Did you know that the NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the CDC) conducted an 18 month study and found that over 5,200 adolescent (young workers) sought emergency-room treatment for work related burns associated with cooking in a place where food was prepared? Of the hazards where burns occurred, servicing cooking equipment (i.e. adding, filtering, removing hot grease from fryers, and cleaning) ranked toward the top. It’s not a matter of if someone will get burned, but when.

We all have a responsibility to educate food service workers on proper safety when it comes to working with and around deep fryers.

From there, the oil is purified and the majority sent to be made into biodiesel, the safe and environmentally friendly alternative to petrochemical based diesel.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States spends about $475,000 a minute on foreign oil – a staggering number when you stop to think about it. The annual total spent on crude oil imports is approximately $250 billion. The U.S. uses approximately 20 million barrels of oil a day (that’s about 3 gallons a day for every person in the country), more than half of which is imported. By 2025, demand is expected to rise to 26 million barrels a day – about 60 percent of which will be imported.

Consider this: In addition, China’s rising oil demand and imports have made it a significant factor in world oil markets. China is second only to the U.S. in consumption, surpassing Japan for the first time in 2003. Transportation sector ranks first in consumption. Roughly 67 percent of all U.S. oil consumption is in the transportation sector.

About 37 billion gallons of on-road diesel are used each year in the U.S. According to the EIA, reducing demand for oil in the transportation sector will have to be the central component in any serious effort to reduce the overall demand for oil.

A job analysis may seem like a big project that is unnecessary for the average restaurant owner.

In essence, a job analysis is a written description that outlines the job expectations, job functions, and job description for any given position.  The benefit to taking the time to do this for each position in your restaurant is two fold.  First, it gives every team member a clear understanding of who is responsible for what activities on a daily basis.  Secondly, it provides a guideline to review your employees by, allowing you to clearly see where an employee lacks or excels in their job duties.  The hidden benefit is that in the event that you need to discipline or even terminate the employment of an individual, you can clearly prove that the employee understood their job duties and failed to meet expectations.  This can avoid costly unemployment claims and negativity against your restaurant in the marketplace.

Writing a job analysis is not a complicated matter.  Consider the role of each employee on both a day to day basis and long term objectives.  Walk through the work day visually for each position held in your restaurant.  If you are not well versed in each employee’s duties, tag along with one of them for the day and keep track of what is done and what could be added or removed from their workload to make business run more efficiently.  Aside from physical duties, consider what  you expect from each position in regards to personality, attire, and attitude.  Set goals that you think are reasonable for personal growth and document these carefully.

Once you have your basic notes, write the details down in a simple format that clearly states the expectations and duties.  Also include disciplinary actions that will be faced if these expectations and duties are not met.  It is important to make sure that you stick by what you put in writing, although allow for flexibility and make changes as needed over time.

Be sure to share your job analysis for each position with your co-managers and other support staff, and make sure that it is used as a report card to keep track of employee progress.  While it should not take more than a few hours to write a job analysis, the time saved will be a blessing when it is time for you to review your employees for consideration of raises.  Having a firm checklist they agreed to upon being hired to compare their work against avoids what can otherwise be an awkward and daunting process that most managers dread.

So while generally considered a  tool for large organizations with human resource departments, even the smallest of start up restaurants can benefit from a detailed job analysis.

See what people who have been to a Filta Discovery Day say… you may be surprised.  Here they talk about the day, the people they meet and the FiltaFry business.

Even those with marketing degrees may be looking at how successful businesses today handle marketing while scratching their heads in confusion and wonder.  The internet has virtually done away with newspapers, quite literally in some markets.  Gone are the days of running expensive paper ads, mailing coupons in the mail and guessing which radio spots will work best for your restaurant.  Social media is all the buzz in all aspects of marketing today and the best part is that, for the most part, it is free!

Social media, according to Wikipedia, is “media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”  What that means in plain English is it is a way to use the internet to reach your target audience directly with little more than a few strokes of your keyboard.

So how can social media marketing benefit your restaurant?  Easy.  It’s been proven by the National Restaurant Association that the bulk of your business will be repeat customers.  Someone comes into your establishment, enjoys a fine meal and comes back for more.  Tapping into their attention span while they are online reading their email, chatting with friends, or catching up on Facebook gives you an opportunity to directly place your restaurant into their mind.

The best way to start is to let your customer know you have an internet presence.  Give them incentive to accept you into their virtual world by handing out cards when they check out with your restaurants online information.  Your website, myspace profile, Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account should all be listed.  If you do not have these, or have no idea where to begin, you can likely get one of your internet savvy employees to happily set these up for you. Reward your customers for adding you to their network by offering frequent coupons or other incentives available only to your followers.

