By Jerome Chiaro

Keep your restaurant’s public reputation in tiptop shape through a good public relations campaign. A good PR campaign not only increases feelings of goodwill and satisfaction in your diners, but also keeps in line with the apportioned budget.

As a restaurant entrepreneur, one of your options to control costs as well as produce results is to make use of restaurant forms, which you can peruse on many restaurant management websites. Usually provided free of charge, these restaurant forms can be customized with your restaurant logo and contact information.

Event posters demonstrate the creative use of restaurant forms in your public relations campaign. Organize or sponsor an event, such as a wine appreciation party, a food tasting or a cooking show, where you can build your restaurant’s reputation through your employees. For example, some restaurants lend their chefs or their food servers whenever there is an event, which requires catering.

Set up a booth or a bar in any food-related event mentioned above and ask your staff to serve samplers of food and drinks. The way they treat everyone at the event should be similar to the way they treat your diners. This excellent customer service results from high quality employee training, which should be part of your restaurant employee handbook.

Aside from reputation management, encourage your patrons to invest emotionally in your restaurant service. For example, birthdays and weddings mean huge profits and great opportunities to impress new customers.

Some of the guests may be eating at your place for the first time. Impress them with your food quality and excellent customer service, which means integrating in your restaurant employee handbook special cultural training on bar mitzvahs, Quinceaneras and debuts.

These special occasions also build special memories for both the celebrants and the guests. Those occasions create sentimental value with your restaurant. The deeper their emotional connection with your restaurant, the harder it is for them to change preferences.

To show how much you value their patronage, create a special nook in your restaurant wall, or you can set aside a separate album, which displays photos of special occasions with your valued customers. Sometimes, you can also keep running tabs for a few valued patrons and track their credits using restaurant forms, such as a credit journal.

A more modern way to manage your PR campaign is to create a restaurant blog where you can advertise your promos and best deals and share valuable information with your loyal customers. You can also send out restaurant forms, such as free dinner coupons, through your blog’s mailing list.

Your blog’s mailing list signed up to get updates about your blog and special news regarding your restaurant. Through your blog’s electronic newsletter, send your regular blog readers discount coupons, which they can print and present to the cashier.

Train your employees to identify the right format of your coupons, which may be included in your restaurant employee handbook. Print tracking codes to identify official looking coupons and keep track of the used coupon codes through a spreadsheet.

Aside from blogs, many restaurants create websites where people can check their menu, look at how their dishes were plated, check out the restaurant interiors, and order food online using their credit cards. This creates convenience, which is also a mark of excellent customer service.

Community programs build a good relationship between your restaurant business and the public. Work with your local neighborhood by participating in health awareness campaigns and charity events. You can start by creating a bulletin board or wall where you share informational posters and leaflets with your patrons regarding cleanliness. Restaurant forms, such as kitchen cleanliness checklist, hand washing procedure, and sanitation checklists, are available for this particular purpose.

About the Author: Jerome Chiaro is a Restaurant Owner & Consultant out of Orange County, CA. Did you know that 95% of restaurant owners and managers spend over 55 hours per week slaving away at their restaurant! He can help you WORK LESS and PROFIT MORE… Claim your copy of his Free Restaurant Forms Toolkit. Success doesn’t happen alone! Join a mastermind of restaurant owners and a wealth of resources, Free at his Restaurant Forms Blog.

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By Dennis Weaver

Can you make bread and buns in the mountains?

We got a call from California this week, I can make great bread in L.A. but at my cabin in Montana, it doesnt turn out so well.

We would like to help. This summer, you might find yourself at a cabin or in an RV high in the mountains. That doesnt mean you cant enjoy great bread.

Yeast products are not as sensitive to altitude as chemically leavened products. We have worked with yeasted breads at almost 11,000 feet in the Rockies. The trick is realizing that you are working with living creatures and giving them the culture that they need to thrive ina warm, moist environment. In a healthy culture, yeast organisms feed on the sugars and starches in the dough, multiply rapidly, and expel carbon dioxide gases that make the dough rise. If the dough is not moist enough, it will take much longer for the dough to rise. Yeast organisms are very sensitive to temperature. If the dough is too cool, the yeast organisms do not multiply as rapidly and produce less gas.

The recipe that works so well for you on the coast may not work so well in the Rockies. But it may not be the altitude; it may be the humidity. In a humid location, unsealed flour absorbs moisture; in a dry climate, that same flour dries out. If you add the same amount of water to flour in both locations, the dough in the humid climate will be much moister. But the solution is simple: add enough water that the dough is soft and moist.

At higher altitudes, your kitchen may be cooler than it is at home. A few degrees difference in temperature will make a substantial difference in the time it takes your dough to rise. Compensate by taking advantage of the warmest spot in the kitchen. (At 11,000 feet in the Rockies, we had to move a tent to the warmest spot we could find, banking the tent into the sun.)

There are some other tricks that you can deploy to help that yeast along. A little extra sugar will feed the yeast and speed growth. An extra teaspoon per loaf will do and probably wont make a noticeable difference in your recipe. Salt retards yeast growth. If you cut the amount of salt in a recipe by 1/2 teaspoon per loaf, you will speed the yeast along.

Be patient, be willing to experiment a little, and be cognizant of the yeast culture and youll soon have perfect bread at any altitude.

About the Author: Dennis Weaver is a baker, a recipe designer, and a writer. He has written many baking guides and

How to Bake,

a comprehensive baking and reference e-book–available free at

The Prepared Pantry

which sells baking and cooking supplies and has a free online baking library.

Source:

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