Zata Blog

Total estimated sales of the restaurants, caterers and taverns industry reached $3.5 billion in May, a 3.2% increase from May 2006 on a year-over-year basis. (Data are neither seasonally adjusted, nor adjusted for inflation.)

The increase in sales, at the national level, was due to higher sales at limited service restaurants (+3.8%). Sales for full service restaurants rose 3.3%. These two sectors accounted for more than 86% of the industry’s sales in May. The food service contractors sector also increased (+8.8%). That sector accounted for more than 5% of the industry’s sales in May.

Source: Stats Can

Zata is excited to inform our hospitality clients of a new partnership formed with Tablesetter.com. This new web-based service was designed to drastically simplify constant human resource issues within the industry by focusing on clear-cut ways to cut your operating costs and reduce your turnover rates.

Electronically standardizing the whole resume process for both owner and potential employee, restaurants are provided with privatized human resource account where individuals can directly submit photo-optional, time-stamped, formatted resumes that can be easily sorted by shift availability, position and experience. You no longer have to sort through faxes, emails, attachments, or walk-in resumes- resumes stay on file until either party removes them from the account (no more interviewing individuals just to find out they can’t work the shifts you require). If the resumes on file don’t fit your needs, simply post help wanted ads to the message board for the position desired.

Tablesetter.com offers several other features to restaurant management. Generate new and recurring business by posting any promotional events or specials your establishment runs. Create, manage, and easily contact guests of your establishment through the easy to use Guest Book. Finally, provide comments and expectations regarding your standards and practices for potential employees to evaluate.

Exclusively to Zata clients, Tablesetter.com is offering a FREE 6-month trial membership for your establishment and special pricing after the first 6 months. Leave a comment on the blog to get more information.

Be sure to see what the New York Post had to say about Tablesetter.com. Click Here!

Zata will continue to work with and inform ZATA users of new services to help benefit you and your establishment.

Study: Year-end review of retail sales and competition for market share
2006

Canada’s retailers enjoyed healthy growth rates in all major commodity groups in 2006, and in fact, total sales matched the peak year-over-year gain of the last nine years, according to a new study.

However, retailers, many of whom have been offering increasingly diverse product lines for the past few years, also kept up their fierce competition for the consumer’s dollar, even during this good year.

Total retail sales in 2006 increased 6.4% from 2005, identical to the growth rate in 2002, which was the fastest increase since this data series began in 1998. Sales hit $390.6 billion in 2006, the equivalent of $11,974 in spending per Canadian.

The study, published today in the Analysis in Brief series, examined the growth of retail sales by commodity and the competition among retailers for market share, using data from the Quarterly Retail Commodity Survey.

Food stores still dominated sales of food and beverages. However, general merchandise stores fed more Canadians than ever in 2006, drawing valuable market share from supermarkets in the retail sales of food and beverage products.

Food and beverage stores lost ground in the sale of many other commodities in 2006. For example, in the sale of health and personal care products, pharmacies and personal care stores regained in 2006 much of the ground they had lost to food and beverage stores in the last few years.

On the other hand, in the clothing and footwear sector, the market share of general merchandise stores fell about three-quarters of a percentage point during 2006, the equivalent of a $228-million windfall for their competition.
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Note to readers

The Quarterly Retail Commodity Survey (QRCS) total sales are benchmarked at the trade group level to the Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS) sales estimates. An exception to this is the general merchandise stores sector, as the QRCS includes the sales of department store concessions while MRTS does not. This situation explains the difference between the total sales estimates published on June 26, 2007, and those in this study.

Readers are cautioned that various types of retail stores may sell a range of goods that extends beyond the broad classifications used for the purpose of this study. As a result, the total value of their sales does not necessarily reflect the value of sales of the principal commodities listed in their classification.

For example, estimates for sales at supermarkets do not necessarily reflect all sales of food in Canada. Other trade groups, such as convenience and specialty food stores and general merchandisers, are also involved in food retailing. They account for at least one-quarter of food sales in retail stores.

At the same time, about one-fifth of sales at supermarkets consist of products other than food and beverages. These include household paper products, toiletries and non-prescription drugs.
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Retail trade activity contributed to the nation’s total gross domestic product (GDP). In 2006, the retail sector contributed about 6.0% to GDP. It was the second largest employer in Canada, accounting for 11.0% of total employment, behind the manufacturing sector.

