Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] The last few years have been very difficult in our industry, and I totally get that. And I don't want to diminish the challenges that many of you have faced over these last three years. But I can't help but feel that this is also an amazing time to be alive, to be alive. And in our industry, there is such opportunity. The industry is changing for the better. Technology is making things more efficient, more effective, making us more effective. And so there are six complaints that I hear over and over, over and over again when I'm on the phone with the potential new members of my Mastermind. Things that I hear with members of the Mastermind, things that I just hear when I'm out and about, things I hear on the Internet, when I talk to other restaurant owners and operators, when I'm actually dining in restaurants and pick up a conversation. There are six complaints that I hear over and over that I'm really sorry, I just can't hear anymore. Today we're going to talk all about those six and I'm going to turn you around. Shift your mindset about how you should be thinking about those six. Don't go anywhere.
[00:01:04] 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.
[00:01:35] Hey everyone, my name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated solely to helping you build a more profitable restaurant. Each week I leverage my 20 plus years of experience, 20 years in the industry, to help you build a more profitable and a more sustainable business. I also work with owners and operators all over the world in my P3 mastermind program. What are the three P's they stand for? Profit, process and progress. We start with the end in mind. Everything is goals oriented. What do you want to achieve? What are we doing to achieve those goals? And is what you're doing working? That's the framework we apply to. Just about everything we do in the program works. If you're curious to learn more. If you struggle to generate consistent, predictable 20% profits, then please set up a call with someone from my team. Visit restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule we'll get to learn more about you and your restaurant. You'll get to learn more about the program. Ask some questions about the program to see if you're a good fit. Fit for the program. Again, if you are ready to level up, if you're ready for more than set up a free call. That's the best way to get started. That link is in the Show Notes now. Have you read the 2023 State of the Restaurant Industry report from the National Restaurant Association? There's a lot to digest in that 41 page paper, but that's where you can lean on. Spot on, the presenting sponsor of that report as a top rated restaurant technology company, Spot on leads from the front.
[00:03:01] Not only are they helping restaurant operators make sense of our changing landscape, but they're working directly with restaurants to overcome challenges with innovative solutions. Their handhelds and QR ordering can help you turn more tables while creating a better guest experience on the back end. Their labor management tools can save up to 20 hours per week on tasks like scheduling, payroll and tip distribution. And when it comes to rising costs, Spoton's reporting gives you the real time data you need to make informed decisions about your menu, your employees and your operations. Best of all, Spoton's direct online ordering puts you in control of your takeout and delivery operation without the third party commissions. They got all these tools in one integrated system backed by a customer support team that actually answers the phone. Learn more by visiting spoton.com chip and you will find that link in the Show Notes.
[00:03:52] Now, as I said at the top of the show, it's a challenging time to be in our industry. But I also believe wholeheartedly that this is perhaps the best time in my life and certainly in the last 23 years that I've been in this industry industry. It's one of the best times to be a part of this industry. And that's because things are changing. There's innovation everywhere you turn, and still I hear the same complaints. And all I want to do on today's episode is introduce you to these six complaints. You will recognize all of them, I'm sure. In fact, many. I'm guessing you're probably guilty of saying yourself, but what I want to do is after I introduce you to these, I want to change your mindset one by one. I want to give you a different way of thinking, thinking about these complaints so that you start rewiring your own brain. So that you change the way you think about these problems and you change the way that you approach the solutions for these problems. I promise you, your headspace, your mindset, is one of the most important pieces to running a profitable business. I know you know that. I know you hear that. But I want you to feel that over the course of this, of this conversation. So again, I hear this from prospective Members, I hear these in my mastermind groups. I hear this when I'm just out at restaurants talking to owners and operators, trying to understand how business is going, what they're struggling with and all of that. And I hear the same things over and over again. And the people in my mastermind already already know a lot of these. I, I introduce them to a lot of these mindset shifts every single week in the group setting. But I want to introduce you to these mindset shifts. So without any further ado, let's start with the first three. Number one, inflation is killing us. I hear this all the time, right? Restaurant owners walk around say, man, these, these, you know, I'm getting killed by these, these rising food costs, right? Inflation is killing me. And it shouldn't be killing you, because what happens is, is inflation is a natural byproduct of what's going on right now in the economy.
[00:05:55] You are affected by inflation and you, you hate inflation because you're not participating in inflation.
[00:06:05] So what happens is the farmer charges a little bit more, and then the importer charges a little bit more, and then your distributor charges a little bit more, and then it gets to you. And where you should be charging the consumer a little bit more. So many of us stop and say, oh, well, I just don't think, I think I'm at my threshold. Like, the guy down the street is selling their burger for $13. I can't raise mine to $16.
[00:06:29] And yet you don't know where they're sourcing their meat. You don't know the quality of beef that they're using in their burgers. You don't know how much they buy at a time, what sort of pricing they get.
[00:06:42] You know nothing about the circumstances there. And yes, I understand you have to be competitive, but.
