Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey there. Chip Close, host of the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. You are at the beginning of a 20 episode arc where I'm sharing the stories that I share more than any other. Stories about restaurants, clients that I've worked with, P3 members, stories about restaurants that I've been to. We started the last one with a restaurant that I've been to in Italy. If you haven't listened to that, go back. That was number one in this 20 episode arc. This is number two. I want to share the story. When I went to Spain two years ago, there's something really interesting that happened. I think you're going to get a lot from it all. On today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:33] There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:04] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy podcast, two episodes every week. I am interested in helping you make more so you can work less. We help independent restaurant owners install the systems into their business so that they can be more profitable. I do that in the talks I give, the books I write. I do that on this show. I also run a coaching program called the P3 mastermind, but I also do that with one big live event that I host every single year. So I go to a lot of trade shows, conferences, conventions, and I never, never feel like I get that experience where someone takes me from beginning to end, A to Z over the course of my time there. So I decided to throw this event. We've been running this event, give or take, for about five years now. It has become bigger and bigger and bigger. We only have 200 seats to sell. It happens October 18th, 19th and 20th in Minneapolis.
[00:01:54] I want you to be there. We sold about half the tickets already. Now we are opening it up to the general public. That includes you if you want a series of tactical playbooks. Right? What to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why it works. You need to be there. I'm going to share with you my catering and private dining playbook. So a five step framework for how to double your catering and private dining sales. It's not theory. I actually did it. We're going to teach you the four scripts. You're going to teach your team, your servers, your bartenders, your managers to increase PPA by as much as 5 to $7 for most restaurants. You do the math. If you generated 5, 6, $7 more for that was in your restaurant, think you're going to find it's something like a 15 to 17% lift in top line revenue. I think that would be a massive, massive improvement from where you are now. And you know that would impact profitability. We're going to talk about how you manage cogs, how you manage labor, how you what's actually working in marketing. We have an entire segment of day two dedicated to AI and specifically how to utilize AI for marketing. You do not want to miss this event. Two ways to join. There's general admission tickets or there's VIP tickets available. Again, all only 200. We've at the time of this recording, we've sold about 92. So a little, a little less than half are already gone. The link is in the show notes. If you want to level up your restaurant in the year 2027, you have to be in Minneapolis October 18th, 19th and 20th. When the tickets are gone, they're gone. This space cannot fit any more than 200 people. If you want to be there, I want you to be there. Go find that link in the show notes. Grab your tickets today.
[00:03:28] What's the food cost for your third best selling entree? You don't know. But with Margin Edge you could know instantly. Margin Edge is a complete restaurant management software that we recommend to every single P3 member, anyone looking to improve their profitability. With Margin Edge, you just get to snap pictures of your invoices and you get real time data for every area of your business. You get to see plate costs in real time. You get a daily P and L. You know, I love that your inventory count sheets are automatically updated.
[00:03:57] What happens is that Margin Edge saves you a ton of time and it lets you make better informed decisions. I got a client, Gather brewing. They were P3 member for a better part of a year. They started using Margin Edge last year and within one month, I'm telling you, 30 days, their food costs went from 38 to 28%. Massive savings that those 10 points dropped straight to the bottom line. Trust me, there's a reason I recommend Margin Edge to so many my clients, so many listeners, so many P3 mastermind members. It's because it works. I know it works. If you've been listening for a while, you know I talk about it. If you're interested in learning more or you want to see how Gather brewing went from 38 to 28%, they put together an incredible video. Video. Head over to margin edge.com/chip again, margin, edge.com, slash chip. As always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
[00:04:46] Okay, so we're talking about stories, right? I wanted to share the 20 stories that I share more than any other. So if you are in my mastermind, surely you've heard some of these. If you've attended any of live events, surely you've heard some of these. But I've never collected them all in one place the way I'm doing here. The thing is, stories are what gets restaurants talked about, right? You have to give people something to say so they got a frame of reference to go and talk about you. These stories are not meant to tell you what to do. They're meant to tell you what other people are doing, what other people have done so that it sparks a little creativity, can inspire you to level up, to think differently, to go outside the box.
[00:05:25] That's what these stories are all about. Last time I shared a story when I was in Europe, when I was in Italy in 2022 with my family. Today I want to share about 2025, when I was in Spain. So if you've been listening for a while, you know I travel a lot. It's one of the things that we do. It's really where we spend our money. Because I think travel changes you. Travel has surely changed me. We've took my son. I think my son's been to 10 different countries now. He's just turning 11.
