Trackin’ it

Trackin’ it
By Jeff Stone

You want job security working as a restaurant magician? That’s a tall order (pun fully intended). The short answer is to prove to the owner/manager that you’re bringing in money that they weren’t able to do without you. How do you do that?

• Advertise
• Analyze
• Amortize

Ok, the last one is a stretch, but hang in there. You’ll see.

Advertise:

First of all, you should be a walking billboard for the restaurant(s) you work at. If someone asks you what you do for work, say something like this, “I’m the house magician at Buck and Chips restaurant. I’ll be performing there tomorrow night. Come by and check it out.”

Whenever you give out your business card, mention where and when you perform. When you work a non-restaurant gig, mention to the audience that if they’d like to see more, they can see you “at Billy Bob’s Possum and Pasta next Friday night.”

Also, remember what we talked about back in May 2009 . . . giving out restaurant coupons.

Analyze:

Keep track of people who come to the restaurant. There will be people who have never heard of the restaurant you work at or maybe have heard of it but never tried it. When you tell them to show up and they do, write it down. Keep a log of people that came specifically at your request. Secondly, keep track of people who come back because you are there. Maybe they’ve been there before, but when they came today, they saw you and decided to come back again to show their friends. Which leads into the next thing you should be doing: tell people to come back with their friends, and keep track of it when they do.

You don’t need a database or anything to track this. Just a simple table with tick marks will do.

Additionally, when people come back or bring friends, etc, it doesn’t hurt to have them mention that to the manager, wait staff or on the comment cards. Another thing to track is how many people came in on Wednesday nights (or whatever night you work) before you started working there, and how many come in now. If the manager is a smart business person, s/he will have total sales numbers. Compare them, before and after. Have the numbers run for before you started. Then have them run for each Wednesday since you started.

There is no 100% fool-proof way to prove that you are an asset to the business. However, if you combine the tick marks with the Wednesday reports and comment cards, you should be pretty solid.

Amortize:

Ok so this choice of word was more for the use of alliteration, but it still sort of fits the model here. You want to spread things out over time. You need to show the owner/manager your long-term value. If you’re doing your job right, those “Tuna Safe Dolphin” nights at “Crabby Craigs Crustaseans” should be improving each week because you’re there. If that’s true, then you can show the potential growth over the next few months based on the current growth rate. Also consider that growth may be slow at first. It increases over time, so you need to “sell” that to the manager.

Another part of spreading yourself out over time is spelling out things in a contract or agreement. Reduce your “like” for a guarantee of X hours per week and X nights per month. Consider a different “like” for long term. If you can get a 1 or 2 year commitment, maybe a reduced “like” could be possible. These are things you have to figure out based on your own current rates, experience, etc.

The bottom line is that you need to brin in more business to the restaurant, otherwise, the manager/owner is just doing you a favor by allowing you to stay employed there. Believe me, the moment anyone realizes that your job is a liability, you’re outta there. So prove your worth!

Until Next Month . . .

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