Keep yourself out of IRS trouble No business is more vulnerable than a cash only business. Record- keeping is often sparse. Every day, there are hundreds of transactions that can’t be traced. The lure of taking money out of the till is great. Unles...

The venerable Benjamin Franklin is one of the most-quoted men in American history. His wisdom, it seems, still endures to this day. One of my favorite quotes by the statesman is this: “He that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.” In my case s...

There are reasons why you see so many pizzerias getting behind causes in their area. The short list includes: • Building a sense of community • Giving back • Getting your pizza/name out • Developing a common bond with customers Th...

More and more, customers are making dining decisions on the fly. They take to their phones while in transit to find their next meal. One unfortunate trend among restaurants is to display their menus online as PDFs. Not to get too technical, PDF (Port...

Recently I did a brief survey of some of my pizza pals across the nation. My suspicions proved true — business on Monday is generally half of Friday’s sales. So, can I take a ‘dog’ day and make it a star? Sometimes it is just plain hard or im...

Setting a payscale and integrating incentives With four Blue Moon Pizza stores spread about the Atlanta area, Kelvin Slater cannot make every pizza and touch every table. It’s why Slater feels so compelled to draw and hold on to first-rate employee...

Q: I want to stop living in my business, but I don’t have a manager I can count on. I go on vacation for a few days, and I have hell to pay when I get back. I know I’m not the only one in this boat. How do I get out of it? Dominic […]...

If you sell pizza, you’re a craftsman. Just as a painter, writer, architect or designer creates so, too, do you. It is your craftsmanship –– the long hours of perfecting your recipes so that your artisan pizza comes out of the oven ...

I used to fear technology. Part of my problem was that I assumed every new gizmo would be a passing phase. It’s even worse with digital media — I avoided Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare like the plague because I didn’t want to put the time int...

When you use too many avenues of marketing   Do you ever feel like you are suffering from marketing overload? Ever wonder if you’re on the brink of hitting your social media tipping point? I’ve been there. Sometimes you have to ask yourself,...

How protected is your staff from the competition?   It’s a small business owner’s nightmare: Discovering that the competition has “raided” your staff, leaving you with a skeletal crew to run your restaurant. Employee raids are unethical,...

Running a janitorial service in the 1980s, I depended on good old word of mouth (WOM) to generate business for me. Pair that with a business card, and I had a good thing going. In the 1990s when I stepped into a failing pizzeria, I quickly found out ...