[00:05:48] We care about it that much. We make it a priority.
[00:05:51] We drive a couple of Subarus. We have a small house mostly so we can eat well and we can travel well.
[00:05:57] We don't have to be fancy. We just like to go to cool places, interesting places, places we have never been. In 2025, we went to Spain. We spent a few days in Madrid, had a fantastic time, visited some friends there who were staying there. And then we went up to San Sebastian. If you know San Sebastian, it's like this food mecca. It's a culinary.
[00:06:17] It's a. It requires a, you know, a culinary pilgrimage if you've never been before. So there's Old Town, which has all these little pincho bars. So you get all these pinchos, like little tapas. And every little bar is famous for different things. You go into each and every one. You go and get a glass of wine and you know, this one pinchot here, and you go over and get another glass of wine and have these two pinchos here. And you sort of mash together a meal over the course of, you know, two hours. Wandering the streets. But they also have all these Michelin star restaurants. So one of the things I wanted to do, my son had asked, can we go to a three Michelin star restaurant? I was like, okay. He's a pretty sophisticated diner. And we were like, okay, yep, we love doing that. We love going out to fancy meals. So we tried to get a restaurant and we tried to get a restaurant at Arzach. And they basically laughed. I've called nine months ahead of time. They basically laughed at me on the phone and they said, no, we have no more reservations available in the month of August. I was like, oh really? So we could accommodate you on September 10th. I was like, oh no, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be back in the States by then, thank you very much. And I was like, crap, where are we going to go?
[00:07:16] We ended up going to Martin Bersatogi. I may be butchering the name, but it's another three Michelin star restaurant just outside of town. And it is extraordinary. So the chef has tons of restaurants all over Spain. This is sort of the, the, the crown jewel of his entire empire. He lives right above the restaurant. We went. It was a multi course tasting menu, like, I don't know, 14, 15, 16 courses. Chef was actually there. Here's the story.
[00:07:40] The restaurant was exceptional. The food was great. The wine pairings were exceptional. The dining room was beautiful. None of that is what I'm going to Right. This has nothing to do with it being a fancy restaurant. It was fancy. Has nothing to do with being fancy. This has everything to do with the hospitality they extended me, my wife, and mostly our son. I'm going to tell that story in a second after a word from another one of our sponsors.
[00:08:07] Today's episode is brought to you by Right Work. If you're serious about improving restaurant profitability, which, if you're listening to this, you should be, labor has to be one of the first places you look. But too many operators are still building schedules from last week's template from manager intuition or a flat labor target that doesn't match actual demand.
[00:08:28] Right Work helps restaurants forecast that demand so that they can build better labor models and create smarter schedules that match staffing to the actual needs of the business. For restaurant strategy listeners, Right Work is offering free onboarding, including a free labor model build out, plus three months free to use right work. Go to write.work/chip to claim the offer. That's right. R I G H T dot work W O R K slash chip, C H I P as Always. You're going to find that link in the show notes.
[00:09:04] Okay, so we travel a lot in 2025. We spent two weeks in Spain. We were in San Sebastian, and we went to this fancy restaurant. It's called Martin Bur Satagi. Three Michelin stars. It has nothing to do. My story has nothing to do with the food or the wine, although I think it was the single best meal of my life. And I've had the privilege of dining at a lot of great restaurants all over the place. This took the cake. I, I can't even explain why. My wife and I looked at each other like an hour into the meal and she said, I, I think this is the best meal I've ever had. And I was like, I, I totally agree.
[00:09:37] That's not what this story is about. This story is about something very pedestrian, something that any restaurant can do, and it had to do with my son.
[00:09:45] Now in the United States, we like to ignore kids. Kids are just a nuisance. They're an annoyance. They order chicken fingers, pizza, you know, pasta and butter, and they're just sort of like shooed into the corner. It annoys us.
[00:09:56] But over in Europe, it's totally different. And especially or even at the highest quality restaurants, right? In a two, three Michelin star restaurant. Like, my son was the youngest person by about 20 years in that dining room.
[00:10:11] So here we go. We're about halfway through the meal, and at a certain point the chef comes out and the chef is, you know, touching each table, shaking hands and all of that, and he doesn't speak a lick of English. So he's got one of the servers there acting as a translator. And he finally comes over to our table and he recognizes that there's a kid at the table, like all of these adults having this very fancy meal. And here's this like 8 year old having this meal. And. And he like lit up. He couldn't believe it. And so he's talking to my son and the translators, you know, like the go between, between the two. And he said, you know, what are you doing here? Are you enjoying it? Are you eating everything?
