Author: Jessica Rubano

The summer of 2013, DiCarlo Food Service installed a 902.77kw solar panel system, consisting of 3058, 295-watt solar panels on the roof of our facility, exemplifying our commitment to environmental health and sustainability.

The sun produces vast amounts of energy; enough in a single minute to meet the world’s energy needs for an entire year.  Solar energy is the most abundant energy resource on earth.  A solar energy system allows us to capture free sunlight and convert it into usable power.  The sun’s ultra-violet rays make it to solar panels even on cloudy days making our solar initiative cost-effective as well as a compassionate investment.

By installing solar panels on our roof, DiCarlo is accomplishing two very important steps on the route to a cleaner planet:

  1. Conservation of non-renewable resources, such as oil, natural gas and coal.
  2. Reducing and eliminating contributors to air pollution.  Our project will result in 807 metric tons of CO2 emissions reduction per year.

We have made many improvements to be “GREEN” in recent years, but this solar project far outweighs all the others combined.  Just another reason why “DICARLO BLUE IS THE NEW GREEN,”

Monitor our Solar Panels in Real Time.

  • Pepperoni Pizza Burger: grilled burger covered with pepperoni, Mozzarella cheese and pizza sauce.
  • Verde Burger: grilled ground beef mixed with seasoned garlic, topped with piquant Italian Verde sauce made with parsley, onions and capers.
  • Earth & Turf Burger: grilled ground beef, beneath a golden porcini mushroom sauce with grilled zucchini squash and sweet red bell peppers.
  • Greek Burger: topped with herbed Feta cheese, black olives and onions.
  • Hickory Burger: beef patty covered with cheddar cheese, bacon and hickory barbeque sauce.
  • Rowdy Reuben Burger: grilled beef patty smothered with melted Swiss cheese, thousand island dressing and zesty coleslaw, served on marble rye.
  • Caesar Burger: ground beef seasoned with garlic & black pepper, on a crusty roll, accented with Caesar dressing, romaine lettuce and avocado.
  • Trattoria Burger: grilled beef burger layered with roasted red bell peppers, pesto mayonnaise, and Mozzarella cheese, served on focaccia bread.
  • Gyro Burger: hamburger topped with white onions, tomatoes and yogurt cucumber dressing.
  • Barbeque Burger: ground beef grilled with a tangy barbeque sauce and hot peppers.
  • Cordon Bleu Burger: ground beef patty beneath a layer of sliced ham, Swiss cheese and dijon mustard.
  • Bistro Burger: ground beef covered with caramelized onions, Brie cheese and crisp bacon, served on a walnut bun.
  • Blue Moon Burger: grilled burger topped with Bleu cheese, sauteed mushrooms, lettuce and tomato served on an onion bun.
  • Pinwheel Burger: different colored, quartered cheese slices arranged in a pinwheel design melted atop a grilled burger.
  • Cowboy Burger: grilled mushrooms, grilled onion, bacon and Monterey Jack cheese on a flavorful beef patty.

A headline on the National Restaurant Association website reads in big bold letters, “The restaurant industry is fast-paced and ever changing.” Like many other industries, the Internet has affected the way that restaurants operate and advertise.

Besides being listed on sites like Yelp and Google Maps (which has turned into a major player in the yellow pages game), having a menu online is one of the essential steps in being found and attracting more customers. Posting a menu online provides an edge over the competition. As an article on Neuromarketing.com puts it, “menus are printed marketing pieces, much like catalogs, magazines, ads, etc.”

Many restaurants, whether they are franchises or small independent venues, have chosen to include a menu on their websites. Not having a menu can make your business look out of date, and therefore less competitive. From the point of view of an online-savvy customer, this lack of information is a likely deal breaker. Sybil Yang, a doctoral student at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, goes a step beyond and says that “menus are a way restaurants build trust between them and the guest.”

If your restaurant has a website (which is highly recommended), make sure that you include a menu that is easy to find. And the more detailed the descriptions in the menu, the better. You might include:

  • Ingredients
  • Prices
  • Daily Specials
  • Combos/Promotions
  • Nutritional Information
  • Other specifics; i.e., kosher, gluten-free, vegan, etc.

Make sure to include your menu as high up on the page as possible. Readers tend to scan a page in mere seconds, from left to right, and are highly unlikely to scroll down to find more information. So from a marketing point of view, your best bet is to make your online menu readily available and highly visible.

Another benefit of having an online menu is search engine optimization (SEO). Menus are chock-full of keywords that will pop up on search engines. It’s easy content to keep up and a possible traffic-driving tool to your website. If you don’t have a website for your restaurant, get one. In the meantime, you can use different online directories that offer restaurant menus, often searchable by area. These are:

  • Menupages
  • The Grub Club
  • All Menus
  • GrubHub
  • Seamless (for ordering online)

A fast and easy way to make your menu digitally available is to make a Facebook page for your restaurant. This is a great option for restaurateurs who are on a tight budget, since it’s free and also doubles as a marketing tool. Facebook users can “like” your page, peruse the menu, and you can post discounts, special deals, or announce new items to your followers.

