What we’re about
It’s the year 2025, labor rent and taxes are at all times high in NYC. Labor is at $16.50 an hour and small business are suffering. There are 40,000 food service establishments in the five boroughs alone, many losing their profit margins or slowly going out of business. Landlords are just as greedy as online delivery services like Grubhub or Ubereats. It’s time for restaurants to use technology and new ideas to make their businesses better. Many of this generation of young employees are so lazy and entitled. There are ways to reduce your staff down to cut the cost of labor. Dishwashers, bus boys, cashiers, delivery people are employees that are no longer needed.
I’m Vlane and I’ve owned Super Action Burger in Williamsburg Brooklyn, for the past 13 years. During and after covid pandemic, I figured out some secrets to running a 40-50 person restaurant with just 2 people (myself and my wife) @ 0 labor. 3 people max when its busy. I replaced cashiers with cash and cc kiosk (I will talk more about this in a post), removed: delivery person, busboy and prep cook. Now I just have a cook and bartender. My restaurant was featured in a vending times magazine:
https://www.vendingtimes.com/articles/self-order-kiosks-keep-brooklyn-video-game-restaurant-in-the-black/
MARKETING – Groupon, Eventbrite, Facebook, Instagram and yelp business; are some of the marketing services for restaurants we will talk about the pros and cons of. There is also a new marketing company called “CargobikeInsanity llc”. It’s a billboard advertising company on stationary cargobikes. They found a loophole in New York law, where their bikes can be parked at almost any location for weeks to months. The bikes have 18” display screens, digital scrolling signs, cell phone charging, powered by solar panels and gives out fliers 24/7 (with menus boxes). I’ve been using these bikes for my restaurant for the past 10 months and I’ve had a 40-50% surge in business during this time. See what I’m talking about on their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Cargobikeinsanity/videos/1941662729577884
I renting 5 bikes all around Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. Customers take fliers off the bike and bring to restaurant after seeing the bike’s billboard and video advertisement. I’m renting 4 more bikes next month, to market in more areas: Manhattan and off highway exits in Williamsburg.
ONLINE DELIVERY – Grubhub, Seamless, UberEats and Doordash. These guys have been profiting off of restaurants for a long time. There are pros and cons. There are some dark secrets to these services that restaurants need to be aware of. They have procedures to steal orders behind restaurants back and give the customer a full refund. There are ways for customers to get free food on Grubhub/Seamless. Grubhub/Seamless does stealth refunds behind restaurants backs. Delivery drivers have a new scam of showing up at restaurant and waiting outside for 20 minutes, before coming inside to get the food, to make more money per hour. These are things restaurant owners/managers need to discuss.
It’s time to have monthly meetups to put together our ideas to increase our profits.
