Cafe’s – Need to seat more waiting customers on Saturday night?

"Cafe’s – Need to seat more waiting customers on Saturday night?"

So you are looking to increase profits. How do you go about that? You could increase your prices, but that would likely anger the regulars, not to mention the ever increasing competitive nature of the market could lead to a drastic decrease in customers. So what else? You could increase the amount of customers you have at any one time. . But how can you do that without increasing your real estate size? Simple speed up the customer turn over rate.

One of the most frustrating things for a cafe or restaurant owner is when you have customers waiting for a table, or even worse, customers walking by because the wait times are too long for a table, all the while you have customers who are eating slowly. Wouldn’t it be great if you could speed up the time between seating and paying the cheque?

 

According to an article by Charles Areni, professor of marketing at University Of Sydney  has shown that the speed of the music playing can dictate the rate at which customers consume their food. “Diners eat more quickly – literally bring their forks to their mouths more frequently – when the music is fast rather than slow.”

What does this mean? Well simple:

When you have a slow night, for example, early in the week, you can play slower music and your customers will stay at your café longer and not even realise. This will cause then order more extras eg. Coffee, wine, dessert etc. On the flip side, when your weekend nights are fully booked and you need to turn tables quickly, you play faster tempo music and your customers will not stay as long. Allowing you to get more customers through the door.

Its amazing what music can do!

 

Further reading:

http://www.ppca.com.au/music-users-/restaurantcafetariff/.

Going to have a big lunch? Offset that crash with green tea.

"Going to have a big lunch? Offset that crash with green tea."

 It has been well documented, the health effects of green tea. Green tea has been used for hundreds of years and we are only recently discovering the reasons behind the health benefits associated with this magic drink. expired domain list . Recent studies have unveiled one such healthy component of green tea being a compound called – ECGC, which is a type of flavonoid that is not contained in other teas that could be used to stave off that after-luch carb-crash.

A recent study performed at Penn State University looked into the effects of green tea (containing ECGC) and the blood glucose level of mice after a starchy meal. As you may know, blood glucose, and insulin levels rise after a meal, and this is particularly true of a meal high in carbohydrates. Without getting too scientific, this is a bad thing, and can contribute to the “food coma” or “carb crash” that you experience after a big lunch.  Not to mention a myriad of health effects in the long term such as weight gain, diabetes and others.

The study showed that when the mice were given a dose of ECGC immediately before, during or immediately after the meal, their blood sugar and insulin levels didn’t rise to as higher levels as mice without the ECGC dose. The mice were given a dose approximately equivalent to one cup of green tea in humans.

So what can we take from this study? Aside from re-enforcing the idea that you should try and avoid starchy meals for your general health, if you are going to indulge yourself with a carbohydrate rich lunch (such as anything containing rice, wheat, potatoes etc), and want to mitigate the effects it may have on your afternoon at work, you can do this by consuming a cup of green tea with lunch. Give it a shot!

Further Reading:

http://live.psu.edu/story/62624.