[00:00:00] How many times have you been out to a restaurant, a nice restaurant, maybe marking an occasion, and they've done something above and beyond? I want to talk about above and beyond because they represent a really great opportunity for stories, for stories to be told long after that meal is over.
[00:00:16] I think most restaurants don't do this very well at all. And I think a couple do it really well. And the couple that do it really well, I think are going to illustrate just how far behind the rest of us are all of that. On today's episode of Restaurant Strategy, there's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:00:59] Hey, everybody. Hey, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy podcast. Two episodes every single week to help you level up and build a more profitable restaurant. I give talks, I coach, I write books, but I also throw one big live event every year. The Restaurant Profitability Summit happens every October. This year, October 18th, 19th and 20th in Minneapolis. A series of playbooks over the course of two days, two different levels of tickets, general admission or vip. I'll be on stage. My coaches, Sal, Chris, Rev, they will be on stage with me. We've got P3 members presenting on stage for the first time ever. We got a headliner, Gavin Casen, two time James Beard Award winner. He has three different restaurants out in Minneapolis. He will be taking the stage with me to talk about growth and profitability, talk about what success looks like, especially moving into the year 20, 26 and beyond. The industry is different.
[00:01:53] If you are ready to level up and have a better, more profitable, more sustainable business, you need to be there. You get your tickets by clicking the link that's in the show notes. Again, two different ways to join us, general admission or VIP. This is capped at 200 people. We sell this out every single year as of the time of this recording. Because I'm recording this, this is what, early June now? So I'm recording this way before. We still have about 85 tickets left, so a little bit more than half are sold. I don't know, by the time this airs, they might be gone because again, it sells out every single time you go grab your tickets by clicking the link in the show notes.
[00:02:31] Now, if you've listened to this show for any length of time, you've heard me talk about Kickfin because they've been a trusted partner of mine for years and I genuinely believe in what they do. For restaurant operators, see, 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 throughout the day and then doing spreadsheet math at, I don't know, one, two in the morning. Warning Tip pooling regulations keep getting more complex. It's just not fun. And that's exactly why Kickfin exists. With Kickfin, restaurants can calculate tip pools automatically and send instant cashless tip payouts to employees existing bank accounts. And I said cashless. No cash, no predatory pay cards, no glitchy employee apps required. Your team gets their tips fast in the account they choose from, right when their shift ends, Kickfin integrates with all the major POS players Sotoast 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, when they are paid fairly and paid fast. I promise everything improves and Kickfin makes that possible. If you're ready to save hours every week, eliminate those cash runs, streamline your accounting and make tip payouts the best part of everyone's day. Visit kickfin.comdemo and yes, that link is in the Show Notes.
[00:04:13] Ajinomoto is your answer to every busy dinner rush spent deep in the weeds. When hungry customers walk through your door, they expect good food, right? Good food that tastes homemade. But making every dish from scratch can cut into your profits. Certainly what we're talking about today, especially with the cost of ingredients and yes, the cost of labor. That's where Ajinomoto Foods comes in. Ajinimoto has a huge catalog of fast, easy to prep frozen Asian products that taste and look homemade. That includes classics like fried rice dumplings and onion rings and new trendy fusion plates like kimchi chicken pot stickers. See? Choosing Ajinimoto is choosing over 100 years of proven expertise in the food service space. Choose to save time. Choose to save money in your busy kitchen without compromising on the quality your customers have come to expect. Learn more about
[email protected] and yes, you'll find that link in the show Notes.
[00:05:15] Okay, so we're Talking about stories, right? Over the course of these 20 episodes, 20 episode arc, I'm talking all about the stories that I tell over and over and over again. And if you're not understanding yet, let me just. Let me just hammer it over your head. Stories are how we frame, right? Narrative is how human beings tell each other about other things. So nobody goes out and says, oh, man, I went to that restaurant. They say, how was this? Oh, it was really, really good.
[00:05:37] That's not enough to get people to go there. They say, I went to this restaurant. Oh, how was it? You say, it was really good. But, man, do you know what they do? I always talk about it. It was really good, comma. But you know what they did. You know what they do. You'll never believe. It's the thing that comes after. It was really good. I loved it. I had a great time. I loved it. It was good. I had a great time. Is not enough to get people there. So we have to tell stories. Stories are the way that people tell people about other things, about the things in their lives. So I'm talking about the stories that I. I'm talking about the stories in.
