Do you like receiving a gift card in lieu of something more personal?  An increasing number of Americans do.  The continued popularity of gift cards is on the rise with Starbucks reporting a whopping third of total sales from gift cards in the fourth quarter of 2013.  That's $1.4 billion to be exact.   

With that much profit on the line, the risk gift card fraud poses is greater than ever for retailers and restaurants alike.  Suddenly diners don't have to be so sneaky when an inconspicuous card will "dine and dash" for them.  Raising the stakes even higher, thieves continue to devise increasingly sophisticated methods to perform a very simple objective : ripping you off.  Unfortunately, you don't have to look any further than your own employees when it comes to the majority of gift card theft. 

How does severe weather affect the restaurant industry?

In 2005 two major hurricanes hit the gulf coast region, Hurricane Katrina and the stronger Hurricane Rita. They devastated the south coastal states and with that shut down businesses including several restaurants. With similar effects, a string of severe winter storms in 2010 caused several restaurants to lose sales and close for a period of time. How can we take lessons from these past weather events to prepare for future weather incidents?

Market research has gradually become standard operating procedure in the restaurant industry.  With so many moving parts involved in the testing process, the journey a new menu item travels from idea to plate has many stops along the way.  In the tech industry, we test products all the time.  We don't get the perk of taste testing our products, but our developers seem to enjoy the process anyway.  The system for testing new technology is sometimes referred to as "beta testing".  So what exactly does this phrase mean and how does it affect your profit margin?  It seems like new business terminology is popping up all of the time (what's a "value-add" or a "paradigm shift" anyway?) but beta testing has actually been around since the 1950s, originating at IBM.  It describes a product's "readiness for general availability".  Its use has spread to other industries to describe the final stage of market research.  Beta tesing is essentially the "soft opening" in restaurant speak.  It is the method of testing new items, systems and best practices - and implies an opportunity to measure results before your profit margin is on the line.

If you've been to mirus.com lately, chances are you've noticed some major changes. The recently updated website features an enhanced user experience and responsive design that gives everyone the same view on any device they're using.

With this post, we will walk you through various parts of the new website and highlight key pages that make it easier to find information. We hope that by the end you will take your own tour of the new mirus.com! We'd love to hear from you - so check out the contact us page to get the conversation started!

Customer satisfaction, specifically in the restaurant industry, is a ripple effect that begins as soon as a consumer walks in the door. Whether their experience is positive or negative can be felt by every department in the company. You're essentially one bad review away from having your reputation tainted… scary. Generally speaking, retrieving customer feedback can be tricky. The customary way is via in-store or online surveys. However in this day in age, maintaining a positive reputation can be quite challenging. The Internet can be an asset or liability depending on a customer’s experience at your restaurant.

We’ve discussed customer satisfaction in great length throughout the past year but mainly at a high level. For instance, did you know business intelligence software could be your pathway to satisfying customers? If this concept is new to you, click here to continue reading. We’ve also discussed customer satisfaction from a business point of view and the impact it could have on your margins. Business and software aside, customer service is in the hands of your employees. Do they understand the importance of keeping customers satisfied? Here are a few suggestions to make sure they keep customer service top of mind – all the time.

In the complex equation of analyzing profit margin for your restaurant(s), there are always new ideas and trends that emerge worth replicating by both finance and operation restaurant executives. So far in the first quarter of 2014, one hot trend is menu engineering. While the basic objective of menu engineering is to become more profitable, some constants (outside of the menu) will always remain – to view them, click here.

Finding new ways to maximize the overall profitability of a company, aside from customer satisfaction, is the Holy Grail of the restaurant industry. Especially with the uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the affects it could potentially have on the bottom line. Fact is, when more money is being made, everybody is happy and more investments can be made into the business.

For this post specifically, we’re going to delve into 3 of the top strategies to maximize profitability simply by reengineering your menu offerings on a few products. And, maybe a little upselling of those products along the way.

