Make a Uniform Decision Aninsidelookattherestaurantbiz b y J e n n i f e r e l g i n

W hether or not someone has ever been a member of the food-hospitality industry, it can be difficult to think of restaurant stereotypes and not

think about the exchanges between server Joanna and chain restaurant manager Stan regarding the necessity of “uniform flair” in the movie Office Space. In a hilarious back-and-forth dialogue, Jo-anna presses Stan to explain how dozens of flashy buttons and pins will create a better experience for restaurant guests, and the loyal corporate manager does his best to inform his employee that with uniformity comes cohesiveness in the work environment.

Of course, this is a parody and both parties are right in their argument set in such an extreme example. It does, however, beg the question for both small business owners and larger restaurants with many locations: “What should be the uni-form standard in our unique setting?”

Every eatery has its own identity; some rules come from a distant headquarters and have been in place for many years, while smaller, privately-owned dining establishments make these deci-sions in-house and on a case-by-case basis.

To keep in touch with the entire spectrum of restaurant profiles, wholesalers and distributors are stocking up on silhouettes that promote as much style as they ensure safety, and pieces that can transform the wearer from casual to fine din-ing in one simple step.

IdentIfyIng the marketIt is widely accepted that large national chains maintain a uniform standard across the board, perhaps assigning tweaks that befit the climate of a certain location. This promotes thorough product branding and identifies an employee as just that. Each store has a level of expectations to be met, and owners do this to ensure that a guest in Arizona will have the same dining experience when visiting a sister locale in Ohio. A uniform in this setting may involve several pieces, such as a company-issued shirt or apron with the store’s logo, neckwear and/or headwear.

Withspacefor

decorating,thebib

apronwithpockets

protectsclothing.

(Imagecourtesy

Edward’sGarment)

Above: Bylayeringavestoverlunchtimewovens,thispiecetransitionsintodinnerser-

vicewithonestep.“Sometimeschangingyourstyledoesn’tmeanabandoningthebasic

elementsofyourimageapparelprogram,butratheraddingapiecethatcomplements

thelook,”saysTaraynnLloyd,Edward’sGarment.(ImagecourtesyEdward’sGarment)

Right: Awaistapronkeepseverythingaserverneedswithinreach.(Imagecourtesy

Aprons,Etc.)

Jennifer Elgin is a freelance writer and broadcaster, covering fashion and

sports beats for various media outlets. She attended the School of Jour-

nalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she earned her B.S.

in Broadcast Journalism. She loves fashion, fishing, the color red, traveling

and sports. She currently resides in Denver.

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Independent restaurants, as their own entity, can allow the centralized ambience to dictate policy and have lenience when determining the desired look and feel of the storefront and its staff members. A common example of this is to allow front-of-the-house staff to wear their own clothing of choice, as long as it fits an agreed upon color palette. The apparent idea here is to invite an air of individuality that sets each employee apart.

Any service industry member will agree that saving steps when busy is the bridge to streamlined performance, and that comfort trumps all when considering the hours spent on one’s feet, regardless of uniform policy. The key to cashing in on this indus-try, then, is to zero in on the universal and functional pieces that all employees will want to wear to work.

StapleS of the induStry“Some form of uniform is important in all sizes of restaurants,” explains Pam Pen-nington, Aprons, Etc. “For example, aprons provide the customer with quick identi-fication of their server, and aprons with pockets allow servers to carry necessary items like pens, pads and straws.” With an adjustable neck feature or flat bistro front, the fit can be comfortable for every wearer. Additionally, aprons provide protection for cloth-ing. For those who wear items from their own wardrobe to work, the shield provided by an apron can save costly mishaps from ruining clothes.

Above: By layering a vest over lunchtime wovens, this piece transitions into dinner ser-

vice with one step. “Sometimes changing your style doesn’t mean abandoning the basic

elements of your image apparel program, but rather adding a piece that complements

the look,” says Taraynn Lloyd, Edward’s Garment. (Image courtesy Edward’s Garment)

Right: A waist apron keeps everything a server needs within reach. (Image courtesy

Aprons, Etc.)