[00:06:11] In my life. So clients, P3 members, experiences that I've had, restaurants I've dined at, and also experiences things that I was a part of when I was working there. I want to talk about personalization.
[00:06:23] So the common thread is, over the last couple of episodes is that I don't think we know our guests very well at all. I don't think we know who they are, what they do, what they care about, why they come here, what they do with their. With their free time. I just. And it's so easy.
[00:06:38] Think about a department store, you think about Amazon, you think about almost any other business they would die for. The kind of access that we get, and we take it for granted, right? The kind of access, the time that they are at our register, basically, right? We have a lot of time to engage with them, and I don't think we do a very good job of it. When I think about restaurants, I consider myself overwhelmed with gratefulness and joy. That the way we celebrate a birthday is to go out for dinner. That the way we celebrate a promotion is to go out for dinner. That the way we celebrate an anniversary or graduation or whatever is to go out to dinner. That's what we do. We mark big occasions by going out to dinner. And that wasn't the case 2, 3, 4, 500 years ago. A thousand years ago, it wasn't. We did different things to mark occasions. But right now, today, in our society, culturally, this is what we do. We mark occasions by going to dinner. So if you have the kind of restaurant that people go out to, to celebrate, to mark an occasion, I'm here to tell you you're probably not doing enough. All right, so I'm going to give you a couple of stories around this, right? I talked about it a few weeks ago, and I'll remind you about how we had gone to Spain, and it was my son's first three Michelin star restaurant. He specifically asked for it. We like dining at a high level sometimes. And so we did that when we were in Spain, and they provided a special menu just of that night's food and gave it to us. It had the date on and all of that. The chef signed it. It was special.
[00:08:07] It costs. If you got that kind of restaurant, it costs very little to do that, right? All of the different ways that you can make things special. And it goes beyond. I always joke around, I said, if it's somebody's birthday and we've got it written down, and we give to the server, and then when dessert comes around, we stick a candle in there or a little plaque that says Happy Birthday, and we sing them Happy Birthday at the table, guess what? That's not enough. Can you imagine? And picture this. If I had my mom over. If you had your mom over.
[00:08:32] I have my mom over for. To celebrate her birthday. She comes in, I'm like, hey, mom, what's going on? Come on in here. Let me take your coat. Sit on down. Yeah, yeah. So what's new? What's going on? Blah, blah, blah. If I didn't say happy birthday, if it wasn't the first thing out of my mouth, she'd be like, what the hell, right? So I'd say, what's going on? She's like, well, I'm celebrating a birthday today. That's going on. It's gotta be the first thing out of our mouths. So in a restaurant, why would we wait until the end? The first thing we do, right, Is they come in. Hi, just checking in for a reservation. Absolutely. Glad to have you.
[00:09:06] It says here, celebrating birthday. Whose birthday is it? From the downbeat, from the very first moment, I strongly believe you should be wishing them a birthday when they come over to the table, because guess what, right? So they come over to the table, server should say Happy birthday. The buser should say Happy Birthday. The manager should say Happy Birthday. It sounds annoying, right? It's not. Trust me. Because it's their birthday.
[00:09:30] It's like if I have my mom over and I say happy birthday, and then, you know, my brother shows up with his family, and, well, they don't have to say happy birthday because I already. Because Chip already said happy birthday. Absolutely not. Everybody has to go wish my mom a birthday. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody who comes over to the party, everybody has to wish her a happy birthday. It's not just because, oh, we did it once, and it's not like, oh, I didn't think to wish her a happy birthday because I knew we were going to sing to her later and that was going to be my wish for a happy birthday. It sounds ridiculous when we say it out loud. So guess what? On birthdays, you get a pass. You could be a little bit annoying. Happy birthday. Everybody who sees my mom on her birthday says happy birthday. She gets texts and phone calls and messages on Facebook.
[00:10:09] Everybody says happy birthday. It's the same thing in your restaurant.
[00:10:13] What I mean to say, though, is that's the bare minimum. We. We acknowledge what's going on. We thank them for letting us be part of the celebration, for trusting us to not screw it up. But then, you know, your candle and a plaque and singing to them, it's not enough. It's really not. You've got to go above and beyond, do something.
