Compliance in the Restaurant Industry

According to the National Restaurant Association, nearly 13 million people are employed in the U.S. restaurant industry. And even in our current economic climate, the industry is expected to hire more than 1 million additional restaurant workers in the next decade. That?s good news for such a risky business sector. Even during the best of times, the restaurant survival rate is low. One Ohio State University study found that 59% of new restaurants closed within three years.

With the odds stacked against them, the last thing any restaurant owner wants is to lose money ? not from lack of customers ? but rather from an imperfect understanding of the federal and state restaurant industry compliance regulations governing their employees.

The physically demanding work and reliance on tips as remuneration for employees places restaurants in a unique position when it comes to federal and state industry labor regulations. There are several key areas of the law of which restaurant owners should be aware to prevent expensive and time consuming audits or lawsuits.

The primary law impacting restaurants is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA a federal law setting minimum requirements for the working conditions and compensation of workers.

All restaurant employees are entitled to certain wages and benefits. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour for non-exempt employees. Be wary: individual states may have higher minimum wages. Check the laws of your state to be sure.

This minimum wage standard is uniquely applied for ?tipped? employees or those who make more than $30 a month in tips. Many restaurant owners can take credit for a certain amount of money their workers earn in tips and apply it to the payment of the minimum wage. Different states regulate this area of the law in different ways. All employers must inform their employees in advance if they intend to count tips towards the minimum wage, and they must provide evidence to the government that the employees are receiving at least the minimum wage after combining wages and tips.

If employees are required to work more than 40 hours a week, they must receive overtime pay at a rate of at least 1.5 times the employee?s regular hourly pay rate. The National Restaurant Association?s website provides guidelines on How to Calculate Overtime for Tipped Employees.

Furthermore, if any of your employees are under the age of 18, there are special laws that apply to their working conditions. Minor and adult employees are both entitled to the same minimum pay and overtime protections. However, minors are also subject to federal youth employment regulations. More information about employing minor workers is available at the Department of Labor website that focuses on youths.

Navigating the maze of labor regulations that apply to the restaurant industry can be a daunting task. With careful planning and research, however, employers can minimize their risk in an already risky business venture.

Anne Berlow authored this post in partnership with Global Compliance?, a comprehensive ethics and compliance program to encourage trust and transparency within organizations.

*For more on risk management within the hospitality industry, check out the September issue of Risk Management, online Thursday, September 1st.

Related Topics: National Restaurant Association, Restaurants

Source: http://www.riskmanagementmonitor.com/guest-post-compliance-in-the-restaurant-industry/

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Best Time to See Elusive Planet Mercury in Morning Sky Is Now (SPACE.com)

Skywatchers, take note: This week is your best opportunity of the year to see the planet Mercury as a "morning star."

Of the five planets known since antiquity, Mercury is by far the most rarely seen by the average person. In fact many serious astronomers have never seen planet Mercury, including the famous German astronomer, Johannes Kepler.

The reason why Mercury is so rarely spotted is not that it isn't bright: in fact it's generally one of the brightest objects in the sky. Mercury's problem is that in never strays very far from the sun, so its bright light is always dimmed by the greater glory of our nearest star. [Gorgeous Mercury Photos From Messenger Mission]

Our best chances of seeing Mercury are during the periods when it is farthest from the sun, called greatest elongations. Because of the inclination of the ecliptic, the path the sun and planets take through the sky, not all elongations are equal. Only twice a year is Mercury's elongation favorable, once in the evening and once in the morning.

This week is the best morning elongation of 2011 for observers in the Northern Hemisphere. The best evening elongation this year was in late March. Good elongations in one hemisphere are usually bad ones for the other hemisphere, so the best elongations in the south this year are May 7 (morning) and November 14 (evening).

The best way to spot Mercury this week is to find an observing location with a low eastern horizon. Start looking at least half an hour before sunrise; it may help to sweep the horizon with binoculars.

The sky map of Mercury here gives you some guideposts to finding the hard-to-spot planet.

The predawn sky is ablaze with bright, first magnitude stars: Sirius, Procyon, Betelgeuse and Rigel in Orion, Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and Regulus in Leo. Mars is now shining brightly right alongside Castor and Pollux, forming a distinctive triangle which can guide you straight to Mercury below them.

If you point a telescope at Mercury, you won't see very much, because Mercury is very small and close to the horizon, where the air is most turbulent, causing light to blur. Follow Mercury with your telescope as it gets higher in the sky, and the image will gradually improve, as Mercury rises above the turbulence. This is the secret for getting the best telescopic views of Mercury: find it in twilight, then follow it as it rises.

Over the next week, the relationship of these bright objects will change. Because of the Earth's movement around the sun, the stars will all shift upward and to the right, while the two planets will move downward and to the left.

Notice that this puts Mercury and Regulus on a "collision course." Next Friday morning, Sept. 9, there will be a conjunction between Mercury and Regulus. These two objects will then fit together comfortably in the eyepiece of most small telescopes.

