Restaurant operators are under a tremendous strain to build a business model that’s competitive and profitable: They must navigate a market landscape that’s heavily saturated, exposed to tremendous customer criticism and eroded by rising labor and overhead costs. As a result, proposing an operator spend money on capital improvements is often hard to quantify—especially when it comes to investing in table bases.
However, wobbly and misaligned tables can negatively affect the success of a restaurant, so replacing them shouldn’t be a luxury purchase, but a strategic investment.
Take a look at a comparison of purchasing FLAT Tech table bases versus standard bases and the potential impact of use on the hard operational costs, potential liability exposures and direct loss of brand reputation.
Hard operational costs
Hard operational costs must be controlled in order to be profitable in any business. That’s the reason the thought of spending an extra $30 for each table base is so difficult for many operators to reconcile. For instance, imagine that Hotel X opened a new restaurant with 100 tables and opted to purchase standard tables rather than FLAT Tech tables at a savings of $3,000 ($30 x 100 tables). The restaurant will perform by current restaurant averages for the sake of this experiment over a period of three years.
By conservative industry averages, the initial savings of $3,000 to go with standard table bases will cost the restaurant an extra $50,340 in the first three years due to breakage, spillage, labor costs, refunds, cleaning and shrinkage.
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Potential liability exposure
Having furniture that’s unstable or not functioning properly creates a situation that can cause serious trouble for operators. In 2018, an article by Emerging News listed faulty furniture in the dining area as being one of the top three reasons restaurants get sued.
The top cause of most restaurant lawsuits is due to slips and falls. According to the National Safety Council, more than 25,000 slip-and-fall accidents occur every day, with these incident costing businesses upwards of $100,000 per incident. Having wobbly tables and foreign materials such as coasters, napkins and food packets on the floor can cause slips and trips and is not a great way to keep customers and staff safe on the busy dining room floor.
The second biggest cause of restaurant lawsuits is due to food poisoning or foreign matter in food or beverages. Having a need for servers to get down on their hands and knees to fix a table, and then serve food to guests, can cause a cross-contamination opportunity. Even if servers are washing their hands after being on the floor, they may have wiped their hands on their uniform and may pick dirt and germs back up by wiping their hands again later. The damage to a business’s reputation can be devastating.
Loss of brand reputation
Operators spend billions of dollars every year to build a compelling brand position to attract and retain customers. Why would they then allow the table their guests are seated at to undermine all that effort?
We live in an age of technological wonder, where people can instantly take out their smartphone and share their thoughts on a business with the whole world. Do a search on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Yelp for “wobbly tables” and see what customers really think of this problem.
Protect and grow market segment with an ounce of prevention by investing in FLAT Tech table bases or FLAT Equalizers. These patented and innovative products completely alleviate the problems caused by wobbly and misaligned tables for guests.
To learn more, contact www.flattech.com to find the perfect solution.
This post is sponsored by FLAT Tech