A great resource in this time has been restaurant management books that have lent valuable insights by industry experts. However unaffected you were in the pandemic […]

A restaurant will achieve success when its whole team of employees works as one. But, the team of employees can only achieve success when it gets proper guidance from its leader. Ensuring that daily operations run smoothly is one of the primary restaurant manager duties. In addition, the restaurant manager is there to solve problems […]

Understanding the details of your restaurant operations has become a priority especially now with the coronavirus pandemic. Restaurant managers and operators need to be aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, creating a SWOT analysis for the restaurant is a good start in getting a better understanding of your business and operations. Stepping back […]

There are a lot of factors that go into taxing a restaurant. Income, location, restaurant size, number of employees are some of the criteria where the government will look to levy taxes on the restaurant. Depending on these variables, the restaurant can shell out thousands of dollars per year just to pay their restaurant taxes. […]

Owning and running a restaurant is appealing to many. There is a certain excitement in creating a space where people come to experience great service and food curated by your staff. If you desire to have your own restaurant, you need to be confident about the format you choose. While there are various types of […]

Without offering great quality food, it is practically impossible to draw crowds to your restaurant. It is the single most aspect that trumps every other aspect of customer service and restaurant management. Quality control is for restaurants what cheese is for pizza – it enhances the final result. This happens because quality control measures ensure […]

Imagine this scenario, you’ve been running a restaurant for six months and you’re wondering why the bottom-line isn’t that good. You’ve calculated all of your fixed & variable expenses and have noticed that your revenue should have been enough to earn a profit. It’s quite possible that the cost to make your food products are […]

A restaurant’s biggest asset is its employees. They are a true reflection of your restaurant and its dining environment. Restaurant managers know that without a great team, it is impossible to deliver exceptional customer service. This makes hiring for restaurants an even more challenging task. Add to that the ongoing labor shortage and the problem […]

Determining the value of a restaurant is beneficial to multiple parties: the seller, the buyer, and the investor. The seller, usually the owner of the restaurant, is the party who will most likely do a restaurant business valuation. The main reasons behind this is because they want to know how much money they’ll be getting […]

Self service restaurants are becoming more prevalent in this day and age due to advancements in technology. People are also living busy lives and queuing in long lines doesn’t cut it for them anymore. Operating a self service restaurant will help your customers choose and pay for menu items without needing to talk to a […]

One of the best ways to promote your restaurant and attract customers is by hosting interesting events. It helps customers from all walks of life and different age groups to discover your restaurant, its food, and its excellent service. In this blog, we have compiled a list of innovative restaurant event ideas to entertain your […]

Creating the right culture in a restaurant is vital for smooth functioning of work and ensuring accountability in restaurant operations. When your staff takes responsibility for the work that has been allocated to them as well as for their mistakes, it helps in building mutual trust.  A lot of restaurant managers and owners fear the […]

Growing a food business or restaurant requires ongoing promotional activities to market it so it’s always in your audience’s minds. One of the best ways to do this is to leverage photo-sharing social media platforms like Instagram. With 4.48 billion people using social media worldwide in 2021, it goes without saying that you cannot dismiss […]

Wondering how to attract more customers to your restaurant? You’re not alone. With the ample availability of vaccines in many countries around the globe and the number of fully vaccinated citizens on the rise, restaurant owners are expecting a spike in the number of customers. This has gotten restaurateurs looking for modern & unique restaurant […]

It’s always exciting to see your business flourish and earn good profits from it. Once you have established a food business and managed to drive sales, the next step is to grow the business. Food business expansion has to be thoroughly strategized to ensure you don’t get off on the wrong foot. If you are […]

​​Obtaining customer feedback is an awesome strategy to know the situation of your restaurant at the customer level. Most of the time, there are certain issues in the restaurant that only the customer will be able to point out. Whether restaurant owners would want to admit this or not, there’s a certain stubbornness that’s present […]

The restaurant industry is a very difficult wall to penetrate. The sheer number of competition in the space will have you second guessing your decision to enter. Big corporations together with small & medium enterprises are into the food business. You’ll start to think to yourself, how can I compete with them? However, with great […]

At some point in our lives, we’re sure that there’s a moment where you’ve wanted to own your own restaurant. There’s a certain appeal to seeing your customers eat the food you conceptualized and being served with the utmost care. It’s easy mouthing the words “start my own restaurant” but the difficulty penetrating this space […]

The restaurant business is fairly straightforward – you make money from the food you sell. So unless you have priced your restaurant menu smartly, it is quite difficult to make a healthy profit. Most wannabe restaurateurs feel pricing a menu doesn’t need a deep understanding of costing and instead go with gut feel, approximation, and […]

