26 Degrees in the Shade . . .

A Theme for your Bar or Restaurant in Spain

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How To Choose Your Pub, Bar or Restaurant Theme

Before you can choose a theme for your Spanish bar or restaurant you might want to study your catchment area in real depth, to see if there are enough people, both local and passing through, to support a bar or restaurant with your chosen theme. If you are too specialized you might lose a lot of potential customers.

You might be located in the commercial centre of a city where there are thousands of people who can afford to eat out every day and are looking for new exciting places to patronize. If this is the case, then probably any one of a whole range of themes would probably draw in enough custom to support your business.

Our Bar/Restaurant Theme 

Most bars restaurants will not be afforded such a luxurious choice. Our catchment area is big and we don’t have anyone else doing what we do. We specialise in fresh pizza, burger, kofta kebab, lamb chops, spare-ribs.

Our clients are prepared to spend a little more to get a better atmosphere and really good quality food and service.

After having studied the catchment area then, we have chosen a mixture of basically two traditional themes :

1. English country pub-dark wood and beams meets,
2. modern pizzeria tiled walls and stainless steel

We have taken the conservative approach. We offer food from Italy, Turkey, USA and UK. The other components that comprise our theme are:

• Child friendly environment to make parents feel at ease. Wipe down tables no table clothes (plastic outside, dark wood inside).
• Tiled floor inside and out. Children can drop a ketchup-steeped burger on the floor and there’s no embarrassment, as it can be cleaned up in seconds.
• We are open for all needs at all times (some clients will be eating spare-ribs or lamb chops around a table and drinking a good wine, whilst, there maybe people at the bar or on the terrace, who just want to drink, there maybe people seated eating fast food, people waiting for Take Away food and even a group of people with coffee putting a business deal together.
• Décor: Fast Foo, tiled floor and white tiled walls out side. Inside rustic dark wood, wooden beams and terracotta coloured tiled floor. Kitchen: All machines, stainless steel.

So as you can see we have come up with our own theme aimed at making as many sectors of the community as we can comfortable. Flexibility is a big part of what we offer (a business meeting over coffee at one end of the bar and the ladies Bridge Club tucking into lamb chops at the other end).

Summary

Our theme is to offer something for everybody and offer a warm welcome to all sectors of the community.

The Power of Garlic Bread

When you are training staff to take an order, it’s a good idea to teach them how encourage a client or group of clients to order one or two additional items. Whether you are taking a food order yourself or your waiter is doing it you can easily increase your turn over by doing this. Garlic bread is simple and cheap to make, has a good mark-up and is one of the items that you can easily get a client to tack onto his or her order.

Increasing the Food Order

When you take a food order once the client has given you their order and you have written out the order in shorthand, read the order back to the client to confirm that it is correct and as soon as you have done this ask. “Would you like garlic bread with that?” If the client says yes, then ask if they would like it served with mozzarella cheese.

Basically a good waiter should always be looking for opportunities to increase the session’s turn over.

After 19 years of running a successful bar restaurant my wife and I, plus our staff, have learned how this is best done. The technique of suggesting extras to the client is the same in any restaurant; only the items will vary according to the particular menu.

Here are a few items that we and our staff have found continued success with, when it comes to boosting up the client’s order:

• Garlic bread
• Garlic bread with mozzarella cheese
• French bread with butter
• Side salads
• French fries
• Extra wine

How to Increase the Wine Order

When a client orders a glass of wine you can offer a half bottle or as you are pouring the glass of wine when there are two people or more seated at the table, tell them a little about the wine and offer to leave the bottle at the able. Very often once the client has seen the label and tasted the wine he/she will simply say. “Oh! Leave us the bottle.” Another time, I might say. “Would you like me to leave the bottle and charge only for what you drink.” A lot of clients like this system and very often when they get around to asking for the bill, you’ll find that they’ve drunk the lot and everybody’s happy.

Well there you are, just a few pointers on how to encourage clients to spend a bit more in your bar restaurant.