This article was provided to SPACE.com by Starry Night Education, the leader in space science curriculum solutions. Follow Starry Night on Twitter @StarryNightEdu.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20110902/sc_space/besttimetoseeelusiveplanetmercuryinmorningskyisnow

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Essential Online Business Strategies eCommerce SEO | email ...

If you are running an online business then you cannot afford to ignore the benefits of ecommerceSEO. This is essential for achieving regular traffic flow to your website and increasing turnover. Without ecommerceSEO you may find that your ability to achieve your potential online can be limited.

Why you Need ecommerceSEO

Search engines are key gateways for the flow of traffic around the internet. If your business is not visible to search engines then you could be missing out on a large percentage of your target audience. ecommerceSEO is about getting your website seen on search engines. Effective ecommerceSEO strategies can increase your ranking results and ensure customers know what you do and where to find you.

What is ecommerceSEO?

eCommerce can be a complex field so it is a good idea to choose a specialist service. eCommerce involves key strategies such as the evaluation, development, optimisation and promotion of your website. This allows you to promote your business successfully online and direct more traffic to your site:

- Evaluation ? a professional ecommerceSEO will look at your website on a structural and conceptual level. They will be able suggest improvements for both the visual and promotional aspects of the site.

- Development ? ecommerceSEO services will be able to assist you with developing your site in order to boost traffic. This can include additions such as blogs, forums and interactive add-ons.

- Optimisation ? ecommerce SEO services can help you to optimise your pages for search engine ranking results. Key tactics can include improving keyword phrases and web coding compliancy.

- Promotion ? there are many different options available when it comes to promoting your website online. ecommerceSEO services will be able to assist you with finding the right promotional package for your online business including directory listing, social book marking submission and Pay-Per-Click advertising.

Benefits of ecommerceSEO

The online business markets are growing more and more competitive. You need to employ all the tricks you can to stay ahead of your competitors. ecommerceSEO can provide your website with the boost it needs to gain that extra edge in saturated markets:

- Generate Traffic ? ecommerceSEO can increase website exposure and ensure that quality traffic is continual generated. The more traffic you can drive from your target audience to your website the better your business can perform.

- Increase Revenue ? ecommerceSEO is all about increasing your revenue. If your website is not easily accessible customers will pass you by. You need to think about ecommerceSEO as leaving arrows all over the Internet that point your customers directly back to your website.

The higher the search engine results and the more online exposure you can get for your brand the more chance you will have of achieving you business goals. SEO services allow you to maximise your business potential.

About the Author

An SEO company can assist you with practical steps to success for your online business. This can include services such as search engine marketing to increase brand awareness and boost traffic.

Source: http://www.kcdonline.com/2011/09/Essential-Online-Business-Strategies-eCommerce-SEO/

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Include pets in your disaster plan ? Health & Fitness ? Bangor ...

LOS ANGELES ? A poll released Tuesday by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that 35 percent of dog and cat owners have no plan for dealing with their pets during a disaster that forces them to evacuate.

Forty-two percent of dog or cat owners polled in the survey said they would not evacuate without their pets, 39 percent said they would leave them behind and 19 percent said they didn?t know what they would do.

The finding underscores something emergency management officials learned during Hurricane Katrina six years ago in New Orleans: Some pet owners won?t evacuate in an emergency if it means leaving their animals behind, while others may be forced to abandon pets.

While Hurricane Irene has come and gone, September is disaster preparedness month, and with hurricane season running through November, the ASPCA is urging pet owners to identify a place in advance where they could bring their animals if they had to evacuate in an emergency. The organization also advocates microchipping pets as the best way to make sure owners can be tracked down if their animals get lost.

New Yorkers hunkering down for Irene this past weekend were lucky: The city permitted evacuees to bring pets with them to designated shelters. And the transit system, which normally only allows service dogs or pets in carriers to ride buses and trains, allowed leashed dogs onboard as a way of encouraging reluctant pet owners in flood zones to leave.

As a result, said Tim Rickey, the ASPCA?s senior director of field investigations and response team, several hundred pets were brought to New York?s shelters, which had crates and animal care teams to accommodate them.

In Joplin, Mo., after the tornado in May killed 160 people, the ASPCA took 1,300 lost or abandoned dogs and cats into an emergency animal shelter. Fewer than 5 percent of those animals were microchipped, said Rickey.

Only 500 of the Joplin pets were reunited with their owners. The rest were placed with new owners in a massive adopt-a-thon that drew 5,700 people from 24 states.

The ASPCA poll found that nationally, only 28 percent of dog owners and 24 percent of cat owners say their pets have embedded microchips. In addition, according to the survey, 21 percent of dog owners and 46 percent of cat owners say their animals don?t have any form of identification that is on them all the time.

The survey, conducted for the ASPCA by Lake Research Partners between July 30 and Aug. 4, involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,005 pet owners nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Rickey, who has led pet recovery efforts for hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike, and floods, ice storms and wildfires, said animals at the Joplin shelter included animals that were rescued, animals found as strays and pets dropped off by owners who couldn?t keep them because they?d lost their homes. Some pets were so scared they had to be trapped by Rickey?s crews.

Rickey has three horses, four goats, 17 chickens, four dogs, two cats, a wife and two daughters at home in St. Clair, Mo., and even though it requires a horse trailer, they have an evacuation plan that includes the whole bunch.

