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Restaurant
6066 MAPLE, North of Orchard Lake Rd. • 851-0805
AND CARRY-OUT DEPT 851-6577
(next door to our full-service restaurant)
I
Restaurant Staff,
Patrons Must Work Together
DANNY RASKIN LOCAL COLUMNIST
Management
and
Staff
Extend Most Sincere
Wishes For A
Very
Healthy
and
Happy
Passover
Papa Romano's
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•A 7"x 7" MATZO Topped with
Cheese & Zesty Sauce with
Your Choice of 2 Toppings
Additional Toppings
Mari
Double Cheese Extra.
■ 11411 itlisram ZZ
This weans.' eniv
West Bloomfield
Orchard Lk. & Maple
(West Bloomfield Plaza)
855-4777
I
his week's guest Mystery
Muncher writes ...
Restaurants are every-
where. They come in all
shapes, sizes and national ori-
gins. In some cities you can liter-
ally eat in a different restaurant
each night for years.
But dining spots haven't
reached their saturation point.
The American public is still
ready, willing and able to spend
millions in new restaurants.
That was the opinion of
William Siegel who wrote How
To Run A Successful Restaurant
(John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). This
book and Starting a Small
Restaurant by Daniel Miller
(Harvard Corner Press) offered
handy tips for patrons as well as
entrepreneurs.
You can compare
a local, family-run
restaurant with
what was de-
scribed in Mr.
Miller's book.
Whether you enjoyed
the place or not, you can
strike a blow for restaurant
customers everywhere by re-
turning to give it another
chance. If the restaurant
hasn't improved, leave the
book with the
owner when you
send back your un-
eaten meal.
The mortality
rate of new restau-
rants is appalling,
according to Mr.
Siegel. Half fail or
change manage- -
ment every five
years. The big question is why?
It isn't true that any housewife
who throws a successful luau or
her husband who can grill six
steaks to perfection on a barbe-
cue has all the talent needed to
open a restaurant. The restau-
rant business has many sides and
cooking is only a part of it. Own-
ers must know how to buy, store,
advertise, handle employees,
keep customers happy and
dozens of other things.
Running a restaurant takes a
special kind of person, according
to Mr. Siegel. You have to know
how to prepare meals for 60 in-
stead of six, get along with peo-
ple and have good business sense.
Mr. Miller maintains that
small restaurants have a unique
role in today's stressful American
society. They provide the public
with one of the last vestiges of
true enterprise and inventive-
ness. A small restaurant is one of
the few places where distraught
parents of small children can re-
gain their sanity and feelings of
romance, where the weary trav-
eler can feel at home and where
a family can enjoy each other's
company without having to do
the dishes.
Both Mr. Siegel and Mr. Miller
agreed location is a prime factor.
But the menu is an important
item because business is based
on descriptions in that folded
piece of cardboard or within plas-
tic inserts. It's a direct commu-
nication between the chef and the
diner. And dinner patrons who
have more time to order and eat
want to know how each dish
is prepared and
shreds of lettuce and a bland,
unimaginative dressing. And
what's worse, some restaurants
slap a few shreds of meat and
cheese on top, make it just a lit-
tle larger, call it Maurice salad
and charge too much extra for it.
Other turnoffs are warm toma-
to juice, cold coffee, cream in lit-
tle sealed cardboard containers
instead of pitchers, packets of
sugar instead of a bowl and
scanty pads of butter or mar-
garine for a basket of rolls or
breadsticks and baked potatoes.
In many restaurants, you don't
even get the rolls or breadsticks
unless you ask.
How many times have you had
to virtually rip a menu apart
served.
The more exotic restaurants
feel obliged to carry some Amer-
ican-style food like chicken or
steak. But Mr. Siegel believes
American tastes are becoming
more sophisticated. Chinese
restaurants that were also Can-
tonese now offer everything from
Mandarin to spicy Szechuan food.
But whatever the menu, food
should present a pleasant sight,
a mix of tantalizing aromas and
a variety of tastes, according to
Mr. Siegel.
Menus should have enough va-
riety to keep customers coming
back, and it pays to have light
meals for dieters.
Many restaurants fall down
when it comes to the quality of
side dishes. A choice of lifeless
drained green beans, corn or lima
beans is monotonous.
Numerous salads served with
dinner are soggy, unappetizing
and with little else but a few
to discover all the offerings be-
cause clip-ons obscured impor-
tant parts of the menu?
Many restaurant owners and
managers don't seem to realize
the importance of the quality of
their employees. A restaurant's
reputation depends on the qual-
ity and appearance of the meal
and the cleanliness of the dishes
and silverware.
A surprising number of restau-
rant have failed, according to Mr.
Siegel, because of high employee
turnover. The waiter or waitress
who snarls at customers and then
mixes up orders is the owner's
representative to the dining pub-
lic. The persons they hire are ex-
tensions of themselves.
Mr. Miller maintains it should
be a firm requirement that every
member of the dining room staff
give customers a friendly greet-
ing when they come in.
If the host, or hostess is busy,