Building sales and employee morale at the same time.

A good way to build sales within the four walls of the restaurant is to run server contests that focus on selling items that can increase your check average, help get rid of high inventory items before they go bad (this works great in the case of over ordering which also helps combat high food cost), help increase sales in an area that may need a little help such as wine or liquor, and can also help build sales on slower nights.
If you provide great contest prizes this can have a huge impact on employee morale and can help generate competition amongst the servers and once everyone is on board it can be fun and everyone wins.
Here is a list of some on the contest I have done or seen done in the past:
Bingo-fill out a sheet of paper with a bunch of squares listing the menu items or drinks you would like sold. The first one to complete it wins.
High category sales, such as appetizers, wine, dessert etc…
Highest check average.
Wine feature contest for a month based on highest sales. Usually, three winners; first, second and third place.

Here are some the prizes I have offered in the past.
No closing duties or side work.
They get to write their own schedule for the next week.
Trade outs with other restaurants or local businesses.
Beer, wine and liquor purveyors can also give some really good prizes.

Anytime you can get your employees to compete with each other, can create a positive fun atmosphere where they can win some really cool prizes it a great morale builder.

What are bloggers saying about your business?

Knowing what is being said about your business on the internet is very important as positive things are great and good for your business and negative things can be very damaging.
Lets face it, just about everyone goes to the internet for their source of information and if they were just visiting your web site, then you could paint the picture about your business that you want everyone to see and know about you, and that would be all there is to it.
However, there are so many places on the internet for anyone to go and review your business, positive or negative. Blogging is now such a large part of the internet and has gained a great deal of popularity and credibility that a negative write up on your business can be very damaging and in the hands of the right blogger can go viral over the internet.
I use Google alerts to let me know whenever anything is written about the business I manage. You can set up these alerts here http://www.google.com/alerts and it seems to work pretty well, it even picks up my tweets from twitter. There are other sites that you can use, this just the one I use.
So far I have only encountered positive writings and they are great to share with our staff to help keep morale as high as possible. But if and when I encounter a negative one, I will be able to at least address it before it spins out of control and reaches to many people. Blog alerts can play an important part managing the business and I work way to hard to allow anything negative to go unaddressed.