Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, what's going on, everybody? Chip Close again, host of the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. Every summer I do this thing where I do a 10 episode arc revolving around a different theme. This year I'm talking about crazy ideas. I believe we have to be willing to reiterate and reinvent ourselves to continue evolving. Otherwise this industry will continue to stay static and stagnant. So I don't have all the answers, but I'm just sharing some crazy ideas. Here's a crazy idea. What if instead of just having one menu, we had multiple menus? What if each night was different? What if there were almost different experiences every night of the week? Wouldn't that create scarcity? Oh, this menu's only available for two nights a week or one night a week. What if we could do things that would get people coming back more frequently? Because I know customer retention and increasing guest frequency will help us. I want to get really deep into it. On today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:58] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:29] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated to helping you build a more sustainable and profitable restaurant. Two episodes every week. You know, I wrote a book, I give talks. You find me on social media. I am here twice a week. I have a coaching program called the P3 mastermind. And every single year I host two live events. Two opportunities to gather all of us in one place in one city. The next event is coming up. We have the P3 profitability summit. Happens in Fort Worth, Texas on October 19th, 20th and 21st. Tickets are on sale now. We always cap these events max 100 attendees at the time of this recording. We have sold, I believe, 74 tickets to date. So there are less than 30 tickets left. There are general admission tickets. There are also VIP tickets available. You go to chipclose.com C-H-I-P k l o s e.com you click the button in the navigation bar that says Summit. You'll learn all about it. I've also included the direct link in the show notes. So if you want to level up, if you want a more profitable restaurant, if you want to know how to actually manage cogs, how to actually get your labor in line, how to grow revenue from an operational perspective, how you grow, check average, how you increase catering and private dining sales. If you want to know how to market your restaurant to focus on customer acquisition, customer attention, actually spreading word of mouth. This is everything we're going to cover for three days in Texas in October. I want you to be there. Go check the link in the show notes.
[00:03:08] What's the food cost for your third best selling entree? You don't know? With Margin Edge, you could know instantly. Margin Edge is a complete restaurant management software that I like to recommend to all of the P3 members, all the clients I work with. Why? Because it helps them improve profitability.
[00:03:25] With Margin Edge, you just get to snap pictures of your invoices as they come in and you get real time data in every area of your business. You can see plate costs in real time. You get daily P Ls, your inventory count sheets are automatically updated. It saves you a ton of time and lets you make informed decisions. So I got a client P3 member, gather brewing down outside of San Antonio. They started using Margin Edge a month after they joined my program. And within one month of them bringing on Margin Edge, their food costs went from 38% to 28%. It was incredible savings. That's 10 points that dropped straight to the bottom line. There's a reason I recommend Margin Edge to so many of the P3 members. It's because I know it works. If you're interested in learning more or you want to see how Gather brewing went from 38% to 28% food costs, head over to marginedge.com chip there's an incredible video there that talks about their story, talks about their journey with the platform. Again, Marginedge.com chip see a really great. See a really great story about the folks at at Gather Brewing. Go do that now. Of course, that link is in the show notes.
[00:04:34] Okay, so we're doing a bunch of these shorty episodes all about me sharing these crazy ideas. Not necessarily answers, just workshopping, whiteboarding blue sky, just giving you ideas, calling out things that I think maybe aren't going to be here forever. There's no reason that our restaurants need to operate the exact same way they've operated for dozens or hundreds of years. Restaurants have been around for thousands of years and depending culturally where they were in the world, they have operated very, very differently. Read your history books. The way the model that we're stuck with, the way that we've been running our restaurants now, is not necessarily the way they will run in another hundred years. We have to be willing to continue to evolve, to do things differently, to rethink Things that are no longer working. And we spent a lot of time talking about razor thin profit margin margins. My gut tells me this thing isn't working as well as it once did, and it's not working as well as you need. So my crazy idea on today's episode is instead of opening a restaurant with a menu and just serving as many people as we can every week, what if we had different chefs every night, different menus, even different configurations in the dining room? Could we change the decor elements? Could we make it feel like a different experience every night of the week? Would it be work? Sure, it would be work. Might it be worth it? Yes, because I think it creates some urgency. You have to come now before this disappears. Therefore.
[00:06:09] Therefore that creates scarcity.
[00:06:12] These are things we don't necessarily have right now. Why should I come in tonight? I'll just come in when it's more convenient. So we are waiting on the consumer. We are waiting for them to get the idea for it to be convenient to them.
[00:06:26] So I live here just outside of New York City. I was in New York for 20 years, and I think of Broadway shows every single year. We get stars, celebrities taking the stage in shows this past season. Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal were on stage. George Clooney was on stage. They were big stars. And they don't run for years and years and years. They run for 10 weeks, 12 weeks. You have limited opportunities, right? In the case of somebody who's going to play eight shows a week for 10 weeks, that's 80 opportunities for you to, to see an A list star. And if you really want to see that star, you got to go when they tell you to go.
[00:07:04] It's the same idea, I think, with our restaurants. Again, would there be challenges? Yes, of course there would be. But I challenge you to think about some of the benefits that might come up from this. I don't even know if it's possible. But the whole idea of this, of this conversation, of this arc of episodes is to throw out some crazy ideas, to challenge ourselves, to say, what if? In a previous episode, I was talking about Nick Kakarot.
[00:07:30] Nick was one of the co founders of the Alinea Restaurant Group, and he didn't come to the restaurant industry through our industry. He came at it from finance. And so when he came at it sort of, you know, from an established career, he said that one of the best things he could do for his company was just ask, why, why, why? Why do we do it like that? Why do. Why have we always done it that way? Why does it have to be done that way? And what if we did this? What if we did that? What if we changed it? And he said 70% of the time we were doing it a certain way because that most effective, most efficient way of doing it. But 30% of the time, which if you think about is a meaningful amount, 30% of the time he said, oh, well, that's just the way we've always done it. And there wasn't a good reason and they found a better way through. So the whole idea of these episodes is to challenge you, right? What would happen if there were different menus, different experiences every night of the week? Or Monday, Wednesday, Friday was one thing, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday was something else.
[00:08:32] Would, would there be a benefit to that? That's my challenge to you on today's episode. Again, these episodes are meant to be short and sweet. They're little ideas meant to spark something in you. So in all of these, take my ideas for what they are just meant to be a spark. But I hope that each of these episodes spark 10 other ideas that you're smart enough to think of. I'm just sharing 10 things that that occur to me. But by all means, this is not exhaustive, this is not gospel.
[00:09:01] So I recommend you go and you think in this direction as well. I promise you we are going to have to evolve, we are going to have to iterate if we want to continue to survive and thrive over the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years. So that's my crazy idea for today. What crazy ideas do you have? One final reminder that the P3 profitability summit is coming up and tickets are on sale now, either general admission seats available and also VIP tickets. So please go get your thing, find the link in the show notes and explore. Learn more about what we're going to talk about. Learn more about the structure. You can watch a cool video that we shot from last year's event in St. Louis. We move this event every single year. And if you've never been to one of these events, I hope you decide to come join us. Thank you guys. I will see you next time.
[00:10:05] Sa it.
