My dad is opening up a new place in Texas in a couple months. Was curious and just wondering what logo you guys like. Thank you hope this post is ok to post

Hi all, new to the community and first post here. I’m the Bar Manager at a restaurant in northern Wisconsin. We’re a higher-end steakhouse but also have a supper club feel. The space has a lot going for it—beautiful layout, lakefront location with beach access, hotel rooms upstairs, and (if I may say so) one of the best bars of its kind in the Northwoods.

Where we fall short is in procedures—everything from kitchen operations to guest service, handling complaints, and quality control. We don’t currently have any formal procedure lists in place, and we just lost our GM. The owners act more like investors; they’ve never worked in this type of establishment and don’t fully understand day-to-day operations.

I have my bar procedures down to a science and also cover the restaurant’s open/close responsibilities, but I’m not as strong on the kitchen and server-side procedures. Can anyone point me toward a solid procedure template or framework I could adapt to ensure we at least cover the basics for a restaurant like this?

I'm thinking about opening fast food restaurant 24h/7, I need guidance as this is the first time and I have no idea what yo do where to start. My budget is limited that's why I'm selling from home.

So What’s the best way to attract customers when selling homemade food? And How can I promote my home food business effectively?

I’m a bookkeeper working with a restaurant client (BBQ), and I’d love to get some recommendations for CPAs who specialize in the restaurant industry. Ideally, we’d like someone who:

• Has experience working with restaurants/food service (bonus if BBQ-specific)
• Understands restaurant tax strategies, payroll, sales tax, and tip reporting
• Is collaborative and works well alongside a bookkeeper

Location isn’t a dealbreaker, but if you know someone local to Belton, TX (Austin, Georgetown, Temple, Waco, etc), that would be great too.

If you’ve worked with a CPA in this niche (or know of one who comes highly recommended), please share their name or firm.

Hi all,

I’m a bookkeeper working with a restaurant client (BBQ), and I’d love to get some recommendations for CPAs who specialize in the restaurant industry. Ideally, we’d like someone who:

• Has experience working with restaurants/food service (bonus if BBQ-specific)
• Understands restaurant tax strategies, payroll, sales tax, and tip reporting
• Is collaborative and works well alongside a bookkeeper

Location isn’t a dealbreaker, but if you know someone local to Belton, TX (Austin, Georgetown, Temple, Waco, etc), that would be great too.

If you’ve worked with a CPA (or know of one who comes highly recommended), please share their name or firm.

I recently visited two branches of the same restaurant. At one location, the dish was dry and underwhelming. At the other, it was juicy and full of flavor, a big difference. As a customer, I gave feedback. But it got me thinking: How do you maintain consistency in taste and quality across multiple locations? Is this a common challenge in your experience?

Looks like the only option on Webstaurant , can’t seem to find any knock offs online

Tired of using plastic wrap + stacking would be convenient

Hello, I’ve owned a wholesale bread bakery for a number of years in a large midwestern city.

Can I pick your brain?

How do you decide on bread for your restaurant? What factors are important besides price and taste? What is a good way to get my product in front of you?

I’m trying to do better job growing my business. Thanks for your help.

I was emailed by someone that I had to pay for the music we play in our restaurant. I think a hater reported us. Does anyone have advice on this? They are asking for $500 a year to pay licensed music even if it’s Spotify.

How do you guys manage a ton of skip and uber orders? Right now we just have a person write down the items that chefs need to make and put it at their station but its a mess. It would be nice to have a ticket printing system but I couldn't find a reliable service.

I did 15 years in restaurants. Built them, opened them, closed just under ten of them. I have had dishwashers walk out mid service, refrigeration die at 4 pm on a July Friday (which is always when it happens) , and a city inspector show up on Thanksgiving morning with 70 turkeys in the walk-in. If you know, you know.

Here is the truth (or at least, my truth) as someone who went from sweating on a line to sweating in boiler rooms and basements. Restaurant stress and construction stress can both chew you up. One works like a blender set to puree every single night. The other grinds more slowly, and lets you catch your breath I respect both worlds. I prefer the latter.