2012 NovEmBEr Printwear | 41

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2012 November Printwear | 4342 | Printwear November 2012

The women’s low-rise boot cut pant fits the

style demands and comfort necessity of ser-

vice team members. (Image courtesy ed-

ward’s Garment)(Image courtesy Daystar Apparel Inc.)

Pennington forecasts strong sales in waist and bib style aprons in a wide variety of colors this season. “Waist aprons complement a restaurant’s logoed Ts or polo style shirts, while the bib aprons provide the perfect spot to brand on the chest of the apron so that employees can wear their own garments. In environments where employee turnover is high, aprons offer a great unisex and non-sized option.”

Agreeing that aprons create a recognizable ID of the service team, Taraynn Lloyd, Edwards Garment, also points out stylish cuts designed for restaurant wear can make a big impression. “Restaurants look for variety not only with their menu selection, but with the garments that their employees wear,” she says. “They can select different styles and colors based on their brand and the décor of their prop-erty.”

Other styles that perform well for restaurant servers include polos, poplin shirts, vests, hospitality pants and aprons––all of which are easy care and machine wash-able. (They have to be; one shift can see enough splatters and spills to make a washing machine shudder.)

“The biggest advantage for allowing employees to wear what they want is ob-viously cost with the initial investment,” notes Sara Rehan, Rehan’s Uniforms.

UNIFORMS & WORKWEAR

bright colors are being served up in kitchens

this season. (Image courtesy Aprons, etc.)

a-dress the Market’s needsedwards Garment offers these tips for catering to the service industry:

• offer comfortable pants that provide servers

room to move. Young women want lower-

rise pants that fit on their hip and have a

bit of stretch to the fabric. Young men also

want pants that are comfortable and provide

added stretch. They particularly want pants

that fit on the top of their hip bone.

• Servers that work in one venue during the

day and another at night need to have image

apparel that accommodates their changing

role. Typically, you’ll see them in a woven

shirt, with or without neckwear and in com-

fortable pants during the day. For evening

they just add a vest to provide formal style.

• vests need to have a longer body length to

accommodate the pant sitting on the hip.

• Long-sleeve woven shirts work best to pro-

tect the servers, and they cover any body art

which the patron does not want to see.

• easy-care apparel that is wrinkle resistant

and home laundered is a must.

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2012 November Printwear | 43

“Yet, even when the restaurant allows their employees to wear their own clothing, in almost all cases the restaurant will provide aprons, usually with their logo on them. This does give the look of a standard uni-form without the cost factor being prohib-itive for the restaurant.”

Rehan reports that restaurants lean to-ward decorating aprons with their logo over shirts, citing more difficulty in re-trieving shirts than aprons after an em-ployee quits or has been terminated.

In order to reach out to the individual employees, a Rehan’s representative meets with restaurant managers and owners to pre-approve certain apparel items. They then supply a catalog to the restaurant showing the approved items and set a group price for the employees based on

those items to make the purchase more at-tractive. This method gives the staff a say in their apparel while following the wishes of their management team.

How tHe otHer Half livesWhile restaurants may vary from one an-other in what they require the hospitality and support staff to wear to greet and serve guests, a whole other world exists beyond the kitchen door: the back-of-the-house staff. There is less policy and more neces-sity involved when it comes to dressing those who prepare the daily fare. Chef and kitchen staff apparel is designed for pro-tection and function, and contemporary styles appear on this season’s menu.

“Colored coats and coats in short-sleeved versions have increased in popular-

ity this year,” says Pennington. “In a more formal restaurant environment, often a head chef will wear a more standard chef coat for working and keep higher end coats for visiting diners. Traditionally, long sleeves have served to keep hot items and products from touching bare skin, but the overheated kitchen atmosphere have many searching out lighter-weight fabrics and moisture-wicking panels in both long- and short-sleeved versions,” Pennington con-tinues.