Ask your DSR how you can enroll in a ServSafe class. This training course will certify you in the requirements set by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation for the ServSafe Food Protection Manager Certification Examination, which is recognized by the International Food Safety Council.

Island Harvest was created in 1992 by one woman with a cooler, a station wagon, and a strong desire to help people in need.  Linda Breitstone, the founder, was infuriated that food from a local convenience store was being thrown away at the end of the day- with a soup kitchen down the street.  The mission at Island Harvest is “to end hunger and reduce food waste on Long Island.”

Island Harvest serves as the bridge between those who have surplus food and those who need it, supplying hundreds of nonprofit organizations on Long Island with critical food support.  Since its inception in 1992, Island Harvest has rescued nearly 71 million pounds of food, supplementing more than 66 million meals.  Island Harvest is a member of Feeding America.

DiCarlo and Elara have joined Island Harvest in fighting hunger by implementing the One Case- One Meal program. 

One Case- One Meal is Elara’s signature hunger relief program, providing meals in partnership with local food banks, like Island Harvest to people struggling with hunger.

In addition to the One Case- One Meal program, DiCarlo also donates over 1,000 lbs. of food a week to Island Harvest.

At our annual Food Show, we encourage the over 150 food manufacturers with booths to leave behind any food they wish to donate.  When the show is over, Island Harvest comes to collect the surplus.  This has been ongoing for over 10 years.

Iced coffee and cold brew have been on a success trajectory lately. Traditional iced coffee has experienced a growth rate of 33% on menus since 2007, according to Datassential, with a big bump in interest in recent years due to the introduction of cold brew. In fact, cold brew is surging in demand, with younger generations and higher income brackets driving an overall consumption uptick of 30% in the 12 months ended February 2018. Can you say “big opportunity”?

Cold Brew Represents an Even Bigger Opportunity

Cold Brew is unlike any other type of coffee. Cold Brew is crafted, made by slowly steeping ground coffee beans in room temperature water for more than 10 hours and then filtering them to produce a coffee concentrate. That concentrate is diluted with cold water and served chilled over ice.

Steeped for many hours at room temperature, Cold Brew is created entirely without added heat. This slow, gentle process draws out the best of the beans, delivering a smooth end-cup with rich, clean coffee flavor and none of the bitterness and acidity of hot brewed coffees — a flavor profile particularly attractive to younger consumers.

Datassential pegs the four-year growth of cold brew at a whopping 424.5% (44% in the last year alone), and is a favorite of the all-important millennial customer base. Despite this impressive growth, however, the beverage still only appears on less than 4% of menus.

Clearly, getting iced coffee and cold brew on the menu are good places to start, but there are other tactics for boosting these beverages’ appeal and maximizing their potential selling price.

Step Up the Condiments

Given that many customers sweeten and/or lighten their iced coffee and cold brew, it pays to offer them an opportunity to customize these beverages while they’re at it. In addition to the usual cream or milk, and sugar, consider:

  • Flavored creamers and syrups
  • Soy milk, nut milks (such as almond), coconut milk, and other nondairy milks
  • Whipped cream or a heavy cream float
  • Sweetened condensed milk
  • A selection of different sugar substitutes
  • Alternative sweeteners such as brown sugar, raw sugar, agave, maple syrup, and honey
  • A sugared or flavored sugar rim
  • Chocolate shavings, powdered cinnamon, or another finishing garnish

Create Premium Specialties

Since iced and cold brew coffee are still underrepresented on menus, it’s relatively easy to create signature versions of these beverages that will set your operation apart and set the stage for premium pricing.

  • Combine iced coffee or cold brew with lemonade for a refreshing drink with a kick of caffeine
  • Flavor an iced latte with brown sugar and cinnamon
  • Sweeten and lighten iced coffee or cold brew with sweetened condensed milk and serve over ice, as for a Vietnamese Iced Coffee
  • Blend cold brew with vanilla syrup or extract and milk or cream, and serve over ice for a decadent Vanilla Cold Brew with Cream
  • Blend iced coffee or cold brew into smoothies of all kinds, from strawberry to chocolate (which creates a delicious Mocha Smoothie)
  • Flavor Iced Cold Brew with on-trend flavors like malt, white chocolate, or salted caramel
  • Whip cold brew or iced coffee with ginger, turmeric, honey, and a scoop of ice to take advantage of the healthy image of these ingredients
  • Promote seasonal iced coffee and cold brew beverages with flavors like Pumpkin Spice, Chocolate Peppermint, and Blueberry

Did You Know?

