Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] 600 episodes.
[00:00:04] That's a lot of talking about restaurants, a lot of conversations about food costs and labor and marketing and hiring and leadership and profitability and all the things that keep restaurant owners awake at night. And after all that talking, you know what's interesting? The questions haven't changed all that much. The details change, certainly. I started this in 2019. Pre pandemic. The world changed pretty clearly. The circumstances, the economy, technology, the fundamentals. Fundamental challenges, though, that restaurants face, they're remarkably consistent, right? How do I make more money? How do I get more customers? How do I find better employees? How do I stop working so much? How do I build a business that doesn't fall apart the second I walk out the door?
[00:00:47] Different restaurants, different cities, different concepts. But guess what? Same questions. And I think. I think there's something important in that because it tells me that most restaurant owners aren't struggling because they're facing some completely unique, impossible to solve problems.
[00:01:02] They're struggling because they haven't yet built the systems to solve problems that are so incredibly common in our industry.
[00:01:11] So Today, for episode 600, I wanted to do something a little different. No guest, no single deep dive. Just 10 questions that get to the heart of what it means to own and operate a successful restaurant. Some of these questions are ones you guys sent in. Others are things I hear from owners all the time.
[00:01:32] Some, I think, are what I think owners should be asking. I'm going to answer them the way I would if we were sitting across the table from each other. No fluff, no complicated theories. Just the most useful advice I can give you after spending the last 25 years in this industry, the last 10 years, coaching and consulting restaurants. But before we get started, let me start by saying thank you.
[00:01:57] Whether you've been listening since episode one, or maybe this is the first time you've ever found the show, I can't tell you how grateful I am that you are here. 600 episodes only happen because there's someone on the other end listening to what I have to say. So let's make this one count. Thank you very much. Don't go anywhere.
[00:02:16] 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.
[00:02:47] Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in to this episode 600 of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. We put out two episodes every single week.
[00:02:55] The idea is the same every week to Help you guys level up, to give you new ideas, new strategies for dealing with a changing world to help you build a more sustainable, more predictable, more more profitable restaurant. So you can find me anywhere on social media. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram again. I put out these podcast episodes. I write books. First one came out in 2023, the restaurant marketing Mindset. The new one I'm going to talk about a lot coming up. It's called the Restaurant Profit Plan Playbook. That one comes out in January. But I run a coaching program called the P3 mastermind. There's four other coaches who work alongside with me. It is the number one way I know how to help restaurant owners increase the profitability of their restaurants. If you are struggling to make what you deserve to make, go to RSProfit.com just learn more about the program, set up a call so we can have a conversation. There's zero pressure. We bring on about 10 to 12 new people every single month.
[00:03:48] Why not you if it makes sense? I'd love to talk to you about next Steps. Go to RSProphit.com, you'll chat with me or someone from my team and let's see if you're a good fit. As always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
[00:04:00] So in today's episode, I'm sharing the 10 questions I get all the time. 10 questions. The, you know, questions you sent in, questions that, that I've been getting for years and, you know, a couple of these are ones that I wish more people asked. Let's get right into it. Question number one. Why is my restaurant busy but I'm not making any money? I love this question because it gets the heart of one of the biggest misconceptions in the industry. It is the reason why I went back to school, got my MBA at the age of 42. Busy does not mean profitable. I want you to say that out loud. Busy does not mean profitable. You can have a line out the door every Friday and Saturday night, still be losing money. You can have a dining room packed with guests and still struggle to make payroll because revenue is only one part of the equation.
[00:04:44] Profit is what remains after you pay for everything required to generate that revenue. And see, here's the problem. Most restaurant owners focus almost exclusively on sales, right? How much did we do yesterday? What did we do last week? Are we up or down compared to last year? And those are important questions, but they're incomplete. Because if your sales increase by 10% while your costs increase by 15%, you haven't improved your business at all. In fact, you've made it worse.
