Monday 10/27/14 AM & PM recap

Written By: Dusten

LY Lunch Sales: 1180
Projected Sales: 1455
TY Lunch Sales: 1749
+/- : up 48% over LY and $294 over projected
Lunch Covers: 114
Avg PPA: 15.34

LY Dinner Sales: 3427
Projected Sales: 4190
TY Dinner Sales: 4146
+/- : -$44 under projected, 21% increase over LY.
Dinner Covers: 164
Avg PPA: 25.28

Weather: Sunny and warm. 70's-80's.

Any Special events going on?:

Who worked?:AM: Krystin, Joel, Sayo, Kate CL, Jason SA, Hiroe FR, Junko H and Megan (sp?) host stage
PM: Clair, Joel, Miho, Alex CL, Krystin H, Ally (sp?) H train, Kaori SA

Flow of Business, Cuts and Ticket Times: Good lunch. We had our usual pop from about 11:45 until 1pm. I cut Krystin at 1pm, Joel at 1:30 and Sayo at 1:45pm. Most everything everything went out pretty smoothly. I noticed sushi bar food getting stacked up a bit too much a few times so I helped get that out. There was a tempura plate that took 30 minutes to get out. The table was two women in Kate's section. One ordered a sushi lunch which went out quickly. There was a brief incident with the kitchen (see below) that maybe backed things up for a moment, but the women were happy with my play-by-play updates on their food and were very gracious to receive it.
PM: Monday nights are becoming a pretty average to busy night. we went on wait for an hour which I think was great for Ally to experience. There were significantly more misrings during dinner than lunch, but I didn't hear or see anything about inordinate ticket times. I like sitting in the office after we are closed and listening to people marvel over their experience here as the walk out the door. I cut Joel at 9pm, Clair at 9:15pm and Miho at 9:45pm. I feel we had a pretty strong crew tonight all around and one missing server didn't throw us off at all. There are some issues with servers unclear on to go policies and birthday desserts. Maybe I've been here too long, but many things I felt were known or common sense have caused problems with tables. Some servers were unaware that we do birthday desserts. Others are unclear on our to-go policies. I try to clarify these things as they arise with servers, but that rarely happens before they've had misinformed a guest. 

Specials?10 bentos, 4 hot rocks, 8 poisson cru, 6 smoking sashimi, 11 pork belly nigiri

3 Staff members that stood out (why/how):
AM: I noticed that Joel tries to take time to do extra things for his tables, like box up leftovers for them. However, he seems to let those sort of things drag him down or leaves a mess in the way of everyone else. He a group of six in the party room that had lots of rolls and two teishoku plates leftover. He gathered all of that up but simply left it on the dessert freezer for a good while. I ended up boxing all of that stuff up for him, as he simply didn't have time to do it himself. This happened again today with his A8 table and a kayaku udon. This happened last night with the farm salad we remade for his B6. I think it is a nice gesture to the customer and I'd like to see more of things like that happening, but not to the detriment of service.
Kate had a weird table towards the end of service. Elizabeth, I don't know if she raised the issue with you or not, but a pair of girls (they were adult but I'll refrain from calling them women) came in and one wanted to know if she could basically build their own roll. Kate carefully explained that we have menus and while me may be able to omit or add an ingredient within reason, our sushi bar doesn't quite work like Subway Sandwiches (my words not hers). From then on Kate says that girl was just unpleasant and borderline rude. They weren't around for more than 30 minutes and left Kate a zero tip. They never seemed to have a genuine complaint or problem with service other than they didn't get to pick and choose ingredients for their roll. Kate handled the situation with poise and professionalism and I think she is to be commended for it.
Hiroe had a rough time for a brief period during lunch today. There was a bit of miscommunication regarding the chicken katsu today. Krystin's table ordered 4 I think and we only had 3. There was no count given to the FOH and I don't think the table or Krystin was made aware of the shortage until they'd already been waiting for their food. The table ended up with only one chicken katsu and 3 tempura teishoku instead. Krystin said the table was perfectly happy with the substitution and wait times. Hiroe seemed to get caught in the middle between FOH and BOH (as food runners do) and I heard her let out an unmistakeably irritated grumble in the dish pit. I've never heard or seen her get into such a state and 30 seconds later it was as if nothing ever happened. I'm glad she released her frustration away from customers and let it roll of as quickly as it came on. I wish more of our employees, myself included, could just let those sort of things go so easily.

PM: Joel had a long day. He works hard but sometimes I'm never quite sure if he's cutting corners and pushing gray areas or if he really just doesn't know any better sometimes. When I show him something to correct a mistake or an incident, he seems receptive and even comes to me when he notices shortcomings elsewhere. I guess these things take time and a little trial and error.
Miho had more misrings than anyone else tonight. With the exception of two nigiri pieces I think they were all hers tonight. I think she may be distracted with her boyfriend leaving. That is a bummer for her I'm sure. She does a bang-up job otherwise.
I think Ally is going to work out well at the host stand. She may need to toughen up in some respects but Krystin is already pretty confident in her abilities. There's a lot for her to pick up on, but she seems like an incredibly bright kid with an infectiously cheerful disposition.


Any VIP's in? There were 3 or 4 tables of folks for lunch that I recognized. Same for dinner. Just no names. Miho's boyfriend came in. He is moving to Dallas and wanted to say goodbye to Take.

Comps& Void Detail: AM: Void 2x Chicken Katsu for 86 and 1x iced tea misring. 1x gyu-don Void for 86.
PM: 1x takowasa void 86, void endo roll for misring, void tekka and salmon maki- guest changed mind, void 2 sake toro nigiri- 86. void salmon box misring.
Clair and Joel won the wine contest tonight. Clair sold over $50 earning $10 Kome bucks. Joel sold $116 earning $15 Kome bucks.
Miho paid for her boyfriend's entire meal, so I just treated it as a makani discount.
Sip Slurp Sushi discount.

R&M needs?:There are some concerns about the hot rock. Clair mentioned that one of her tables had hot oil splash onto them the moment they put the first piece of beef on the rock. The smoking of the oil on the rock, if I'm not mistaken, basically means the oil is burning right? I don't know. Those things are just so damn hot. Servers need to very sternly warn their tables about being careful when they eat off of those things. Also Alex wanted to know the wifi password so that she could play music after we closed. I didn't have an answer for her.
I swapped out the Co2 tank on the Asahi machine tonight. Elizabeth said she just changed it recently. If that is the case maybe there is a leak?

86'd items/ need more? we could probably use more china markers. I don't feel servers have been diligent enough about collecting them and I've had several tables with shredded markers while over the weekend.