[00:00:01] I want to help each and every one of you build a wildly profitable restaurant that runs itself. In fact, I think you should only be spending five hours max in your business. I think you should be able to spend as much time as you want to spend in your business. But I think the best restaurants out there succeed when they only need very little from the owner, when there are operators in place to actually execute on everything that needs to be done. And I think oftentimes an owner who's also an operator, who's there all the time, is actually a detriment to the growth and success of the restaurant. I'm going to explain what I mean on today's episode and if more money and working less sounds good, stick around all the way to the end because I'm going to talk about actionable steps so you can actually get there. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy. 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, see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:21] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated to helping you build a more profitable and more sustainable business. Each week we've got two new episodes, right? One focused on operations, one focused on marketing, because those are the two sides of our business, profit and growth. I give talks all over the country. I wrote a book called the Restaurant Marketing Mindset and I run a mastermind. It's called the P3 mastermind. If you're interested in leveling up and being part of an incredible community of restaurant owners and operators who are all trying to build more profitable restaurants. And the best way to get started is to have a conversation. It's absolutely free. 30 minutes with me or someone from my team where you get to ask a whole bunch of questions to see if this might be a good fit. You start that conversation by going to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule and yes, you'll also find that link in the show notes.
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[00:03:08] Now, today's episode, we're going to split this conversation into the first part. I'm going to talk about where I think we're going on the bottom half of the episode. We're going to talk about how I think we can get you there. Number one, I want everybody out there to have wildly profitable restaurants that pay you very well for the the value that you provide. Tons of people out there, right? So I want you to build a business that pays you really well and requires very little of you in order to operate right.
[00:03:35] The best companies in the world, the biggest companies in the world do not need the founder or even the CEO to be there on the ground actually making it happen, right? Steve Jobs, when he got sick, right, didn't have to be there in the day to day, the company Apple just went on pumping out, executing the vision because that's what Steve Jobs did so well. He set the course, he set the vision and he put pieces, players in place to make sure that all the work was going to get done, that there was proper oversight provided and all of that.
[00:04:07] There's a saying, it says the more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business actually is. Because if you are the business, it's almost impossible for the business to exist without you, right? So if the business needs you every day to show up, to turn on the lights and lock the doors, check people in, cook the food, all of that, then what happens if you get a cold? What happens if something worse happens? What happens if you need to be somewhere else? What happens if you just want to go on vacation?
[00:04:36] What I think we should all be after is a business that provides for us and allows us the time and space to actually go enjoy that money. Now, if the only place you want to be in the world is in your restaurant, in your kitchen, great.
[00:04:53] But I don't want the restaurant to need you there in order to succeed. If that's the only place in the world you want to be, then great. I want you to decide where you want to be. And oftentimes I work with owners who really just want to be at their restaurant. Because that's what they love. They made it because they love it. And that's great. But what we get to do when we take you out of the operation is we get to change the relationship you have with your restaurant. Because maybe you want to be at your restaurant all the time, but you don't want to be on the line all the time. Maybe you don't want to be behind the bar all the time. Maybe you don't want to be stuck at the front door seating people. Maybe it'd be better if you could come in every once in a while and actually enjoy the food. If you could bring friends there, if you could just wander around the dining room shaking hands rather than grilling, frying, sauteing, chopping, etc. So that's what we're after.
[00:05:45] We're getting to the place where you get to define the relationship you have the restaurant. And I think out there in the world, too many independent owners do not get to make those decisions. Again, this sort of goes back to the conversation we had last week, right?
[00:05:59] Your restaurant's really good about telling you what it needs from you, but are you just as good at telling the restaurant what you need from the restaurant?
[00:06:10] What I want to get to the place. I want to get to the place where you are spending max, five hours working in or on your business. Because when you're really good and efficient, when you delegate, everything can be delegated. When you outsource the things that should be outsourced, you get to focus on the things that only you can do, the things that you do better than anyone else. And P.S. the things that you probably love to do, like maybe menu development or greeting people in the dining room or whatever it is hiring. If you. If you've got a passion for people and developing that talent, fine. I want you to be able to spend the time doing what you want, the thing that lights you up and the thing that actually benefits the business. Hey, I should be doing this because no one else does it as. As well as I do it. That's what we're getting to. And I firmly believe that the best restaurants out there have owners who are in or who are working in or on the business max, five hours a week.
[00:07:08] Tim Ferriss wrote a book called the Four Hour Workweek. And it was sort of this, you know, this challenge to an entire generation of like, yeah, I want a business that, you know, where I only need to be there for four hours a week. That's okay. You can create it.
