Simple Tricks for Growing Revenue with CEO of Frontline Performance Group

Episode 503 December 01, 2025 00:35:30
Simple Tricks for Growing Revenue with CEO of Frontline Performance Group
RESTAURANT STRATEGY
Simple Tricks for Growing Revenue with CEO of Frontline Performance Group

Dec 01 2025 | 00:35:30

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Show Notes

#503 - Simple Tricks for Growing Revenue with CEO of Frontline Performance Group

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This week's episode is brought to you by: KICKFIN

Thousands of restaurants across the country use Kickfin to send instant, cashless tip payouts, directly to their employees’ bank accounts, the second their shift ends. Get in touch today for a personalized demo and see how restaurants and bars across the country are tipping out with Kickfin. 

VISIT: https://kickfin.com/demo/


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Your servers are your frontline workers... your infantry... the first line of attack. They are responsible for the hospitality in your restaurant, yes. But they are also your salespeople. And if revenue is so important, the natural question is: What are you doing to level up your team?

Frontline Performance Group is dedicated to that specific problem, and today's conversation with CEO Geoffrey Toffetti provides an answer to that question. 

 

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If you want to snag a copy of Chip's book, The Restaurant Marketing Mindset... 
CLICK HERE: https://www.therestaurantmarketingmindset.com/


If you're ready to learn more about the P3 Mastermind...
CLICK HERE: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/p3-mastermind-program


If you want a free 30-day trial of our Restaurant Foundations Membership Site...
CLICK HERE: 
https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/Foundations-b


If you want to leave a 5-star rating/review on Apple Podcasts...
CLICK HERE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/restaurant-strategy/id1457379809 

 

