Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So we're talking all about stories, right? Stories help your guests figure out who you are. They give them a shorthand to talk about you. But you know what else it helps? It helps your staff, your team.
When people come in, when they learn your stories, they get immediately they get
[00:00:15] Speaker B: brought up to speed.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: They understand who you are, what we do, why we do, why it matters. I want to talk about Danny Meyer today. I want to talk about Danny Meyer, something he wrote about in his book Setting the Table when he opened Union Square Cafe. And the reason he waited almost 12 years between opening Union Square Cafe and opening his second restaurant, Gramercy Tavern. And it was the stories that helped him do that. And he talked about in his book about how he couldn't figure out how to run the restaurant without him being there all the time.
Until he unlocked this one thing. That's what we're talking about on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: There's an old saying that goes something like this.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: You'll only find three kinds of people in the world.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy podcast. We put out two episodes every single week.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Do you know we are almost at 600 episodes?
[00:01:29] Speaker A: This show's been going on for more than seven years. I have you to thank. Thank you for making this show part of your week. If you don't know me, I'm a 25 year veteran in this industry. I have my MBA in food marketing. I run a membership site. It's called Restaurant Foundations. The link is in the show notes. I run a coaching program called the P3 mastermind. That link is in the show notes. It's RSProfit.com I give talks. I, you know, I write books. But I also host one big live event every single year. It is called the Restaurant Profitability Summit. This year it's happening in Minneapolis. October 18th, 19th and 20th. Two days in a row in a room with me and my team, 200 other restaurant owners from all over the world. They're all descending upon Minneapolis to learn the actionable how to's the playbooks you can use right away to manage your expenses, specifically labor and cogs, how to get them under control.
So how to hire better, interview better train develop better, how to manage your scheduling better, how to run inventory, how to use menu engineering to run a more efficient, efficient, profitable menu. And then on the on the profitability revenue side, it's how to increase check average, how to grow catering and private dining sales, how to look at all your revenue streams and make targeted growth. Over the course of the two days, we're going to teach you how to grow revenue by as much as 15 or 20%. Look at your top line. What would 15% growth look like? I promise you it will translate into bottom line profit. We're also dedicating the entire second half of day two to talk about marketing, specifically AI and how use how to utilize AI in your marketing. This isn't one on one stuff. It's like 213 tactics. We're going to literally walk you through exactly how to do it. You get your tickets by clicking the link in the show notes. Two different ways to join us. There is either VIP or general admission. Both tickets get you into both days of education. Both of them get you into the party on Monday night. The VIP then gets catered lunch on both Monday and Tuesday. And also you fly in early. You have dinner with me Sunday night you have dinner with me and my team. It's a real proper dinner. I promise it's going to be terrific.
That's it guys. The Restaurant Profitability Summit is happening in October and I want you there. Go click the link in the show notes and secure your spot.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Restaurant owners, you want a steady predictable flow of new customers, right? If that is the case, then you need to check out Restaurant Scale Secrets. They have a fully done for you marketing system that has already helped tons of restaurants including more than 50 members of this restaurant strategy community. They work with a ton of my P3 members. I recommend Restaurant Scale Secrets because I know it works. They run meta ads, they run Google Ads and they have an entire automated system to get people into your orbit and to get them coming in and coming back. The program works. It's why I recommend it not only here, but to all of my P3 members. You get to fill tables and add tens of thousands to top line revenue. So if you're ready to take that whole piece of marketing off your plate and start filling your seats, head to restaurant scale seats, book a free discovery call. There's no pressure. Get to meet Monica and her team and you'll see what they do and what they have already done for so many people in this community. Again, restaurantscalesecrets.com chip as always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
