SEMINAR INFORMATION
Seminars and speakers are being added, but here is what you can expect so far:
Michael J Rasmussen is owner and president of Rasmussen Tax Group, a team of industry specialists empowering restaurant owners to have more personal time, grow their business, and be more profitable through technology and service that simplifies tax planning, accounting, and business solutions. Michael’s Where’s my CASH seminar is designed to teach the operator the mechanics of reading a financial statement to determine important ratios to manage to each week. Bring your current financial statement and Mike will select 10 financial statements to review during the show by a drawing during his presentation. A personal sit down will be scheduled to explain the results to the operator.
Jim Milliken is an 18-year pizza industry veteran. All of his advertising and operational knowledge were put to use when he purchased a Wheat State Pizza franchise. After 6 months in business, Milliken increased sales by 52%. He now operates two stores in central Kansas and can be found in PMQ’s Think Tank where he is an avid participant. Jim will go through the basics of going into the pizza business, which will include: demographics, traffic counts, site selection, how to negotiate, what to negotiate, timelines, hiring a contractor, hiring an accountant, obtaining financing, pre-opening marketing and discuss the challenges of everyday pizza life.
Tom Lehmann, employed by the American Institute of Baking since 1965, took an interest in pizza in 1967 when he reverse engineered a pizza being produced in Chicago. He was soon recognized as the local pizza expert. He has provided technical assistance to most of the large wholesale pizza manufacturers, chains, and independent operators. He conducts at least three pizza seminars for the AIB every year. He is familiar with all types of pizza/pizza production. Tom and fellow AIB expert Jeff Zeak will conduct the Dough Fitness Center all three days of the Orlando Pizza Show.
Jeffrey Mandel is a territory manager at Heartland Payment Systems. Jeff was a victim of an unscrupulous credit card processor! Since then, he has shown countless merchants how to effectively reduce the costs by breaking down how the credit and debit card associations work. Items covered in this seminar are: How Visa and MasterCard REALLY work-- what’s their hard cost, who’s getting paid profit, how much, and who you can eliminate from the mix; 10 tricks that brokers/middlemen use to inflate their profit at your expense; Three discounts you SHOULD be receiving from the card associations that may go into someone else’s pockets.
Aaron Allen is Founder and CEO of Quantified Marketing Group. Aaron is a third-generation restaurateur and one of the most sought-after restaurant marketing consultants in the nation. His firm has worked with more than 3,000 restaurants. He and a panel of experts from his restaurant consulting firm will lead an interactive roundtable focusing on operational and marketing topics as they relate to pizzeria owners. The roundtable topics will include: Culinary Development, Purchasing, Public Relations, Restaurant Design/Concept Development and Local Store Marketing, among others. Each attendee may participate in two 15-minute roundtable discussions followed by a 10-minute Q & A.