[00:06:49] But you also have to guard our margins. So here in this industry, I don't have to tell you this, we live and die by razor thin profit margins. We don't have this cash cow that makes 40, 50, 60% profit. We make 5, 10, 20, 25% if we're absolutely lucky.
[00:07:09] But if we want to guard our margins, we have to understand our margins. And so when our costs increase, we have to pass that along to the consumer. You, as a consumer are affected by this. Everywhere you go, right? Everywhere you go, clothes are up. Most restaurants are up. Your grocery bill is up. Everything is up. That's because inflation affects an entire community.
[00:07:33] And oftentimes what happens when I talk to owners and operators, especially at the independent level, they go, well, I Just can't. I just can't because people won't pay the higher prices. Which brings me to the second complaint. That is the second complaint. I just can't raise prices any higher. People won't. People won't pay it and people have to pay it. Here's the thing. People will pay for the most unbelievable things, right? Here's a perfect example. Doordash and Uber Eats and grubhub, all these third party delivery sites, right? We know that takeout and delivery is an inferior product, inferior to the experience, to the quality of food that people get when they dine in the restaurant. We know that. And yet still, people order, on average, the average American household orders one to two times every week from those delivery apps. And they deal with the extra convenience fees and the service charges and the delivery fees and all of that.
[00:08:33] And they deal with a substandard product because convenience and sheer laziness.
[00:08:40] I say that full well, knowing that I take out, I do take out and delivery at least once or twice a week. This is not some other group. I'm a part of this group and I'm guessing many of you guys listening to this are also a part of the group. It's inevitable.
[00:08:54] We work long hours, our weeks are hard. So sometimes you just need a quick win, man, let's just order in sushi. Let's just get, let's just order a pizza. It's totally fine.
[00:09:04] But let's be really clear that what people pay for in those instances is diminished quality. I'm willing to put up with diminished quality and additional prices for convenience, for laziness. I don't have to prepare food, I don't have to get up from my couch.
[00:09:21] That's it. It's gonna be delivered right to me.
[00:09:23] So when you say I can't raise my prices, people won't pay the higher prices. It's because you're still thinking of yourself. And I talked about this a few weeks ago. You're still thinking of your product as a commodity.
[00:09:34] And I gave this talk in New Zealand recently and it was all about the luxury mindset versus the commodity mindset.
[00:09:41] So the commodity mindset says, all things being equal between two products or a handful of products, all things being equal, a consumer will then make their decision based on one of three criteria, convenience, familiarity and price.
[00:09:57] They'll judge based on one of those things. Here's a perfect example. A gas station, right? When you're on the highway and you're running out of gas, you don't go to your favorite gas station. You don't necessarily even go to the one you're loyal to. You go to the one that's closest to because if you don't, you're going to run out of gas, you're going to be stuck on the highway. That's convenience. It's convenient. That one is right here off the highway. That's right here at the service station, right? If you get to a place, right? If you're in your, you're in your own community, in your neighborhood and you've got a choice, oftentimes you'll go to the one you're most familiar with, right? Maybe it's the one that's closest, but oftentimes it's the one you're most familiar with, right? This is where loyalty comes in, these loyalty cards, right? Maybe the rewards cards. Maybe you go to the one you're familiar with because you've got loyalty, you've got membership built in there. Fine.
[00:10:46] And if you pull into a strange town, strange city, and you're at an intersection and you need gas, and there are two, three, four gas stations at that intersection, guess what you're going to do? You're going to look at the signs and pick the one with the lowest price.
[00:11:03] When we pick a commodity like gasoline, right, like petroleum, it doesn't matter what we put in our car, all of them are going to make our car go.
[00:11:14] So petrol is petrol's petrol.
[00:11:17] Gasoline is a commodity product. All things being equal, we make our decision based on one of three criteria.
[00:11:24] The same is true with your restaurant, with many restaurants out there, we run the risk of falling into that trap. You will never be the most convenient. You can never be familiar to the most amount of people, and you certainly can't be the cheapest. That is a race to the bottom. You cannot be the cheapest product. So if we assume that we can't or don't want to compete on any of those three criteria, then let's, let's separate ourselves from that race to the bottom, from being the closest, the most well known, the cheapest. You will never win that argument. So these first two, these first two complaints really go hand in hand, right? Number one, inflation is killing me. It's killing you because you're not participating in inflation. Which leads to the second one. Well, I just can't raise my prices. People won't pay it. They will pay it if you make it valuable to them, if they see the value in that experience.
[00:12:20] So I've said this before on the show, but Seth Godin, the Great marketing guru, public speaker, best selling author, has been a great influence to me over my career marketing restaurants. But he, he does this thought experiment sometimes. What would you have to do if I told you that tomorrow you had to double the price of this product without changing the product? How would you market it? How would you make it so that in the eyes of the consumer it was worth now twice what you were charging yesterday?