He urges pet owners to ?always evacuate with your pets. If it?s not safe for you to stay, it?s probably not safe for your pet.? And you never know if you will be gone for two hours or two weeks, he added.

Of course, while hurricanes are usually forecast in advance, tornados leave little time for people to take shelter ? with or without their pets. In Joplin, when the sirens went off, people were lucky if they had time to grab family members and pets and huddle in a closet.

Virginia Anderson, 95, lost everything in the tornado but a couple of cabinets full of glass collectibles that were somehow protected by a wall that didn?t blow away with the rest of her house. But she couldn?t find the two things that meant the most to her ? her cats, Pretty Kitty, 12, and Lucky, 5.

She moved in with friend and former daughter-in-law, Pauletta Daniels, on the other side of town. Three days later, Pretty Kitty turned up fine in what was left of a closet at Anderson?s home. And two weeks later, Daniels found Lucky at the ASPCA shelter. Like every other pet sent home or adopted from the shelter, he got a microchip before leaving.

Source: http://bangordailynews.com/2011/08/31/health/disaster-preparedness-plans-should-include-pets/

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[OOC] Yu-Gi-Oh (kinda) Comes to Life!

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ABC attacked by "DWTS" fans over Chaz Bono casting (Reuters)

NEW YORk (TheWrap.com) ? Dancing With the Stars" aims for provocative casts, and Chaz Bono's joining the show has already yielded strong reaction -- some of it ugly.

Bono, the only child of Sonny Bono and Cher, was born a woman but legally changed his gender and name last year. The announcement Monday that he would join the highly rated ABC dance competition immediately made him one of the highest-profile transgendered people in the world.

It also brought to the surface prejudices about Bono and others who have changed their gender, judging from the "Dancing With the Stars" message board. In hundreds of comments, Bono was the most common subject.

"HUGE HUGE fan of this show since season two and eagerly await each season to get my dancing/entertainment 'fix'!! But when I heard that Chaz Bono was going to be on, I was sick. Not that I have anything personally again her/him, I just don't want that lifestyle choice continually flaunted in the media esp ABC," went one typical anti-Bono comment.

But for everyone who vented disgust -- or questioned whether Bono would dance with a man or woman -- there were many who defended Bono and accused his critics of bigotry.

Bono's casting is only the latest to make a lighthearted reality show the impetus for deeper discussions about values, tolerance, bigotry and politics. Gay "American Idol" contestants have opted not to announce their sexuality, perhaps out of concern about alienating intolerant viewers. And Bristol Palin's "Dancing" casting two seasons ago led many to vote for or against her based on her mother's politics.

If Americans quickly vote Bono off the show -- or keep him on despite a middling performance, as they did with Palin -- it could reveal plenty about attitudes toward transgendered people.

ABC said Bono was in rehearsals for the show and unavailable to comment. The network, meanwhile, had no immediate comment Tuesday on the comments posted by "Dancing" fans on its message board.

Among the other comments:

"Chaz Bono How low can this show sink. Well you have certainly addressed the gay community. Guess this will not be a family show any longer!!!! Lost my family!"

"YOUR choice to bring Chaz Bono into the mix goes too far. I am not about to risk the potential for on screen dialogue about sex changes and gender confusion while my 7 and 9 year old are watching. If you want the "anything goes" hippy culture, then soon that is all you will get. You've lost us. In case any of you are wondering ... no, we are NOT tolerant. We are not tolerant to allow any and all influences to come unfiltered into our home and especially to our children. This is truly a sad farewell."

Some of the objections were flat-out confusing -- one person seemed to suggest Bono had to be paired with a woman -- because he was still a woman: "Chaz will have to dance with one of the girls because she/he says she/he is a man but chromosomes say different no matter how many surgeries you have.

The show has historically paired men and women regardless of sexuality. The openly gay Lance Bass was paired with Lacey Schwimmer.

Transgendered people believe that their gender identity does not correspond to the one into which they were physically born. Many seek surgery or hormones to change their physical gender. In an interview with ABC News in May, Bono explained:

"It's actually pretty simple if you look at it. ... We all in the womb start out as female and then hormones come and we either stay female or we become male. I think of it as hormones that, you know, went in the brain but not in the body, and that's all being transgender is. It's just that the sex of your body and the gender of the brain don't match up."

Many criticisms of Bono had nothing to do with gender -- some complained that he is overweight and only famous because of his parents. Those two criticisms have faced many, many contestants before him.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110830/tv_nm/us_dancingwiththestars

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Junaio 3.0 Mobile AR Browser Update. Now Scans Barcodes Too.

Junaio, the mobile Augmented Reality browser created by German AR firm Metaio, has been updated this morning: Version 3.0 now supports scanning barcodes. Some of you are probably thinking "Whoop-dee-doo, every app can scan barcodes nowadays." And you're right; it's not really a big deal in that sense. When you consider Junaio's capability at advanced image recognition, using it to scan 1D and 2D QR codes is kind of like using a bazooka to shoot an arrow.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/kC9ABe2D1TY/

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