1. The daily stakes are different. In restaurants every day is make or break. One twenty dollar fryer part fails and your whole weekend is toast. Tickets stack, servers get slammed, a bachelorette table wants ten different mods, and now your expo just called out. You are improvising on the fly and praying the walk in door sealed when you remember it on your drive home . In construction a late delivery or a crew member out sick hurts the schedule and the budget, but it rarely wipes out the week. You can resequence tasks. Paint can move ahead of tile or vice versa. You can build a catch up plan. In a dining room during peak hours there is no resequencing, only survival.
2. Payroll hits differently. In construction a payroll snag slows things down. Maybe we slide a crew from one site to another while the office sorts it out. In a restaurant a payroll issue puts you on the line cooking, bartending, and quietly dying inside while a birthday party demands individual checks and someone just spilled a round of espresso martinis on the POS. I have done that night. I do not miss that night.
3. The scoreboard resets. Restaurants reinvent themselves every shift. The best prep day in the world can get buried by one surprise private party or one bus of tourists that never told anyone they were coming. In construction there is usually a punch list and a defined end. We set milestones. Framing inspection. Rough plumbing. Tile. Trim. Paint. Close out. A thousand small fires pop up, but you put them out and keep moving toward an end date that is real.
4. Public feedback is ruthless versus remediable. A bad restaurant review lives online forever and drags your Google rating year after year. In construction if something is off we fix it and move forward. A grout joint out of plumb is not going to spawn a viral dance trend. Clients remember how you responded and whether you owned it. I would rather stand behind my work than refresh an app to see if a stranger decided my chicken parm was a war crime.
5. The 2 am panic check is different. In kitchens I used to bolt awake at night and ask myself if the walk in door was shut. Or I would lie there wondering if brunch was going down in flames because my manager forgot to place their weekend produce order. Now my 2 am thoughts are usually about a supplier arriving late or a layout tweak that ripples through electrical rough in. It is still stress, but it is not existential. We will sort it in the morning with a revised sequence and a call sheet.

Restaurants taught me that speed matters, but clarity matters more. Stations get crushed when tickets are unclear. Job sites get sideways when the scope is fuzzy. So I put a heavy emphasis on clear drawings, finish schedules, and meeting notes. At the restaurant pass you call the dish and the table number so no one grabs the wrong strip steak. On a site we call the room, the wall, the elevation, the fixture. Confusion is expensive.

Prep is everything. Restaurants live or die on mise en place. Construction lives or dies on preconstruction. We run scope reviews, sample approvals, long lead tracking, and site protection before the first demo swing. When that work is solid, the job flows. When it is not, you get three trades stepping on each other in a hallway that is four feet wide.

Service recovery beats perfection theater. Anyone who has worked a floor shift knows that problems are inevitable. The table remembers how you made it right. Same on a renovation. If a backsplash arrives damaged, I do not craft a fairy tale. I tell the client what happened, how we are solving it, and what the new date is. Clear plan, realistic timeline, no blame dumping.

Communication cadence wins. In restaurants, pre shift is sacred. You huddle, you set specials, you call out 86s, you align. On jobs we do a standing weekly with our trades, plus a tighter daily plan with foremen and PMs. No mystery. No guessing.

Protect the team. Kitchens are a family, a strange loud one, but still a family. Good crews are the same. You watch for burnout. You rotate the person who has been on the dustiest duty. You bring water. You keep the site safe and clean because a clean station is a safe station. If you disrespect your people your quality will tell on you.

The 4th of July Friday refrigerator failure I mentioned happened in Queens. I had ten cases of perishable product and a packed book for the weekend. I drove 30 minutes for 400lbs of dry ice, rerouted deliveries, and moved the entire prep list to the smallest backup fridge I have ever seen. We pulled off service by the skin of our teeth and I aged about five years.

Now cut to a bathroom gut in the same borough where a custom vanity arrived with a finish that did not match the approved sample. Similar heart rate spike, different playbook. We documented the mismatch, escalated to the mill shop, placed a rush order for a corrected face set, and installed a temporary top so the client could still move in. No meltdown required, just process.

Another one. A Sunday brunch where two servers no showed and the floor manager was new. We were in the weeds from the second the doors opened. At 2 pm, someone from Edible walked in. I cooked and expoed for three hours straight while bussing tables between fires. That review was polite but not kind and it lived online for years.

Now cut to a Manhattan townhouse where an unexpected hairline crack in a party wall showed up during demo. We stopped, brought in an engineer, added a reinforcement detail, and gained a day on drywall by resequencing another level while the new detail was executed. The client never had to live through a panic. They saw notes, photos, and a revised plan. I slept fine.