[00:07:21] I think, Max. I think, Max you should be looking at five hours again, unless you want to be there. If you want to be there, then I want you, but I don't. I want to get to the place where the restaurant doesn't need you there.
[00:07:35] So you have to decide if that sounds, that sounds good. See, when you get to the place where you only have to be in your business or working on your business five hours a week, you get to free up all this extra time to do the stuff that only you can do. Sometimes those are the high value tasks that your business requires of you. But sometimes it's high value tasks that your personal life requires of you.
[00:07:57] Because remember, you're the only person who can parent your kids.
[00:08:01] You're the only person who could be a best friend to your best friend.
[00:08:05] If you don't make time for those people, those relationships will deteriorate.
[00:08:11] Your house, your garden, your, you know, the things around, around your life that you like, your health, your well being, if you don't go to the gym, if you don't work out, if you don't take care of yourself, no one else is going to do it for you. So by freeing you up, you get to then choose how you spend your life. Now, maybe that's opening another restaurant, coming up with a new concept. Maybe that's growing this one into multiple units. Maybe that's thinking of a franchise concept or growing this into a franchise, whatever it is, when you don't have to be doing the schedule, doing the ordering, doing the prep, taking inventory, checking people in, running payroll. When you don't have to do that, then think of all the stuff that you'll have time for. So we've got to, we've got to agree on that, that there's a better use of your time.
[00:09:02] And at the very least, we get to change the relationship you have with your restaurant. And we're talking about five hours. Now how do you spend those five hours and how do you get from where you're at now? Maybe it's 55 hours all the way down to five hours. That's what we're going to talk about on the rest of this episode. Stick around.
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[00:10:46] Okay, so I think an owner should be building a business that requires five hours max of them every single week.
[00:10:54] Five hours max. And really we can get it to like an hour or two. We'll talk about that. We've talked about the mindset shift that's required. Talked about it a little bit last week. We're continuing on that conversation. So if you missed last week's episodes, worth revisiting. Last Monday, we talked all about this, right? The profit first mentality. This is an extension of that. Because once you get a profitable restaurant, then we have to make an automatic one, an efficient one, one that makes money without you.
[00:11:22] Because then we free you up to do whatever it is you want to do. So if all you want to do is be back in your restaurant, we then get to change the relationship you have with your restaurant. You don't have to be there early and late, you know, stuck on the line. You're not stuck at the front door, you're not stuck behind the bar. You get to do the things that you actually want to do. Now if you just like being at the front door, the great. You get to decide if you just want to be behind the bar. If you want to be on the line, fine, great, you get to decide.
[00:11:48] We put the systems in place that allow for these things to happen. Now again last week, we talked about that profit first mentality working in reverse order, reverse engineering your business so that it provides what you need from it so that's important once you've decided what you need from it, right, which is X number of dollars, Y number hours.
[00:12:10] I'm suggesting 20% of your revenue you should be generating as operating profit. And I'm supplying Y. I think it's five hours max.
[00:12:21] Question first is how do you spend your hours?
[00:12:25] I think one hour a week needs to be spent on manager meeting. A very good, efficient, effective manager meeting. Those are the people that are actually responsible for overseeing the line level employees, the hourlies. Those are the ones responsible for managing profitability. So one hour every week with your entire management team together, I think that's an important one hour.
[00:12:51] I think one hour a month should be spent just on a books meeting, right? Books meaning your accountant, your accounting, your numbers, looking at your PNL from the previous month, looking at your forecast and budgets for the month ahead, making decisions and all of that. Right.
[00:13:07] I think you should be spending at least one to two hours every single week, either on the floor or back in the kitchen. And or so if you got one hour meeting with managers, one hour at least on the week, during the week on the floor, one hour a week to two hours a week back in the kitchen.
[00:13:30] So if you're two hours in the floor, two hours in the kitchen, one hour to manage your meeting, there's your five hours, I think max. That's what's required of you, max.
[00:13:40] Now if you just do one hour on the floor, one hour in the kitchen, now we're at three, now we got two hours to play with.
[00:13:46] I think one hour a week should be spent on development of your front of house team, however you choose to spend that. And one hour should be spent on development of your back of house team, however you choose to spend that. We talk about development, we talk about growing people's skills, growing people's base of knowledge. So now if you want to really fleshed out five hours, it's one hour manager meeting, one hour on the floor, one hour in the kitchen, one hour with your front of house staff to focus on development, one hour with your back of house staff to focus on development. There's a really good five hours and then one extra hour on the 15th of every month spent on a books meeting. That I think is a really good use of your time.
