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How Staff Scheduling Software Can Save Time & Money for Your Business

Posted by Giovanni Albanese, October 24, 2023

Running any type of hospitality business like a bar, restaurant, or brewery is a challenging ordeal.

With so many moving parts — ordering supplies, creating menus, and the overall operations, managers barely have enough time to make sure things are getting done.

Then, there’s creating a schedule to ensure you have staff on hand to run everything smoothly.

Primitive methods of writing schedules by hand, or even “advanced” ways of putting them together with a computerized spreadsheet, can tack on hours to a manager’s week and, more importantly, take them away from more critical tasks.

Scheduling software tools, like North Carolina-based Schedulefly, have swooped in to solve that issue, saving companies time and money while streamlining operations.

We heard from Schedulefly Co-Founder Wil Brawley, Mad Mole Brewing Taproom and Operations Manager Byron McSweeney, and Big Red F Restaurant Group Owner and Chef Dave Query, who explain how using scheduling software is a win-win for brewery operations—and many other hospitality services—big and small.

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Should Your Business Stay Open on Thanksgiving and Black Friday?

Posted by Grace Lee-Weitz, November 2, 2022

As consumers, Thanksgiving usually means two extra days off of work to spend time with family and friends celebrating an American holiday. For brewery, bar, and restaurant owners, however, the prospect of a federal holiday like Thanksgiving poses an interesting question: Should you stay open?

Traditionally, Thanksgiving and the subsequent day dubbed Black Friday have been the days when Americans spend…and spend big.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), the world’s largest retail trade association, during the 2021 holiday season, Black Friday brought in a whopping 66.5 million people shopping at stores with the average adult spending $430 dollars (Deloitte).

And while these have traditionally meant big and small retailers, Goose Island is probably the brewery most well known for getting beer businesses in on the Black Friday action. Since 2010, the brewery has released its incredibly popular barrel-aged Bourbon County Brand Stout and its yearly variants the morning of Black Friday. It’s a special event that has become a bit of tradition with folks lining up around the block to get their hands on a limited number of that year’s bottles.

And other breweries have since followed suit with everyone from Weldworks to Lakefront Brewery to 3 Sons getting in on the action.

But increasingly on a wider scale, more retailers have actually closed their doors on Turkey Day and subsequent Black Friday. In 2020, major chains such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Dick’s Sporting Goods closed on Thanksgiving for the first time and continued that trend in 2021. Similarly, last year, Target took things a step further, announcing that it will close all of its stores on Thanksgiving every year for the foreseeable future.

It’s a bit of a quandary: stay open and potentially tap into one of the largest sales days in America, or close and give yourself and your staff time off to spend with their families?

Keeping a restaurant or similar establishment open during a federal holiday means understanding a few considerations. For example, recognizing that overtime requirements can mean you might need to pay your employees more than the average weekday. Consequently, staying open might only be profitable if you can ensure that you’ll experience increased traffic that day.

Overall, what are the advantages of keeping your bar, brewery, or restaurant open on Thanksgiving and/or Black Friday? Alternatively, what are the potential benefits of choosing to give your staff the day off? And if you do decide to light up that open sign, how can you prepare?

We weighed both sides of the equation and offered a few tips and tricks on how to navigate that question during this holiday season.

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How Much Do Bartenders Make?

Posted by Sarah Buckholtz, October 3, 2022

Here is a staggering fact: Over 726,936 bartenders currently work in the United States, according to demographic information from Zippia.

And that number is only going to get higher. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the employment of bartenders is projected to grow eighteen percent from 2021 to 2031, with about 105,300 openings for bartenders projected each year, on average, over the next decade.

Many of those positions are anticipated based on the need to replace workers who change careers or retire.

If your business is looking to hire a bartender who has the proper bartending licenses and skills, keep reading as we break down salaries and tipping expectations for bartenders.

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Everything You Need To Know About Barbacks

Posted by Grace Lee-Weitz, July 1, 2022

A bartender is essential to any drinking operation. Of course you need someone behind the bar slinging cocktails, stirring glasses, and pouring beers. But a role that is just as important in a bar is a barback. Someone who might not necessarily stand front and center in the eye of the customers, but rather scurries around washing glasses, refilling garnishes, stockpiling napkins, and pretty much doing all the other little tasks that make sure a bartender can perform their best.

Similar to bussers in restaurants, barbacks fill in behind the scenes, performing necessary duties that keep your establishment running smoothly everyday.

For that reason, barbacks are one of the most important pieces of a bar team.

If you’re becoming a new bar owner or looking to improve your current bar staff, hiring a knowledgeable, hard-working barback is key.

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