After regular brewed, iced coffee is the leading coffee beverage. Falling just outside of the top 10 in daily incidence rate, iced coffee performs better than common drinks like lemonade, wine/spirits, and smoothies.

Consumers view cold brew as a treat. They grab one when they want to indulge or have something different from the norm. In that way it’s differentiated from hot brewed coffee, which is part of consumers’ daily routines. As such, consumers are likely to have both beverages, but for different occasions.

Consumers find flavored iced coffee appealing. Almost half (47%) of consumers like flavored iced coffee, in particular vanilla, caramel, and chocolate.

It may be necessary to educate consumers on the difference between cold brew and iced coffee. The majority of those that haven’t tried cold brew fail to understand what makes it different from iced coffee. From a brewing and/or flavor perspective. Pairing education with sampling could help entice more consumers to try the product.

When guests get a sense that their server is warm, friendly and demonstrates a genuine interest in taking care of them, the potential for a positive dining experience is greatly enhanced. We’ve all heard it said that great service can make up for bad food but great food can never make up for bad service and that’s what hospitality or the human side of service is all about.

Eye contact and smiles. While this is so basic to the hospitality industry, eye contact and smiles from hosts, hostesses, servers and bartenders toward their guests is often nowhere to be seen. Constantly remind and role-play on the importance of this. Building positive hospitality experiences is next to impossible without them.

Seating. When other tables are available, guests may appreciate the host or hostess asking if the table they’re presented is all right. If not, offer one that is more to their liking. Your servers start out at a disadvantage if, for whatever reason, someone wishes they had been seated at another table.
Sensitive upselling. Yes, servers are there to sell but first and foremost they should be focused on taking care of your customers and doing whatever they can to turn them into loyal, repeat guests. The National Restaurant Association tells us that around 60 percent of sales in fine dining restaurants come from repeat business and in casual restaurants it’s even more, up to 80 percent. Your single, most important goal should be to turn casual customers into regular, repeat guests.

Specific personal questions. After the main course is delivered, encourage servers to approach each table with specific, personal questions that demonstrate they have minds that are engaged and they truly care about the responses. This can be nothing more complicated than, “Is your tuna cooked the way you like it?” or “Your filet looks really tender, is it?” It displays a level of caring and personal interest that most restaurants will never pick up on.

Connect with the kids. Parents appreciate servers who take a sincere interest in their kids. We’ve had servers go out of their way to learn our kids’ names, show them the fish tank up close and get them something special from the kitchen. Train your people to recognize the kids. Have them ask parents if you could bring them something to nibble on first. Parents will love it and the kids may just start recommending your restaurant the next time the family is deciding where to eat.

Be on the guest’s side. Servers should always convey that they’re looking out for their guest’s best interest. When servers go to bat for the guest, they notice. While dining with my family, our server took our order and suggested changing two separate dinners to a combination and some sides that saved us a few dollars. The money wasn’t the issue; the fact that she was looking out for us made a huge impression. I ended up leaving a much bigger tip, we made her our new favorite server and we plan to ask for her section the next time we visit.

Good-byes. Remind servers to impart a sincere “thank you” to guests as they get ready to leave. In addition to showing appreciation for their patronage, tell guests what a pleasure it was to serve them and be sure servers always ask them to return. As in the server’s introduction, sincere smiles and direct eye contact is crucial or it will be interpreted as mere empty words.

Any staff member, be they another server, hostess, busser or manager, who passes by guests leaving the restaurant should also be ready with a smile and friendly “thank you.” Hosts and hostesses should be especially on notice. It’s a slight downer when the hostess who was so warm and friendly when you arrived doesn’t even look up when you pass by the hostess stand to leave.

Source: Jim Laube for Restaurant Startup & Growth

Here are three best practices to help you build a cost-effective and productive kitchen staff.

Get your Dishwashers More Involved…

Keeping your staff busy and on schedule for tomorrow’s prep work is the first place to focus on cutting prep costs. Regardless of your restaurant’s concept, involving dishwashers is a smart move.

Approached like a mentoring project, many hardworking and dedicated dishwashers can move into prep jobs. They can perform all the busy work that puts prep-ready items into a skilled cook’s hands. Peeling garlic, shallots, onions, carrots and potatoes are just a few possible duties. Preparing celery and spinach, de-veining shrimp, cleaning squid and scrubbing clams are others. These are the kinds of tasks that can be delegated to the dish crew with a minimal amount of training. The key is to keep your highest-paid cooks from wasting time. Get products into their hands in a usable form. Nothing should make a chef crazy faster than watching a $14-an-hour sauté cook peel onions. Keeping ample amounts of ready-to-use mirepoix in the walk-in always keep cooks at the stove.Finally, don’t forget to train dishwashers in food safety techniques before they assume prep duties. This includes proper hand sanitation.

