Management Advice

I have helped clients open pizza restaurants for seven years now. I have seen many pizza prep table configurations. This vital piece of equipment is the workhorse of any pizzeria. It is the center of all activity and efficient production. What still amazes me is how many brands, features and benefits are offered.

I have assisted more than a dozen operators in developing and executing various types of pizza concepts during the past few years. Over 28 years ago, when I was menu development director for a group of restaurants in Seattle, I researched, cooked on and identified the subtle flavors that each type of wood creates when fueling grills.

Stainless steel fabrication. Hmmmm… Once I began to understand some of the operational value-added aspects that can be built into custom fabrication, I naively asked my designer friends why every job would not include custom fabrication versus manufactured buy-out pieces. They were quick to state the why-nots. But I also became more aware of the why-tos.

I recently attended a full-day seminar that focused on the multiple uses for this astonishingly versatile piece of equipment. A question arose amongst the other attending consultants and operators: Why are so many end-users still reluctant to use this flexible piece of equipment?

As far as I am concerned, tilting skillets, also called braisers, hit the top of the multi-functional equipment list. They are similar to large cooking pans, with deep sides and a lid, in which food can be braised, fried, blanched, simmered, thawed, steamed, griddled, poached, browned, boiled, simmered, grilled and stewed.

Some pooh-pooh it – but it is more than a trend. Daniel Boulud already knows it.  As does Colin Alveras, Boulud’s DBGB beverage manager in New York City who claimed it to be the wave of the future. However, many erroneously think that tapped keg wine is cheap wine. But Google wine taps to see how many savvy operators running quality wine programs have embraced keg wine.

As one web site states, “No kitchen exhaust = no cooking = no restaurant… or so most of us used to think.” Indeed, there was a time that the idea of creating a real menu from a kitchen without hoods would have seemed nearly impossible. Enter the ventless kitchen – something I am encountering with more and more frequency.

Several recent projects have reinforced in my mind the connection between concepts, menus, facility designs and kitchen equipment. Most restaurant financial experts will advise operators to hold fast to a two-to-one sales to investment ratio if they want to pay off their debt load within three years (desirable). What this means – and few want to hear it in the planning process – is that if operators are projecting $800,000 in annual sales, they need to keep fully loaded expenses in the start-up to $400,000 maximum.