The food and beverage sector hasn’t always been a tech-driven industry, but that’s starting to change. Mounting competition and recent disruptions have driven food and beverage companies to innovate, pushing the industry to rely on new digital technologies. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions have led this innovation. Food and beverage businesses have traditionally lagged behind others in […]

However ‘difficult to succeed’ people may refer to the restaurant industry as, the numbers don’t lie. As of 2020, the restaurant industry employed 11.26 million people in the US alone. It clearly shows that despite the challenges posed by the restaurant industry, a lot of people still enter it with the intent to start a […]

In 2020, 110,000 eating and drinking establishments closed their operations in the United States due to the pandemic. In addition, 87% of surveyed restaurants reported an average 36% drop in revenue (source). While the worst phase of the pandemic appears to be over, restaurants should have a fresh look at their marketing foundation and follow […]

It isn’t easy, is it? It takes a lot of effort to streamline your restaurant operations and keep food costs low. Anyone who is looking to open a restaurant or running one requires various technologies to run the operations smoothly and maximize profits.  Often we see many restaurateurs are confused with the myriad of options […]

The uncertainty posed by the pandemic has increased the challenges for the restaurant industry tremendously. As if the erratic and scanty profits weren’t enough of stress, now restaurant business owners have to additionally deal with the reduced or fewer walk-in customers because of the social-distancing norms. While many were forced to operate with the delivery-only […]

Learn how to calculate restaurant prime costs to increase the profitability of your restaurant. This pandemic has been the worst nightmare for the food & beverage industry. No matter what country you reside in, the lockdowns and the limited operating capacity has definitely put a dent on your sales. Restaurant owners are forced to adapt […]

Running a restaurant can be easily termed as a Herculean task, especially in a pandemic. With new restaurants struggling to break even and established ones working on negligible profits, it takes more than just a quality dine-in experience to survive these tough times. But even before the pandemic, a lot of restaurants faced challenges surviving […]

Especially after the past year, we are all looking for a way to hit the refresh button. As a restaurant owner, one way you might be looking to revamp your restaurant is by changing the interior design and giving your restaurant a new look. However, it’s difficult to justify spending a lot of money on […]

The restaurant industry is ever-growing. Each year we see numerous restaurants opening up and then some fizzling out. A lot of websites claim that the restaurant closure rates are as high as 90% but this myth was busted by popular research that showed only 17% of restaurant startups failed in their first year. But what […]

Looking to start your own restaurant in India? Wonderful! With a rapidly expanding economy, India is an excellent country to establish a small or medium-sized business. However, diving into the unknown can be tricky. Starting your own restaurant in India involves many steps. If you miss one, then problems surface down the line. So, we […]

As a restaurant owner, you may face a wide array of business challenges as long as your restaurant is operating. How do I increase sales? How do I make a profit? What’s my ideal cost of goods sold? How do I lower my operating expenses? Are my permits ready to go? These are good initial […]

To qualify as zero-waste, a restaurant must divert 90% or more of its waste from going into the trash. Thus, zero waste restaurants focus on reducing and reusing their collective resources. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), roughly one-third of the world’s food is wasted. This amounts to approximately 1.3 billion tonnes, suggesting […]

The global pandemic hit every sector in some form or another – hard. In the beginning, many businesses struggled to continue with their regular operations. Then, however, entrepreneurs came up with creative solutions and found new ways to keep the business world running. One of the biggest challenge for the corporate world, is the participation […]

The food and restaurant business is a highly competitive one. Hence, entrepreneurs and marketers in this field are always thinking of ways to differentiate. Experts will tell you that the devil is in the details. So with restaurant marketing, your best strategies aren’t always “out there,” but in your current practices. Take your restaurant menu […]

Good ideas can come from unexpected places. However, if you aren’t familiar with some basic rules in the kitchen and what the recipe ideation process looks like, you might forget your ideas very quickly or simply throw away your final dish after applying a wrong food combination. In this article, we are going to cover […]

Menu isn’t just a price list written in black and white. It’s in your hands to design your menu in a way that will encourage your guests to order your most profitable recipes. The process that’s responsible for designing, pricing, and positioning your menu items is called menu engineering. According to Gofrugal, “Menu engineering is […]

You may be wondering what a franchise is – a word we hear quite often in the food business world. Franchises are businesses that allow franchisees to operate using franchisors’ names and models. In a franchise business, you practically own the company, but you have to follow a set of rules and regulations presented by […]

The menu is key to any restaurant’s success, whether it’s a chain or a standalone, large or small. New customers may be drawn in by a unique name, or a fantastic location, but it’s the food that keeps them coming back. Any changes you make to your menu should be carefully examined. With this being […]