It is important not to cross the line between friendly reminders and spam.  Nothing will kill your marketing plan faster than continually advertising to your audience.  The key is to mix your direct advertising with fun little bits that keep your audience engaged.  A perfect example would be for a pizza restaurant to post about a printable coupon in the morning before people are thinking about where to go for lunch, then in the afternoon share with your fans the fact that “The world largest pizza was a round pizza 122 feet and 8 inches across. The ingredients were 9,920 lbs of flour, 198 lbs of salt, 3968 lbs of cheese and 1984 lbs of tomato puree.”  While fun, these type of statements will get your fans talking about and passing along your name to their friends, eventually adding to your customer count.

Having completed the February training course, new Filta Franchise Owner Paul Casarotto speaks about his experience with joining the Filta team.

What type of risk taker are you?
You need to start the decision making process by taking into account your comfort zone as well as your goals.  With a start up, you have a higher risk of investment, as nearly fifty percent of all start up businesses fail in the first five years.  You will also find you will work harder to meet your goals, at least initially.  Without an established brand to back you up, you have to push yourself infront of your target customer and draw them into your doors.  While hard work and bigger risk may scare some people off, for the adventurous entrepreneur the payoff can be big.  Consider any major franchise out there today.  Each of those mega corporations started out as someone’s local, home-grown business.  If your dream is to own an empire, an individual business may be the best option for your investment capitol.

If you prefer to invest in a manner that is lower risk, franchising may be the better option for you.  Franchising provides a great opportunity to open a business without the requirement of building a brand.  The brand recognition, consumer loyalty and track record is there for you to see.  Franchises often have entire teams devoted to helping their franchisees succeed- from choosing the right real estate to walking you through supply orders, a franchisor is committed to helping you avoid mistakes. Franchisees reap the benefits of corporate advertising, as few individual businesses can hire design and marketing teams to promote their concept the way a major established corporation can. The downside to franchising is that you must run your business within the guidelines of the parent company, so despite having your own business, there is still the “boss” entity many wish to avoid.  There is tremendous opportunity for profit, but your ability to expand in your market may be limited by territory boundaries.

There is no “best” or “one size fits all” answer to the question of franchise versus independent business. In the end, both can be lucrative, both have risks, and both have their limitations.  Talking with other experienced entrepreneurs that have struck it alone as well as successful franchisees is the best place to start.  In the end, it is a personal choice as to which is right for you.

The benefits to franchising can best be summarized with one statement.  There is less risk to the investor.  This isn’t to say that there are absolutely no risks involved in starting a franchise.  However, the chances of succeeding with a new business and generally the fastest way to see your bottom line in the black is to open a franchise rather than an independent business.

Considering that by and large, the majority of new businesses that do not survive that essential first five years in business are independent businesses, one has to question why franchises are a safer bet for your investment capitol.  There is no one magic answer, but rather several contributing factors that when pieced together complete a puzzle that is much more solid and therefore a safer investment all around.

Brand Recognition and Loyalty

Think about starting a brand new business from scratch. As an entrepreneur you have to figure out how to reach your target market, how to communicate to these potential customers what exactly it is that you offer, and entice them to spend their hard earned dollars at your establishment.

A franchise owner gets to skip the majority of those processes.  If the franchisor has been on the market for any real amount of time the general population is probably quite aware of what it offers and has a good impression of business.  It boils down to habit.  People are comfortable with what they know.  A perfect example in the restaurant industry would be opening a Wendy’s franchise.  If you are hungry and have a limited amount of time to eat, and you know that Wendy’s is fast food that you enjoy and can afford, you are more likely to eat at Wendy’s than to try the new burger joint that opened down the street.  While there are always some people that are more adventurous than others, the vast majority would save trying the new restaurant for when they have more time and money at their disposal.

Marketing
Brand recognition and brand loyalty come from another benefit of franchising- marketing.  Marketing is something that costs quite a bit of start up capitol for a new business, but for a franchisee is generally done on a much larger scale by the parent company.  Looking back to our Wendy’s example, the parent company obviously can afford much grander marketing plans than the average start up could ever dream of funding.  The money the parent company spends on advertising has a trickle down effect, benefiting both franchisor and franchisee considerably.

Planning

It is safe to assume that the reason why most independent start ups fail in the first five years is lack of a solid business plan.  With a franchise, these common mistakes have not only been made, but quite clearly overcome, for the parent company to grow to the point it is offering franchisees a part of the business.

While there may be extra costs involved in franchising, those costs are easily made up by the fact that the brand image and loyalty are firmly in place, large scale marketing is done by the parent company, and the majority of the business mistakes have been overcome before you hand over your first dollar.  In today’s economy, safe is the best bet you can make with your investment capitol.