[00:05:11] So here's what I want you to do. I want you to start with something I call the 30, 30, 20 rule. 30% COGS, 30% labor, 20% for everything else. I literally call it the everything else bucket. So all your fixed overhead, operating expenses, if you do that, 30 plus 30 plus 20, it leaves 20% for operating profit. Of course, that's before debt servicing, taxes, depreciation, but that's operating profit. Those percentages, the 30, 30, 20, they are commandments. It's a, you know, it's a template. Different restaurants have different business models. So those, those percentages will. Will structure differently, right? Maybe your rent is higher, or since your labor is higher, your food cost has got to be lower. That's fine. The point, 30, 30, 20 leads to 80. It's to understand the relationship between your costs and your revenue. So if your food cost is 34%, your labor is 37%, your prime cost is, you know, 71%, right? That means that 71 cents of every dollar you bring in is gone before you even pay rent, utilities, insurance, or anything else. And no amount of Instagram marketing is going to fix that underlying problem. So my advice is simple. Before you spend another dollar trying to attract more customers, figure out where your money is going. Get a clean P and l understand your percentages, identify the biggest gap, and work on that first, because more sales are wonderful, but more profitable sales are actually the thing that will change your. Your life.
[00:06:39] This one was a question that was sent in. I asked over the last couple of episodes, and I sent emails asking for questions. Somebody said, what's the fastest way to improve my restaurant's profitability?
[00:06:49] And I'm going to give you an answer that might actually surprise you. It isn't necessarily cutting costs. The answer is to improve your per person average, your ppa. Now, I'm not suggesting that you ignore food cost or labor. You absolutely need to manage those things. But think about this.
[00:07:04] You already have customers sitting in your restaurant. You've already paid to get them in there. You staffed the dining room, you've turned on the lights, you've paid rent. What happens, what happens if you generate a little more revenue from each of those guests?
[00:07:19] Let's say you serve 500 guests a week, and your average guest spend is 30 bucks, right? So that's $15,000 in weekly revenue. Now imagine you increase your PPA, your per person average, by just three bucks.
[00:07:32] Now, not 30 bucks, just three.
[00:07:36] That produces an additional $1,500 per week over 52 weeks. That's $78,000 in additional annual sales. Now, obviously, that isn't $78,000 in profit. You still have the incremental costs associated with those sales. But it's a meaningful opportunity, and you didn't need to find a single new customer to create it. You just had to improve ppa.
[00:08:00] Of course, that begs the question, how do you improve ppa? Well, I think you train your servers to make better recommendations. You get them focusing on second beverage sales. You improve your appetizer and dessert presentations. You teach your employees to guide guests through the menu, use thoughtful upselling and downselling, and perhaps most importantly, you make sure your guests are actually having a great experience.
[00:08:24] Because I don't want you pressuring people to spend money. I want you helping them to enjoy themselves, as that's really the difference between selling and hospitality. And there's a simple assignment that goes around this. I want you to pull your server report, right? Your server performance report. It's called in toast and everyone's POS has it. And I want you to calculate PPA for every server, right? So that's just the net sales that they generated divided by the number of covers that they waited on.
[00:08:48] That gives you your ppa. And find the gap between your highest performing and your lowest performing. And then figure out the gap between everybody's number and the average.
[00:08:58] And then I want you to ask yourself why that gap exists. From, you know, your best person to the average, your best person to your lowest, your lowest to the average. There's probably a training opportunity hiding right there in plain sight. So, yes, I think it's important to manage the numbers. But the number one way, the easiest way, is to increase ppa.
[00:09:17] Now, question number three. How do I get more customers without spending a fortune on advertising? This is something. I get some version of this over and over and over. And here's the first thing I would tell you.