[00:12:49] So this dish used to be $15. Now I'm telling you, got to charge 30.
[00:12:55] That has a, is a thought experiment that I've heard Seth talk about for the last, I don't know, 10 or 12 years. And now, especially over this last year, it's basically true. The price of eggs more than doubled last year in some places tripled.
[00:13:10] And most people didn't raise the price of their omelets or, you know, a diner didn't raise their place of their, the price of their scrambled eggs and hash browns. And yet they should have.
[00:13:21] They got dinged all year long because they couldn't keep up with inflation.
[00:13:27] What I'm saying is that we are part of the market. We are part of a thriving community.
[00:13:33] We have to raise our prices. We have to pass those expenses along to the consumer now as we fight rising food costs. Understand in my book I always say, hey, when we have a cogs problem, right? If our cost of goods sold is too high, that's a good problem to have. And I say this to all the members of my mastermind because there are five solutions we have to that problem. Number one, we can go back and renegotiate our price, the price of that product. We can go source a different ingredient. We can go find another vendor, we can play with the portion size. Or finally the fifth one is that we can increase the price.
[00:14:11] We have five different levers that we can pull to help keep our cost of goods sold in line, which is really what we're talking about here.
[00:14:20] So when the, when the price goes up, right? When the price of goods goes up, you got a lot of things you can do. You can go back and say, hey, whoa. You can go back to your vendor and say, I, I can't pay that price.
[00:14:32] My people, I can't, I can't increase my prices enough. You, you got to give me a break. Hey, how, what can we do here? You've got a relationship built. That's a relationship business.
[00:14:41] And if that doesn't work, find another ingredient. And if that doesn't work, go find another vendor. When you start putting one vendor against the other, you finally have some leverage.
[00:14:51] So when you got, you can source eggs from here or source eggs from here, you go and say, hey, this guy's gonna give me this much per dozen. What can you do? What are you gonna do to keep my business? Let me just tell you. They want your business. They'll go down. They'll go down another 50 cents, another quarter, another dollar. Whatever they need to do to keep your business, you have leverage. That's, I guess my point, right? This is the mindset shift. You have more agency than you think.
[00:15:20] So when we're talking about inflation, you simply have to participate in it.
[00:15:25] Number two, if you're saying you can't raise your prices, there are a lot of things you can do before you have to raise your prices.
[00:15:33] Let's be absolutely clear about that.
[00:15:36] And then when you do raise your prices, you simply have to make it worth it in the eyes of the consumer.
[00:15:43] Doordash and Uber Eats and grubhub have snowed us all, all the consumers, in thinking that convenience is more valuable than a great product, than a great tasting meal.
[00:15:56] And consistently we say, no, convenience is more important to me than I'm willing to deal with mediocre food. Pizza that's sort of, you know, room temperature.
[00:16:07] It's better when you're there in the pizza shop and you get a nice hot pizza coming right out of the oven.
[00:16:12] But we forego that for convenience because we don't have to put on our shoes and get the car and leave our house and all that.
[00:16:18] That's fine. So these first two complaints go hand in hand, right? Inflation is killing me. It's because you're not participating. I'm simply inviting you to participate in that. And number two, I can't raise my prices anymore. I feel like I'm at my max. People won't pay that. They will.
[00:16:33] They will. But remember, there are a bunch of things you can do when trying to keep your cost of goods sold in line. That comes before raising your prices. Finally, when push comes to shove, you might just have to raise your prices. There's a lot you can do before that. And if you have to raise your prices, you simply have to make sure that people see the value, that it's one worth the additional cost to come to you. Right? This is that Disney World conversation. Disney World's got it right. It's expensive enough that everyone complains about it, and yet not so expensive that people stop going.
[00:17:06] They go. They grumble, but they go.
[00:17:11] That's really where you want to be in your business. I'm not talking about gouging people. I'm just talking about you making the margins you need to make so that your business can support you.
[00:17:21] Those are the first two complaints and they're so, so, so important because even though inflation is coming down, this idea, both of these things are perennial. We will deal with them every so often. It's a conversation I have with a lot of operators every single month.
[00:17:39] Not just over the last year. Over the last year it's been more acute. But I have this conversation very, very often. So I invite you to shift the way you think about those two problems.
[00:17:49] Number three, here's the one I hear quite a bit. You know, just, you know, people just don't know we're here. Like, like I just need more butts and seats. If more people knew about us, we would be fine. And that is an absolute myth.
[00:18:05] I want to say that again. That is an absolute myth. It is a lie.
[00:18:09] There are plenty of people who know about you, right? Here's perfect example.
[00:18:14] On my way from my house to pick up my son from camp, let's say this afternoon, I'm going to pass easily two dozen restaurants. I know they're there and yet I've only been to about two or three of them.
[00:18:27] There's no reason why, except I just haven't gone.
[00:18:31] Maybe some of them just don't appeal to me. They don't look like I'm going to enjoy it there. They're too difficult to get to or I simply am never in that direction when I at a convenient time. But I know they're there.
