Let’s talk about the art of Pencil Whipping. Here’s the “official” definition from Wiktionary: Verb pencil whip (third-person singular simple present pencil whips, present participle pencil whipping, simple past and past participle pencil whipped) (idiomatic) To approve a document without actually knowing or reviewing what it is that is being approved. (idiomatic) To complete a …
restaurant operations
Alerting, Forced Comments, and Task Management in Checklists
A lot of our prospective clients ask us if we can force comments, create alerts or tasks when there are safety violations on their checklists. We don’t offer these features, not for technical reasons, but for liability and management reasons. I’m going to use this blog to explain our thinking on this subject. Alerts and tasks sound …
OpsAnalitica’s Managed Service Offering
There are two things that I know to be absolutely true: If you use the OpsAnalitica Inspector to automate your checklists – YOUR RESTAURANTS WILL BE SAFER! Restaurant managers don’t have time to take on additional projects no matter how important they are. That is why we have created our Managed Service License, the first in the industry. …
Food Safety Concerns Among Consumers Increase
Just this week I came across the above graphic and an article out of QSR Mazazine citing a national study that showed 74% of consumers expect better food safety. The same study also found “that while a slight majority (53 percent) of U.S. consumers say that their level of concern about food safety has stayed …
Flavorless Pizza
Last weekend I ordered pizza from a new place in our neighborhood that we had never tried. We had friends over, and they swear by this place, so we gave them a shot. The pizza was flavorless. My friend who orders from them regularly commented on how the pizza wasn’t up to par. My guess …
7 Tips for Faster Better Line Checks
Pre-shift line checks are a requirement for running a successful restaurant. Line checks provide management the ability to inspect their restaurant before the meal period to: Ensure that they are stocked properly, Pars The right food is on the line, FIFO That everything is safe to serve, Temperature Control The correct serving ladles and spoons …
How Checklist Tags Help Reduce Food Cost
Question and response tagging. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well… What is it? Ok let’s take a look at what question and response tagging is and what it means to your checklists and operations data. It is hugely beneficial and saves you one of your most precious resources. Time. And we all know what time is. …
Chipotle’s Woes Could Happen to Any of Us
A couple of years ago I met with a Chipotle Director to show him the Inspector app of that time. My hope going into the meeting was that he would have been so blown away that he would have walked us into the VP of Ops office. He didn’t, full disclaimer, he wasn’t officially speaking …
Inspection, Managerial and Custom Reports
We have spent all of 2015 to get to this point; our data warehouse is up and running, and we are releasing our first set of managerial reports. Let me explain how reports work in the OpsAnalitica platform. We have three types of reports: Inspection, Managerial and Custom: Inspection Reports: consist of summary views of …
Why Getting Rid of Tipping in Full Service Restaurants is Stupid
Full-service restaurants are unique in American business in that the incentive systems for service employees are perfectly aligned with the goals of the business. It is an amazing sight to see employees working to benefit themselves and simultaneously benefitting the owners and managers of the establishment. Allow me to explain. Servers in restaurants make a …