[00:09:29] Stop thinking about marketing as something that happens outside your restaurant. I think your marketing actually starts right inside the four walls. I've talked about this a whole bunch over the years. I call it the triangle principle. Attraction, retention, evangelism. Right? Three sides to a triangle. I think there are only three things we need to do to actually market our restaurants. Most owners will start with attraction, meaning they want to focus on the people coming through the front door. So they buy ads, they post on social media, they hire influen, they run a ton of promotions. And I'm not saying those things can't work. They Do. But I want you to work backwards. Attraction, retention, evangelism. We actually start with evangelism. Are your existing guests so delighted, so overwhelmed by the experience that they can't help but tell other people about you? Right. If not, the question is, why not? And what can you do to make sure they all rave about you? They send texts and videos and post and leave reviews.
[00:10:25] Then after we button that up, we get word of mouth sparked. Then I want you to look at retention. Are your guests coming back? Meaning, do you have a system for turning first time customers into regulars? Do you collect contact information with permission? Do you communicate with guests after their visits? Do you give people a compelling reason to return something simple and stupid? Are you even inviting them back?
[00:10:48] And see, only after you've addressed those questions do I want you pouring any money into attraction. Customer acquisition is time consuming. It's difficult, and ultimately it's expensive.
[00:10:59] And if your restaurant has a retention problem, then advertising simply sends more people into a leaky bucket. They visit once, they have an average experience and they disappear. And so you then have to pay to attract somebody else. And then they come in and have a mediocre experience, they disappear and you have to pay to attract somebody else. And that is an expensive way to run a restaurant. So here is what I'd recommend. Instead of spend the next 30 days focusing on the guests you already have, improve the experience, actually engage, build relationships. Capture contact information appropriately. Create a reason for people to come back and actually, actually invite them back. Encourage them to tell all their happiest friends about you. Right? Because the most effective marketing actually starts when somebody say, man, you've got to try this place.
[00:11:50] Question number four, right? This was, this is something that I think more people should ask. I told you, I've got stuff that was sent in, stuff that I get asked all the time. And some that I, that I added in, I added this one in. Should I raise my menu prices? Short answer is probably, But I don't want you to do it blindly. Here's what frustrates me about this whole conversation. Restaurant owners will spend months complaining about rising costs, right? Food is more expensive. Labor is more expensive. Insurance is more expensive. Utilities are more expensive. Does that sound like this year or what? Right? That everything's more expensive and yet they're terrified to adjust their menu prices. And the question's why? I know why. I mean, obviously it's because they're worried customers will get upset and they'll disappear. But let me ask you something. Do you think your customers are surprised that Prices maybe haven't gone up right because they buy groceries, they pay rent, they fill their cars with gas, they understand inflation. And in every other aspect of their life, the prices are going up little by little by little. That doesn't mean you charge whatever you want. Doesn't mean you gouge people. Price still has to make sense relative to the value you're delivering. But if you're keeping prices artificially low simply because you're afraid of upsetting people, you may be sacrificing. In fact, I know you're sacrificing the financial health of your business out of fear. And I think you know it's not sustainable. So here's what I want you to do.
[00:13:13] I want you to start with the numbers. You gotta know your plate costs. You have to know your margins. Understand which items are popular, understand which items are profitable. Then evaluate your pricing.
[00:13:25] Maybe you need a modest increase across just certain categories. Maybe you just need to reposition a few items. Maybe you need to introduce a premium offering that changes how guests perceive value.
[00:13:37] Maybe you just need to remove some items that aren't contributing enough. But whatever you do, be deliberate about it and make the decision strategically. And remember, your job is not to be the cheapest restaurant in town. Your job is to deliver an experience that goes above and beyond that, punches above its weight, that's worth what you charge.
[00:13:57] And if you do that consistently, then price becomes one part of the decision rather than the only thing that customers care about.
[00:14:06] Question five. Yep, you guessed it. This is something I get asked all the time, how do I find better employees? Here's my answer. My answer is, you listen to it on episode number 599, right before this one. It starts by building a better restaurant. Some place that the best people would want to work at. Right? I know it sounds simple, but I think it's the most important place to start. Too many owners approach hiring as if they're doing candidates a favor by offering them a job. But talented employees, they got choices. They're like free agents on the market. Every team wants them on their team, right? They're evaluating you. They're looking at your culture, your compensation, your schedules, your managers, your training, your opportunities for growth. And then they get to decide whether they want to work for you.
