Mario Villegas Seattle - What is the Value of Online Restaurant Guides?

The trend of eating out has brought a great boom in the restaurant business in the past few decades and online restaurant guides and reviews have brought phenomenal changes in this field. According to Mario Villegas, the President of Twilium Management Group in Seattle, online restaurant guides can either make or break the destiny of a restaurant. A good review can boost its business and take it to great heights, while a bad one can literally shut it down. The reason is that people greatly depend upon online reviews and ratings these days, due to increasing exposure to internet and social media.

How valuable are online restaurant guides?

Online restaurant guides hold great value for both, the restaurant owners as well as the customers. They play a key role to educate and inform the customers about the location, star rating, menu, quality of food, quality of service and all they need to know about the restaurant, in order to make their decisions for visiting a restaurant. On the other hand, positive ratings for restaurants on online guides can actually act as crowd pullers, with a positive correlation between the ratings and the number of customers it is able to attract. In fact, these guides can play a vital role in enabling the consumers to make out the quality of food as well as services provide at a particular restaurant.

Hence, according to Mario Villegas Seattle, online presence has become an essential factor which determines the success of any restaurant in the hospitality industry. On the other hand, it is imperative that restaurants which have established a good reputation among the consumers with their food quality, impeccable service and excellent ambience, are not dependent on online guides for their success. They can do well enough even without being able to get good reviews as they are already established as brands in hospitality business.

Comparison on the Basis of Online Restaurant Guides

In the words of Mario Villegas, “A large number of potential consumers make use of online restaurant guides to make a comparison between tow available options and base their decisions on the information available therein.” Therefore, a good rating and positive reviews can be of great help for consumers to choose the best, besides enabling restaurants to compete with their rivals in an effective manner. They can even establish a stronghold in the market with the help of these online guides. Online reviews can influence the consumer decision to great extent even if there is no change in quality of food served as well as the quality of service, as it is the first thing which beckons a consumer to a place and he forms a firsthand impression about the food and service only after dining there.

Despite the fact that online guides about restaurants are no less than asset for them, there is a related concern that these guides may be manipulated by the restaurateurs to mislead the consumers. Such reviews can attract people once, but finally it is always the quality of food, service and ambience at a restaurant which really matter.

By Mario Villegas Seattle

How to Start a Restaurant Business Successfully by Mario Villegas

Starting up a new business is an uphill task for any entrepreneur, and it can be even more difficult if you are going to launch yourself in hospitality business as there is a lot of work to do here! “A restaurant is recognized not only by the food it serves, but also the quality of service and ambience available therein, because these are the basic things customers look for”, according to Mario Villegas, President of Twilium Management Group. Seems simple enough, but the owner must step into the shoes of his customers to find out what they actually expect and this will take them a long way on the road to establishing a successful restaurant business.

Here are some tips which can help you start a restaurant business successfully:

Plan the Layout

Mario Villegas Seattle advises budding restaurateurs about the importance of planning a layout and design of his upcoming restaurant. It would be good for looking for original ideas than imitating an existing place as the design is the first thing which attracts the customers to your place. The main areas to be looked after are the color scheme and interior design of the restaurant, while the entry area and dining area need to be focused on. However, you must not ignore the backspace, rest rooms and storage area.

Accessorize Well

Besides being careful about the layout, you also need to make sure that your place is well accessorized with matching and comfortable furniture, which makes the place look good. The dinnerware, utensils and kitchen accessories should be modern and tasteful as the food needs to look good, besides tasting good. The place should be at the right temperature and the lighting should also give a welcoming appearance to the place.

Navigation

While you choose the venue of your upcoming restaurant, you need to ensure that the place is easily navigable and reachable for customers from all over the place. It should also be easy to reach and available on GPS maps, so that more and more people, whether from the city or tourists or business travelers, are able to locate it and reach it.