Have you heard the news lately? Apparently Millennials are just terrible (Let me go on the record to say that I resent whoever said that – because I am a Millennial). Millennials, commonly referred to as Generation Y, were born between 1981 and 2000 (33 – 14 years old). They are known as the entitled generation who are lazy and have a poor work ethic. Ouch. Regardless of your opinion of Gen-Y they all have a mouth and a stomach. What’s your approach for getting them into one of your restaurants? Millennials love to eat out but getting our butt into your seat can be rather challenging and the traditional forms of marketing aren’t going to cut it. Ready for some statistics?

Ok good, here’s what you need to know about Millennials:

• 93% of Millennials use a mobile phone (79,980,000)
• Among those, 63% use smart phones (50,387,400)
• 93% of Millennials actively use the Internet
• 84% of Millennials are Social Media users (72,240,000) – (As for the other 16%? Their parents won’t let them…)
• More than half of the U.S. users on Twitter are Millennials (25,000,000)
• 75% of Millennials are on Facebook (64,500,000) – (1/3 of all Facebook users)
• Four out of every ten video views come from Millennials
• 86 million … number of Millennials in the United States – 27% of the entire US population
• Millennials account for $1.3 Trillion in annual consumer spending – 21% of the total

I don't always try to prevent loss. But when I do, I do it manually.

Loss prevention within the restaurant industry is a hot topic right now. There’s something awkward and unsettling about it, too. Operators want to act like they have it under control and financial executives are hesitant to disclose that loss is actually occurring. Why? My theory is that they don’t want to appear vulnerable. I heard a story a few weeks ago where an employee had stolen over $5,000 and it flew under the radar for about three months until a District Manager finally realized something wasn’t adding up on the P&L. There isn’t an end to that story yet as it is still being settled in court. Which brings me to my point: there’s a manual and automated methodology to preventing loss. (Although I would go as far as saying that preventing is not the appropriate choice of words … restaurants are always at risk of being stolen from – so the only sure fire way to prevent loss would be to hire an auditor to be at each location everyday. Who can afford that, anyway?)

Would you like fries with that?

A little over four months ago we published a blog about restaurant profit margin and the 4 areas you (should) care most about. Within that list, upselling was one of the four factors we believe you should care most about as it relates to restaurant profit margin. Upselling sounds like a pretty simple strategy. Every employee that interacts with a customer needs to ask them if they want more … easy, right? Unfortunately it’s not that easy. There’s a science to suggestive selling and it goes deeper than just asking a customer if they would like an appetizer to start their meal off.

Here are 5 upselling strategies that will not only help increase profit margin but will motivate your employees and help keep your customers satisfied. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Repeat, loyal customers?

Whether you own one restaurant or 100 there's no eluding the fact that you, at some point, have run a promotion.

Chances are you're running one right now! From a consumer perspective, restaurant promotions are ubiquitous. You see them on TV, online, in your mailbox, in your inbox, on billboards ... they're e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e! The question I have for all restaurant companies is, "Are you diligently analyzing promotions on a weekly basis?" If you are, that's great! When calculating restaurant profit margin, as it relates to promotion analysis, we would argue that it takes a village to analyze. It doesn't just reside in the Marketing Department to analyze a promotion; it should also have the attention of the Finance and Operations Departments. Why? Because there are a lot of misconceptions regarding successful promotions. Marketing will get giddy when they see sales spike after a promotion has begun and think it's doing great and that success will trickle down to Operations. Once it gets to Finance, they will notice the sales increased, as well, but some Financial Analyst will look a little closer and observe that though sales have risen, the profit margin has been squeezed chiefly due to the new promotion. Then the whole company gets sad because the promotion that was increasing sales that they loved so much either can't continue anymore or needs an adjustment.

Obviously there are multiple variables that get calculated into restaurant profit margin. (We did a blog about this topic a couple weeks ago: refer to Restaurant Profit Margin | 4 Areas You Care Most About for further reading!) For this post specifically, we will discuss how diving deeper into promotion analysis can help improve your restaurant profit margin.