[00:10:43] And my son says, well, yeah, I love dining out like this. I love to do tasting menus. I've been to lots of other restaurants. And he's saying, what restaurants have you been to? My son's impressing him by all the restaurants he's been to. And the chef, like shakes his hand, you know, takes a picture with him, shakes his hand and walks away again. This is the first part of the story. It has nothing to do with how fancy the restaurant was.
[00:11:04] Five minutes later, that translator comes over and says, says to my wife, can you write down your son's name for me? And she said, sure. So she spells it out. She writes it down. He said, thank you very much. She goes back to the kitchen. We have absolutely no idea. We have no idea what's happening.
[00:11:20] So then five minutes later, this chef comes out holding one of his chef's coat. Like, one of his, like, official chef's coats that he wears. And he assigned it Amigran Amigo. Preston puts today's date and then signs it and gives it to him and takes another picture with my son. As they're holding it, my son is, like, lit up like. It's like if you just met Michael Jordan, if you met Derek Jeter, you think of, like, the biggest celebrity star, the person you revere more than anyone. It was like my son had just met that individual. My son had never heard of this chef before this day. But he comes out, gives him a chef's coat, takes a picture, and brings out, you know, a special menu of everything we're eating. Gives it to him. All of this pomp and circumstance. Amazing. My kid's on cloud nine. We're on cloud nine because he's on cloud nine. P.S. guess what? It just helps him stay more focused through a three and a half hour meal. He is absolutely ecstatic.
[00:12:14] Another hour passes. We're getting towards the dessert courses, and the server comes back and says, the chef would like to invite Preston, my son Preston, into the kitchen. Preston, would you like to follow me? And I looked like a sad little puppy dog. And I was like, what? Really? And he's like, oh, you can come too, if you want. I guess it was like he really didn't care about me now. He didn't know who I was, and who cares? It doesn't matter.
[00:12:38] But it was really for the kid. And we just invited ourselves back there. So we get to go back. We see an army of cooks preparing these meals, full station. It was, like, amazing to be back. It was very cool. Chef asks to take another picture with my son back there in the middle of the kitchen. It was amazing. So he come back out, he gives us a whole package, right? Whole, like, bag to package up all his stuff. Because now he's got, like, the menu, the chef's coat, you know, all of that.
[00:13:04] As we were. As we were leaving, my son said, I like your pin. Cause all the captains have a little pin with the logo for the restaurant on their lapel. And he says, oh, wait one second. He goes back, he gets a pin and gives it to my son, and he puts it on my son's lapel, the lapel of his jacket. He says, here you go. Now you'll never forget this restaurant again. My son, if he. If There's a Cloud 10, he's on Cloud 10.
[00:13:28] As we're leaving the restaurant and getting back in a cab and heading back to our Airbnb, he's like, over the moon. And all of this not because they gave us free food or not because they, like, did anything special except took a picture with us, gave us a gift, took us on a tour.
[00:13:46] All of this is absolutely free. Yeah. The chef's coat has actual value. He didn't have to do that. But everything else, every other part of the story is absolutely free. I would strongly urge you. Right. Your takeaway from this story is don't ignore the kids. In fact, this is gonna come back over and over again. We're gonna weave this throughout. But, like, the kids represent an opportunity.
[00:14:09] I am talking about this restaurant not because the food was so good or the service was so attentive or the wine list, the wine pairings were so thoughtful. I'm talking about this restaurant to thousands and thousands and thousands of you because of how they treated my son. Because going above and beyond, going the extra mile now, you might have a much more casual place than what I'm talking about. Fine. I don't care. What can you do to go above and beyond for the children in your restaurant? What can you do to go above and beyond so that everybody would tell the story of eating at your restaurant?
[00:14:41] That's the takeaway from today's episode. Again, I want to remind you again about the restaurant profitability summit. It happens October 18th, 19th, and 20th in Minneapolis. If you are ready to level up and build a more profitable restaurant, get your cogs and labor under control, drive revenue from an operations and marketing standpoint, Learn how to actually embed AI into your restaurants. Then you need to be there. There's general admission tickets available. There's VIP tickets available. Be in the room. There are only 200 seats. Nearly half of them are gone. I appreciate you guys being here. Thank you very much. I will see you on the next.
