Special events are an important marketing tool for restaurants in general and in particular those with full service.
Breaking – routine events have a direct connection with increasing the consumer’s purchase intention, increasing the customer average price, and increasing the final income of the business whether it is on a daily, monthly, or annual level.
Sometimes the daily routine of a restaurant causes indifference and a vacuum that can prevent the growth of the business.
That’s why it’s important to produce content that provides additional interest to your regular guests, exposes your business to new ones and helps your business to be up to date and remains in conscious.
Another and important advantage of breaking routine events is creating interest for the various teams in your business.
These events are in high demand, generate interest and provide a great marketing opportunity to attract customers who may never have come across your business before.
So, what exactly is a breaking routine event?
A breaking – routine event in the hospitality world is based on leaving the comfort zone and the daily life of the business for a certain time (service, a whole day, a week, etc.) and creating a new product that you will offer to your guests during this time.
This product can correspond to your existing product, in addition to it or instead of it.
If for example, we refer to a restaurant menu:
- Adding a new product to an existing one is often expressed by adding new items to the menu for the same period of time next to others that are already exist and in place of those you decided to omit.
- Adding a new product to the existing product means increasing the menu items and expanding it.
- Replacing the existing product with a new one means to create a full menu with all new items for your guests and without any mention of the existing ones.
Of course, these events have to be complete in terms of content and there is usually a direct impact on other departments as well.
For example, if you have decided to go for a breaking – routine event with a Spanish concept, the menu will probably have elements that correspond with this concept, but this will probably also affect the music playlist, the design of the restaurant, the uniform of the various staff, the manner of service, the drinks menu, and more.
When we are interested in creating a breaking – routine event in our business, it is important that in addition to its benefits, we also consider the consequences that can arise from it.
This type of events can easily appear to your target audience as too expensive or as those whose level of service will be poor.
In addition, many restaurant owners, managers, or chefs have the need to produce content that is “wow” and without noticing the cost of the event can reach much higher than you expected in your forecast and it not always profitable for you.
To avoid these cases, we will share with you six excellent operational tips for organizing a successful breaking – routine event:
- Organized working gant
- Coordination of expectations
- Tests and tastings for the various teams
- Equipment rental
- Preparation of a budget
- Creating a diagram of your restaurant positioning space and passing it on to the various managers
Organized working Gant
After we have already decided on the type of event, it is important that we create an organized working gant that includes:
- Task – description of the task to be performed.
- Responsibility – who is responsible for the execution (which employee)
- Date for execution – target date for execution. It is important that we define our tasks with deadlines.
- Status – Performed or not Performed.
- Comments – optional if there are certain comments about that task.
This gant is usually managed by 1 person, but of course there is also the option to share online and anyone that relevant to the document can update independently and immediately.
gant also creates a coordination of expectations whether it is within the organization or also with external bodies to the organization and this leads us to the next point.
Matching expectations
One of the most important things is coordinating expectations.
Usually, when your business has employees for a long time then matching expectations is easier. In any case, it is always important to coordinate expectations to avoid unpleasantness and leaving tasks up in the air.
Matching expectations with external parties to the organization is also a critical move for the smooth transition of the breaking – routine event.
For example, you decided to host a guest chef in your business who brings with him a product that connects to your existing menu.
First and foremost, it is important to create a meeting and to talk about the mutual expectations.
That make things clear to the guest chef, whether it is in terms of the desire/reason why we are hosting him, what are the boundaries where he can play, yours understanding of what he would like to do and how (which dishes he plans to make), going over utensils, serving plates and cooking equipment, detailed operational explanation to the guest of how the service works in our business, and it’s always good to get a common picture for marketing purposes.
One of the most important things is to ask that chef for products list he will use in his dishes and a detailed explanation of each and every dish for the purpose of creating an organized menu guide for FOH.
Tests and tastings for the various teams
Before any breaking – routine event it is important that our teams know where they are going to and what is going to happen. We must not forget that our service people are our sales department.
See our article: WHAT IS YOUR SALES DEPARTMENT?
It is possible to schedule a brief before the event, let the staff taste the dishes and give the the relevant info.
Our experience taught us that these types of briefings are less productive because they are very long, the team loses interest at some point, and everyone gets under unnecessary pressure.
The other option is to do tests on the dishes or drinks during the week before and at the daily briefings of each day during this week to let the different teams taste and learn about the new dishes.
At the same time, produce an orderly menu guide that includes details about the product you offer to the guests, highlighting one or another sensitivity, if there is an option for changes in the dish, the selling price, an illustration of the form of serving and an explanation with which Tableware and more.
Of course we will make a summary briefing before the event as well, but it will be much more productive and faster if it is done after an orderly process.
Equipment rental
A breaking – routine event can be based on existing equipment, purchased or rental.
This has a direct relationship to the size of the event. The bigger the event, the wider the equipment required. Purchasing equipment is an expensive business which subsequently also requires storage areas from us.
In most cases of large events, we will focus on renting equipment (plates, set, glasses, tablecloths, tables, various serving utensils, fans, umbrellas, bar and more).
There are several suppliers in the market that provide rental equipment services
We recommend going to the supplier’s showroom since choosing tools online will probably cause disappointment when receiving the order.
Product serial numbers are the name of the game and should be ordered according to them. That way there will be no mistakes.
Budget preparation
Preparing a correct budget can be done after we know the raw materials we will work with and after choosing the equipment and receiving the price quote.
In preparing the budget we will include:
- Manpower – the cost of the various teams that take part in the event.
- Food and drink – the cost of the food and drink that we will purchase for the event.
- Equipment rental – the cost of equipment renting is based on an arranged price offer from a supplier.
- Variable cost – The space design, artists (musicians, DJ, guest chef, accommodation, etc.), graphics, printing house, marketing and more.
and on the other hand:
- The expected number of guests
- Average customer price
Preparing a diagram of your restaurant positioning spaceand passing it on to the various managers
Preparing an orderly diagram of the business space and passing it on to the various teams in this type of event is critical.
A neat chart will help all employees to have healthy and correct communication and a smooth flow during the event.
In many cases and especially in those where we change the space of the restaurant by moving or adding tables, you want to create a division into service areas and orderly numbers of tables.
In addition, if there are guests with different culinary sensitivities or preferences, we would like to know them in advance and update all the relevant factors & departments.
Making this kind of chart also helps us when assigning the staff members in the different areas. In larger areas, you will know to place a greater number of waiters or, alternatively, higher quality ones.
In neater. We know to provide you the right operational solutions for any type of event.
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