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: The mission of the P3 mastermind, and by extension this company Restaurant Strategy, is to help independent restaurant owners increase the profitability of their restaurants. One of the things I say all the time is that revenue does not necessarily cure all sins. Because I believe we have to take a profit first mindset, make sure that we understand how to set revenue targets and build budgets that are aligned with those revenue targets. But once we have a system in place to help us manage our biggest expenses, mostly prime cost cogs and labor, well then, then yes, I do understand the power that increasing revenue can have on the bottom line of a business. Today we're going to talk all about that. Specifically how we grow top line revenue in our restaurants. Don't go anywhere. 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. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. Two episodes every week, all geared towards independent restaurant owners. Helping you increase the profitability of your restaurants. What does that mean? Helping you drop more of the revenue into your pockets. I wrote a book, it's called the Restaurant Marketing Mindset. I give talks all over the country. I also run something called the P3 mastermind. Simply put, this is the way to work directly with me. We've put over 350 people through the program. Currently about 120 members enrolled in the program. The thing has grown like crazy over the last four and a half years. Not because it doesn't work, I obviously because it very much does work. It's an incredible community. If you are struggling with single digit profit margins, I'm here to tell you you don't have to settle for that. We target 20% consistent, predictable returns. I promise you it's possible, but you don't have to take my word for it. Let's have a conversation. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule Grab some time on the calendar and let's hear what's going on. If you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you have heard me talk about Kickfin. Because they've been a trusted partner of mine for for years and I genuinely believe in what they do. For restaurant operators, managing tips has always been a headache. There's never enough cash in the drawer. At the end of the night, managers are stuck making bank runs and doing spreadsheet math. At 1:00am Tip pooling regulations keep getting more complex. It's just not fun. That's exactly why Kickfin exists. With Kickfin, restaurants can calculate tip pools automatically and send instant payouts directly to employees existing bank accounts. No cash, no predatory pay cards, no glitchy employee apps required. Your team gets their tips fast in the account they choose, right when their shift ends. Kickfin integrates with all the major POS players so Toast Square, skytab, Genius Union, and many more. So you get fully automated end to end tip management. It's fast, it's accurate, and it gives you a clean digital record for accounting and compliance. Kickfin powers tip payouts for every type of concept from mom and pop shops to regional hospitality groups to national brands like Walk On Sports, Bistro, Marco's Pizza and Toasted Yolk Cafe. Great hospitality starts behind the scenes. When your people feel valued, paid fairly and paid fast. I promise everything improves. Kickfin makes that possible. If you're ready to save hours every week, eliminate cash runs, streamline accounting and make tip payouts the best, best part of everyone's day. Go to kickfin.com to learn more. As always, you'll find that link in the show notes. So my guest on today's show is Joffrey tti. He is the CEO of FPG Frontline Performance Group. I'm going to welcome him to the show. He's going to tell you who he is. He's going to tell you what FPG does. Most importantly, how they think about revenue, how they think about profitability, and how they think you should be doing it. But in order to have that conversation, we first got to welcome this guy to the show. Joffrey, good to have you. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. Chip, it's great to be with you. [00:04:36] Speaker A: So fpg, new to the market. It's sort of newcomer, right? [00:04:39] Speaker B: New. New to the independent restaurant market for sure. Not new to hospitality at large. [00:04:45] Speaker A: So you've been around for like two or three years, right? [00:04:47] Speaker B: 33. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Almost 33 years. Tell me what FPG does and obviously found some modicum of success doing this for. For more than three decades. [00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah, we, we've just always been our mission has been to help frontline teams perform better. That typically means in a place where there's a revenue opportunity. So across a counter, at a table, on the phone, anywhere that a human is serving a human and there's an opportunity for an improvement in revenue is sort of where we've always existed. We spent two and a half decades going on site to our clients we would embed our people into their operations. And then we started building a technology platform really to help us to automate what we are doing so we could scale it up. And then when Covid hit, we couldn't go on site for a couple of years. So we, we flipped our business model and went technology first. And that's been working out really well. And along that journey we kind of got focused on hospitality and now it's our strategic industry, hotels and restaurants are, or where we're focusing all of our energy. [00:05:53] Speaker A: So we're having the right conversation. Talk to me a little bit because I used to, I'm very opinionated in this area, but I used to do a lot of consulting, used to do a lot of on site and I've been very vocal about not doing that. And I have very specific reasons for that. And it's top of mind now because next year in 2026 is gonna be the first year in six years that I'm really, I did a little bit here and there, but it's really the first time where I'm gonna go back out there and do some on site work with restaurants and their teams simply because now I have a vision for how to do it better, how to do it, quote unquote, the right way. But talk to me about what you learned from being on site