I have become obsessed with the financial picture painted at the last All Manager Meeting. All year the trend has been Xoco 2014 dinner nosediving versus Xoco 2013 dinner. In August, it was shocking to see that we actually did MORE COVERS at dinner in 2014, but still came up thirty thousand dollars short. In fact, the check average across the board, for both lunch and dinner, was $4 less in August 2014. Despite serving thousands more people in August this year, we came up ten of thousands of dollars short in sales.
Unfortunately, I have no one to blame but myself. We changed the menu format completely in July, and I never trained the staff how to sell the new format. I take responsibility for that failure. We are going to tweak the format so that the Lunch / Dinner side is formulated to SELL. The first column will start with the Xoco margarita and seasonal margarita, and then list all the starters and guacamole bar. The middle three columns will be entrees: tortas, caldos and salads. The final column will be desserts.
I am calling this money ball menu, and it will be a great training tool for the servers. We are going to old school Frontera the Xoco. I am 100% focused on getting this menu and my team to encourage every guest to have a starter, entrée and dessert. And margarita. And hot chocolate. Every guest, thirty dollars. The buck stops here.
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