Traditional-style chef hats have been mostly replaced with beanie style caps, which are also available with performance characteristics that dissipate body heat, and pants are offered in baggy styles for greater comfort. In Rehan’s experience, up-scale restaurants tend to prefer chef hats,

Building your business means creating a fi rst and lasting impression with customers. You need to stand out from your competition and create a brand that will convey who your company is.

Image apparel is a key ingredient. Your employees are the fi rst people your client sees when they step inside your business and how they present themselves impacts your bottom line.

From cruise ships to hotels, restaurants to retail establishments – image apparel is a decisive factor in successfully defining your image.

Edwards Garment is your single reliable source devoted to customer service. Visit our website at www.edwardsgarment.com or call 800.253.9885 to place your order today.

Building your business means creating a fi rst and From cruise ships to hotels, restaurants

Image Apparel: A Key to Your Success

EDW2122_Uni_PrintW_HALF.indd 1 9/28/12 9:25 AMUse Info # 116

PWNOV12.indd 43 10/18/12 12:30 PM

2012 November Printwear | 45

GenerOUS GratUitY

• When a location is just opening, it will have more flexibility in terms of

changing uniforms or colors.

• make sure your client knows his staff represents the entire restaurant.

• build a partnership by making sure good service is part of the deal.

Follow up on accounts to make sure uniforms are performing as ex-

pected and to get constant re-orders.

• Check out what chains are headquartered in your area.

• Schedule your call before 11 a.m. or after 2 p.m.

Left: Designed with mesh pan-

els, this chef’s coat offers pro-

tection and ventilation. (Image

courtesy rehan’s Uniforms)

Below: The standard eight-but-

ton chef coat is trending this

season in short sleeves. (Image

courtesy Aprons, etc.)

44 | Printwear November 2012

Aprons etc. offers the following tips to approach a local restaurant:

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2012 November Printwear | 45

occasionally coupled with a neckerchief, while smaller family restaurants dress most of their back of house staff in baseball caps. “More small restaurants are now supplying the headwear, as they are quite concerned with employees wearing their own hats, due to what might be printed on them,” notes Rehan.

Pennington states that smaller restaurants are often also concerned with the economy of the uniforms they purchase, along with appropriate function. Since most chef coats are offered in a common fabric with the same pocket features, the primary differ-ence between one coat and another often comes down to the number of buttons and their construction. For a client wanting a chef coat at the best price, she recommends starting with eight plastic buttons.

Why uniforms Work in the WorkplaceLaura Leeper, a restaurant general man-ager based in Denver, who has worked at

every rank up to her current position, un-der every uniform policy (or lack there-of ), discusses why she believes uniforms are crucial to a positive restaurant work environment. The former hostess, server, corporate trainer and bar manager can’t express enough how important the first impression a server makes truly is:

“Anytime I go out to eat, the first thing I notice is how the staff appears; not what aromas are coming out the kitchen, or the lighting and décor, but the appearance of the staff,” she says. “If my server, or even the host, doesn’t look put-together, I have to wonder what the kitchen—where my food is being prepared—looks like.” Ob-viously, Leeper’s training has wired this thinking, but experience on both sides of the table often reveals that the assump-tions made on a first impression are valid.

An avid diner who enjoys trying new restaurants and visiting favorites alike,

continued on page 106

Wearable_1/3_Nov2012(10/10)

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Use Info #152

An elastic-backed bean-

ie keeps the chef cool

when the kitchen gets

hot. (Image courtesy

Aprons, etc.)

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Datebook

2012 November Printwear | 107106 | Printwear November 2012

UNIFORMS & WORKWEAR

tie to any business or organization. The person is tweeting as themselves, for themselves. The account is still in-tended to build relationships and to exchange information and we suspect the person works for someone but it’s not obvious “who” exactly that com-pany is.