Service

In the words of Mario Villegas, service is as important as the décor and food quality available at the restaurant. Make sure that the staff you recruit is courteous and friendly. The food should be served hot and fresh and each customer should be treated in a special manner, so that he comes back again and again.

Menu

Just like some people judge a book by its cover, a menu plays a key role in developing an impression about the restaurant. It should be attractive yet simple and easy to comprehend, carrying all the requisite information along with clearly mentioned price list.

Marketing

Like all other businesses, the success of a budding restaurant business greatly depends upon the right marketing, as people need to come here first to get the taste of what you are offering. Online marketing and reservation, social media and newspaper ads and free templates can be some good marketing ideas to introduce your restaurant to the potential customers.

In the end, being patient is the most important tip for a new restaurateur. If you are offering quality food and services, customers are bound to pour in sooner or later!

By Mario Villegas Seattle

Mario Villegas Seattle - Most Common Mistake made by Small Bar Operators

1. You start your business for the wrong reasons by Mario Villegas Seattle

When you open you first bar thinking that you will make a lot of money. Think that opening a bar will give you freedom and more time with your family. Or maybe because you are the boss you wouldn't have to answer to anyone else. If this are the reason for opening a business, you'd better think again.

On the other hand, if you start your business with the full picture, you'll have a better chance at entrepreneurial success:

Practice the Art of Upsell and Impulse Buys By Mario Villegas Seattle

Mario Villegas Seattle - Train your staff in the art of up selling. Program items and times for upselling; for example, Instead of asking what customers want, offer suggestions and frame them as personal recommendations: "I sampled the new mango mojito last night, and it's my new favorite cocktail." Another tactic is to frame a beverage as a unique, temporary opportunity: "We use in-season fruit in our sangria. This week we have locally grown apples." Lastly, offer top shelf options when customers request a cocktail. When they order vodka, ask "Do you have a preference? We have Grey Goose."

Mario Villegas - Minimize Risk when Opening a Bar or Restaurants, Seattle

Mario Villegas - Insufficient Capital : Account on your business plan for one year of rent and marketing. Many owners can greatly underestimate how much it costs to not just open a restaurant but to keep it running during the first few crucial months and years. Many restaurants scramble to find their ground in the first year while the owner makes necessary changes in the menu or staff and customers find out about the place. To minimize your risk, plan to have several months of funding to cover the costs of salaries, food and bills. It can take a while to simply break even with a new restaurant, much less make a profit.

Mario Villegas Seattle - Mistakes Mostly Caught while Buying a Bar

Mario Villegas Seattle - If we talk about the business and companies then the result comes around us with several types of entrepreneurships including small business or big business organizations and few of them owner would be setting up their new business or companies. While talking about any business many prospects comes in front of us and if someone gets failed to follow those prospects, then a huge number of complications could be faced. Here if we discuss about any bar or Hotel then there are a long list of bar owners, who has setting up their business into small premises and that never create any problem in the business growth, even some owners have opened small bars or hotels into their home or they are also growing rapidly, but the mistakes comes in front of them that is done before choosing the hotel or sometimes during the business, and those mistake could happened cause of their wrong decisions or the nature of avoid.

After doing a study we have found out many reasons which occurred while running your business and wish that these could be useful for your business growth and hope you can keep out from all the mistakes. Some of these are,

Mario Villegas Seattle - A Restaurant Needs the Skills to Build a Successful Business

Mario Villegas Seattle - In the event of running your business, evaluation is needed for all either, that’s a restaurant or another trading and evaluation could be improved only by following the skills of a business. Basically a restaurant never identified only with meal or recipes even its affected by many certain things or skills, which are required to build a successful restaurant. The imitation should not be applied in a restaurant because of customer’s nature of change so that some prospects are required to build a successful business or to get rank in a top 10 business. Following by some consideration, any entrepreneur takes it up on the high.