[00:14:53] So the first thing I want you to do is evaluate your employee experience.
[00:14:57] What makes your restaurant special? Why would a great server choose your restaurant over the one down the street? Why would a talented cook want to join your kitchen? Why would an ambitious manager start building their career with You.
[00:15:08] And if you don't have compelling answers, and then that's where you start, then you improve your recruiting. Stop posting the generic job listings. Tell people what actually, actually makes the opportunity exciting. Move quickly when a promising candidate applies, and stop waiting until somebody quits to start looking for their replacement. Again, we talked all about this last week, so I don't want to, I don't want to go too deep, but we. Right, this is the leapfrog playbook. This is the three tier training. We're always looking for talent, we're always developing a bench. Because the worst time to start recruiting is when you're desperate for an employee.
[00:15:44] And again, one more thing. Don't confuse experience with potential. Some of the best employees you'll ever hire might not have the most impressive resumes, but if they're curious, reliable, coachable, and eager to learn, well, then you can build something. You can build something special.
[00:16:01] Which brings us to the next question. This was actually a question that was asked at my summit just a couple of weeks ago in Minneapolis. The Restaurant Profitability Summit. Question number six, why do my employees keep leaving?
[00:16:16] I actually think this is one of the most important questions a restaurant owner can ask. Because turnover is expensive. We know that. We've read the stats. And not just financially, it's expensive. Emotionally and operationally, it creates instability throughout the entire restaurant.
[00:16:30] Every time somebody leaves, you've got to recruit a replacement, which means you got to interview and train and get these new people up to speed and then hope they stick around long enough to justify the investment.
[00:16:42] Meanwhile, your existing team, they pick up the slack, right? So your managers are covering extra shifts. The guest experience will suffer a little. So it begs the question, why do people leave? Right. Well, sometimes they leave for reasons completely outside your control. Meaning they move, they graduate, they change careers, they have kids, their, their circumstances change, their, their priorities change.
[00:17:05] But sometimes they leave because working for you just isn't very enjoyable. And that's the part I want you to focus on. Right? Not all people who leave are leaving for the same reasons. Some people leave for good reasons. And God bless, we just have to focus on the others. So in my new book, the Restaurant Profit Playbook, again, I introduced this three tier train approach to employee training.
[00:17:26] I'm not going to go deep into it because you can go back one episode, episode 599, where I go very deep into it, but basically three tiers. Tier one asks the question, what does this person need to know in order to take a station by the end of the week? Tier 2 asks the question, how can I make this person as good as my best employee within 90 days? And Tier 3 asks, what would I need to do to keep this person around for the next decade?
[00:17:50] Most restaurants barely make it through Tier one, right? They train somebody for a few shifts, throw them on the schedule, and forget all about development entirely. And then they're surprised when employees leave. But why would somebody want to stay if they didn't see a future? Why would they want to stay if they weren't learning, if they weren't being pushed? So here's my advice. Build a training program that addresses all three areas, right? And have interviews. Have conversations with your people while they are still your people. Not just exit interviews, right? Have those conversations, sit down, ask those questions, and then answer those questions for every new person who comes in.
[00:18:28] Question number seven. This is something I actually get quite a bit. I've got a meeting on the books tomorrow with one of my P3 plus members to talk about this. Specifically, how do I get my managers to take more ownership?
[00:18:40] Man, it's a big one, right? And here's. Here's actually what I want to know.
[00:18:45] Have you actually given them ownership, or are you simply giving them responsibility without authority?
