Operations

The National Restaurant Association’s 2015 Restaurant Industry Forecast showed that 70 percent of consumers wanted restaurants to serve breakfast throughout the day. It also showed an increase in interest in “breakfast for dinner” in the millennial demographic.

I shared with the reporter the story of doing a quick survey at a NATSO member location to help the owner determine why truck drivers were stopping at his location. In this instance, the member thought the main reason drivers were stopping at his location was the price of their fuel. However, the reason was the friendliness of their staff.

I think a lot of our independent members who are putting a priority on providing the personal touch would get the same survey results.

Here are a few ideas on providing the personal touch at your truckstop.

The Department of Justice considers accessibility of toilet rooms to be third priority in ADA compliance, and a common issue we see in this area relates to the toilet room mirrors.

Shrink is a part of doing business, so business owners have to take steps daily to control it. Here are twelve daily actions you can take to help minimize losses.

We have a current employee who has been with the company for eight years in a Director role. We are considering outsourcing the work he does along with all IT work. I know we can go ahead and lay him off due to these business decisions and we would be putting together a separation agreement. My concern is that I read recently that anyone over the age of 40 is to be given the separation agreement at least 21 days in advance of the separation. True? We are concerned because he does have security controls, etc. and if we give him this advance notice – we are not sure what damage he might do to the company.

For Doug Rauch, former president of the Trader Joe’s grocery chain and an upcoming speaker at The NATSO Show, food waste is a top concern. Not only is underutilizing food wasting our country’s resources, business owners that aren’t donating food that is past its use-by date or produce that isn’t at its best are losing money.

Chairman’s Circle Federated Insurances answers the question, “We have an exempt employee that separated in the middle of a workweek. We prorated his salary that week to reflect only the days he worked. He is coming back now stating that he had worked 40 hours that week before he left. Does that have any bearing on the pay, or are we ok with leaving it as is?”

In a perfect world there would be no need to count items in your store. If you diligently kept track of your purchases and sales you would know precisely what your current inventory is. But mistakes and outright theft are part of reality so in order to know what we truly have in the store’s inventory we must count it.

Today we’re going to look at similar procedures that can prevent the sale of tobacco to underage consumers. As I said, retailers who violate the law and sell these products to minors can face tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales, fines, embarrassment within the local community and significant costs in lost employees. Here are eleven steps to help prevent tobacco sales to minors.