Consumer spending leading contributor to economic growth

Consumer spending was the leading contributor to economic growth in 2006, advancing 4.1%. This growth rate represents the sector’s best performance since 1997.

Low interest rates, a strong Canadian dollar, relatively favourable prices for most goods and services, ongoing job creation and a 6.2% increase in disposable income kept consumer confidence levels high in 2006.

Consequently, retail trade, as well as construction, wholesale trade and finance and insurance, were the main sectors contributing to GDP growth in 2006.

The two largest retail trade sectors are food and beverages and automotive, which together account for roughly half of retail sales.

Of every $100 spent in retail stores in 2006, consumers spent about $22 on motor vehicles, parts and services, $22 on food and beverages and $10 on automotive fuels, oils and additives, the three major categories of spending. This compares with only $3 out of every $100 on sporting and leisure goods, and $2 on housewares. Consumers spent about $9 on each of the other commodity categories.

With prices rising again at the pump, consumers likely noticed that they had to continue to budget more on gasoline in 2006. For every $100 spent in retail stores in 2006, consumers spent $3.50 more on automotive fuels, oils and additives than they did in 1998, and $2.50 less on food and beverages.

On a yearly basis, each Canadian spent, on average, $1,144 on automotive fuels, oils and additives, more than double their allocation of $528 only nine years earlier.

Fastest sales gain: hardware, lawn and garden products

Canada’s housing boom kept things busy for retailers of building materials in 2006.

In 2006, sales of hardware, lawn and garden products, including lumber and other building materials, posted the fastest growth rate of all commodity groupings. Sales for this group surged 9.9% to $27.3 billion, representing an average of $836 on a per capita basis.

Building and outdoor home suppliers have always dominated in terms of market share in the hardware, lawn and garden products sector. They accounted for over 70% of the market share during the entire period under study despite competition from other retailers.

Between 1998 and 2006, the market share of building and outdoor home suppliers rose from 72.3% to 74.5%. However, the 2006 market share remained virtually unchanged, dropping only a tenth of a percentage point from 2005. Still, this small market share decline between 2005 and 2006 represented an amount of $27 million.

The main losers in this sector were general merchandisers, whose market share fell from 16.1% in 1998 to 14.7% in 2006. This decline occurred mostly in lawn, garden, and patio furniture sales.

General merchandisers feed Canadians more than ever

Food stores still overwhelmingly dominated the sales of food and beverages in 2006. However, general merchandisers have been competing hard with them in the last few years and appear to have made some inroads.

Overall, sales of food and beverages hit a record high $84.3 billion in 2006, up 4.8% from 2005.

Food sales alone, which accounted for almost 73% of this commodity grouping, increased 4.5%, slightly slower than the record pace of 5.1% in 2004.

Each Canadian spent, on average, $1,810 on food in retail stores in 2006, $152 on non-alcoholic beverages, and $527 on alcoholic beverages.

Consumers devoted 7.3% of their disposable income to food purchases in 2006, down one percentage point from 1998.

In 2006, food and beverage stores continued to lose ground to general merchandisers. In 2006 alone, they lost nearly a full percentage point in market share, virtually equivalent to their total loss between 1998 and 2005.

On the other hand, the market share in food and beverage products for general merchandisers rose from 7.4% to 9.6% between 1998 and 2006.

Pharmacies partially regain lost ground in sales of health, personal care products

The trend to diversification in retailing has been evident in the health and personal care products sector in the last few years, with the growing involvement of general merchandisers and food stores in pharmaceutical sales.

Sales of health and personal care products rose 8.1% in 2006 to $33.0 billion, the fastest pace in four years. Retailers registered sales of $21.8 billion in prescription and non-prescription drugs, up 9.5% over 2005.

Between 1998 and 2005, the market share of pharmacies and personal care stores in health and personal care products fell from 70.9% to 66.0%.

However, in 2006, pharmacies and personal care stores partially regained lost ground, as their share rebounded to 67.9% at the expense of food and beverage stores.

General merchandisers, who increased their market share from 13.1% in 1998 to 16.2% in 2005, saw it slip to 15.9% in 2006.

Source: Stats Can

There’s more than meets the eye to a good sign.

First you need to consider the location of your sign. Ask these types of questions.