[00:18:44] These restaurants don't suffer from an awareness problem, right? They don't suffer from an awareness. I know they're there, as do thousands and thousands of other people who live in my town.
[00:18:57] The problem is something else.
[00:18:59] I talk a lot about something I call the triangle principle. It's a marketing triangle. There are three sides to the triangle. Attraction, retention and evangelism.
[00:19:07] Basically, these are the three things I think you need to do to successfully market your business. There's a specific way we go about that, but just on the surface, high level, 30,000 foot view. I want to introduce you to this triangle principle. If you've never heard me talk about it. There are three things, three sides to it. Retention, I'm sorry, attraction retention and evangelism. We got to get people in, we got to get people back and we got to get people talking.
[00:19:32] So oftentimes I talk, I don't know, I give six or seven talks over the year where I Go to different conferences, events, conventions, trade shows, and I'll talk to rooms filled with restaurant owners, right? And I talk about this marketing triangle, this triangle principle, quite a bit. And I. And I would say to the room of, I don't know, a room of 300 restaurant owners say, what's the most powerful marketing tool at our disposal? You know what they say? They all scream back at me. They say, word of mouth. And I said, yep, you're right. So tell me your word of mouth plan. What's your strategy for. For word of mouth?
[00:20:06] And they just sit there, glazed eyes, wide open. They've never thought of it before. They've never been asked that question before.
[00:20:14] They say, well, no, no. People come in, they have a great time, and then. And then they go tell their friends and all that. And that's how we get other business.
[00:20:20] Absolutely not. As a restaurant owner, as an operator, I want to focus on things that I can control so that that kind of word of mouth will happen without you. And there's nothing you can do about that.
[00:20:35] What I want to focus on is how you can affect word of mouth, how you can spark word of mouth. Specifically, what do you do to get people to talk about you, to get people to leave reviews, to take photos and videos and post them online? How do you make it easy and obvious and inevitable?
[00:20:53] Meaning, how do you spark word of mouth? Yeah, maybe some word of mouth will just happen without you trying to do it, but I think here in the year 2023, we'd be a lot better off if we tried to do something about it. And the best restaurants in the world try to spark word of mouth. I give this example from time to time. I'll give it again today. Last year, when I was in Las Vegas for the Bar and Restaurant Expo, I was at one of Jose Andres restaurants in the Sahara Hotel. And I was there at the bar and I ordered a cocktail. It was a riff on aviation.
[00:21:25] And they did this drink where they sort of like. She goes, okay, she starts mixing it and she pours it in the glass. And right before she puts the last finishing touch on it, she says, oh, you might want to take out your camera because everybody always wants to film this. It's really cool. I was like, oh, okay. I had no idea what. But there was this big pitcher, big glass pitcher. And she took a bar spoon. And what I realized is there's a liquid in there, and there's almost like a cloud hovering over the liquid. And she basically spooned out a little bit of the cloud and like, garnished the glass with it. So it was like a little cloud hovering over the liquid in my glass. And it, like, sort of danced over the liquid, right? Danced over the glass for, I don't know, 60 seconds or so. And I videoed the whole thing and I was like, whoa, you're right. That is cool.
[00:22:09] Number one, someone had the presence of mind to come up with that drink. And then someone trained their bartenders, or this bartender had the presence of mind to tell me to get ready for it.
[00:22:26] So they created something that was photo worthy, that was photogenic, that was worth filming.
[00:22:31] And then they told me, hey, this is photogenic. This is worth filming. You're going to want to share this.
[00:22:37] And I did. They made it easy. They made it obvious. They made it inevitable.
[00:22:43] So when we talk about an awareness issue, we talk about, I just, I need more people. More people knew we were here. Let's be really clear. We're talking about word of mouth in a certain way, but we're also talking about butts in seats. And so this is sort of the hill behind the hill, right? The problem behind the problem. We always say, oh, I need butts in seats. And we think that means we need to introduce ourselves to more and more and more people. But. A but is a but is a but. And they say it's cheaper to keep a customer than to go find a new one. So really, I'm gonna. I'm gonna suggest that what you need is just any but. And better to reach out to the people who already know you and like you and trust you. People who have already trusted you enough to come in and have had the experience, and I'm guessing have loved the experience.
[00:23:34] Let's focus more energy on getting them back.
[00:23:38] That's retention.
[00:23:39] So now we've talked about attraction retention and evangelism. We work it in reverse order. Evangelism. We need a way, a system for getting people to talk about us. There are specific things we do to make that happen.
[00:23:52] And then retention. There are specific things we do to get the people who are there in the dining room to come back. And I could spend, I don't know, four episodes talking about that. You just simply need to wrap your head around it and think of ways to do it. And this is something we talk about quite a bit in the Mastermind, something we specifically target these three areas. We come up with hundreds of ideas every single week as people go in the hot seat.