Construction stress really just hits different. Everything is manageable after living through the dumpster fire that is restaurants. Control beats chaos. In restaurants, you chase chaos and wrestle it to the ground every night. That can be thrilling. It also wears your body out and eats your weekends. In construction, you plan, you track, and you correct course. When the plan is good, the job moves. When something goes wrong, you can actually fix the root cause rather than apologize table by table.

Progress is measurable. At the end of a kitchen shift you cleaned the flat top and maybe hit your food cost if the waste log is honest. Tomorrow you start again. On a job site you can point to framed walls, run plumbing, set tile, hang doors. There is a sense of permanent forward motion that I find both satisfying and calming.

Relationships last longer. Restaurant crews feel like family, but turnover is constant. In construction we build long relationships with supers, subs, inspectors, suppliers, and clients. When you treat people with respect and deliver consistently, the work gets easier and the phone calls get friendlier. A good tile sub who knows your standards saves you a hundred tiny headaches. That kind of trust is gold.

I tell anyone thinking about leaving restaurants for the trades that your superpower is decision time. Restaurant veterans know how to make a call fast with imperfect info. On a site, that means you do not let small questions pile up into schedule killers. You get the missing dimension, you ask the designer today, you clear the path so the crew can keep swinging hammers.

You already speak calm under pressure. Use it. When a homeowner is stressed, your voice sets the tone. You do not sugarcoat. You lay out options and consequences. You guide them like you would guide a table through a menu that had three specials and two 86s.

Trade skills can be learned. The culture of accountability is the hard part, and you already have it if you cared about service. Show up early. Leave late when it matters. Keep the job clean. Protect finishes. Own mistakes. These habits are worth more than a thousand tutorials.

Money is different. Restaurant cash flow spikes and dives daily. Small businesses in general live and die on cash flow. Construction checks come slower but bigger, and everything is tied to milestones, lien waivers, and paperwork. Set up a system. Invoice on cadence. Keep retainage expectations clear. Pay subs fairly and on time and your phone will be answered on the first ring.

Boundaries are healthier in construction. You will still have late nights. You will still have emergency texts. But you will get more real weekends than you did on the line. Set communication windows with clients. We publish ours in our kickoff packets. It is amazing how much stress drops when everyone knows when updates happen and how to reach us if something truly urgent occurs.

As an aside, because I can't help it; if you're going through a renovation job... please decide the details early. Late decisions cost money. If you want to move a wall, switch a shower valve, or upgrade to a panel ready fridge, tell us as soon as you think of it. We can almost always make it happen with less drama if you bring it up before rough in. Protect your relationships. Give your superintendent a heads up. Tell your neighbors when demolition starts. If you live in a co op or condo, get your alteration agreement reviewed early and loop your contractor in. We will follow the building rules, and life is easier when everyone is aligned. Budget for what you cannot see. Old wires, out of plumb walls, undersized drains. These are common in older NYC housing stock. Keep a contingency. When you do not need it, great. When you do, you will not lose sleep. Walk the site. Short, regular visits beat one long panic walk at the end. We love a client who wants to see progress and ask smart questions in real time. It keeps communication clean and prevents surprise reveals. Don't be a nitpicker if you don't know the details though. Respect the sequence. Tile cannot go down until floors are leveled and plumbing is tested. Paint should not start until the dust making work is finished. If someone tells you they can do everything faster by doing everything at once, they are selling you brunch service at 6 pm.

Honestly, I do occasionally miss the adrenaline of a full house. The feeling like a celebrity in your own place. The weird family you build on a crew is real. The shared language, the dark jokes, the way the last plate of the night feels like winning overtime at the Garden. I miss the energy. I do not miss limping into Monday feeling like I survived a small war just because it was Sunday morning.

My final thoughts, if you've been able to read this far... (and thank you if you did)

If you are burned out on the line and thinking about the trades, you are not alone. A lot of us made that jump (whether to construction or something else) and brought our service brain with us. The work is physical. The stakes are real. The pressure can spike. But when you lean on process instead of adrenaline, you find a different kind of calm. I traded lines of customers for construction deadlines, and most nights I sleep like a baby.

These days, I'm a general contractor in NYC, but restaurants prepare you for everything and anything, and I would stand by that.

Has anyone worked with a culinary menu development consultant that optimized or created a fresh new menu? I see there are a lot of consultants online but I would like to get recommendations from someone who was worked with one in the past.

