 In recent years, restaurant operators have experimented with new service models and streams of income that they may not have considered before. Yet even though the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us – we can only hope – and your guests likely no longer think of you as a reliable source for paper towels and cases of beer, a lot of restaurant brands are finding resourceful ways to hang on to pandemic-era approaches to business and expand upon them. As a result, the definition of a restaurant has become more layered and diversified. Restaurant food can come to guests via a virtual kitchen, retail meal kit, an online video or the dining room itself, so take advantage of the business opportunities that may exist even several degrees of separation from your guests. Have a colorful chef or team? Consider creating a podcast, blog, or TikTok video series around them. Or perhaps you have a popular recipe or spice mix that guests rave about. Building that into a recipe subscription or making it part of a larger retail arm may help you stretch your reach to people far beyond your city – and result on some extra eyeballs on any additional content you’re creating too. This can help you transform the typical restaurant job too, creating some opportunity for people to build careers with you for the longer term.
 It wasn’t so long ago that ghost kitchens felt like a must-have tool in a restaurant operator’s portfolio, offering flexibility with menu offerings, greater control over overhead costs, and simply a means of getting restaurant-quality food to consumers during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, as people look to restaurants as gathering places and lean on grocery stores for more of their at-home dining needs amid high inflation, many ghost kitchens are facing headwinds. While some ghost kitchen brands are growing, particularly when they have backing from large restaurant conglomerates, there have been more closures of virtual brands in recent months – even for well-established restaurants including Chili’s and Wendy’s. Industry analysts say that consumer concerns about quality control and uneven familiarity with tech-driven and restaurant-driven ghost kitchen brands could be part of it. As a result, expect to see new hybrid ghost kitchen models emerge that may lack dining rooms but do have physical locations, staff and even event space that guests can visit to better connect with the brand. It’s another lesson for restaurant operators in how times and consumer habits can shift so quickly, calling for rapid adaptations. Having the tools, systems and menu flexibility that allow you to be nimble may be the best investment. It’s important to be able to scale different parts of your business up or down based on the insights you’re gaining from your data – and retain the power of your brand in the process.
 A majority of consumers – 55 percent – don’t use a restaurant loyalty program, according to a new study from William Blair. For restaurant operators, this represents a big opportunity for growth at a time when competition for restaurant spending is stiff and loyalty programs can cultivate stronger attachments to brands. As restaurants have stepped up their pursuit of guests in the past few years, these programs have evolved well past the punch-card system and even the digitized system of accumulating rewards points. Nation’s Restaurant News highlighted some of the newer offerings to come to these programs – and many of them focus on gamification, customization or otherwise elevating the experience around buying food from a certain restaurant. Jimmy John’s and Chipotle, for example, have introduced a competitive element to their programs: At Jimmy John’s, the “gauntlet” challenges guests to purchase all 25 sandwiches on the menu within a set time frame in order to win a Jimmy John’s beanbag chair, while at Chipotle, a sweepstakes-style program enhancement dangles the opportunity for 3,100 members to win free food for a year. Other brands are playing with the subscription model, offering tiered program options – some free and some paid – that unlock exclusive menu items, provide early access to events and products, or allow members to access different levels of giveaways and other perks.
 In these uncertain economic times, there has been a lot of talk about how restaurants must build value into the experience they offer guests. This isn’t simply about making guests feel they are getting a good deal, but about making the experience feel like it’s well worth the cost – or that it easily justifies the decision to choose your restaurant over the one across the street, or over preparing a meal kit at home. Delivering that level of experience increasingly requires restaurant operators to anticipate their guests’ needs before those guests even know what their needs are. Collecting and dissecting data to deliver ever-greater levels of customization and personalization can help. As a recent report from Modern Restaurant Management says, technology is enabling operators to capture details about guests at every point of their experience – so they can know that one guest is allergic to dairy, or that she likes eating at a certain table. This also means that a server is equipped with food and drink upsell suggestions based on a person’s previous order. So a server may not necessarily offer the same special to every table anymore but instead can make a targeted seafood suggestion that complements the wine that guests at one table have ordered the past three times they have visited your restaurant – then promote plant-based specials to the vegetarians at the next table. This deeper level of personalization extends to a restaurant’s communications with guests too, so you have a range of targeted promotions going out to subsets of your email or text distributions. This year, how can you make your in-person and electronic outreach to guests feel more personal and less one-size-fits-all?
 You may be familiar with the menu engineering model that guides restaurants to categorize menu items into one of four buckets: stars (top-selling, high-profit items), plowhorses (popular items that aren’t necessarily high-profit), puzzles (items that sell and make a profit but aren’t consistent) and dogs (lowest performing, lowest profit items). A webcast from US Foods encourages operators to think of labor in the same way, categorizing employees according to their productivity and alignment with your culture. Like your menu items, your staff behave and respond in different ways – some demand (and deserve) your attention and resources, while others are best guided out of the business before they damage the morale of others. Specifically, an “A” employee is aligned with your culture and highly productive, a “B” employee is aligned with your culture and not as productive, a “C+” employee is not aligned with your culture and isn’t as productive, and a “C-“ employee is productive but creates a counterculture in your organization. There is power in knowing where each person sits at a given time. Your A players – your stars – are those you want to keep at all costs, so direct your resources toward them to help them develop and secure their loyalty to your business. B employees could be up-and-coming A’s with some additional training from the A’s. C+ players could be new employees – they may have the right attitude but they need help to become more productive and aligned with your culture. The C- players may well be good at what they do, but they are dangerous because their attitudes can work against the business. Are you taking stock of where your staff fits? Doing so helps you continuously recalibrate so you can maximize your sales and service while weeding out detractors.
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