School of Operations
As word got around that Dave was a quality consultant and speaker, more and more people asked for his advice and counsel. The demand became so strong that he finally sold Big Dave's Pizza & Subs to dedicate all of his time to his clients. He is a regular columnist in Pizza Today and a fixture at Pizza Expo. He travels more than 80,000 miles a year to work with foodservice operators from start-ups to multinational, multi-billion dollar corporations. Case studies from some of Big Dave's clients How the School of Operations With all due respect to my friend Kamron, it is obvious that you can increase your bottom line by improving your marketing (and he is the best in the biz at that) ... but if you are gaining sales and losing money on each transaction, the more you sell, the more money you lose. Operations is where it's at!
Marketing is the sexy part of building your bottom line. In the School of Operations, we do the grunt work -- the basic blocking and tackling that separates profitable high volume operations from those on the "For Sale by Owner" list. Don't get me wrong ... Grunt work is not necessarily tedious or boring. In fact, there is an exciting sense of freedom that comes from having effective systems in place to assure that your product is consistent, your costs are firmly under control and that your business runs efficiently whether you are on the premises or not. (This is part of that "have a life" idea!) Some would say that great systems are the difference between a hobby and a real business. A hobby is just a way to kill time and dispose of spare cash. A real business can be expanded at will, successfully passed to the next generation ... or easily sold for an obscene amount of money when you are ready to move on. I can certainly testify that it takes far more energy to "make it up" every day than to have effective procedures in place. Great systems may not sound as sexy as boosting your sales by 20%, but good systems can easily be the difference between just getting by and making a comfortable living without the need to bring in any additional sales dollars at all. Besides, if you can't deliver a consistent product at a consistent profit, why waste time on marketing? If you major in Operations ... You will learn how to stop the bleeding by getting an iron grip on portion control. In my experience, most independent operators easily lose half of their profit on the make line. You will learn a simple system that will allow you to make better pizzas, faster and at a lower cost ... without having to touch your present prices. You will learn how to gently clamp down on employee theft and stop bleeding financially from missing receipts and vanishing products. People steal from you because they have the need and the opportunity. Addressing the need is more in Bill's area ... but you must know how to eliminate the opportunities to keep honest people honest. You will learn how to buy smarter. Your vendors are actually eager to sell you groceries at prices 10-15% lower than what you are paying right now ... but they won't do it unless you know how to ask them for this cost savings. You will learn how to transform your lame "price list" menu into a lean, mean selling machine. Working with your own menu and costs, you will quickly determine which entrees are profitable ... and which ones are not worth the effort. You will see where you are making money in your menu mix and what to do with under-performing products. You will learn how to constantly monitor your principle costs and how to react to the data, both positive and negative. Does this sound like a lot of work? How about a simple way to know your food cost every day ... without taking an inventory? We will discuss national and global trends in the industry and predict the newest, hottest most profitable ideas for putting more money on your bottom line. I am on the road a hundred days a year sponging up "silver bullets" from coast to coast and around the world ... and they are all yours for the taking. Hmmmm. Operations actually sounds SEXIER than Marketing! |
Big Dave OstranderImperial Palace Hotel
Las Vegas, NV
October 22-24, 2007
Big Dave Ostrander
The Pizza Doctor
School of Operations
Bill Marvin
The Restaurant Doctor
School of Leadership
Kamron Karington
Author, The Black Book
School of Marketing