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Question about the industry: I've always heard that breakfast is the most profitable shift for any restaurant since the ingredients, prep time and turnaround are so cheap, low and fast. It makes sense to some degree but I've always wondered how true that is. When I worked as a busboy at Denny's, all the servers wanted morning shift since that's where they made the most money even though the checks were low so I guess it was just volume? And also then again it was Denny's and that's a place people would usually choose breakfast over dinner. Or any other meal really. I can still see though how the markup on breakfast food would be insanely high when I think about and realize how cheap I can cook a Grand Slam for. TIA
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Feb 21, 2021 21:10
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Italian pasta joints charging $18 for a plate with some dry chicken breast in a heavy cream sauce seem like they'd make bank too
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Feb 21, 2021 21:23
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BiggerBoat posted:Question about the industry: The most profitable shift is whichever one you can sell the most alcohol in. So for a place like a Denny's, sure, breakfast is probably great. An upscale pub that does breakfast is only doing it to use up old product, and they're hoping to break even on it - their most profitable time is going to be from about 7pm-close, due entirely to alcohol sales.
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Feb 21, 2021 21:55
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Brunch was always insanely busy at places I worked at that did brunch. It's a double whammy of cheap ingredients marked up and cheap champagne and vodka getting used in mimosas and bloody marys.
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Feb 21, 2021 22:08
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I dunno who's been doing the marquee sign advertising specials at our sister store next door, but they've been giving me a sensible chuckle It currently reads: I HAD A JOKE ABOUT SALADS, BUT I TOSSED IT Given that last week's was TRY OUR SMOKED WANGS, I'm 100% sure they know the alternate meaning for tossing salad, and I love it.
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Feb 21, 2021 22:10
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To add to breakfast profitability chat: my place does primarily breakfast, and no alcohol sales. We're not buying pricey proteins; things like bacon and sausage and country ham --- pork, in short --- are way cheaper than beef or fish. (We do sell catfish biscuits, but that's cheap swai from Vietnam, not, like, salmon or swordfish or the like.) And I'd guess FOH makes out well because of the table turnover. People are coming in solo or pairs, just grabbing a bite before work, so even before COVID made us 90% curbside/takeout/delivery, you didn't have 6 people hogging a table for an hour+ like you might for dinner. More turnover = more tips. Completely talking out my rear end here, I don't know poo poo about this, but that's my 2 cent opinion.
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Feb 21, 2021 22:37
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BiggerBoat posted:Question about the industry: Working at a diner that was better than Denny's but still not great, Sunday brunch was the highest volume, so probably best sales for the restaurant, but all the customers were loving low tipping assholes so it ended up being like 3 times the work and less pay than a random tuesday dinner as a waiter. Lunch shifts were the best because it was decent volume, customers were trying to get in and out and out quickly but it was a beak from whatever job they had that they hated so they were mostly kind and grateful. Seriously, 9 am on a Sunday morning is when all the people who've never eaten in a restaurant before decide to go to a restaurant.
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Feb 21, 2021 22:51
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6-top in 1.5 hours at $22/cover avg = $132 check Avg 17%tip = $22.50 3 turns of 1-2 people in 1.5 hours at $15/cover breakfast avg = $60 Avg 17% tip = $10.20 Obviously it depends on the restaurant, maybe that avg cover is a bit too high for dinner and a bit low for breakfast, and depending on liquor and dessert, but give me one 6-top for 1.5 hrs over 3 turns any day. And 3 turns in 90 mins is generous. Especially if your support staff isn’t on top of it. If you’re an order taker, you want the turn. If you’re a salesperson, you want the time.
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Feb 21, 2021 23:38
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The one nice thing about working Sunday Brunch is we had a hostess, 3 bussers and 2 food runners, during slower hours the servers would often have to do those jobs too. I never understood co-workers who complained about having to tip out the support staff, they loving earned every penny.
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Feb 21, 2021 23:53
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BiggerBoat posted:Question about the industry: Eggs, potatoes, bacon, easy to fancy up, relatively cheap to buy in bulk compared to the more diverse ingredients involved in lunch/dinner service. Kitchen staff usually makes the same hourly regardless of what time of day they're working.