[00:24:18] There's no right or wrong answer. You just simply need to do it.
[00:24:22] So attraction, retention, Evangelism we work it in a reverse order. Now we get to attraction. We save attraction for last, right? Customer acquisition. Because, number one, it's the hardest to do. Number two, it's the most expensive to do. It's also the most time consuming of the three, trying to raise awareness, right? So we've got this. We talk about the, the Aida model. A ID A.
[00:24:45] Marketers think about it all the time, right? It's, it's the, the journey, the path a potential consumer goes through to become a customer.
[00:24:53] So A ID A. It stands for awareness, interest, desire, action.
[00:25:01] We need to make them aware. We need to get them interested. We need them to crave what it is we have. They have to want it, want it so much that they then take action.
[00:25:10] That's a typical marketing funnel, right?
[00:25:14] Awareness, interest, desire and action.
[00:25:18] And that takes time, it takes resources, takes money, takes effort, it takes focus.
[00:25:27] So I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. I think we should. I think you should have specific ways that you raise awareness to your brand. I think you should have specific ways, tactics, things you do to try to get people to take action and book at your restaurant or order online.
[00:25:42] But we can't do that by sacrificing the other two.
[00:25:46] You already have people coming in, so let's make sure all those people are talking about you, reviewing, you take, taking pictures and videos, right? This is a flywheel approach. They're already coming in. Whatever you're doing is getting people to come in. Let's make sure we're turning them into evangelists. Let's also make sure that we're making it easy for people to come back. We're enticing them, maybe incentivizing them to come back and to come back quickly. There are a bunch of things we can do there if we get that flywheel going. We know that everyone who comes in talks about us, evangelizes for us, and everybody who comes in will come back because we got a system in place to make it so.
[00:26:23] Well, then whatever we do to get people to come in, we know that they're already going to do the other two pieces of the triangle.
[00:26:30] So marketing triangle, attraction, retention and evangelism. We work it in reverse order. So when we say, well, if more people knew about me, right? It's an awareness issue. It is not an awareness issue is that people drive by you and it's just not convenient. They just don't think of you at the times when you. When. When you would be appropriate for them to go there, right? They drive past you on their way to work and on their way home from work. And neither of those are opportunities that they're going to go to a nice romantic meal.
[00:26:59] So you got to get them to think of you on a Saturday night when they want to celebrate their anniversary.
[00:27:04] I'm telling you, you don't necessarily need more people to be aware of you. You need people to come back again and again and again. And I think if we got better at turning our customers into evangelists and if we did better with customer retention, the rest would take care of itself. So again, shifting your mindset, shifting the way you think about butts and seats, because that's what we're talking about. A but is a but is a but. We don't necessarily need new butts, we just need buts. We need 100 covers or 200 covers a night or whatever it is you need to be profitable.
[00:27:40] Make sure you're not discriminating against the people who already know you, like you and have trusted you enough to have a meal with you.
[00:27:47] So those are the first three, the big complaints that I hear all the time. The next three, the last three, are even better. We're going to get to those after a word from another one of our sponsors now. Today's episode Restaurant Strategy is also brought to you by seven Shifts. Seven Shifts is a team management platform built specifically for restaurants. Great restaurants are built by great teams and seven Shifts is your secret weapon to better understand your restaurant, to hit labor targets and to keep your entire team connected with drag and drop scheduling in app communication, task management, tip management and more. It makes restaurant work a lot easier from back a house to front of house managers, franchise owners and larger corporate teams. Seven shifts as benefits at every single level. Plus it integrates with the other systems your restaurant already uses like POS and payroll. Turn your team into your competitive advantage. Restaurant Strategy podcast listeners get three months absolutely free. Get started at Seven Shifts Comics.
[00:28:45] That's the number 7S-H-I f-t s.com RestaurantStrategy to get three months free and join over 30,000 restaurants using Seven Shifts today. That link you will find in the show Notes now talked about the first three big complaints and I gave you a new way of thinking a shifting your mindset of those three. And I hope and I hope some of that landed and resonated with you. Again, this is just you and me. You got this. You got me in your ears. You are listening. You are bettering yourself, right? You're trying to be a better owner than you were yesterday trying to be a better operator than you were yesterday. Kudos to you. You take time out of your day to listen to an industry podcast like this. That's not lost on me. You, you are committed to leveling up. I'm simply trying to help you level up. So these are the big complaints that I hear on and on and on from all different owners and operators. And I just can't hear them anymore because there's a different way I think we should be thinking about them. So we already covered the first three, now the last three. Number four, I can't find good people, I can't keep good people.
[00:29:51] This is an industry wide problem.
[00:29:54] We don't pay enough, we don't take care of our people enough, we don't give them the things they need. Let's be absolutely crystal clear.
[00:30:02] Most of our entry level workers could easily, instead of working for us, they could go get a job at Starbucks, at Target, at Walmart, they could landscape, they could do all these things and get PTO and get health insurance and dental. Right? And get 401k.