embedded to then moving away from it. Talk to me about why you made that change and what sort of learnings came from it. [00:06:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really good question because when we were in it, nothing would have convinced me that not to do it because we were really good at it and had done it a long time. But I think the biggest change is the, the recognition that when you, when your consultant is going into your operation, if they're working with your team, if it's not just to talk to the owner, but if they're actually on the ground doing stuff, the management team can begin to rely too much on them rather than on themselves. So when we pulled back by necessity during COVID we said, okay, we made a conscious decision. We said, we are going to take our internal training program that we use to develop our consultants. And we had 250 consultants who are, you know, decent scale. And we said, we're going to turn that into a customer training program for their managers. We're going to create a certification program so that we can give them the, the core of our knowledge of our, of our, you know, plan or our process and empower them. And then we're going to give, we're Going to continue to supply the tools they need, which is kind of where we're at now. And we found that pound for pound performance is better because instead of there being a heartbeat, like your on site results go up, you leave, they go down, you come. You know, it's now just kind of a steady climb. So we, we were in a giant experiment on this front because we pulled 250 people out of the field and we've never put them back. And our clients overall are doing better in that scenario than us going there and holding their hand. [00:08:16] Speaker A: So I love this. This is exactly what I found. I always use the analogy of holding up the wall. So I'm brought in to fix a restaurant, or in the past I'd been brought in to fix a restaurant. And I say, okay, so you see that wall? This is really important. We have to hold this wall up. So let me show you how to do it. I'm going to talk you through it. I'm going to hold it for a while. I'm going to show you exactly what to do so you guys get a sense of it. I'm going to hold it every single night. We're going to hold that wall up. And then at a certain point, I'm going to have you come in here. No, no, come over. [00:08:43] Speaker B: Come over here. [00:08:43] Speaker A: Yep. Put your hands there. Yep. And put your hands there. Yeah, right. Just. Okay, now I'm going to step away. You stay right there. Just like that. Do you see? You're doing it exactly like I used to do. Okay, great. So you got to hold up this wall. And they say, I got it. Yeah, I watched you do it. Now you showed me how to do it. You've empowered me to do it. I got it. And I say, okay, great. And I leave and I come back three weeks later and the walls crumbled. I said, what happened? And they say, oh, well, yeah, I got to tell you, there's this one night and I just couldn't. And I. I didn't realize you had to do it every single day. And there was one day where I just didn't do it. And that's when the thing fell. And it's like, it just. It doesn't work. So I love that you're talking about. So you're talking about this training program, I assume, administered through, like, videos and readings and things like that, right? [00:09:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we have an lms. [00:09:29] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. And then the other piece to it is this software, right? This. This dashboard, this. This platform that you're talking about. So talk to me. A little bit about the LMS and some of the, you know, lessons and sort of the scope of that. And then I want to use that to then jump over to the other piece to it, the very usable, you know, minute to minute piece. The, this platform, the platform, the dashboard that you guys get. So let's deal with one piece, then the other. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Yeah, and actually fine to do that, but they're on the, they're the same thing. We, we are the only LMS that actually measures outcomes. We get the actual sales data. But the core of our training, we call it service based sales, it's all rooted in how to be influential with your customer without feeling like you're selling to them. No one likes to be sold to. It makes people uncomfortable. If you ask most service personnel to be a salesperson, they're going to cringe. No, we think sales and service are two sides of the same coin. The best salespeople in the world are the best at serving their customers. However, whatever they're selling, it doesn't matter. They're going to be the most liked people in the room, typically because they're, they make people feel good. Well, it's the same kind of philosophy is how do you, in, in a, in a front desk scenario, you have like five minutes to do this. In a, in a restaurant, you have an hour. So you've got plenty of time to, to work the magic. And it, it really comes down to, you know, having a dialogue with the customer, understanding their likes or needs, and then recommending them things that are going to maximize their satisfaction. And in restaurants, it's really interesting because there's so many opportunities to do that, whereas at a front desk, there might be one better room. I know in a restaurant you can construct an entire experience from this amazing menu that the chef has created. And there's, there's sort of a little romanticism to it. There's, you know, we, we have a thing we call features and benefits, where you don't, you don't recommend something based on its features. You recommend it based on its features and its benefits. You know, so you can say, I recommend this wine. And then you got to immediately say, why? What is the benefit to you? Well, because it pairs perfectly with veal and that's what you've ordered or whatever. I'm, no, I'm not a food expert, but I'm a sales expert. So we, all of our training is centered around two things. How to do that well, what are the skills that are universal. It doesn't matter what you're selling. And then what, what kind of process should you be following to enable the server to hit all of the things that they need to hit throughout the transaction to maximize revenue? [00:12:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:06] Speaker B: So they get both of those things and then there is sort of a third subset which are what are the things not to do? What are the behaviors that you should extract out of your operation to maximize satisfaction? And there we like to say this is common sense made commonplace. It's most, most of what we do, you've heard, at least in your life, you've probably done it in your life. But are you consistently doing it and are you training your teams to do it? And then measuring whether or not they're doing it is really kind of what it comes down to. [00:12:35] Speaker A: So can I pull on that thread a little bit more? Talk to me about the measurement piece to it. And then so the ongoing development, the nurturing, the. Tell me how, tell me how that happens. I assume it's like one hand washes the other, but tell me how it's executed in real time, in real life. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So the system is monitoring down to the check level every product that's sold by server, by shift, you know, by outlet. And it's. We've trained, we actually, I know this is a big buzzword right now, but it won't be in the future, It'll be common in the future. We've trained our AI to interpret what is happening on the checks against our framework of service based sales. So it's able to diagnose at an individual level what, what is happening. So not just revenue per guest, which we think is a core metric in this equation, but see, that's how you kind of rank people and you say, okay, revenue per guest, same shift, same restaurant, apples to apples, what is the ranking? But it actually goes down below that and it says, okay, why, why is someone in 9th out of 12, what is it on their check? What is the construction of their checks? That is different. And then it hones the training from the lms, it recommends the training to address those specific deficits. It also sends reports to the manager that say Joff is below benchmark on modifications to the entree compared to the top peer group. Here's some training that you can give him on that issue. And you should schedule them with Chip because Chip has the highest add on ratio of anyone in the restaurant and he can help Jaff get better at that. Yeah, and that's, that's happening on an ongoing basis coming out of the system. Now to replicate that without the system System is very difficult. That's why we're here, because people haven't been able to do it. But you can definitely get a ranking by revenue per guest. And just, you know, as a manager, focus on the bottom two or three at a time and pair them on the schedule with the top two or three and tell them, we want you to learn from each other. Just taking that action and being that deliberate on your scheduling can have a monumental effect on your revenue. [00:14:52] Speaker A: I can imagine it. So it's something as simple as, hey, you know, chip only has 1.2 drinks per guest on the check, and Joffrey's got 1.7 drinks per guest on the check. And that represents a, you know, you know, half a drink per, you know, extrapolated out over my 5 shifts, my. [00:15:11] Speaker B: 50 weeks free beer could be 10% revenue hit just right there. That's right. We actually, we like to track. So if you look at revenue progressed on a leaderboard, this is something. I point this out to restaurateurs and they're always like, oh, I've never thought about it that way. So let's say you have 10 servers. Again, same shift, same same restaurant, no special cause, and one is selling at $10 less per guest than the other than the top. What that means is when you give that server the benefit of serving those guests, they're costing you $10. [00:15:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:46] Speaker B: So it's not they're making you 50, they're costing you 10 because others in your environment are making it at 60 or 70 or what have you. So then what do you. Is. It's like the individual, the independent restaurateurs that I've talked to, they struggle with two things. The data is not readily available. It's just not easy to get to. You can get to it, but it's challenging to get to it, especially every day. And then once you see the pattern, what do you do about it? What. What step should you take next to address that? And that's. We're trying to solve both of those challenges, is make the data super easy to understand and use AI to interpret it to tell you how to address it. Those are like the two overarching things we're doing. [00:16:25] Speaker A: I love it. It's so funny. Through most of my career, I had, you know, built up and built up and built up and eventually got into management. And when I started building my own company, I stepped back and I just went back into a serving role. I just thought, I need more time, I need more flexibility. All of that, all of those things. You don't get being in restaurant management. And I remember that check average at this place, fancy fine dining restaurant, was 125 per head. And mine was consistently 142 per head. And there was one, I remember there was one week where we start, you know, it was, you know, everybody was losing a shift. And I said, I don't understand. It makes zero sense. Well, we have to be fair. But I'm worth 17 more dollars per head. You want me. And I remember saying like, I don't have to work here, but I need X number of shifts in order to be able to pay my bills and all of that. I said, and I'm worth 17 more dollars for every person you sit with. Me said, another way, this person is costing you $17 every time you give that person. So when you schedule them and not me, it makes no sense. And there were people well below the average people at 114. There were people at like 106. I said, it makes absolute, absolute no sense. I said, you know, I'm doing everything you need me to do and I'm just like head down grinding and I'm not going to have this conversation again. And it was the last time we ever had the conversation because it was finally brought up the food chain to the, to the gm. And GM looked at it. He's like, he's absolutely right. Like, this is not a conversation. Like I, I remember it. So, so specifically. [00:17:48] Speaker B: No, it's, it's exactly right. I mean the, we've, we, we analyzed the top five publicly traded restaurant