With high-profile seasonal menu specials, additional dishes look that much better, and give the chef the chance to squeeze an extra dollar or two from other specials. A first-class dish of Nantucket bay scallops gratin, with ginger and Thai sticky rice will command a high price. By offering a shrimp pasta special alongside, for considerably less money, that dish will sell for those customers looking for a deal, allowing the chef the chance get an added bump in price without the dish seeming expensive.

Diners are always on the lookout for "the latest" at restaurants, and chefs are always inventing ways to keep the menu exciting. But it's not feasible to overhaul the entire menu daily or even weekly. Fortunately the daily special can always create a little buzz in your house.

Specials are important as a way to keep menus interesting. Ensuring return visits from customers requires a solid mix of standard and signature dishes along with fresh and intriguing options. Equally important, specials give the kitchen manager or chef a chance to stretch the imagination. They also keep the cooks motivated and interested in their jobs. Let's face it: No one likes rote responsibilities.

Most menus don't change more than four times a year to reflect the seasons. Some menus change even less frequently. Without specials to excite the cooks, they often long for new items to prepare so keeping them energized is vital. Complacent cooks who aren't charged by their position may look for a new place to hang their toque. Daily specials are an ideal way for the kitchen management to teach young cooks new techniques, how to handle new foodstuffs and organize new items in their station with little notice.

Most menus don't change more than four times a year to reflect the seasons. Some menus change even less frequently. Without specials to excite the cooks, they often long for new items to prepare so keeping them energized is vital. Complacent cooks who aren't charged by their position may look for a new place to hang their toque. Daily specials are an ideal way for the kitchen management to teach young cooks new techniques, how to handle new foodstuffs and organize new items in their station with little notice. -- Michael Tsonton

The daily special presents an opportune time to entice cooks to brainstorm ideas, a process that also invites camaraderie and a sense of ownership. For the chef's part, the process often unveils initiative and a glimpse into the cooks interested in stepping up to the proverbial plate.

Involve Staff

Start the process by sharing seasonal purchasing information with the staff. Create a list of possible proteins, vegetables and starches that work within the restaurant's price point. Ask the staff to contribute five or six ideas for appetizers and entrees. Arrange a meeting with the cooks and the sous-chefs to discuss the ideas. Ask them how they got their ideas and what motivated them to create each dish. Remind staff that all ideas are worth exploring but that the dishes that make the cut must fall in line with the concept of the restaurant and the price point.

Inspire suggestions. Have each person elaborate and improve on ideas. Keep the conversation open. Before the exchange begins, set the ground rules. Everyone should be positive and the word "no" or other negative comments should not be allowed. This is not a dogfight, but an opportunity to foster team building and work toward a common goal.

Once a short list of items has been agreed on, it's time to get to the cooking. In most cases, getting samples from purveyors isn't a problem, which means recipe testing won't infringe on controlling costs. The cook should prepare the same dish twice for consistency and to simulate the line during service. On a practical note, preparing just one dish probably won't be enough food for all the cooks to taste and evaluate. Consider all comments and then make the necessary changes to the dish, tweaking the special until it's ready for the dining room.

Determine Costs

Before any dish hits the specials list, the cost for all the ingredients must be determined by the chef or kitchen manager. Check the line to be sure that the portion of the protein that cooks are using for the special is the same amount that went into the calculation of the cost. The same applies for other ingredients, especially the more costly ingredients like butter, cream, cheese, extra virgin olive oil or specialty vegetables like wild mushrooms. Share and discuss any miscalculations with the cook and other staff.

Seasonally Speaking

Beyond making food look and taste great, nothing is more important than keeping the food cost in line. Make sure that the prices for ingredients are current. Fluctuating market prices for dairy and seasonal produce can easily change the cost of a dish by a point or two if the pricing information isn't current. A daily special won't be as special if it's costing the restaurant money to run it.

Seasonal ingredients, from fruits and vegetables to fish and seafood, are ideal for building daily specials. With the customer's insatiable appetite for new and exciting, foodstuffs such as fava beans and white king salmon in the spring or Nantucket Bay scallops in the fall add cache to the menu. Sold as a special, these dishes offer a sense of urgency. Guests think if they don't order it, the dish won't be available later. For instance, squash blossoms, soft-shell crabs and even figs and local asparagus are available for a limited time. All these ingredients can easily work into "house specials" that the customer will clamor for each year.

In the spring anything green gets attention as the winter cold gives way to some sun. And fall brings out some of the best in wild mushrooms. Winter warmers like soups, risottos and stews are easy to sell, solid profit makers, and people love them.