[00:30:19] All of these things that still aren't solid across the board in our industry.
[00:30:25] So in order to find good people and to keep good people, you've got to make a place that good people want to be at and want to stay at if you provide. I've said this before, right? Our professional lives exist to serve our personal lives. If we were independently wealthy, we would just go sit on a beach somewhere. I'd be golfing every day, I'd be swimming in some pool, right? We wouldn't necessarily be working.
[00:30:51] That goes for you, that goes for me. That goes for millions and millions of people all over.
[00:30:57] We didn't have to work if we were independently wealthy. There's a lot of things we could be doing with our time. And yeah, maybe sitting at a beach is what you want to do. Maybe volunteering, maybe you do the stuff that you've always wanted to do. But let's be really clear, we all need to pay for stuff. And so we need to make money.
[00:31:13] That's why we work. We work to make money. It's true for all your employees too. Their professional lives exist to serve their personal lives.
[00:31:22] If you understand what they need from their personal lives, then you'll understand what they need from their professional lives.
[00:31:28] Because again, one is there to serve the other.
[00:31:32] So if you want to find good people and keep good people, create the kind of place that will continue to serve them and allow them to live a full, satisfying life. I can't tell you what a big deal this is. And we walk around surprised.
[00:31:49] Well, I don't want to. People. Why don't people want to work in our industry? Because they're long hours, hard work, late nights, weekends, holidays. Even if I stopped right there, that makes it a very tough industry to work in. And then you go into this place where you're not necessarily guaranteed paid time off or sick days or health insurance or a 401k, meaning, you know, a path to retirement, to a healthy end of life.
[00:32:18] It's okay that people want those things.
[00:32:21] It's okay that people go seek those out. So don't blame them, because our industry doesn't do it. Now, if you want to find good people and keep good people, you need to figure out how you can provide some of those things for the people who work for you.
[00:32:37] And then beyond that, beyond that, which is really the conversation I'd like to be having, it's about development, both personal and professional development.
[00:32:46] How can you keep people interested and engaged and growing, learning more, becoming more valuable to you and to your company so that they can make more money and provide more for their families and. And do cool things with their money, like vacations will put their kids through school.
[00:33:08] We don't talk enough about how we develop our employees.
[00:33:12] So what's the path? You hire someone to be a prep cook. They're gonna come and you teach them how to chop, slice, all that, and they're gonna do that until you're done with them. And do that for the next 30 years? I don't think so.
[00:33:24] Give them a path. Show them how, hey, you're gonna start as a porter, and then we're gonna teach you how to be a dishwasher. And then when you're ready, we'll teach you how to be a prep cook and then a line cook. And eventually, once you master all the stations, you know, we could talk about a sous chef.
[00:33:37] You'll learn some management, some leadership.
[00:33:39] Sous chef becomes a chef de partie or a chef de cuisine, and I don't know, maybe eventually you'll take over the kitchen or you'll have the skill set to be able to go work somewhere else. Maybe you'll go up in my next restaurant as the executive chef. That there is a path for you.
[00:33:55] There's step after step after step after step. For you to go from where you are now sitting across from me at this table to where you might want to go, that your life, you can say to somebody across the table, your life in A year or two or five could be wildly different than it is right now. Ten years from now, you might be in a wildly different position. And I want to give you those opportunities, but we don't do that.
[00:34:24] We bring people in, we chew them out, and we chew them up and spit them out.
[00:34:29] We put them on all these doubles, all these triples, make them worth back to back closes. You know, we do the dreaded clopin. We grind people down and we wonder, we wonder why they don't stick around. That's why they don't stick around. You know it, you say, well, it was so much easier back then. No, it wasn't.
[00:34:49] No, it wasn't. It was always hard. It's become harder because people now have alternatives.
[00:34:54] They're aware of the alternatives. This is one of the big things that happened out of the pandemic.
[00:35:00] People. It's not like people go to school for four years to be a line cook. They don't.
[00:35:05] You train them for a couple of weeks, they can work garment, train them for a couple weeks, they can work fry station, they can do saute.
[00:35:13] You can teach them the skills. They don't have to go to a four year university.
[00:35:18] People who go to a four year university or go to law school or medical school, they're not changing midstream.
[00:35:24] They're trained to be a doctor, they're gonna be a doctor. They lose their job, they're gonna go be a doctor somewhere else.
[00:35:30] Same thing with lawyers, same thing with bankers, right? That's not our industry.
[00:35:36] Our industry is very easy to get your foot in the door now, that's a plus.
[00:35:42] So we can look at it a couple of different ways.
[00:35:44] I choose to look at it as a plus. The barrier of entry to our industry has always been relatively low.
[00:35:52] I got started in this industry with absolutely zero experience, no proper training in being a restaurant professional.
[00:35:59] But I learned, I committed myself in the beginning. I was taught, people made me learn it. And after a while that sort of put this spark of curiosity in me. And then I wanted to learn more and I wanted to grow more and be better, learn more about wine and spirits and food and taste more, and on and on and on.