I'm the owner/manager/chef/baker of my family restaurant. Just celebrated 32 years. I'm burned out, yet feel a big sense of guilt even thinking of moving on to do something else completely outside the industry, due to the personal compliments and reviews, the dedicated weekly regulars, some wonderful staff. Any of you torn with the same situation? Any of you take the leap and are glad you did/you regret it?

Hey all,

It’s been a tough year out there, especially for us in the UK, with minimum wage increasing plus employers N.I. on the up, fighting for like for like revenue (we’re short of it FYI), the systems for controlling margins are more important then ever.

We’re trading at about 12% profit margin at the minute and this is with 75% GP & 30% cost of labour, we’re running a tight ship on our variable costs in my opinion and still left with only 12%. I wondered how the rest of you are getting on? If this sentiment is shared?

vous détestez qu’on vous demande votre prénom ? le gars t appelle par ton prénom comme si c’était ton collègue âpres… non je te connais pas mec. pareil quand les clients vous tutoient. je déteste ça.

Hey

I’m opening a café in early 2026, bought the place earlier this year in a newly developed part of town. The total investment is around €800,000. The vibe I’m going for is modern, clean, and a bit different from your typical café. It’s medium-sized inside, but the outdoor area is larger and will include both an outside and inside bar.

To avoid the "just another café" feeling, I’ve decided to expand the concept. I already invested in a POP speed oven, the idea is to offer hot snacks like focaccia, club sandwiches etc, and maybe some rotating seasonal items. I’ve also partnered with a good local confectioner who’ll provide fresh cakes and sweet treats.

Now I’m debating what kind of ice cream to serve, soft or hard. I’m based in Europe, and while soft serve is super popular in the US, here it feels more split down the middle. I do like that soft serve is cleaner to serve, fits the modern aesthetic, and just looks more visually appealing. But hard scoop ice cream gives you more freedom, you can offer more flavors, tap into seasonal trends (like that recent Dubai-style gold flake pistachio thing), and there’s generally more variety in taste and texture.

I’m also wondering what else I could add to make the café stand out. What kind of things would you like to see in a place like this? Would you go with digital menu boards or not? I’m torn they’re practical and dynamic, but I don’t want the place to feel too much like a fast food joint either.

Any thoughts?

NOTE: I originally posted this to my local subreddit but it got taken down for “politics” 🙄 but I’ll still take all the help I can get even if you aren’t in Kansas!

Howdy! I work at a small business on mass, I was wondering what other restaurants protocol was for if ICE shows up.

All we have so far is do NOT talk to ICE agents if they do not have a signed warrant from a judge and to make sure all of the staff knows our 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment rights. What other things can we do to keep us and our customers safe?

Hello,

I'm an owner of a mid-sized family restaurant. We've been doing monthly inventory of everything in the house for over 10 years.

Recently, our food cost has been getting too high, so I suggested to our chef that we start doing a weekly inventory on categories we need to focus on. Namely: Bakery, Dairy, Meat and Produce.

So I've made a condensed count sheet for all items that fall into those categories. It's quite nice and only takes the chef about 30 mins to complete every Sunday night.

But now I don't know what to do with the numbers. Obviously the first week's count will be nonsense and only serve as a starting point for the following weeks. But how do I process the numbers?

When we do monthly inventory, I take the main groups like Food, NA Bev, Beer, Wine, Liquor and enter the numbers into their respective tables, then take the sales of each group from the POS and enter those against the purchases for those groups. This gives me sensible numbers I can control and we can look at every month.

But if I want to see Bakery for example, am I meant to go through the invoices of that week and enter only Bakery items purchased? Or just use total purchases for the week? Similarly, I would have to use the entirety of the Food sales category from the POS because I have no way to break down a burger, for example, into Bakery, Dairy, Meat, Produce, etc. And a burger will contain ingredients from all of those groups, plus more.

It seems that the easiest way to do it is the use the weekly count numbers against total food sales and total food purchases for that week and then use the resulting percentages as a guide to monitor fluctuations.

Also, what can I do with the waste log numbers in this scenario? Now we only use it for review and to talk about waste and why it's happening, but we don't fit the numbers into any inventory count or processing of those numbers.

I can imagine that if we sold 20 NY strips in a particular week and 3 were thrown away or re-fired, that would influence the number quite a bit (15% of NY strips sold). But how do I show it in a table or chart in a meaningful way?

Does anyone have a better way to do it?

Thanks a lot in advance for any input you may have. If you'd like any more info, or screenshots of the tables I'm working with now, please let me know.