[00:14:33] Just my opinion, that's I think what your property needs from you.
[00:14:40] Now as you scale up and you get 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 locations, I'm not saying 5 hours in each location.
[00:14:48] Now you'll have layers of leadership below you and you work with them. So instead of spending an hour on the floor or an hour developing your front of house team, you're spending an hour with your regional management for front of house operations and an hour talking to them about how they're developing their people.
[00:15:09] So you're working with them, you're teaching them, you're developing them, showing them how to develop their people. So it scales up.
[00:15:16] But really I think that's five hours like in or on the operation.
[00:15:21] Now it's going to be rest of the time where you're going to have to work with, you know, landlords or vendor relations, things like that.
[00:15:28] Fine. Working with your accountant, your bookkeepers, looking at the future, renegotiating certain deals, contracts, Fine.
[00:15:36] But that becomes high value, high leverage tasks that really nobody else in the organization can do. And when you take the 55 hours all the way down to 5, you then have time to do that more effectively. It's not just squeezed into the twilight of your days.
[00:15:51] That becomes really crucial now. Okay, now we can get to the all important how question. How do we do that? You begin by making a list.
[00:16:02] On the one page, it's all the stuff that you can teach other people to do.
[00:16:08] This becomes the list of items, tasks that can be delegated or outsourced. On the other page, it's all the stuff only you can do, or that you do better than anybody you can think of.
[00:16:21] And also the stuff you love to do.
[00:16:26] We're obviously going to ditch one page and focus entirely on the second page. You'd be amazed too, when you first build these lists, how much is on that second page that actually will eventually go to that first page. But it's going to be hard. It's going to be a process. So in the beginning, you're going to do all the sort of menial tasks you hate doing.
[00:16:43] Setting pars, prep sheets, ordering, inventory, payroll, scheduling, all that kind of crap, right? Updating, pos, updating menus, all that stuff is going to be really easy to offload. And eventually it's gonna be things like menu development. Man, I'm really good at menu development. Eventually you're gonna develop your team to get really good at doing it. And you just come in to do the really cool stuff at the end, but we'll get there. You start with these two lists, and the one list is all the stuff you definitely can or definitely want to delegate and outsource. And the other one becomes the stuff that really only you can do, or the stuff that you really desperately want to do.
[00:17:18] That's how you begin to go from 55 to 25. 25 to 5 then happens when you begin following up and providing oversight for all of these tasks.
[00:17:31] How do you make sure that the ordering is being done right, that they're taking inventory properly? How do you make sure that the schedule is under budget? Remember, part of that is when you see that it's not under budget. You're working with your team, developing them, teaching them new skills, new frameworks so that they can do what you need them to do, which is put up a schedule that's under budget. 55 to 25 happens easier than you think. 25 to 5 requires trust. It's a little bit like jumping off a cliff, but that's where the real magic happens when your team really takes over, when they take a sense of ownership over your property. It begins, like we said, at the very beginning of the episode, by changing your mindset, embracing this, believing that you deserve this and that this would be better for you, your family, and your business. And it goes all the way down the how you do these two lists. And little by little, over the course of two or three months, you divvy up these tasks, you delegate them, you outsource them, and you start providing oversight. That becomes what your meetings are about.
[00:18:28] That's what you're looking for when you're on the floor or when you're developing your team. You're teaching them how to do what you need them to do better.
[00:18:37] They can't do it as well as you. They shouldn't. Your job is to teach them, to train them. So the very best leaders out there do. If you look around our space, Kevin Boehm in Boca, Michael Mina, the Thomas Kellers out there, the Danny Myers, they're all out there. And this is what they do really well.
[00:18:58] They delegate.
[00:19:00] Danny's not in the weeds anymore. In his restaurants, he was for a while, and not anymore because he realized he's of greater value to the organization, thinking through higher value, higher leverage tasks. That's it, guys. I want all of you to have wildly profitable restaurants, restaurants that pay you really well and give you the time and space you need to go enjoy that money. If you want to learn how to do this, this is what the P3 masterminds all about. Restaurant Strategy, podcast.com schedule if you, if you want to help, if you want to network community to help you get there and get there faster, we can work really quick. Set up a call totally free. You'll chat with me or someone from my team, the very least, though, this is what you need to do. You need to believe this is possible. You need to make space to make it happen. The how? You start with those two lists. That's it. Guys, appreciate you being here. Thank you very much, and I will see you next time.