[00:36:19] But we can start with nothing. I start with nothing. I got off the bus from Philadelphia green as a cucumber.
[00:36:26] But somebody taught me, they trained me and over many, many years, I became a restaurant professional.
[00:36:33] The same thing is true. We just don't do a good enough job of making sure people understand that there's a place for you here at Every step of the way. And here is the path. Here is how I'm going to get you there. Here is proof of my commitment to you.
[00:36:51] We don't do that enough. So when you say, I can't find good people, I can't keep good people, let's be really clear on where the good people are going and why they are going there.
[00:36:59] They're not with you for very specific reasons.
[00:37:02] The last piece to this, and I'll say, is that nowadays, I firmly believe you don't find good people. You make good people.
[00:37:10] You create them, you train them.
[00:37:13] I was not a good restaurant professional. I was not a good server when I started 23 years ago.
[00:37:22] But they trained me, they taught me, they gave the. Gave me the tools I needed. And the companies I worked for early in my career were committed to developing young talent. If you showed an interest in the industry, we will foster that.
[00:37:36] And they did.
[00:37:38] You can do the same.
[00:37:41] In fact, as we move forward, I think we have to do that. That's going to be the norm.
[00:37:46] It's going to be the norm moving forward.
[00:37:49] That's number four. Number five is sort of related to this, right? I hear this all the time also. I don't know, man. Like, I just can't find. I can't find good people, right? Like. Like, people I get are just so lazy. Like, my staff right now is so lazy. And that's not a staff problem. That's a leadership problem. That's on you.
[00:38:06] I firmly believe that is on you.
[00:38:10] Because my common response to this, right, you know, my staff is so lazy. My response is, why did you hire lazy people?
[00:38:18] Well, my staff is so lazy.
[00:38:20] Why are you letting them be lazy? Why do they think this is the kind of place where they can be lazy, where they can cut corners, where they can show up late?
[00:38:30] That is leadership. That is about managing expectations from the start. And I know the pushback here, and trust me, I have heard it. They say, yeah, yeah, but, like, I just. It's Slim Pickens right now. I just need warm bodies and so they can just do whatever they want, man. That is not true.
[00:38:46] That is not true.
[00:38:49] I'm going to introduce you to technology. There are all kinds of technology solutions right now that exist that allow you to go with fewer people. Many operators out there, I'm sure many of you listening just aren't interested in that. And that's fine. Right now. Five years from now, it is going to absolutely be the norm. We're going to laugh, we're going to go back here I am on record. I think restaurants are going to be wildly different five years from now.
[00:39:12] And I'm on the record now saying it. I think five years from now we're going to laugh at the fact that we resisted some of this technology.
[00:39:20] Yep. We adopted to adopt the technology we need. The new POS system, the reservation, wait list management. Right. The online ordering we had. We adopt it kicking and screaming rather than looking for the thing. Rather than going into those trade shows going like, I need something that's going to help cut my labor. I'm looking for a tool that's going to help me drive more revenue. I'm looking for a tool that's going to help me save on my expenses.
[00:39:47] We just walk through and get sold to get hammered from by all these salespeople rather than approaching and you attacking the table tables. This is the problem I'm looking to solve. Do you have a solution to that for that? No. Great. Thank you very much. I'm on to the next table.
[00:40:04] If your staff is lazy, if you find yourself walking around sort of bitching about your staff, understand that it's not your staff's fault. That is a leadership issue.
[00:40:13] Now, Danny Meyer talked about this way back when in this 2007 book, setting the Table. I talk about this book a lot. It has been very, very impactful to my career and, and thousands and thousands, probably millions of other hospital hospitality professionals out there. If you haven't read it, you should read it.
[00:40:33] But he talks all about this, right? He talks about the, the salt shaker theory, right. That the guests and your team, your staff, are always trying to move the salt off center. They're always going to take, take the easy way out. They're never going to do it exactly right. Your job is to make sure they understand what they need to do, how they need to do it, and why they do it that way.
[00:40:56] This is what we do. And if you can't do it that way, that's fine. There's plenty of other places to work. But you will not work here. People who work here do this.
[00:41:04] There are tons of examples of that out there.
[00:41:07] But if your staff isn't doing what you need them to do, that's a deficiency in leadership and you need to look in the mirror again. This is something we cover in the mastermind program that I run. It's something that I require from all the members.
[00:41:21] Everything begins with us.
[00:41:24] Everything begins by looking in the mirror.
[00:41:27] We take ownership of that and we make sure we do everything possible, everything we can possibly do to make sure that we, that we're, that we're in the right.
[00:41:42] Make sure that we're doing everything we can. That's what a good leader does. And then, hey, if you do this and this and this and this and this, and you step back and say, no, none of that's still working, okay, then it's not you, it's them.
[00:41:54] But, but here's another thing. You should always be hiring.