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Feb 22, 2021 06:09
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cowboy
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BiggerBoat posted:Question about the industry: It's not really true but there are true elements to it. Breakfast service (of which there are many varieties and food cultures to breakfast) does, from a very American and Eurocentric perspective, tend to be low cost and also low labor to execute. The issue is that breakfast doesn't have a high perception of value and as you indicated the check average doesn't tend to be very high. This also really cuts down to some nuts and bolts of business design in restaurants where you have scalable cost of goods sold such as labor and product vs. fixed costs like rent, insurance, utilities, etc. You also have fixed elements of revenue generation such as the hours in which you are able to operate and how much space you have for guests. A $10 egg scramble that costs $1 to produce and one untrained cook to execute at speed could be profitable at volume but each item sold is still, even at a 90% bottom line conversion ratio generating 9 dollars. A 55 dollar t-bone sold at a 45% food cost is still generating 30.25 in base revenue and, in theory, will also attract a higher table spend on wine, cocktails, and appetizers or whatever it is your restaurant is selling. Also menu items designed for higher volume tend to be also designed with a higher risk of product loss or waste. Diners and diner-like franchise establishments probably do better sales figures in breakfast because breakfast in our own cultural perception better aligns with the overall cheap/fast breakfast mechanic of a diner model whereas most people do not go to Denny's and buy the NY strip or think of it as a place to go for a special occasion. The most profitable service I usually see is dinner, and in particular selling private events.
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Mar 3, 2021 02:22
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Brunch is the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's work! Our dining room reopens next month, and with comes weekends spent getting mad at eggs on the weekends!  (I just need a set of sunnys-WHY DID THE SIXTH YOLK BREAK IN. A. ROW.  )
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Mar 12, 2021 13:29
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nudejedi posted:Brunch is the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's work! Our dining room reopens next month, and with comes weekends spent getting mad at eggs on the weekends! lol
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Mar 12, 2021 13:33
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nudejedi posted:(I just need a set of sunnys-WHY DID THE SIXTH YOLK BREAK IN. A. ROW. Your eggs are probably old. If you can find fresher eggs the yolk will be more resilient.
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Mar 12, 2021 14:15
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Joburg posted:Your eggs are probably old. If you can find fresher eggs the yolk will be more resilient. Not arguing with you, friend, but in nudejedi's defense: As someone who has cracked 2-3 cases of eggs a day [for the laypeople, that's 720 - 1080 eggs] working at a breakfast joint, you're bound to get a hosed-up egg (or three, or a dozen), no matter what the freshness. Bloody, broken, double-yolk --- if tickets are slow it's a fun "hey look at this!" but when you're hauling rear end those eggs suuuck. edit: also, I been watching Voyager for the first time since a kind goon gave me a Netflix login, so I really dig your av Joburg. Janeway's pretty loving awesome! (I am, of course, in no way biased because we share the same first name, just with a variant spelling.) JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Mar 12, 2021 |
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Mar 12, 2021 22:30
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Cracking eggs on a flat surface, not a table edge or a pan will help too. The point pushes the shell inwards and can pierce the egg.
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Mar 12, 2021 23:17
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In my brunch experience sometimes the eggs just hate you as much as you hate them and also gently caress brunch. Brunch has a natural aura of hatred surrounding it brought in by the sheer concentration of the Worst Customers Ever all dining at the same place at the same time.
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Mar 12, 2021 23:21
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I worked at Waffle House, IHOP, and breakfast and brunch service at a hotel. The eggs were always ridiculously fresh because we went through cases a day at all of them. After years doing breakfast service the only thing I truly learned is that eggs loving hate you and they like it when you cry. And also don't inhale powdered eggs when you're measuring them out. You'll get eggs in your sinuses and the sneeze an hour later is horrendous. It will change you.
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Mar 13, 2021 00:08
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nudejedi posted:Brunch is the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's work! Our dining room reopens next month, and with comes weekends spent getting mad at eggs on the weekends! One of the absolute funniest pranks I've borne witness to was for a hotel sous chef that always, and I mean ALWAYS pranked people making hard boiled eggs by putting a raw one in the cooling tray. Without fail, you get a broken raw one when peeling. When he finally took another gig, The shipping/recieving manager got him back real good on his last day. Imagine, if you will, a breakfast cook getting crushed in the middle of a friday hotel breakfast rush, going to grab the next egg and crack it and nothing comes out. Not broken, not raw, just zilch. So he grabs the next one, and the next one, and wonders if he found a glitch in the matrix. You see, the revenge-getting man had waited for the rush and then replaced his ready-go stash of eggs on the line with all hardboiled ones. Sous was in such a hurry he went through nearly the whole thing before he figured it out. Grab, crack, wtf, pitch, repeat.