Mario Villegas Seattle - Raise Capital for Your Venture

Mario Villegas Seattle - If this is your first bar or restaurant finding someone to invest in your restaurant will be a challenge. You may have listened or read about venture capitalists, private equity firms, or angel investor organizations. In fact, do your research on these terms and you'll find plenty of wealthy investment groups looking for the next bigger ideas to invest in. If you're an established restaurant with franchise or growth opportunity, then pursuing these types of investment firms should be relative easier and yield dividends. However, for startup restaurants, chasing these professional investment groups is impractical.

If you want to increase your chances of finding an investor or partner you must have a strong and professionally done business plan should reflect your qualifications, experience and track record, and that of your proposed management team if already selected. The business plan needs to do a good job of detailing the restaurant concept and provide a convincing argument of how that restaurant concept can be successful in the local market.

Mario Villegas Seattle - Social Media to Promote you Bar & Restaurant

Mario Villegas Seattle - Here are a few tips to help you get more results from your social media efforts:

1. Keep up with the latest trends: Using Facebook and Twitter to promote your business is old news. Everyone is already doing that. In order to stand out, you need to know what the latest trend is and take advantage of it. For nightclubs & bars, you should be working with Instagram tools (photos), Vine (short videos) and Snapchat (deals).

Mario Villegas Seattle: - Bar Management Tips

Mario Villegas Seattle - Delegation : Management and delegation go hand in hand. No one expects you to do everything and be everyone but it can surely feel that way, especially when things go wrong. We have a few tips to help you smooth the path to creating an efficient staff.

1. Consider what it is you would like done and how exactly you would go about doing it yourself. Think of who on your team may have the skills to complete the project and ask yourself why?

2. Designate who will be accountable and responsibility for the project and give your employee a reason to complete it. Explained that what and why to all the team.

Building or Renovating Your Restaurant by Mario Villegas, Seattle WA

Mario Villegas Seattle - How the space is laid out is vital to the flow for customers and staff

There are laws and suggested rules to follow

The Entrance: A transition Area - The area for the host/hostess

The Bar Area: Away from the dining room in a place where you don’t walk thru dining area to get to the bar.

Distance from the back wall to the front of the bar counter needs to be at least 8 ft.

Bartending Etiquette by Mario Villegas Seattle

Mario Villegas Seattle - A quick look around the room tells the story. The guy in the corner booth...the one with the irritated expression...has a drink sloshing over the rim with little pieces of sopping paper napkin stuck to the sides. The woman to his right is miffed…the cigarette she just lit has turned into a soggy mess because the ashtray the bartender left her was wet on the inside.

She looks a lot happier, though, than the guys in the suits at the bar. They've been waiting easily ten or twelve minutes with empty glasses and an over-flowing ashtray. The impatient rapping of their glasses on the bar is a sure sign they're a lost cause. A few short minutes later the two briskly head out the front door with the deportment of men who have tolerated enough bad service for one night.

The problem is that the bartender is otherwise occupied -- occasionally making drinks for the servers, washing a glass or two and flirting with the coed sitting by the station is about all the young man can handle.

Mario Villegas, Seattle - Ten Do's & Don'ts for Behind the Bar

Mario Villages is member of the restaurant owner association.

1. DON'T -- Settling for mediocrity is unprofessional. Bartenders shouldn't serve drinks that have been improperly prepared or inferior in any respect. Amateurism is not a tipped quality.
2. DON'T -- It is highly unprofessional to gossip, argue, gamble or loan out money to the clientele. By any means possible, bartenders should also avoid becoming embroiled in inflammatory conversations. Taking sides in a heated debate exacts a heavy toll on gratuities.

How to do your Weekly Food Inventory by Mario Villegas

Mario Villegas Seattle : Most independent restaurants calculate their food cost only once a month. Yet, virtually all the major chain restaurants calculate their food cost each week. According to industry averages, chain restaurants (before corporate expenses) are two to three times as profitable as independent restaurants.

While weekly food costing isn't the entire the reason, it's part of it.

