On the House

Singin' the Blues

Boy, I hate to say I told ya so, but...actually, I don’t really hate it... I sorta love it, to be honest.

If you are like me, you may be racking your brains to remember when the last time you heard good news was. The economy is tanked, I can’t bring myself to even look at my 401k, the world is melting down around us...I’m a bit overwhelmed by it all.

Actually, it’s all that plus the trifecta of having drama in my family and at work that has me down, so I may be a little more sensitive to the bad news that you may be, what with virtually everything I care about in a state of upheaval.

But the news IS bad. Our industry is down, foot traffic is down, sales are down, profits are down, people are getting laid off, restaurants that we practically grew up with, like Bennigan’s, are closing, Landry’s is on the table...Landrys!...and the unthinkable happened when InBev actually bought Anheuser-Busch! Did you ever think you’d see the day when THAT happened? Not me..

People I care about are freaking out because they are going to be casualties of all these mergers...people with families and mortgages and futures are losing their jobs in the 4th qtr, in an economy that just lost ANOTHER 700 points last week...and no one is hiring. Bye-bye health insurance, see ya security...you can’t even borrow from your home equity because a. no one is lending and b. HA!, good luck getting equity out of a house that is worth less than you owe for it!

This is really dire. And it’s taking us down.

It used to be that the bar business was considered ‘recession-proof’...paraphrasing a quote I read in Cheers magazine, when the economy is great, people drink. When the economy sucks, people drink. And so it is, but here’s the problem...or is it a benefit?

People ARE still drinking, but they are drinking down. Now, before anyone jumps all over me, I’m not quoting statistics; I’m talking about what I’m seeing in my own restaurtants.

My guests are trading down to cheap beer. We are actually seeing an increase in our beer percentage of sales, all of it attrition from both spirits and wine. And with our COGS being virtually the same as last year in the midst of some of the most egregious cost increases experienced in 2008, that, anecdotally, tells me that guest are drinking the cheap stuff. Sales and purchasing info bears that out.

So, is this good or bad? That depends on what point of view you are looking at it from.

Certainly, like all full-service restaurants, we carry a vast selection of fine spirits, interesting craft and imported beers and moderately priced wines. We want to sell these things. These offerings bring in good margins. But they are also fairly high in cost of goods. You can’t eat COGS, so we want these to sell and get that money in the till.

But, like it our not, we are generally judged in our performance within our companies on COGS.
The optimal scenario is low COGS with high margins. But if you can’t get the high margins because people are trading down, then let’s hope you can get profits up by going around through the back door and lowering your COGS so that more of whatever margin you get falls to the bottom line.

So in this case, with the trade down, we are at least getting a lower COG in the well and domestic macro boom going on right now...at least in our stores.

But that leaves us sitting on a lot of costly products that one must have in order to have a well-stocked bar. We have to keep the stuff around, but it’s not moving like it needs to. Oh, sure, we can brow-beat the staff into the aggressive upsell, but that’s not what they are doing. ‘They’ are us and they are suffering as much as anyone and, restaurant people being in the service industry, ipso facto, they want to serve the guest and the way they are doing it now is to point out the best ways to save money on a bill, against their best interests, since tips are based on total spend, but hoping that honesty will be rewarded by the saved money going into the server’s tip.

Not to mention that, as things slow down, like in any other industry, we are having to cut staff to save labor, resulting in the only way ‘trickle-down economics’ has ever actually worked...foot traffic is down, so we cut staff, so the staff has less time to sell to guests, resulting in less sales, requiring more cuts with less staff to sell...trickling down and spinning in circles all at the same time leaving us...well...screwed.

So, bottom line, we’re taking a huge hit in this economy, and that light at the end of the tunnel IS a train...things are going to get worse before they get better, I’m afraid.

So what do we do now?

Oh, you thought I had an answer here? Like some pontificating oracle, perhaps? A veritable Nostradamus, if you will?

Nope, I’m as flummoxed as you are as to what to do. I just presented my 2009 forecast and I’m PRAYING it’s only 6% inflation, after price events. Sadly, I think it will be more, not to mention that, even with gas prices dropping, we are still paying gas and delivery charges- charges that may go away on paper, but, once having that income, distributors will find a way to keep it, likely in increased broken case charges or just spread out into small across-the-board cost increases.