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Mar 13, 2021 00:19
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I thankfully haven’t worked in the restaurant industry since my teen years, and only FOH then, but I do have a bunch* of chickens so I have seen some crazy eggs. The most amazing was a double yolker that was 110grams. Poor chicken must have hurt after that!  *ok, I have 33 chickens so that qualifies as a lot, not a bunch
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Mar 13, 2021 02:13
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We get a lot of "factory second" eggs donated. They're fine, just not the beauties the farmer's market folks will buy. It's been an education in the possible varieties of chicken eggs, I'll tell you. Never knew they could be wrinkly.
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Mar 13, 2021 03:01
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TheParadigm posted:One of the absolute funniest pranks I've borne witness to was for a hotel sous chef that always, and I mean ALWAYS pranked people making hard boiled eggs by putting a raw one in the cooling tray. Without fail, you get a broken raw one when peeling. That is pure, delicious evil and I'm here for it! Disargeria posted:In my brunch experience sometimes the eggs just hate you as much as you hate them and also gently caress brunch. The real all consuming hatred comes from having a Sunday batch (full case of eggs worth of yolks and w/e pounds of clarified butter) of handmade hollandaise break! JacquelineDempsey posted:Not arguing with you, friend, but in nudejedi's defense: Yeah it's the "I don't have time for this right now" that ruins one's zen. I've gone through enough eggs, I start counting hot streaks of lovely ones so I don't actually get upset.
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Mar 13, 2021 06:00
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The only Brunches I’ve ever been to were, some high scale Buffet Brunch ( I was invited to, didn’t want to go). Which had an open omelet bar... That has to be hell on earth for a chef.
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Mar 13, 2021 06:55
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fizzymercury posted:I worked at Waffle House, IHOP, and breakfast and brunch service at a hotel. The eggs were always ridiculously fresh because we went through cases a day at all of them. so is it more the smell, the texture, or the volume that haunts you because honestly with the idea of blurting an uncooked booger omelet out of your nose could be any of the three
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Mar 13, 2021 07:12
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TheParadigm posted:One of the absolute funniest pranks I've borne witness to was for a hotel sous chef that always, and I mean ALWAYS pranked people making hard boiled eggs by putting a raw one in the cooling tray. Without fail, you get a broken raw one when peeling. oh yeah that's the stuff the kind of thing that is harmless but in the heat of the moment when someone loses concentration they will do a big loud swear and everyone else snickers because they were in on the joke, watching out of the corner of their eyes  edit: I think I posted this a while ago, but my favorite prank was on this line cook that would ask the bar for a 12oz glass bottle of Labatt or whatever cheap beer near the end of shift, to sip while finishing up and cleaning. Our expo guy would sneak a spear of asparagus into the bottle and everyone would be watching for like 2 minutes until he took a swig and gagged. It never stopped being funny. WITCHCRAFT fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Mar 13, 2021 |
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Mar 13, 2021 07:14
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The chefs got me once with an insanely hot pepper (no idea which one) by telling me it was an uncured peppadew. I was pissed until the end of the night when one of them ordered a round of shots for the crew and the one that the shittiest cruelest dude on the line got was the juice of that same pepper topped off with enough coke to make it look like whiskey. He went a puked out by the dumpster and everyone gave him hell for 6 months because he couldn't handle his shots.
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Mar 13, 2021 08:48
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JacquelineDempsey posted:
I started working at a place with 5 Brians: Chef Brian, Big Brian, banquet Brian, Brian George and Brian Ripple. Where's Brian? was always a fun game. pile of brown fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Mar 13, 2021 |
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Mar 13, 2021 11:00
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PopeCrunch posted:so is it more the smell, the texture, or the volume that haunts you because honestly with the idea of blurting an uncooked booger omelet out of your nose could be any of the three It was all of that plus startlingly painful. The guy who witnessed it actually vomited. I just cried a lot and worried I was going to die of a turbo sinus infection.
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Mar 13, 2021 12:26
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Grandmas Cookies posted:The only Brunches I’ve ever been to were, some high scale Buffet Brunch ( I was invited to, didn’t want to go).