[00:18:52] Because those are two very different things. Responsibility and authority. Right? Ownership and empowerment. That's what we have to talk about. And I see this all the time, like, an owner will come up and tell me, hey, my GM doesn't take initiative. I just ask a few questions. Well, can your GM change the schedule? Well, you know, I like to approve it first. Can they make hiring decisions? Well, I really like to meet all new people. Can they resolve a guest complaint without your approval? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the situation.
[00:19:18] Can they make decisions about purchasing or inventory or changing SKUs? No, I usually want to be the one to handle that.
[00:19:26] And I'm sitting there thinking, what exactly is this GM managing? You've given them a title, you're giving them a salary. I'm guessing you gave them a set of responsibilities.
[00:19:36] But meanwhile, the owner has retained all of the authority. And then the owner's frustrated that this GM doesn't take more ownership.
[00:19:45] Well, why would they? You've trained them to wait for your permission, right? So here's the shift I want you to make. If any of this resonates, stop asking your managers to bring you problems. Start asking them to bring you solutions.
[00:19:57] So I was introduced to this framework a while ago. I was taught it's the one three one method. So they bring you one problem. They make three possible you know, give you three possible solutions and make one recommendation for a course of action. Meaning when a manager comes to you with a problem, you want them to identify the issue, consider three ways to address it, and then recommend the approach they believe is best.
[00:20:18] Now, this doesn't mean you stop supporting them, and it doesn't mean you expect them to know everything.
[00:20:23] It means you're teaching them how to think, you're helping them develop judgment. And over time, they become more capable of making decisions independently. And here's the best part. You have to let them make the decisions. You have to establish boundaries, of course, you have to communicate what success looks like. But then you have to give them room to operate, which will occasionally lead to mistakes, right? Absolutely. You made mistakes, though, and I made mistakes. And it's all part of the learning process. I didn't break anything. You didn't break anything. Everything's still standing. But if you have to correct every decision, if you override every judgment, if you insist that everything be done your way, you are never going to develop strong managers. You're just not going to develop people who are good at running places. You're going to find people or have people that are good at following instructions, but that's not actual leadership.
[00:21:15] Question number eight. What's the one number I should be looking at every day? This is one of those that was sent in. I love this question. Actually, I've gotten versions of this, but not as clear and direct as this. Right? What's the one number I should be looking at every day? My answer is going to depend on what you're trying to improve, because there is no single number that tells you everything you need to know about a restaurant. But if you're asking me where I'd start, I tell you to focus on sales relative to your forecast. Not just sales, sales versus your forecast. Because your forecast is the foundation for so many other decisions, right? Your labor schedule and your purchasing and your prep and your inventory, your cash flow. If you don't have a reliable sales forecast, obviously, I mean, I think you're essentially operating blind.
[00:22:03] And here's what happens. You schedule too many people on slow days, you schedule too few people on busy days. You over prep, you under prep, you waste prep product, you create unnecessary stress, and then you wonder why your costs are out of control.
[00:22:16] So I want you to build a daily sales forecast. Start, I don't know, start with historical sales. Look at day of week patterns, look at recent trends, and then consider weather, holidays, any local events, anything that you think might affect demand. And that might, you know, influence traffic.
[00:22:33] Then you just establish a realistic target for every day of the week, each morning. Then you compare your actual sales with your forecast. Right. So what happened yesterday? I thought we were gonna do 4500. We only did 4200. Right. So you have to understand, did you hit the number? Did you miss? Why? What can you learn? And most importantly, what adjustments should you make?
[00:22:54] Now, if you're a full service restaurant, I also want you to look closely at PPA per person average, because that tells you something about how effectively your team is generating revenue from the guests who are already sitting in your dining room room. And of course, you got to understand your labor percentage. But I want you to stop thinking about these as all disconnected numbers. They work together.
[00:23:13] Forecasted sales determine how much labor you can afford. Your schedule determines how much labor you actually use.
[00:23:20] Your team's performance influences how much revenue you generate. And obviously, all of those things influence profitability.