Of course, restaurants in the sunshine states would have to alter the menu for their specific markets, but each corner of this country has its own special foods that only crop up during certain times. Taking advantage of seasonal markets makes sense for specials. . . . Seasonal specials give the regular customer something to look forward to.

Restaurant Startup & Growth

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Seasonal specials give the regular customer something to look forward to, and give new customers items they will find creative and surprising.

Seasonal foodstuffs also give chefs a chance to plan menus. By testing plate partners ahead of time -- vegetables and starches along with sauces -- finished dishes can be thought out, and costed out prior to menu time. Getting ahead with menu planning leaves additional time for chefs to handle other projects and problems.

Specials focused on seasonal ingredients also provide marketing and publicity opportunities. Specials celebrating the bounty of tomatoes or heralding the first produce of the spring could prove newsworthy. Because seasonal items may be kinder to food costs, operators can attach a more appetizing price to a daily special. All market studies show that all guests want value, whether the venue is fine dining or quick-casual.

A Proving Ground

The special also works as a sort of proving ground for new menu items and a chance to showcase the kitchen's latest creations. Once a dish has been properly tested and "costed," getting feedback from the guest can make or break its chances of getting on the next menu.

The key is to make sure the special is ready to be sold. More often than not, chefs use the guest as a guinea pig by testing new ideas and dishes in the dining room instead of in the kitchen. This practice can derail the prospect of getting positive feedback from the guest as well as possibly losing that customer when a meal doesn't meet expectations. While daily specials provide an outlet for creativity, it is best known as a way to turn over inventory. If striped bass isn't selling well but is still fresh, the best alternative is not to toss it into the trash.

Perhaps the fish can work its way into a cioppino or a bouillabaisse as a daily special at lunch or dinner. Just add some other fish and shrimp already in house, along with a garlicky side of rouille, and toasted French bread, and this dish sells itself. Because such a seafood dish already enjoys an established recipe history, testing the food on the guest is removed from the equation.

If you improvise a daily special from unused inventory, be sure to write down the recipe for future use. What goes around comes around. Next year when faced with too much striped bass, you want your staff to open the recipe file rather than try to recollect the steps and ingredients that made your improvised cioppino a big hit. (See "Recipes as Tools" below.)

Designing a daily special that is tasty for the guest must also be palatable to the bottom line. For many operations, daily specials account for a strong percentage of food sales, and help reduce overall food cost. Many of these dishes in the special category are by design low-cost high-profit items.

Arm Yourself With Numbers

If the restaurant's concept relies on specials for driving sales, it's wise to develop a method for creating specials. Using the menu mix, determine the ratio of special sales to menu sales. Armed with these numbers, it will be easier to answer some questions that will make the special program work more smoothly. How many specials can the kitchen handle and how many of them can the front of the house realistically sell during each day part? More is not always better.

It's also smart to clearly communicate to the staff what it should convey to the guest about the special. Overly complicated, wordy descriptions delivered by waiters tableside can cause the guest's eyes to glaze over and in the end hurt special sales. The key is to keep it simple by giving the guest just what they need to hear, and then allowing them the opportunity to ask questions.

When the specials are presented verbally, some magic words for guests are grilled, roasted and fresh. It might also be useful to have the servers provide background on why the dish is a special. Perhaps it was inspired by the chef's recent visit to Italy or something his mother made when he or she was a child. People love stories -- but remember to keep it short. The information should always be interesting, irreverent or funny. If not, there's no point in telling the guest.

Typically a quality special card will list one to three first courses and the same number of options for entrees. The number of items will depend on the restaurant's concept. For example, a neighborhood Italian trattoria may have a specials list that features more items than an upscale fine dining restaurant. Items like bruschetta, antipasto, pizza, and pasta are easier to create and execute, and don't normally involve higher-priced foodstuffs to finish.

The menu mix could be one soup, like a country bean with proscuitto, a salad of roasted radicchio and goat cheese with green olives, and one appetizer of grilled calamari with almond pesto. The object is to not overwhelm any one menu category with too many additional specials, which will hurt the menu mix, creating sales shortfalls in some menu dishes.

The same idea would apply to entrees. In the Italian concept, one special pizza with seasonal tomatoes, roasted garlic and fresh mozzarella, a pasta of parpardelle with braised duck and one fish special, maybe a grilled swordfish with lemon, pine nuts and oregano. Keep the dishes different enough from each other and the menu's regular dishes so they are "special," and don't cannibalize other options.