In order to accurately calculate your cost weekly, you'll need to take inventory weekly as well. The only method for computing accurate cost of sales is to take physical inventories and then calculate the value of inventory on hand. Many operators erroneously believe that what they spend on food and beverage purchases is their cost of sales. While this may be true in the long run, for specific-period analysis it is inaccurate.

Mario Villegas - Operating a Restaurant from a CEO's Perspective

Mario Villegas - Every restaurant has three major areas that must function well to achieve its potential for success.

• Operations.Operations include all those functions that are necessary to prepare and serve your products to your customers. It includes all those activities that take place every day in the kitchen, dining room and bar.
• Financial. Financial functions deals with safeguarding cash, accounting, cash management, cost control as well as operational and financial reporting.
• Marketing. Marketing is getting the word out about the restaurant and positioning it correctly in the minds of the public. It includes public relations, community involvement, advertising, promotions and projecting the right image.

Now, think about how successful your restaurant could be if you regularly gave competent attention to each of these three areas. Imagine that operations was capable of consistently providing products and service in a manner that meets your high standards.

Mario Villegas Seattle- Cost control

Mario Villegas Seattle -Today’s weather issues, transportation costs, and the continuing rise in the suppliers’ costs of doing business are precipitating increased costs of raw products to restaurants. It is now even more important to be more efficient with one’s food costs. There is not much margin for error or guesswork in the major item on one’s operating statement. I find it interesting that, over all of the years of doing food costing and with all of the tools I’ve used or seen being used, that controlling food costs boils down to just a few small pointers:
                                                 

Mario Villegas Seattle - Most Common Restaurant Startup Mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Mario Villegas Seattle - In any new business venture good decision-making is vital. Opening a new restaurant requires so many decisions that it's not hard to make some bloopers along the way.

The key is not totally missing the mark on the really important issues that can make or break your chances for success. Here are some of the more important common missteps new owners make in areas that play a big role in how well a new restaurant is likely to do.

Mario Villegas Seattle - Select the Right Lighting and Music for Your Restaurant

Mario Villegas Seattle - Music, lighting, and decor play a vital role in setting the overall tone and feel of a restaurant. In some cases, it’s attention to detail that really sets a restaurant apart from the competition and keeps customers coming back. It all comes down to the “if a tree falls in the forest” theory. If you have the best food in town, but you have poor lighting, outdated decor, and music that’s reminiscent of your last trip to the dentist’s office, are people really going to want to eat there? Here are some tips on choosing the right music, lighting, and decor for your restaurant:

Mario Villegas - Have a Cleaner Restaurant And Improve Your Health Inspection Scores

Mario Villegas - Few things strike fear in the heart of a restaurateur more than the sudden, unexpected appearance of a health inspector. Rather than fear a health inspection, however, operators should view the inspectors' inevitable visits as a tool to keep their restaurants clean at all times.

Unsanitary conditions result in unsanitary food, which can threaten the very existence of a restaurant. One infection, outbreak, cockroach on the potato skin, and you could be finished.

This article will provide a general overview of the inspection mechanism, what you can do to improve your establishment's health inspection score and other tips for running a clean operation.

Mario Villegas - Eliminate Theft Behind the Bar

Mario Villegas Seattle : For new restaurateurs, the bar is one of the most vulnerable areas to theft. This is particularly true if you have a booming bar business and a strong bartender. You might not feel the pain of constant theft and skimming, such as a free drink to the bartender's friends here and there, or stealing from the cash register.

Complicating the matter is that sometimes the most dangerous bartenders are the best and brightest. Behind the bar is a place where individual talent and charm can be measured in hard cash, and a common and woeful tale is the stellar bartender with a huge following of customers, who is caught stealing from the owners. In that case, even an honest but average bartender might not be able to match the end-of-the-night profits turned in by the thief. Nevertheless, your bar should be a cash cow in your operation, and you should reap every penny of profit that you earn. You are always better off hiring for attitude (and honesty) and training for skill.