A friend of mine is a District Manager for a fast casual restaurant franchisee.  He was sharing the details of a late night robbery of one of his restaurants.  As the closing crew was exiting the restaurant, the shift manager told the crew to go on ahead; he had to reenter the restaurant to retrieve something from the office.  As the manager exited the restaurant alone and approached his vehicle, he was confronted by two masked and gloved gunmen that had been hiding inside.  They demanded reentry into the restaurant where they forced him to open the safe.  The two gunmen then fled the scene.

Not every restaurant does it – only the smartly managed ones do.  The menus are arranged to direct patrons to the most profitable items.  It’s called “menu engineering”.  The goal is to get you to spend as much as possible, and enjoy doing it.  After all, if you enjoy the dining “experience”, you will be back and restaurants thrive on repeat business.  Marlys Harris, the author of “Tricks of the Restaurant Trade: 7 Ways Menus Make You Spend”, was educated on the ploys of restaurateurs from her son, a recent graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.  One of the courses of the curriculum was “Menu Engineering”. 

It’s a crime that is reported almost daily.  Customer credit card information compromised, identities stolen, and economic crimes escalated.  A local news account of a man attaching a credit card skimming device to an ATM machine at a local bank caught my attention.  The same man was observed the next evening at another banking center and the suspicious behavior was reported by a bank customer when she noticed tape covering a security camera.   What made this a concern to me was it was my bank!  I have used that particular ATM several times.  I could easily have been a victim under the right circumstances, but luckily the timing was in my favor.

As an industry we are facing the continuous rise of commodities that adversely affect our businesses.  The rising price in grains and feed affect the price of raising cows, pigs, and chickens increases price for milk, eggs and of course the meat and poultry.  Efficient use of these staples in our restaurants is essential in remaining competitive in the marketplace.  This translates into food cost.  We can’t afford to waste the food we sell either in the inefficiencies of converting raw product into sales– or theft.