Dishes created in this format borrow from the "tried and true" and often don't need to be tested first to find success. Staying on top of the food cost, though, even in the simplest of dishes, is still paramount.

Build Repeat Business

Specials can help build repeat business. A refrain often heard about specials include, "Please call me when the chef does her lobster bisque again." Keeping customer favorites in the special rotation gives the guest something to look forward to.

Pricing specials is a key component to the success of moving daily specials. Generally speaking, customers are willing to pay a bit more for specials because, well, they are special. When offering seasonal items, guests will pay more for foods they know may not be around very long.

With high-profile seasonal menu specials, additional dishes look that much better, and give the chef the chance to squeeze an extra dollar or two from other specials. A first-class dish of Nantucket bay scallops gratin, with ginger and Thai sticky rice will command a high price. By offering a shrimp pasta special alongside, for considerably less money, that dish will sell for those customers looking for a deal, allowing the chef the chance get an added bump in price without the dish seeming expensive.

Giving the guest a range of prices in the special card is important. It gives the special list some breadth in price, which gives the guest the same dining options as the main menu.

-- Restaurant Startup & Growth

Recipes as Tools

Recipes make or break most kitchens. Quality kitchens rely on standards for keeping menu favorites right and new recipes consistent. Menus that feature dressings, vinaigrettes, soups, sauces and desserts need to keep surprises out of the dining room. Quality recipes added to good execution equals consistent product and happy customers.

But writing a tasty recipe is only the beginning. How the information is stored and used by the kitchen crew are completely different. The chef or kitchen manager isn't standing behind the line on in-line skates, sliding from one station to another, preparing every plate that leaves for the dining room. It takes many skilled hands to get the chef's culinary vision into practice. Unless that kitchen is one of the few four-star restaurants where recipes are done at the stove by famous chefs, then taught to a brigade of cooks, a quality recipe better be in the works.

Not everything from the kitchen needs a recipe. Pan-roasted salmon doesn't need a recipe, just good technique. But if the dish is finished with shallot-green herb vinaigrette, writing a recipe for the vinaigrette is a good idea.

Making vinaigrette is not a difficult task, but the finished product can vary greatly in the hands of different cooks. And when two different sauces come out of the kitchen for the same dish, that's where problems begin. Recipes take the most of worry out of a bad scenario. Recipes written with the proper yield and procedures are the framework of good cooking. Once the recipes are put into motion, teaching cooks how to prepare them is what makes the recipe work. The chef is then left to focus on other tasks, knowing that cooks are following standards that are written and easy to follow, resulting in consistent dishes.

Once successful recipes are written and put into production, keeping the information in the cook's hands is just as important as the recipe itself. Write all the recipes the restaurant needs, but if the cooks don't get the tools they need to use the recipes, the soup may become afoul.

Create a form on your restaurant computer's spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel to write and file recipes. A good form to use is one that allows for both recipe measurements, space for procedures, as well as a costing column so all the work of writing a recipe can be done on one sheet.

Printed, a recipe form can be used as a worksheet in the kitchen during the development of a recipe, making notes and changes to measurements or procedures as needed. Once the recipe is detailed, the information can be entered into the computer, written on the form, and saved to a recipe file, and for safety sake, a disk also. If needed, recipe forms can be found on the magazine's Web site, at www.RestaurantOwner.com.

All cooks need tools. To start, the basic tools for a successful cook include a pen, a marker and a notebook. The notebook should be pocket-sized or small enough to keep in the station during service. The main reason for having a notebook is for recipes.

Provide cooks with copies of recipes from the restaurant's recipe file. Instruct the cooks to copy the recipe into their personal notebooks. This directive has two simple and positive actions.

First, by having the cook copy the recipe into a notebook, they read the recipe, and get a head start on learning and understanding it. This also gives the cook a chance to ask questions before returning the recipe to the chef. Second, they now have the recipe with them, easy to find, and easy to use during the shift, giving the cook a feeling of entitlement. That's important in helping build employees who can work without constant supervision. Creating smart, independent cooks should be the goal of any overworked chef or kitchen manager.

This is the major strength of a well-written recipe. The recipe performs as a working tool, giving the restaurant's menu a foundation on which to build consistency, reliability and quality from the business's core group: its cooks.

If the restaurant's menu is one that only changes once or twice a year, standard recipes are a must to achieve day-to-day results. Certainly there is more time up front for the chef or kitchen manager. But the time and effort saved during the menu's run will easily offset those hours sitting in front of a PC.

Give the cooks all the tools they need, from rubber spatulas to sauté pans, but don't forget to give them a well-written recipe. Remember; in the end, it's your name on the food.