[00:10:34] Do. Do something special, something that they will remember. It's not like people say, oh, you know, we went out here for my birthday. Oh, absolutely. How was it? Oh, it's really good. You'll never believe they put a candle on my dessert. We're going to look at each other and be like, you're an idiot. That's what you do. That's what every restaurant does. But instead, if they said, you know, oh, yeah, it was my birthday. Oh, that's amazing. Did you have a good time? Yeah. Yeah. You'll never believe what they did, right? So I'll tell you what we did. I worked at a restaurant, fine dining restaurant, and we would pick. We'd highlight everybody who has a birthday on a given night, and they make the reservation usually about a week ahead of time. We would call, and I'd pick somebody and call.
[00:11:12] And so it was a regular a la carte menu, right? Like, they had appetizers, they had entrees. You know, we just. It was a regular menu, but we would call one lucky winner, right? And usually we'd say, oh, 40th birthday. My wife's 70th birthday, my husband's 50th birthday. It would be. We. We'd pick a Big occasion. And we'd say, hi, just wanted to call, you know, I saw you, you're joining us for dinner next Thursday. Wanted to call and confirm that reservation. Yes, we'll be there. Okay, perfect. Also, I wanted to let you know we don't advertise this. We certainly don't broadcast it. But twice a night we do a chef's tasting menu, right? So the restaurant I was at, chef hated tasting menus, refused to do, didn't like him. But it, if there was a business, if it was a business decision, he would do it. And I said, well, listen, why don't we pick two lucky tables every night and say, we'll cook for you. It's just a menu. We pick your thing. It's like 14 courses. It's extraordinary, blah, blah, blah. And he was like, okay. And if we could sell it at a certain amount. For example, a meal here was, give or take about 120, $130 per head on average. So we sold this menu for $320, which there were plenty of tasting menu places out there. They were used to these higher ticket prices. But we call somebod the phone and just say, hey, I see you're celebrating a big birthday with us. We're so glad to be part of the celebration. We don't advertise this, we certainly don't broadcast it. But twice a night we offer this to two tables to do the chef's tasting menu. It's like basically mystery courses. You won't know what you're getting. You tell us what allergies you have or dietary restrictions, but otherwise, then we'll just cook for you instead of being like $120 for the, the three course prefix, it's $320. But you know, this is really something we don't offer. The scarcity of it made it really, really appealing. The moment that it was a big birthday. And you know, without fail, almost always somebody was, oh my God. Yeah, my, my, my husband would love that, right? Every once in a while was somebody said, oh, I'm not sure, say, okay, we're gonna go and offer this to somebody else. So I, I would need to know now, you can call me back. But there's no guarantee we have it, right? And so sometimes people would hang up and, you know, they would either call back or not call back. It was fine. But we only did it twice a night. The idea being that we could take a 4 top, who was going to be worth roughly $500 to us, and turn them into a 4 top that was worth 1500 dollars 3x, you know, what we would normally generate from it was a no brainer. And in that case, at scale, when you say there's two tables, so instead of a four top at $500, it was a four top at $1,500.
[00:13:37] So in that case it was an extra thousand dollars. Over the course of the night, it was 2,000 extra dollars in revenue. Over the course of the week, it was roughly about $12,000 in additional revenue. Like oh well that, that, that sort of scales at scale. $12,000 a week times 52 weeks. You do the math. That ends up being a really important increase in revenue. And so that's what we did.
[00:13:59] More than making more money.
[00:14:01] We made people feel seen. We talked about this. Will Goddard talks about it. Our job is to make people feel seen. To make people feel important.
[00:14:08] We were able to see them. I see that you're celebrating a big birthday with us. We're so glad we can be part of the celebration real quick. This is what we can offer. This is something we do and we made them feel important for a day and that's what we did. And guess what? You can do that. It's gotta be more than just wishing them a happy birthday. It's gotta be more than putting a candle on the dessert. I would strongly urge you to think about how you can do this. Even the most casual place can do this. One friendly reminder, guys. The restaurant profitability summit happens in October. You can get links, get your tickets in the link in the show notes. Appreciate you guys being here. Thank you very much. I will see you next time.
[00:15:06] Sam, It.