Will your sign be over your door or out on the street?
+ A sign over your door might only need to a have your logo and the name of your business
+ A sign that points people to your business from 3 blocks away should convey a benefit as well

alimente fara colesterol
amenajari interioare
bilete avion madrid
boxe auto alpine
camere slr
ceas armani
atlasib curier
decor cluj
excursie in grecia
catalog gresie faianta
facultati de farmacie
curs frizerie
servicii gazduire
haine de vara
imprimanta cu laser
interviu online
laptopuri in rate
monitoare tft
dentist non stop
scumpire electocasnice
tva servicii
realizare siteuri
traducere autorizata
componente calculatoare

Will it be competing for attention with other signs or will it stand alone?
+ Standing alone, consider the contrast of the sign against it’s background
+ Competing for attention? Use contrast, angles or lighting to make yours stand out

Will it be viewed by people driving by at highway speeds or as they sit in traffic at a light?
+ The further away and faster people will be driving determines the size of the lettering
+ The faster people pass your sign, the less words you can use

Next consider the purpose.

+ Telling the name of your business? Make it clear. Don’t use difficult-to-read fonts
+ Offering a special? What specifically will you be offering? Is price an important component? Or is it availability e.g. “We have iPhones in-stock!”
+ Is your phone number important? How about your website? While there’s a danger of turning your sign into a business card, don’t be shy about putting the information your prospective customers need in order to do business with you.

Finally write the message

As a customer, you need to keep in mind that you need to give me a good reason to come to your store or restaurant.

For example, I drove past a sign that read:

500 Business Cards
$24
Bob’s Printers

Not only did I know that there was a printer there, but I also learned that they’re inexpensive, and if I needed business cards, I had a reason to go there.

That sign could have also offered:

Small Business Package
$59
Bob’s Printers

That change would have broadened the appeal slightly and left room for other packages once a prospective customer visited the location.

Other Resources:

Versabright.com: What makes an effective sign?

A list of tips written by managers of on-campus stores - Pretty good list

-Brad Brooks

TQM - Total Quality Management was a concept touted by Management Guru’s in the early 90’s as a way of ensuring that every part of the organization is striving for excellence.

I was fortunate enough to be part of a TQM implementation while in the restaurant industry in 1994. I say fortunate, because there were a few key points that changed how I viewed business.

Observation 1: Measure only things that matter - and a lot matters

We used the TQM framework to establish operation excellence measures in every part of the business including:

Building exterior
Buliding interior - customer facing space
Service standards - human interaction (was the customer greeted promply)
Service standards - analytics (speed of service measures)
Production areas
Production processes
Storage areas
Waste and Maintenance

As you can see, essentially we started in the parking lot and walked through the restaurant all the way out the back door.

At every point, we looked at broad items such as, “Are the windows clean?” to more detailed questions such as “Are the corners of the front entrance dust and dirt free?”.

By contrasting the broad and the detailed, we created an awareness that it was the little things that made the difference for our guests.

Observation 2: It will never be perfect

The danger is that by adopting such a rigorous methodology that you never get down to the business of running the business. You’re too busy running around with a clipboard making sure that all of the lights are working.

We avoided that by simply accepting that we were never going to measure up.

We resolved that we were going to run at 90% of our operation excellence measure, 100% of the time.

That meant, in practical terms, that we would be great, but not perfect, ALL OF THE TIME.

It made the staff pay attention to details but not get so caught up with them that we sacrificed the profitability of the business.

Observation 3: Consistent application of standards is the key

Once every 2 months a team from another location would come in and measure us. The date and time was random, and we didn’t get advance warning.

The result was a daily walk-through that was standardized so that even a junior staff member could do it. Using pre-printed checklists, they checked 20 of the 200 or so data points that the team would look at. Any more than 2 failures and we would do another test.

Since then, the concept of TQM still resonates. It might be called something different, depending on who’s writing about it, but the concept remains. Measure. Improve. Measure again.

- Brad Brooks

Batrus Hollweg International has done a very interesting study looking at the attitudes of Quick Service Restaurant managers and how they changed between 2001 and 2006.

Click here to download the overview

Overall, they noted:

Significant drops in Leadership and Commitment to Quality
Minor drops in Customer Service Orientation, Communication and Effort & Flexibility
Relatively no change in Problem Solving

The overview even goes on to create some interpretations.

For example, low scores on leadership can:

create a low likelihood of dealing with performance problems
make managers unresponsive the the needs of employees

Low scores on commitment to quality can manifest itself through:
needing a higher level of supervision
cause them to be slow on investigating and resolving food quality and service complaints

They suggest a couple of potential causes for these shifting attitudes

1. Changing generational dyanmics
2. Heavy competition for workers from industries such as retail or healthcare
3. Opportunities in the casual dining category

Overall, QSR owners must do a better job of emphasizing quality and leadership skills during the selection process and reinforcing those attributes during employment.