üThe Business/Personal Hybrid Ac-count—which is what most smart small business owners create. It’s an account that mixes both the personal and professional. You can tweet about what’s going on in your industry, what blogs you’re reading and any struggles you’re facing as a person in your field. But then you use the same account to share personal interests—such as the volunteer work you per-form for a local pet rescue, church or school—and tweet about vacations, family activities and sporting events. You mix both worlds, even if that means alienating some who’d rather not know about the other. However, you don’t dilute your efforts by trying to show others that you are likable, trustworthy and fun to be with.

Once you’ve joined the Twitter commu-nity, you’ll need to find people to follow and potential followers. Account owners can use the site’s search filters, or utilize specific outside pages created to help navi-gate through millions of other Twitter us-ers. Twellow (www.twellow.com) is a web-site that hosts a directory of public Twitter accounts and hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you.

Another website to visit is Listorious (www.listorious.com), where you can find anyone by topic, region or profession and the data is compiled from the tens of thou-sands of list curators. Once you find the right person, you can interview them by asking questions over Listorious.

Once you’ve established a community, maintain it by posting relevant content, and that which builds relationships and loyalty to your business. Good luck!

for Google to track visitor content in-teractions. For example, Google Events offers several tracking variables to help create this system, including category, ac-tion, label and value.•Category—The content format. This

could be a sell sheet, price list, video, coupon, etc.

•Action—How users interact with the content (download, pin, share, email).

•Label—A label of your choice to let you to know which specific part of your content was interacted with. For example, “Back To School Coupon” might be labeled “Back To School 2012.”

•Value—Assign a specific number or dollar value to the content interaction. For example, if you think 20 percent of your coupon downloads will result in an average sale of $100, you might choose to assign the event a value of $20. Likewise, you could use a number system from one to 10 based on goals you have set for that content to have been downloaded, shared, etc.

The information provided by tracked content interactions combined with other statistics, such as top pages viewed and organic keyword visits, will provide the information you need to have a more focused content-marketing strategy.

Use the insight to create content in the formats your audiences prefer (down-loads, coupons or video, for examples). Generate new topic ideas based on the popularity of existing content and fre-quently publish content that has proven to be the most shared through social me-dia. Above all, learn more about how your audience interacts with your website and exactly what grabs their attention.

Remember, the more you know about what content your audiences want, the more you know how to market to them. This industry is based on creativity, and getting creative with the content pre-sented, though challenging, can open yet another door to the pathways that lead to online marketing success.

Leeper dines out at least five times a week. “Most restaurants have a minimum uniform standard; the question lies in how detailed that uniform policy is. I am a strong supporter of having a very de-tailed and stringent uniform policy set in place. If you say, black pants must be worn, that standard can be taken many differ-ent ways. Black dress pants, black cargo pants, black sweat pants. Black dress pants is a very different statement than black yoga pants. A firm dress code sets the tone of what you want your restaurant to rep-resent.”

Another reason she advocates a strong uniform requirement is the ability for management to hold the staff account-able. Lenient policies leave wiggle room for interpretation, and some interpreta-tions may not be the message an owner, either corporate or private, wishes to con-vey to their patrons. “Structure and dis-tinct guidelines eliminate gray areas and squash unfortunate advantage-taking,” Leeper asserts.

Finally, she addresses the problem of wasting investments on decorated apparel due to employee turnover. By exchanging a final paycheck for branded merchan-dise, restaurant owners needn’t hesitate when ordering decorated goods for fear of losing profit. As Leeper states, “Uni-forms provide structure, simple as that. The more structure you want, the more detailed you need to be. I feel the pros far outweigh the cons.”

No matter where a restaurant falls on the uniform-policy spectrum, and regard-less of its size, all service employees have basic uniform needs to be met in order to best perform successfully. Whether outfitting a privately-owned place with basic bistro aprons or dressing a staff with enough fabric to hold 37 pieces of flair, the food service industry is ripe for picking. And, with open kitchens more popular than ever, back of the house team members are as visible as the front sup-port staff––only the entrees being served should look better. pwpwpw

Your Personal Business Trainercontinued from page 31 continued from page 39

Internet Strategiescontinued from page 45

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