Hospitality
Frank Bennett
The DNA Required to Clone a Successful ...

Successful full service neighborhood restaurants are rarely duplicated in a second location, even by their original founder. I have observed this phenomenon over and over throughout my forty years on the New York restaurant scene. Whenever a successful restaurant in one neighborhood tries to expand to another location, it rarely enjoys the success of the original restaurant and often fails completely after a short stay in business. Why? Why can't successful restaurateurs do it again? The failure rate for duplicating successful restaurants is too high! What goes wrong when industry leaders try to repeat their success?

 To find the answer, I decided to interview 25 independent restaurant owners who had tried to open a successful second restaurant and had met with varying degrees of disappointment.

LESSINGS HISTORY - PART 3

Diversification

Tight-knit Irish clans are often guided by an invisible hand. When I asked Jack Lessing, the Chairman of Lessing’s, when the family first got into the retail restaurant business he answered, “It wasn’t until 1977. My mother, a devout Irish Catholic, never wanted the family to sell liquor.”

But in 1977, a friend of Jack’s told him that the only bar in Breezy Point, (the now world famous New York Irish Police and Fireman’s community destroyed in Hurricane Sandy) was for sale. The Bay Terrace Bar was the only pub in a community of 3,800 homes occupied by New York’s Firefighters and Policemen.

IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING - YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT GOING TO GET THERE

The purpose of this weekly blog is to stimulate thought and discussion about the topics that affect the entire social services sector. Even though our blog appears here on the FAMCare site, it is not our intention to inform you about our products in this space. However, every now and then, FAMCare does provide the perfect solution to a problem the social services sector is faced with. 

TRACKING OUTCOMES 

THE ART OF ATTRACTING TOURISTS

Only the art of tourist marketing will set your restaurant apart from all the rest. What, however, is the art? Just like looking at a Michelangelo or a Rembrandt to try to define art, let’s look at the greatest tourist marketing artists the restaurant industry has ever seen and see what we can learn from them.

Frank Giuffrida’s Hilltop Steakhouse

During the 1970s and 80s America’s largest restaurant was located in a little out-of-the-way New England town known as Saugus, Massachusetts. Frank Giuffrida’s Hilltop Steakhouse did three times the volume of the nation’s second-largest restaurant, Tavern on the Green, in Manhattan’s Central Park. 

THE 4 INDISPENSIBLE QUALITIES OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

I had a friend participate as a guest blogger this week for us.  His name is Frank and this is his post.  I hope you enjoy it.

 The theme of a class on advanced management practices I attended at the Harvard Business School was...INFORMATION.

 Modern management theory focuses on the speed and quality of actionable information. At Harvard they are teaching that critical management information sources must be accurate, real-time, data-driven, and actionable.

ONE RASPBERRY

Gerda Weissmann Klein was confined to a Nazi Concentration Camp during World War II where her entire family was killed. Crushed by the nightmare that had suddenly enveloped her childhood, she began to suffer a deep depression that was robbing her of her will to live. 

 "Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend."

FAMCare Blog: Un-kept Promises at the VA

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

  Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923.

 Broken promises are the real scandal at the VA. For many years well-intentioned and highly competent case workers and medical professionals have enthusiastically gone to work for the VA only to find themselves overwhelmed by need and ill-equipped to provide timely service.

It's High Time - Nonprofits on Social Media

 Three years ago the trend in for-profit content began to shift away from lists of product features and advantages to stories about customers who had used the product or service. Creatively written case histories became king of most for-profit content writing. In addition, more and more of this creative content began to be written for, and placed on, social networks. 

 Nonprofits have been experimenting with mobile and social networks for years. I have noticed, however, that they do not fully understand how social networks are different from traditional online communications and fundraising. 

LESSING'S: A FAMILY OF INNOVATORS

LESSING'S: A FAMILY OF INNOVATORS

The oldest family-owned and operated food service business in the United States is Lessing’s in Great River, New York. The company was founded by Maxwell Lessing in 1890 and is operated to this day by 15 family members representing three generations of Lessings. This highly diversified company feeds more than 40,000 guests a day at over 100 corporate, educational, country club, and manufacturing plant locations throughout the Northeast. Lessing's also operates thirteen high-end wedding and catering venues, 9 full service restaurants, an historic hotel built in 1751, and has entered into a franchise agreement with Blaze Fast Fire'd Pizza to develop a chain of pizza restaurants. The Lessing family has provided food service to New Yorkers for 125 years without interruption. Both the longevity and the success of this legacy company is unprecedented, especially in the food service and restaurant business.

A KEY TOOL FOR SUCCESSFUL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The National Association of Social Workers states emphatically that: “Professional development is an essential activity for ensuring quality social work services. It is a self-directed process, which requires social workers to assume responsibility for the growth of their own professional knowledge base. Regardless of career stage, social workers are ethically required to keep informed of current research, theory, and techniques that guide social work practice to better serve clients and constituents.” 

 Most well-intentioned social workers take every opportunity to advance their professional knowledge, but few are given either the time or the tools to get the job done.