-Brad Brooks

As a smart business person, you’re always protecting your margin. Your ability to negotiate well with your suppliers is key to staying in business.

Here are 3 easy-to-use tactics to make your negotiating more successful.

Wincing: Your first reaction should be to show anguish whenever any price is given. In my family, my wife is the wincer. I have a tendency to try and look like nothing bothers me. As always, she’s right and I’m wrong. Wince. No price is low enough for you to get excited.

Silence: There’s an old maxim in sales; “He who speaks first, loses.” Try just staying quiet when you reach a critical point in the process, such as when someone gives you a concession. The tension that’s created while you sit quietly often results in another concession. I know one restaurateur who I’ve seen stay silent for 2 minutes. Try it. It will save you money.

Third Party Validation (Higher Authority): Always have someone else that you have to check with in order to prevent having to make a decision on the spot. “I’ll have to have my…” accountant, lawyer, partner, board, consultant, wife, husband or even a key employee “look at this first.” Obviously, you don’t want to prolong the negotiation if you’re ready to make a decision, but this tactic can be used for large decisions very effectively. You can also use it to come back and try for a lower price as well. “I spoke with my accountant, he thinks that I’m paying too much.” The best part of this is that it keeps your relationship with the seller intact.

Use these tactics to make more money in your small business.

-Brad Brooks

Want up-to-date information about what’s going on in the retail and restaurant industries?

Just log into Zata and you’ll get the most recent Industry Averages.

Restaurant Industry Average

Use it as an overview of what’s happening in the restaurant business.

This past weekend I spoke with a manager of a pizza outlet. When I asked about how business was, he stated that they were a lot slower in the summer. In his experience, this was consistent with the rest of the pizza industry.

But, this is not the case in the rest of the local restaurant market here in the Vancouver area. In fact, during the week that we were speaking about, sales for the rest of the restaurant industry had risen dramatically.

Because his only experience was in the pizza industry, he didn’t have the context of what was going on in the rest of the industry.

The hard question is, what do you do once you know? We’ll leave that topic for another day.

-Brad Brooks

Here’s a really great feature that we’ve added to Zata. It came as a direct result of some of the comments we received right after we first launched the site.

You can now add the events that are going on right around your restaurant or retail store and see them within Zata. We’re using feeds from Eventful.com to populate the information.

We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for you to do this. Here are the step:

Step 1:

Click on the “Click her to choose the venues that impact your business” on the main page.

Click for larger image

Step 2:

Select your city and click “GO”. The available venues will be displayed.

Click for larger image

Step 3:

Select the venues you want from the top box. Hold down the [Ctrl] key to select more than one. Click “Add Selected Venues to List”.

Click for larger image

Step 4

Save the settings and click on “Click here to view Events for these Venues”

You’ll get the To-Do page with a list of events for the venues you’ve selected.

Click for larger image

That’s it, and you’ll get the events displayed on the main page from now on as well.

Click for larger image

Let us know how you like it.

-Brad Brooks

One of the great new features in Zata is the ability to add multiple groups.

You can now create custom parameters so you’re compared to exactly the types of restaurants or retail stores that are similar to yours.

As well, you can add more than one custom group. That means if you have a restaurant you could have the following groups:

All Vancouver Restaurants
All Quick Service Vancouver Restaurants
All Restaurants in BC
All Casual Dining Restaurants within 50 km

…and you’ll be able to see them all at the same time.

It’s easy to set up your custom groups. In fact, you can do it in just a few steps.

First, click the icon at the top of the page labeled “My Groups”

Click to enlarge image

Then just follow the instructions on the screen.

Click to enlarge image

Don’t forget to give your group a meaningful name. Once you’ve set up a bunch of groups, “First Group” won’t mean much.

Some of the cool options include choosing a radius, building type, service type or even specifying square footage comparison.

If you want to use the Predictor (which is our crystal ball for estimating sales), just check the box.

Once you’ve saved your new groups, just go to the My ZATAs icon at the top of the screen and add your new groups to any or all of the metrics down the left hand side of the page.

If you get stuck, you can always click on the Help icon at the top of the screen.

Try it out at https://secure.myzata.com.

-Brad Brooks