[00:23:28] So start with a forecast, measure your results, and learn from those differences between the forecasts and the actuals.
[00:23:35] Then you get to use that information to make better decisions tomorrow.
[00:23:41] Question number nine. This was sent in. How do I get my life back without my restaurant falling apart?
[00:23:47] Actually might be my favorite question of the entire episode. Because you can hear it, right? It feels personal, right? And I know exactly what that feels like. I think you do, too. So back in 2016, I was managing restaurants in New York City. I was hardly making anything. I was working a ton. I had a young son at home. And I remember thinking, is this really what success is supposed to look like? I talked more deeply on this in the last episode, but I was thinking, am I going to spend the next 20 years working nights and weekends, missing time with my family, sacrificing personal life for a business that doesn't even belong to me?
[00:24:19] That was the beginning of a really important turning point, because I realized something. I think the point of building a successful business is to create a better life.
[00:24:28] Not simply to create a bigger job, but the personal life and the professional life should be connected.
[00:24:34] And yet I think that's what so many restaurant owners have done. They've built themselves these incredibly demanding jobs. Jobs where they're responsible for everything.
[00:24:42] Every decision, every emergency, every employee problem, every complaint, every vendor issue. And the restaurant becomes completely dependent on them.
[00:24:52] There's a difficult truth there. If your restaurant falls apart when you leave, you actually haven't built a sustainable business. You've built an operation that depends on your constant presence.
[00:25:02] And so the solution isn't Simply to work harder. You probably already tried that. I think the solution is to build systems. Systems for opening and closing and training and inventory and scheduling and forecasting and accountability, and then just develop managers who can execute those systems without you. And no, that doesn't happen overnight. And I'm not suggesting you disappear for three weeks and hope everything works out.
[00:25:26] Start small, build from there. Take one responsibility that currently depends on you, and document the process. Train somebody else to do it. Give them the authority to execute. Establish a way to measure the result for sure. But then step back. And once you see that work, and I promise it will work, do it again and again and again, just one responsibility at a time. Because freedom isn't something that magically appears once your restaurant reaches a certain revenue number. Freedom is something you build into the operation. And if you don't deliberately design your business to function without you, it probably Never will.
[00:26:02] Number 10. This is another one that was sent in. If you could give every restaurant owner listening one piece of advice, what would it be?
[00:26:10] It was great. And it was. I had to end with it. So right here we are, all right. Episode 600 asking for one piece of advice.
[00:26:18] After everything we've discussed over these last, you know, all these years of seven years, what would I want every restaurant owner to understand? Here it is. Here's my answer.
[00:26:27] Stop building a restaurant and start building a business.
[00:26:32] And I know that might sound like semantics, but. But I think it's the most important distinction in our industry, because opening a restaurant and building a successful business are not really the same thing. See, opening a restaurant is about the concept, meaning the food, the design, the menu, the. The atmosphere, the experience. Trust me, all those things matter. I love those things. They're what make this industry so special. Certainly, it's what got me into this industry. But. But, see, building a business requires something else entirely.
[00:27:02] It requires financial discipline. It requires a systematic approach. It requires solid leadership. It requires strategy. It requires an understanding of how all these various pieces fit together. And most importantly, it requires a clear definition of success.
[00:27:20] Because I want you to ask yourself something.
[00:27:22] Why did you open your restaurant in the first place?
[00:27:26] Was it because you wanted to work 80 hours a week? Was it because you wanted to worry about payroll every Thursday night? Was it because you wanted to spend your weekends covering shifts? No, of course not. You probably wanted to create something, right? You wanted independence. You wanted to make a living doing something you loved. You wanted to build a future for yourself and your family. And, yeah, maybe you wanted to, you know, grow your community. And contribute and create jobs. Maybe you wanted to build something that would outlast you. Whatever your reason, I want to invite you to reconnect with it. Because the restaurant is supposed to serve that purpose.
[00:28:03] It's not supposed to consume your entire life.