Now do you want to pulse on what's actually happening in your restaurant? Ovation gives you real time understanding about your guest experience, transforming guest feedback into clear, actionable insights so you can stop guessing and start making smarter decisions about your business. Their AI driven reporting breaks down every review into restaurant specific categories like speed of service, order accuracy or food quality. And it shows you where to actually focus.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: One operator put it like this.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Ovation is a game changer. It helps us identify issues early before they turn into bigger problems. Another operator starts every staff meeting by reviewing recent Ovation data, giving the team one source of truth to work from with heat maps, goal tracking and performance dashboards. Ovation doesn't just tell you what's wrong, it actually helps your team fix it. You can even assign action items and track the follow through on those items.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: So if you want to get all
[00:05:56] Speaker B: the answers without having to ask all the questions, go to OvationUp to book a demo, mention this podcast and guess what? They'll waive your setup fee. As always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Okay, so on today, I want to talk about again, continue talking about stories, but I want to talk about Danny Meyer, right? So most of these stories are restaurants I've worked in, restaurants I've worked with, or restaurants I've dined at, right? This is a story I'm talking about from Danny's book Setting the Table. But I have certainly dined at most many of Danny's of Danny's restaurants over the years. And so in his book Setting the Table, which again, if you haven't read that one, it's absolutely worth going back and reading the I think the most important part of it is sort of right in the middle when he talks about his growth, right? Opening his first place. But really when he goes from figuring out how to run that first place, how to really become a leader and then how to jump and become the true executive that his company needed. And that 12 year gap, that 12 year period between opening Union Square Cafe, figuring out how to manage it, run it, lead a team there, and eventually be the executive that his company needed so that he could spread himself thin and open a second one. That for me is the most interesting part of the book and it shares all kinds of interesting stories about the salt shaker theory and, and his management principle, which is constant gentle pressure. But the thing that I want to share, the story I want to share was he talked a lot about hospitality. He is Mr. Hospitality, right? He cares so deeply about the guest experience. He cares so deep, deeply about the way that he makes people feel, right? We give everybody hugs, but at the time when he was just running Union Square Cafe, it was him.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: He was.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: He was the hospitality. He was that impresario on the floor. He was the one who gave the guests all hugs.
And his unlock came when he figured out how to pour into his team so how to systematize the things that he did so well. And I think that's a really important point.
The stories we tell, yes, help your guests.
It gives them a shorthand to talk about you, something easy for them to communicate, a narrative, if you will. But I think it also tells your team who you are, the kind of place you are, and what we do, why we do it.
So when we talk about Union Square Cafe, Danny, in his book, talks about how he always loved giving, like a little splash of dessert wine. He talked about giving, like, little extras, sending little mid courses, sending like an amused bouche in the beginning, because not every table got it. It was just like doing those little extras and figuring out who needed those extras. Who is this really going to resonate with? And he felt like he was the only one who knew how to do it. And what he realized over the course of this journey is that no one else knew how to do it because he wasn't teaching them to do it. He wasn't showing them how to do it. He wasn't expecting them to do.
Was when he poured into people and taught them that they had to do it and showed them how to do it and explained why it mattered that they do it, well, that's when his entire business unlocked. And that allowed him to open his second, third, fourth, fifth, 10th, as many restaurants as he has now.
That was the unlock for him.
And so when we tell stories, yes, it tells the guests the kind of place you are, but. But it also tells your employees, especially new employees.
How do you bring a new GM up to speed?
Not by telling. Well, this is where dry storage is. This is where the office is, the bathrooms. Here are the keys. Yes, of course, you got to do all that, but let me give you an example of the kind of things we do, because that will tell you the kind of place we are.
The kind of place that does. This is the kind of place that our guests want to be in.
And without that, we're just like every other restaurant. And so Danny talked about how to operationalize that, right? How to. How to weave that into it, rather than just telling people, hey, I really want you to go above and beyond.
Right? Famously, at a certain point, he would give them like a. Like a comp budget. So all the captains had Comp budgets. So it was like 20 or $25. If you could do something nice for a guest that would make a meaningful impact, that would make their night, I think was how he put it. Well, then I trust you to do it. You have a budget every single night. And in fact, you didn't get in trouble for using it. You got in trouble for not using it. So when you did your checkout at the end of the night, you gave your cash over, you give your, you know, checkout receipt, you go through all the stuff, and then you gave your comp, you know, what was your comp tonight?