companies in the United States because we wanted to understand the P L of a restaurant like as much as we possibly could because we're not restaurateurs. And we were actually surprised at how low the margins are. You know, they're, these publicly traded companies, these five companies average 7 and a half percent EBITDA margin, which is insane. But what that means is if you increase your revenue by 10%, you double your profit. Correct? I mean think about that 10%, what you just described. Scheduling your top earners in your busiest shifts, if you're not already doing it, could, could give you a 10% boost, could double your profit 100%. [00:18:31] Speaker A: So we are speaking the same language because I run a mastermind program called the P3 mastermind where I work with independent restaurant owners to help them increase Prof. Ability. I firmly believe 20% is within most restaurants capability. I have seen it. Now we've put 350 people through the program over the last four and a half years. We have over 120 currently enrolled in the program. We talked about this before I hit record, but at the time of this recording, I'm just coming off the P3 profitability summit. It's the big live event that we throw every single year. It's not pie in the sky. Like, I know 20% is possible. And for quick service, fast casual really has to be 24, 26, 28. Especially if anyone has any sort of, you know, dreams of franchising and all that. Because you can't say, hey, you know, we make 17%, you know, EBITDA NOI. And we're gonna take 6% royalty and 2% marketing off the top. So 17 -9, you keep the rest. It's just, you know, I don't think you're gonna get a lot of people. Yeah, I don't think you're gonna get a lot of takers. So I believe 20%. I also believe that what we do in this industry is too important to not make money doing it. So my entire. This is why we're having this conversation. Because my entire life is built to help people do this. And we really believe profit, first thing, growth. Right. That we need to understand. We need to have a system for managing our key expenses. Mostly prime cost. Right. Cogs and labor. How do we. How do we target specific revenue? How do we, you know, maintain our budgets compared to that? And then once we know how to do that, once we've got a mechanism in place, then, yeah, absolutely. Like I'm the one who says revenue does not necessarily cure all sins. Because I think if they're left. If they're left unwrangled, if we don't have guardrails to, you know, to. [00:20:12] Speaker B: You can end up in debt. [00:20:14] Speaker A: Correct, Correct. And we've seen it. You know, people end up on that sort of MCA hamster wheel, things like that. But if we don't know how to curb our spending when it comes to ordering, we don't know how to curb our spending when it comes to scheduling, then we can't ever be profitable. Profitable. Once we wrangle that, then I'm not an idiot. So when I say revenue does not necessarily cure all sins, I mean it. But I'm not an idiot. I understand the impact. To your point that you just said, I understand the impact that revenue growth has on bottom line profit. And so we say profit first, then growth. Like, let's get the profitability dialed in. And we know we can be at 16% at 1.5 million. And then, ma', am, like, Wait till you see what happens when we get you to 2.2.2. And it's easier than we think. Which is, I think, where you guys come in. Which is, I'm guessing, what you guys firmly believe. [00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, one of the challenges you have being in a restaurant business is that two of your biggest expense lines are variable. So you don't have the. The, you know, the benefit of having fixed cost assets that become a smaller percentage of your pnl. The bigger you get, your expenses grow as your revenue grows because your food cost is more obviously a big, huge piece and your labor cost is a big, huge piece. But where we can help with leverage is same guest, same labor, more money. So that's. That's like giving you a leverage that a lot of the restaurateurs. I don't think it's front of mind. Like, I had an opportunity to speak to a investor who has bought and sold hundreds of restaurants and owns some restaurant groups. And I was kind of pitching him what we're doing, and he said, you know, I. In every due diligence process I've ever been in, and there's been hundreds, no one has ever brought up the productivity of their servers as a benefit to their model. It's always about cost. It's always about food cost, menu construction, who the chef is, what the restaurant looks like. It's never about, well, our servers sell at a certain level consistently because it's just. It's not one of the things they think about, I guess. But it's one way to gain leverage. You can gain leverage leverage the way that, like a software company gains leverages because they have a fixed expense that they can then resell. You can't resell the same food twice. You can resell software more than once. So how do you pull leverage out of a restaurant operation? One of the ways that we believe we can help is sell more to the same guests that you're selling that you did yesterday. [00:22:36] Speaker A: I completely agree. I dedicated an entire day of the summit to that exact point. I will say so people listening to this podcast will not be able to see, but Joffre can see me on video, so he sees I'm wearing a hat with three targets. Right. So we just ran the profitability summit. Everybody who was at the summit got one of these hats. This is basically our. It's something we firmly believe. I talk a lot about the three moving targets. The reason our industry is so hard, because we have three moving targets. Revenue is a moving target. I don't know exactly how Much revenue I'm going to generate tonight in my restaurant. I can't tell you exactly how many people are going to come in, exactly how much each of them are going to buy and which products they're going to buy. So revenue is a moving target. Because of it, Cogs is a moving target, right? So if I order too much, I've got waste and spoilage and that cuts into my cogs percentage. If I don't order enough, then I have 86 as I run out of stuff that impacts the guest experience, all of that, right? So because of that, that's our second moving