[00:28:06] That's why I'm so passionate about profitability. Not because I think money is the only thing that matters. In fact, quite the opposite. It's because profit gives you options.
[00:28:19] It allows you to pay your people better.
[00:28:21] It allows you to reinvest into your restaurant. It allows you to improve the guest experience. It allows you to weather difficult times. It allows you to create a life outside the business. It allows you a proper good night's sleep.
[00:28:36] So if I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this.
[00:28:40] Get clear about the business you're trying to build.
[00:28:44] Understand the numbers, build the systems, develop those people you got, and make decisions that move you toward the life you actually want.
[00:28:53] Because a successful restaurant should create opportunity for your guests, for your employees, and for you. But a successful business is the things that actually make those things happen.
[00:29:06] So you're asking me what I've Learned on over 600 episodes? Right? Right. You know, when I started this. This podcast, I. I had no exact. No idea where exactly it would lead.
[00:29:18] Famously, I said, I committed to the first 30 episodes. I'll do 30 episodes, and I'll see if I like it. I'll do 30 episodes and feel like, if it's worthwhile, cf. Cf. People listening liked it. I mean. I mean, I knew I loved restaurants. I knew I loved talking about business. I knew I could help people. And I. I knew there were a lot of restaurant owners out there who needed help. Right. They were working incredibly hard without seeing the results they deserved. That's why I did this. Right? I wanted to help change that.
[00:29:43] And over the years, I've had the opportunity to work with owners running all kinds of restaurants, Tiny neighborhood joints, busy independent restaurants, growing restaurant groups, people just even opening their first location, people trying to figure out how to scale to their 10th.
[00:29:57] And here's something I've come to believe even more strongly with every passing year.
[00:30:01] The restaurant industry doesn't have a shortage of hardworking people. In fact, we have an abundance of them. People who get up early and stay late and sacrifice weekends and miss family dinners. People who pour their hearts into their business.
[00:30:15] I promise you, hard work is not the problem.
[00:30:19] The problem is that hard work without a strategy doesn't necessarily lead anywhere.
[00:30:25] You can spend 20 years working incredibly hard and still end up with a restaurant that barely makes money.
[00:30:32] You can become the most important person in your business and in the process, make yourself a prisoner of that business.
[00:30:40] That's what I want to help restaurant owners avoid, because I believe there's a better way. A way to build profitable restaurants, a way to develop extraordinary teams, a way to create memorable guest experiences, and a way to build businesses that give their owners more freedom. More freedom, not less.
[00:30:55] That's been the mission of this podcast from the very beginning, and it's going to remain the mission for the next 600 episodes, God willing.
[00:31:03] So if you've been listening for a while, thank you. Thank you for sharing the show, thank you for sending me your questions, thank you for challenging my ideas, and thank you for caring enough about your business to want to keep learning.
[00:31:16] If you're listening for the first time, welcome. You're coming at a really great time. We got a lot of work to do. There's so many episodes for you to go back and listen to, and we got so many great episodes coming.
[00:31:27] I'm excited about what's possible. I'm excited about what's coming because I genuinely believe that independent restaurants are among the most important businesses in our communities. They bring people together, they create jobs, they give neighborhoods character.
[00:31:40] They're places where we go to create memories. And when they're operated well, they can create extraordinary opportunities for the people who own them and for the people who work in them. And I think that's worth fighting for.
[00:31:52] So, again, here's to the next 600 episodes, and here's to building restaurants that are not only great places to eat, but great businesses to own.
[00:32:01] My name is Chip Close. I'm the founder and CEO of Restaurant Strategy. I am also the host of this, the Restaurant Strategy podcast. I appreciate you guys for listening. Thank you very much. If you could do one thing for me before I let you go. If you get any sort of value from this show, take today this opportunity to go. Leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Just go let people know why you listen to this and why you think they should listen to this. That, more than anything else, would help me continue to grow my small business. Thank you very much for listening, and I will see you next time.