There are some significant advantages to operating a franchise, compared to other types of food business ownership. Brand name recognition is a huge factor: most franchisees in India and anywhere else in the world automatically benefit from it. With global food trends changing, there are more and more international food chain franchises opening in India. […]

Miscalculated food cost percentages and high food costs are among the top 10 reasons why restaurants fail to survive. If you are still calculating your food costs manually, you risk making mistakes that would be difficult to recover from. In this article, we will talk about  -how to get started with food cost calculation, -how […]

The restaurant business tends to get a boost during holidays, as high as up to 306 % percent! People have more free time to spend with loved ones, so naturally, they tend to go out to enjoy a nice dinner somewhere outside. And while the holidays usually bring more business, they also require extra work […]

In one of previous articles, we have talked about two main menu pricing strategies and shared tips for designing your menu. Today we want to introduce five menu pricing methods that restaurants can apply when pricing their menus..  We will emphasize the pros and cons of all restaurant menu pricing methods and show what’s the […]

Imagine walking into a five-restaurant. The lights are warm and dim enough to not strain your eyes, and the seats make it feel like you’re sitting on clouds. The server glides to your table almost as if he’s floating on a magic carpet. He takes a menu from his side and hands it to you.  […]

Now that you are all-set to re-open your restaurant after the COVID wave, you must be having a lot of concerning thoughts in your mind.  For instance, how you are going to attract new customers, how you will make your food more saleable, how can customers better understand your concept and many such questions will […]

Pizza is one of the greatest inventions in the world next to the light bulb. Sure, it wasn’t a technological advance, but it did advance our taste buds. If you’re here, then you must have a pizza business, or you’re looking to start one. Let’s help you get started. There are a ton of tips […]

Named “Pub Capital of India”, Bangalore seems to be a perfect city to launch a restaurant/cafe. The city has more than 12 million population – a huge audience to market to – and a moderate climate throughout the year that will appeal to tourists as well. However, the restaurant industry comes with lots of challenges, […]

So, you want to open a restaurant, or you already have one. That’s great. Have you figured out your menu? The answer is probably no if you’re looking at this article, but rest assured, by the end of it you’ll have a better idea of how you can show up competitors with our menu pricing […]

Busy lifestyle, decreasing willingness to spend time to cook in the kitchen, and the convenience of ordering food online make cloud kitchens important part of our lives. Looking at the global growth trend of cloud kitchens in recent years is enough to understand how we prefer to consume food. The cloud kitchen market size is […]

Cloud Kitchen is not a new concept. Restaurants in China have been running cloud kitchens for decades. UAE has been doing it successfully for a while. Earlier, the primary reason for starting and running the cloud business was cost-effectiveness. Now the cloud kitchen business is growing for a different reason – change in consumer behavior. […]

Biryani is everyone’s favorite dish not just because of its unique flavor but also because it tastes luxurious yet it reminds you of home. It is a feast that everyone needs to enjoy at least once a week. If you have the heirloom recipe of your grandmother’s biryani and you can replicate it in your […]

Managing and operating a restaurant is an overwhelmingly complex job. On top of achieving target sales, you need to ensure that your customers are satisfied and that your staff members are following multiple standard operating procedures. The lack of documented standards can lead to the inconsistent and randomized implementation of procedures in product preparation and […]

For the past year, restaurants are relying heavily on food delivery to keep their business afloat during the pandemic. Despite the pandemic, it was reported in reportlinker that the food delivery business is still expected to reach $126.91 billion in 2021. The growth is primarily driven by social distancing protocols, remote working schemes, and restrictions […]

Food delivery has been a common method of ordering and has been becoming increasingly popular for the past few years. Foodtech startup companies such as ordering aggregators, third-party delivery partners, and cashless payments have also ignited and contributed to the growth of food delivery. When the pandemic hit, the food sales of restaurants were severely […]

For the past few years, the focus of all industries and businesses is digitization and automation. Automation has allowed businesses to reduce manual work to yield consistent results. Meanwhile, digitalization further allowed businesses to improve processes and systems using data gathered in real-time with the help of digital transformation tools. All data coming from the […]

With the advent of technology, more and more restaurant owners are gaining access to valuable real-time data via restaurant management systems. These data can give restaurant owners insight into every aspect of their operations and help them understand their business patterns and evaluate their business success. However, most restaurant owners do not know how and […]

In our earlier post, we spoke to a couple of renowned brewery owners who ventured into cloud setup and covered their experiences. We received a lot of encouraging feedback from the restaurant community and many of them urged us to cover some brands that were doing well, what their numbers are, what works and what […]