[00:10:21] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: So table. Table 22 is celebrating their anniversary. They finished their bottle of wine, but they were still halfway through entree. So I poured them, you know, each a half glass of this red that was probably the most similar to what they were drinking. I said, just so you have something to finish your meal.
People will be like, whoa, I can't believe you did that.
Or they ordered dessert and they didn't get a dessert wine. Well, I can send them, split a glass between the two of them so they just get a little sip, a little taste. I know you didn't order anything, any after dinner drinks or dessert wine, but I love this. I think it's a really beautiful pair. My gift to you, a little something that would go above and beyond it was when a table comes in and they obviously don't have the money to dine out very often, and they each get an entree, and that's it. They get water and an entree.
Well, then we send an appetizer and split it. Right. Little something. While we're making your main course, I think you should come out and enjoy the multi course.
Right. We see them, we see that they've saved up for this, and they don't have the budget to each get an appetizer. They only have the budget to get an entree.
Well, we can make their night a little bit better because then they'll go out and tell everybody and they'll remember us. So then 10 years, when they're no longer in med school and they're actually now doctors and making money, they'll think fondly of us and come back.
And so Danny talked about how we can't just tell people to do it. Hey, listen, I really want you to go above and beyond and make it. But he had to operationalize it. He had to say, we really care about making people's nights better, about making their days better, about making an impact. We care so much that we Give you this comp budget, and we're going to expect you to do it because we want you to be sensitive on the floor. We want you to be listening in and figure out, whose night can I make tonight? Because at scale, when you have 6, 8, 10 servers on the floor, and they're all doing that every single night, there's enough people then that are leaving this restaurant and going, wow, you'll never believe, right? Yeah, the meal was great, but you'll never believe what they did right the first time. Somebody brought me a half glass of red and said, I know you finished your. I know you guys finished the bottle of wine, but just a little something, because this food really deserves great wine
[00:12:22] Speaker B: to go with it.
Wow.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: It's amazing.
Again, that was at Danny's restaurant, Gramercy Tavern, the first time somebody had done that, and that was before I had ever read Danny's book, because by then it was already woven into who they were and what they did.
My point being is that if you're looking for permission to go above and beyond, this is me giving you permission. If you want to understand the business implications of will only come back.
It'll only come back and benefit you. Giving a little to get a lot.
You're going to give people something to say about you. Oh, we went to Gramercy Tavern. Oh, I've always heard about that place. Was it good? Yeah, it was really good. But you'll never believe what they did.
It's the but it's the comma but that gets you talked about. And if you don't have a comma but you're not getting talked about, it's the whole point of all these stories I'm sharing.
I'm sharing 20 stories. I could have done, you know, a thousand episodes on this, just trying to pick the very best ones, the ones that I end up talking about all the time. To illustrate the impact of this point, your restaurant matters. You simply have to show people that it matters and explain why it matters and give them the words to use to explain to others why you matter.
That's it, guys. That's what we're talking about today. Danny Meyer setting the table. How we went from Union Square hospitality, operationalizing this spirit of hospitality so that he eventually open Gramercy Tavern in the modern and Shake Shack and a million other restaurants. If you need help with your restaurant, if you are ready for 20% profits, I promise you it's not a pipe dream. We make it happen over and over and over. To date, we've put I don't know 500 people. Through the P3 mastermind, it has grown from one group to four unique groups. Not because it doesn't work, but because it very much does work. It's the power of community. It's the power of accountability.
Go to RSProphit.com, watch a quick video. Grab time on the calendar. You'll chat with me or someone from my team. We'll ask each other a bunch of questions. We'll see if you're a good fit. If you are, we'll talk about next steps. I promise you there is no pressure. We will find the right people. We will continue to curate an incredible community.
My biggest question is, why not you?
Thank you very much, guys, for taking time out of your day to be here.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: I will see you next time. Time.