Waste Not, Want Not…

Prepared vegetables often leave a bounty of fresh trimmings that are perfect for the soup pot. Vary your soup offerings to take advantage of your vegetable purchases. Staying in close contact with your produce purveyor can result in savings for soups. A case of overripe tomatoes will make an easy batch of tomato bisque. Adding a slice of toasted day-old bread slathered with some pureed avocado or melted goat cheese with roasted garlic, and the selling price easily goes up a buck. The key with soup is watching for quality ingredients that get overlooked or even thrown away. A quick training tip for new prep cooks or line cooks is to make them save every scrap as they set up for their shift. Before service, sift through the saved food, explaining to them along the way what’s usable and why. When your staff can differentiate between trash and treasure, you won’t spend as much time looking in the garbage for their waste.

Fine-tune Prep Work by Daypart…

The definition of efficient prep work changes by daypart. The basics are the same for each meal, but to really cut costs you need to look at the specific challenges of breakfast, lunch and dinner service.

Turn and burn for efficient breakfast service. If an operation serves breakfast or brunch, speed is always essential for guest satisfaction. Keeping tables turning is especially important for lower-check-average dayparts like breakfast. Certain kitchen tricks are necessary to “turn and burn,” maintaining quality and keeping guests satisfied. In high-volume operations, prepared items like liquid eggs that can be poured into a waiting omelet pan can save measurable man-hours in cracking eggs. Pre-shredded cheese eliminates the fuss of setting up and cleaning food processors. Products that you only have to reach for save the short-order cook time and keep finished plates flying out of the kitchen.

Prepared foods like scoop-and-bake muffin mixes help save time. Likewise for the increasingly high-quality, par-baked artisan breads, which are available in many flavors and sizes. High-quality, thick, crusty, fresh bread adds value to many morning menu items. Breakfast sandwiches and grilled Paninis get an added value lift from high-quality breads. Because these breads are at their best on the day they are baked, the remaining loaf or two make excellent fresh croutons for the afternoon lunch soup or salad.

Make use of yesterday’s dinner protein leftovers for this morning’s hash special. Prime rib translates into roast beef hash, a sure sellout brunch item. Those salmon scraps from the Saturday butcher work right into griddled salmon cakes. Use your crab cake recipe and substitute fresh salmon that has been lightly pulsed in the food processor. Ideas like these add a fresh look to your specials card and black ink to your profit-and-loss statement.

Other Tips

  • Sliced tomatoes should always be stored in slotted pans for service and storage, allowing the water to separate from the fruit, extending the shelf life.
  • Keep sandwich spreads in large squeeze bottles for neatness and speed, and keep ready at hand filled backups for service. Buying prewashed mixed greens keeps pantry cooks with salad-ready greens at hand; but you should consider mixing in chopped romaine to extend the mix with crunchy green lettuce.
  • Mix creative ingredients into mayonnaise or mustards to add zip to sandwich spreads. Fresh chopped herbs like tarragon and rosemary marry well in Dijon mustard, with a touch of honey. Puree avocado and roast tomato into homemade or quality store-bought mayonnaise for a tasty touch on good bread.
  • Watch your menu mix carefully every night. Items that your guests aren’t ordering may need to be reworked or removed. This information should help dictate the amount of product ordered and prepped. This is especially important during menu changes, when new items are first introduced to your customer. Careful tracking of items sold gives you the information to make quick decisions before an item or items take a bite out of your food cost.
  • Dinner bread is one of the kitchen’s biggest challenges. If you work with a bakery and receive daily deliveries, create a moving par. Set your daily bread pars, and work closely with your bakery, seeing that you are allowed to slide your next day order up or down the night before. Even making small changes on a nightly basis will add up to real savings, and keeps unwanted bread out of the freezer or trash can.
  • Taking the time to rewrap and ice fish at the end of each day is a pain. But proper storage can add days to the shelf life of fish. Make the investment in the correct storage pans allowing for drainage of melting ice and a suitable amount of ice to last until the next shift begins.
  • When building your menu, avoid out-of-season items that are expensive, such as asparagus, strawberries and citrus. Try to be as seasonal as your concept allows. Use items at the peak of their flavor and when their cost is lowest.

In the end, prep and labor savings are all around. Rally the staff and always trumpet the message that wage increases and bonuses are tied to efforts that cut waste and save on labor.

On October 25, 2018, Merieux NutriSciences, a third party food safety management company conducted a food safety and sanitation inspection of our facility.  We earned a 99.1% grade which is a Superior rating, the highest attainable.

View Our 2018 GDP Certificate.Download

Thank you so much for your donation of healthy fare valued at $500 to St. Ignatius Nursing & Rehab Center for the 2018 Health Fair. Your support and generosity are greatly appreciated.