Sprig, Munchery, Spoonrocket, Maple. Sounds familiar? These are some of the well-known cloud kitchen brands out of USA, years of operation and funding raised.  Sprig – 2013-17, $56.7M Munchery – 2010 – 19, $125M Maple – 2015-17, $26M Maple’s food cost was 63% of revenue in 2015, wonder how the future food cost projections could […]

Most of the restaurateurs predominantly focus on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, while completely ignoring another powerful medium – LinkedIn.  I have been personally messaging owners to get more active on LinkedIn and you may wonder why. How does it help? Are you thinking “My customers are not in LinkedIn?”.  Think again.  As of 2019, they […]

Red Rhino is a very fine microbrewery, situated in Whitefield-Hostoke Road, Bangalore. The first thing that will strike you about this place is the location, if Whitefield is outskirts, this location is further apart. As you step inside, you see opulence and grandeur, a breathtaking view of surrounding greenery from the ample open space decks. […]

In my previous blog, I covered the aspect of rejection in sales. In this monologue, let us dive into another important aspect — following up. This is one of my favourite topics, having started as a completely inexperienced person in sales 4 years ago, a noob as they call. In a way, this topic goes […]

Both aspiring and experienced salespeople often research and read a lot of materials on sales. Thankfully there are lots of insightful articles/blogs covering aspects including, “what makes one a great salesperson, how to handle objections, prospecting, cold calling, email tips, follow-ups, negotiations, selling value over features, etc”. I come across many posts on sales in […]

“I’m starting a candy company & it’s going to be amazing,” tweeted the mischievous Musk. “Then I’m going to build a moat & fill it w candy. Warren B will not be able to resist investing!” Every product, well almost all, has competition. Quite often, prospects will ask what’s your USP, or why you are […]

What a time the human race is going through. Nobody would have ever thought the world will nearly come to a standstill. Expectedly, there are two contrasting perspectives, pro lockdown, screw the economy, and save lives or get busy living, let us see what happens. Time will tell if the former approach is right or […]

The hard part of writing is writing. You have the topic and points in your mind, mull it over a few times, sleep on it a few more days, and yet hardly a word is written down. Well, blame it on indolence. And then one fine moment, your brain berates you for the laziness and […]

Every day we see a lot of restaurants being born out of passion, but they go south in record time. Moreover, the pandemic has not been very kind to the hospitality industry and restaurants have been shut for months on end, making it highly challenging for restaurant owners to make ends meet.  But even without […]

Prasanna Kumar, CEO of B&B, a top rated microbrewery pub in Bangalore, is young, aggressive, energetic and loves to take decisions based on data. It would be apt to say that he is quite paranoid about it over the last 6 months and that puts us under a lot of pressure, being his software partner for BOH […]

“Opening a restaurant, writing a book and making a movie are arguably the top three things that humans desire in their life. Opening a restaurant is considered the easiest by most of them. Boy, aren’t they wrong!”–Vinodh Rajaraman The quote stuck with me as it subtly explains that when it comes to restaurants, there is […]

Design and human behavior are like bread and butter; they are always tendered together. The menu card is like an aperitif of your brand, it is the first step of interaction with your customers and you do not want to spoil that! In fact, there is a separate genre of science called the menu engineering […]

Read this to know how third party deliveries are here to stay and grow fairly huge and fast in the restaurant world (F&B Industry)!

This food delivery app has created new wave in the food & beverages industry. With spectacular growth, Swiggy is now no more just an app but a way of life.

Do you know restaurant industry is one of the hardest to succeed. Food and labor cost can account for close to 65% -70% of sales.

Here are the fundamentals of restaurant back-end operations, compared them with the paint industry operating profitably by adopting scientific methods.

Starting the restaurant is easier part, running it is a nightmare. All the glitz & glamour will vanish and will soon face reality, its real tough out there!

We announced the beta version in August’17, took it to the market with bare minimal features to get user feedback. At that stage, you are usually unsure what the reaction would be, your mind goes through thoughts you wouldn’t ideally want it to and you are excited to even get a demo. We were fortunate […]

A while ago, we announced the launch of EagleOwl, a restaurant management platform. Our previous post covered a bit of history. It was a great moment for our fledgling company, something we are very proud of. We took a lot more time than we had planned for, but all that pain and frustration has now […]

Before getting into what EagleOwl is and how it helps your business, allow me to rewind the clock and take you through the birth and journey of Honey Badger Labs. After 15 years of pure coding in the tech industry, a combination of boredom, despondency and palpable frustration had set in. I wasn’t really enjoying […]