target. Likewise, because I don't know how many people are going to come in. I don't exactly know how many people to schedule. I can schedule up on a Thursday night, assuming it's going to be busy. But if it ends up raining and that cuts into our cover counts, we don't hit the targets we thought we were going to hit. Then I'm heavy on labor. So again, if I'm heavy on labor, cuts into profitability from light on labor, it impacts the guest experience. So the reason our industry is so difficult are the three moving targets. That's the, that's the first thing, that's the first thing I wanted to say and I firmly sense and I firmly believe. And here's the other thing I was going to, I was going to point out more productive people are better for our business. When I have a better cook, right, I get a cook who makes 18 bucks. I have a cook who makes 22 bucks an hour, right? But my guy at 22 bucks has got way more experience and he can prep faster, right? So he can cut in, you know, 70% of that, 75% of the time that the less trained, lower paid cook is, you know, that cook can pick up more dishes, can manage more tickets coming in, they are more productive. We talk about like again, when we think of this, like, like coming off an assembly line model, like how much can one person produce? Same thing is true with a better server. Better server can take a bigger station, can manage more tables and can sell more, right? Can maximize every butt that we have in our seats. We talk a lot about incremental cost, right? In business, right? In restaurant industry, we look at incremental cost very differently. We bring in a team. We need a certain amount of people just to open the doors. And that team can do 100 covers. It can pretty much do 150 covers. It can pretty much do 200 covers as long as the book is spaced out. Appropriately so incremental cost is the cost of doing one more. Labor's nothing, rent's nothing, electric is nothing. It's the cost of goods. So the product that we serve to that one additional guest, but for the most part, the incremental guest of 1 more or 10 more, or for the most part, a hundred more, is very nominal. It's really just the product that we serve them. So, like, getting people are more productive who can sell more, we can, you know, lean on that. That team more just helps our profitability because revenue growth helps. Then limit our labor cost as a percentage of revenue. And it brings all those fixed costs down as a percentage of revenue. [00:25:49] Speaker B: That's right. And. And the more revenue you're generating, the more money is available for the servers to earn. [00:25:55] Speaker A: I'm so glad you brought that up. [00:25:56] Speaker B: So it's. It's a, A positive, you know, cycle to say the servers, you train them, they'd sell more, they make more, you make more. You train them more, they sell more, you make more. It's a virtuous cycle is the term I was looking for, versus the a golem effect where you don't train them, they don't perform, there's less money, they turn over, you know, and it really is. It sounds easy. It's not easy. Obviously you wouldn't have a business and I wouldn't have a business if this stuff was easy. But there are people around that can help. Let you, as the restaurant owner, focus on your concept and your menu and the things that you're passionate about and bring in methods that allow you to address some of the more challenging stuff in a systemized way. I mean, just the fact that most of the places we have ever gone in any industry, when we get to the front line, there is no sales process. I'll tell you. You go into a B2B juggernaut, you know, like a pharmaceutical company, and you look at their, how they train their salespeople. There is a process. They have everything documented and they train to it. So we bring a sales process with us because there isn't one. We've never seen one in food and beverage or at a front desk at a hotel or in a ticket booth at a theme park. So we bring one, and it's very simple. It's usually five or six steps, but it, it anchors the thinking and the approach into a framework that then you can train to each component of that framework. [00:27:24] Speaker A: So I want to be really aware of our time, but this is the last. I think this is going to Be the last word here. I want you to talk to me a little bit about that framework. So for someone who doesn't have any, how do you guys approach it? And we'll use that as a, as a stepping stone into, you know, again, how to, how to learn more about what you do. But talk to me about that sales framework that you would bring into a restaurant space. [00:27:45] Speaker B: Yeah, we call it the five course framework. It basically, it's concepts and tactical steps combined. So it focuses first on recognition, that service is emotion. So what your role as a server is to create a positive emotional experience for the diner and to keep in mind, even though you're grinding, they're there to have an experience. So you got to keep the magic going. Right. [00:28:08] Speaker A: It's easy to lose sight of that. [00:28:10] Speaker B: Very. I worked in hospitality early in my career. I know it can be brutal, but you got to smile every time because they don't know that it's brutal. They're there to have fun. And then it gets into things like, okay, how do you start the process? What is the first thing you do when you approach the table? Whether it's fine dining or it's fast casual, what is the first thing you do? Well, you, you connect, you build rapport. Then what do you do? Well, then you get them their first round of drinks. If it's a full service restaurant, you don't talk about appetizers or water, or you say, let's get your drink order in so you can get started. That adds a drink round to almost every check. So it goes through all those steps to the, you know, the entree, to the add ons, to the desserts. And it takes them around the thing, but it puts them in the right order. So the server, once they're trained, they can just move through that and they can spend their energy on the, on the connecting with the guest and on how to describe things so that it sounds enticing and it's fun and that people want to buy it and not worrying because what you're talking about, the server productivity, aside from revenue per guest, is how many guests can you