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,...

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 ...

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,...

It’s all about ROI and how to maximize it   There are a variety of gauges a business can use to measure the success of its marketing. But to really measure you must first know your goal. Was it money in the bank, build a database, find a n...

Catastrophe — it’s one of those words you try not to utter in the restaurant industry. But it’s hard not to think about “what if there’s a fire, someone gets hurt in my place, the delivery driver has an accident?” ...

I haven’t updated my menu in a couple of years except for price adjustments. Is it worth it to pay a professional company to do this for me? Austin Rodigero Phoenix, Arizona I’m rarely stopped dead in my tracks. A few years ago, however, I did a ...

Seven tips for renegotiating your lease   While the recession is coming to an end, many operators are still struggling. The good news? Your landlord is feeling the squeeze, too. According to the National Association of Realtors, retail vacancy r...