So, no answers here. You got any? If so, share them with me at [email protected]. I will compile them and post them here. C’mon now, we are all in this together...share what you are doing so that, together, we can ride this financial tsunami and come out the other side whole.

In the meantime, I will be doing what any self-respecting Beverage Goddess would do...drown my sorrows in my favorite beverage, which, at the moment, is arsenic. Cheers.

How Not to Run a Bar

We walk into the bar, which appears to be relatively new and boasts a couple of dozen taps, some of which hold promise. We grab a table, only to notice that it’s positioned at the top of the staircase leading to the toilets, with all the the attendant aromas, and quickly decamp to the bar. A woman who appears to be a server would seem to have noticed us, but does nothing.

From our perch at the bar, we wait in vain for service. Time passes. Following much arm waving, Maggie finally draws the attention of the server, who nudges the woman beside her, who turns out to be the bartender. Despite there being only two other deuces in the bar, and the three to four minutes we took getting settled, the bartender claims she didn’t see us “sneak in.”

I ask if the Hacker-Pschorr on tap is lager or hefeweizen and she looks at me like I’ve just grown horns. Says she doesn’t know, but can give me a taste, after which she presents me with a foamy thimbleful of beer. I sniff and sip, discovering that it’s weizen, but old weizen. I opt instead for Headstrong Pale Ale.

Maggie asks for red vermouth and soda. More horns. She directs the bartender towards the bottle, slowly. “Right over there,” Maggie guides, “Behind the Stoli.” The bartender can’t even locate the vodka.

When she finally finds the Martini & Rossi, the bartender returns for a repeat of the instructions. “Ice, vermouth, soda water.” Away she goes, only to return a couple of minutes later with a pint glass – a pint glass!! – of vaguely rust-colored soda. My pint finally shows up a little after that, oxidized, but not so much so as the Hacker.

Cutting our losses, we ask for the bill and leave half our drinks. Maggie has been charged extra for the soda. We won’t be back.

Two blocks or so down the road, we enter another pub, a busier pub, and are greeted with a cheery hello the moment we cross the threshold. Here, we stayed.

On Keeping Bottled Beer

In pouring the beer from the bottles, it is the bartender’s or waiter’s duty to select a proper and clean glass. All this applies with equal force to both domestic and imported beer. At the present time, bottled beer has become quite the fashion, and is consumed much more than in former years, especially in hotels, restaurants and private families. The proprietor of any place should buy all the best brands of bottled beer, as the consumer today demands quality and variety. In stocking up, you should see that not too great a quantity, or too much of any single brand is taken at one time, because the older bottled beer gets, the more it loses its flavor, unless it is the special brewed beer of the export trade. Bottled beer should never be kept more than from two to three weeks in the ice box, and in handling it it is proper to try to dispose first of the oldest lot on hand, in order to keep the quantity uniform. In opening the bottle, the bartender should be careful in pulling the cork and brush away any particles of it with a clean towel. Furthermore, bottled beer should be handled as carefully as wine and not in the careless, slipshod manner so many bartenders use.

That’s not me lecturing, but Harry Johnson from the facsimile of the 1900 edition of Harry Johnson’s New and Improved Bartenders’ Manual and a Guide for Hotels and Restaurants, recently published by Mud Puddle Books. I’ll concede more than two to three weeks for bottled beer in the “icebox,” considering the styles and technologies at play today, but otherwise I am amazed at how valid today are Johnson’s words of more than a century ago.

A Fun Food Exercise

My good friend Jay Brooks brought to my attention a now-two month old post over at the Very Good Taste blog. It’s a list of 100 food (and drinks) that the omnivore should strive to try at least once in his or her life, along with instructions on what to do once you’ve read and annotated it. I found it to be a fun exercise and in bolding my own list found several foods I very much do want to try some day, Piedmontese Bagna càuda rating very high on that list.

There’s not much more I can add to the instructions, so take it away Andrew...

Here’s what I want you to do:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

(Disclaimer: I cannot say I have never eaten a Big Mac - hey! I was young once, too! - but I can truthfully claim not to have ever had a "Big Mac Meal," which I assume is one of those things that comes with cookies on the side and some sort of plastic toy. Also, I can't be positive that I've had Tom Yum, but it does ring a bell from when I was in Bangkok a couple of years ago, and I doubt very much that I'll ever find myself eating Roadkill, but I left it uncrossed because you just never know.).