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Mar 13, 2021 13:59
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Working customer facing stations is just so completely different from anything else. The guests have visual feedback as to where you are with their order, so there's a level of understanding that isn't provided by having the servers lie their asses off to protect their tips. You also don't get hit with things like 8 custom omelettes that all need to go out at the exact same time because there's an implicit understanding that you're doing FCFS to the people that are there. The type of person to visit an omelette bar is also somehow completely different than the normal brunch customer, so many of them seem cheerful and not filled with spite. Carving and pasta stations are even easier.
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Mar 13, 2021 14:41
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Guildenstern Mother posted:The chefs got me once with an insanely hot pepper (no idea which one) by telling me it was an uncured peppadew. I was pissed until the end of the night when one of them ordered a round of shots for the crew and the one that the shittiest cruelest dude on the line got was the juice of that same pepper topped off with enough coke to make it look like whiskey. He went a puked out by the dumpster and everyone gave him hell for 6 months because he couldn't handle his shots. Yeah this is the kind of poo poo that needs to stop being normalized. This is extremely hosed up and potentially extremely harmful, to the point of being debilitating for days if a person is intolerant or allergic to capsaicin. Stop loving with people's food. It's not a joke, it's not a prank, it can be a serious loving thing and people, especially those in management, should know better by now.
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Mar 13, 2021 17:49
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TheParadigm posted:One of the absolute funniest pranks I've borne witness to was for a hotel sous chef that always, and I mean ALWAYS pranked people making hard boiled eggs by putting a raw one in the cooling tray. Without fail, you get a broken raw one when peeling. Pranks and poo poo is dumb and anywhere I've worked that poo poo would get you written up and/or fired.
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Mar 13, 2021 17:56
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TheParadigm posted:One of the absolute funniest pranks I've borne witness to was for a hotel sous chef that always, and I mean ALWAYS pranked people making hard boiled eggs by putting a raw one in the cooling tray. Without fail, you get a broken raw one when peeling. This is literally a firing offence and once fired a cook on my line for doing that. Later the owner asked why I fired them for a harmless prank, and had to explain to them what salmonella was and how eggs come out of chickens butthole/multipurpose hole.
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Mar 13, 2021 18:07
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pile of brown posted:I started working at a place with 5 Brians: Chef Brian, Big Brian, banquet Brian, Brian George and Brian Ripple. While completely unfair, there's a certain point i would just start trashing any resume with the name Brian on it. Being named Brian isn't considered a protected class so it's a perfectly legal form of prejudice.
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Mar 13, 2021 18:10
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I’m sure this has been posted before but: Do y’all ever have kitchen / chef / wait staff: Nightmares??? I get them all the time... For me it’s some continuous loop of me not being able to help all the customers, chef screaming at me, messing up orders, etc etc. Until, I wake up sweating and being like what the gently caress...
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Mar 15, 2021 04:12
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Grandmas Cookies posted:I’m sure this has been posted before but: Do y’all ever have kitchen / chef / wait staff: I would get them almost every night when I worked nights, if there's not at least 5 or 6 hours between getting off work and going to bed I'd almost always have a dream where I was waiting tables.
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Mar 15, 2021 04:45
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Less often now, but yeah I've definitely woken up from ticket printer nightmares. Sometimes, though, I get to relive the night it was just me and a newbie behind the bar with no backup for a couple of hours while the rest of the staff were working at or supporting other places on the property In our building the AC failed, the music stopped playing, and hundreds of people got their drinks in a timely manner because we loving rocked it. Once I realized the poo poo we were in I did take him in the back for a half-minute pep talk that was as much for me as it was for him. "We've got this. You start from the left, I'll start from the right. After we meet in the middle, we'll do it again. If you need to take a breath, take a breath. You good? Let's do this." My recommendations got that guy hired at two other bars since then, dude's a legend.
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Mar 15, 2021 04:47
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The owner of our restaurant thought putting plastic wrap on a can of coconut milk would cause botulism
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Mar 15, 2021 05:13
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like, immediately?
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Mar 15, 2021 05:16
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Maybe it was just a way to get people to put things in containers instead of leaving stuff in cans. The health dept here will give you a violation for storing stuff in open cans. If you open something and don't use it all put it in a cambro or delitainer.
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Mar 15, 2021 05:49
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