serve. And there's a huge difference because some people are organized and some people aren't and some have built their own process and some are just winging it. And if you bring in a framework, whether it's ours or yours or someone else's, you can then at least hold your servers accountable to a certain amount of productivity. Because you've taken away the noise, you've taken away the excuses of why they can't handle five more guests. [00:29:33] Speaker A: I love it. Joffrey, tell me something counterintuitive that a lot of people wouldn't believe that you guys very much believe. [00:29:40] Speaker B: We. Well, there's a few. We believe that the front line is the most important thing in your business. It's not the last important thing. It is the most important thing because particularly in hospitality, your brand is the server or the front desk agent. It's not the decor of your restaurant because you could have the best aesthetic in the world and you could have a world class famous chef. And if the server blows up, the experience, they don't care about any of that. Now you got to have good food. I mean, that's, that's a guarantee. You do have to have good tablespoons. But we think that the front line is the most overlooked and most important part of the business. And it's the where you can gain the most leverage without spending any more money. You can, you can grow your revenue 10 to 15% and not spend a penny on anything else just by. [00:30:29] Speaker A: Amazing. [00:30:30] Speaker B: Because real quick, the leaderboard scenario, the way you're talking about what you think the margin should be 20%. We look at the leaderboard of revenue per guest and you take the top 20%, you apply their average to the rest of the leaderboard, it comes out at like 22% revenue. Every time we do it, every time we do it, it's the same. So can you get to 10%? Absolutely you can. And that's going to double your bottom line. [00:30:55] Speaker A: I love it. Geoffrey, I have loved this conversation. You are very much speaking my language. This is something I very much believe in. Like I said, I dedicated almost an entire day of the summit that I just closed to this subject. So we are, we are in alignment there. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to sit and share some of these ideas with me and most importantly, with the audience. Tell the audience where they can go to learn more about you and the work that you guys are doing. If they say, this is great, how do I get involved? How do I, how do I learn more about it? [00:31:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so our website, we make sure our website is everything. So it's Frontline Performance group, that's Paul George.com so frontlinepg.com that's where you could find everything, all of our industries, case studies, all that stuff. You can also find me on LinkedIn, G. Tuffetti at LinkedIn. And I would love to hear from you directly or connect with you. I love connecting with business owners. And so, yeah, I Mean, and we're, we're constantly putting information up on our website that I think would be useful. And if you wanted to engage with us, there's a way to contact our, our sales team on the website. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and the first step, right, is to just have a conversation. I always say, like, conversations are free. Like have the conversation, sit through the demo, like actually see what this, you know, what this is, and ask questions. One of the questions, one of the things I always tell my clients, I said, you know, tell me five people you're working with who resemble my business and show me the impact of the work that you've done. Tell me, show me how this thing has, you know, has worked for other people like me. It's 45 minutes of your life to, to see if the thing works. So for me, that's always the, that's always sort of the, the, the first big step we should take. [00:32:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:32:34] Speaker A: Last words of wisdom for the audience. [00:32:37] Speaker B: You know, just thank you for running restaurants because I love eating out and I'm a bit of a foodie in that sense. I have a whole newfound appreciation for the difficulty in running a profitable restaurant. So kudos to everyone out there who's doing it and just, you know, find a metric that you're comfortable measuring. Revenue per guest is an easy one. Most point of sale systems will give it to you. Rank your people and set your, your training priorities based on the bottom and, and you don't have to do the training. Pair them with people that are doing better. Let them do the training. It'll, it'll change everything. [00:33:12] Speaker A: I love it. I appreciate you taking time out of your day. Like I said, you are speaking my language and this is a really great conversation. I hope everybody listening got a ton out of this. Thank you very much. [00:33:23] Speaker B: It was absolutely my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. [00:33:27] Speaker A: So again, I want to thank Joffrey for taking time out of his busy day to sit and chat with us. We all understand the importance of growing revenue. All the important links are in the show notes. So if you want to connect with Joffrey via LinkedIn, go do that. If you want to go check out the website, maybe schedule a demo call. It's, it's free. Information is free. Go do that. You'll find those links in the show notes. As always, I appreciate you guys being here. One final reminder, if you are struggling with profitability, meaning if you're at break even or single digit profits, you don't have to settle for that. We help independent restaurant owners increase their bottom line to 20% plus. We do that through something called the P3 mastermind. It's a group coaching program that I run. I've got three other coaches that help me run it as well. It's an incredible community. Hundreds of people have already gone through it. Restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule that is how you book time on the calendar. And let's have a conversation. 30 minute conversation. It's absolutely free. And we'll see if you're a good fit again. Appreciate you guys being here. Thank you very much and I will see you next time. Sam. Sa.

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