[00:41:59] Back when I was a service director and an agm. Restaurants, right? So I was in charge of, like, the personnel.
[00:42:06] I would have interviews every single week.
[00:42:10] Just two or three interviews every single week. Because you know what? Maybe I would find somebody who was amazing, who was better than my worst person on staff, right? So if I had 15 servers on staff, I got five who are great, five who are sort of terrible, and five in the middle, right? That's usually how it works out. The law of thirds.
[00:42:30] So if I interview two people every week, inevitably I'm going to find somebody who's better than somebody who's in my bottom five, and then I can just cut loose somebody in my bottom five because I've been working with that bottom five, making sure that they're clear on the expectations. This is what I need you to do. This is how I need you to do it. This is why I need you to do it. And they're in the bottom five because they're just not listening. They're just not following through. So it becomes really easy then when you find somebody great to sit down with somebody who's not great and say, hey, we've had these conversations. I've tried on many occasions to get you to do what I need you to do, and you're just not interested or unwilling or whatever, and that's fine. We're going to part ways. This is not the restaurant for you. I think you're going to find success elsewhere. You're just not finding success here.
[00:43:14] That's how you level up your team.
[00:43:16] When you hire people, when you don't need people, that's the best way to do it.
[00:43:22] So for many of you out there, that's another tool I give you. It's a mindset shift.
[00:43:28] Rather than blaming, rather than looking outward, look inward. This is a Jim Collins idea. This comes from his book Good to Great. Before we look out the window, we have to look in the mirror again. If you don't take anything away from this episode, that's the only thing. Understand that many of your problems stem from you. It's a leadership problem. That's the mastermind I run, in essence, it's executive coaching. I'm helping restaurant owners be the best owner they can be, the best leader they can be. They are at the top of their pyramid. So I'm making sure they're as good as they can be because a lot of people look up to them, both customers and employees, the community at large. They have to be good for a lot of people. There are a lot of stakeholders who rely on them.
[00:44:07] So it's up to them to be the best they can be.
[00:44:11] That's number five. Finally. Then, I want to come to number six. Number six here. I just don't have enough time to work on my business, right? This is the old cliche. I'm so busy working in my business, I don't have time to work on my business.
[00:44:25] This is a quick solution. You'll find the time when you make the time, right? Liz Gilbert said this. She's the writer of Eat, Pray Love, a very gifted essayist and public speaker, says, here's the secret. You don't find the time, you make the time. So I invite you to make the time. That's the key to the mastermind, right? The mastermind is about inviting you to make make time. To take two hours every single week to level up your leadership, to focus on your business.
[00:44:52] Those two hours a week are the things that gives you an additional 20 hours a week because you're going to find greater efficiencies. You're going to learn to delegate. You're going to learn to build a more profitable restaurant. We got a profitable restaurant. You can then replace yourself in that business, and then you can really focus on your business. You can step away from your business. You think about selling your business or expanding your business.
[00:45:11] Profitability is the key. So if you say to yourself, hey, I just don't have time to work on my business, it's because you're not making the time.
[00:45:19] Keep trying to find it. You're not going to find it. You have to make it. Literally, you have to go to your calendar and drop time, say, hey, Monday, 9 to 10am Every Monday night to 10am I'm going to look at my calendar, come up with cool promotional ideas, cool programming that we can do in our restaurants.
[00:45:38] Every Thursday from 9 to 10, I'm gonna do the following. Whatever those things are, you gotta plop them on the calendar.
[00:45:46] So there's a mindset shift that's required there. We don't find time, we make time. If you're committed to your business, if you want it to level up, you've got to make the time.
[00:45:56] So those are it. Those are the six big complaints that I feel like I'm hearing all the time. And I just wanted to dispel them. I want to draw your attention to them and I want to dispel them and I want to give you a different way of thinking about them. I want to shift your mindset and hopefully I've done that over the course of this episode on those six things.
[00:46:14] Again, the last one ties right into the way I end every episode. If you're interested in learning more about my mastermind, by all means, please get in touch. Go to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule set up a free call with me or someone from my team.
[00:46:30] We'll learn about you and your restaurant. We'll hear what's going on. Sure, we'll ask a bunch of questions. You'll get to ask questions about the program that we run. We can see if you're a good fit for that program. The bottom line is currently we've got, I don't know, 85 different restaurant owners in the program across three different groups. I promise you the program works. We continue to put more people in the group because it works. It's an incredible community.
[00:46:55] And if you want to find time to work on your business rather than just working in your business, you got to make the time. So make the time. It starts by that 30 minute phone call. It's absolutely free. There's no pressure to join us. If you're not a good fit, if you don't feel like it's a good fit, if we don't feel like you're a good fit, we're not going to move forward. But this might just be the thing. You need to take the next step and level up. Listen, say this every week. I appreciate you being here. There are a lot of great podcasts you couldn't listen to. I know that. I appreciate you taking time out of your week to listen to this one. Thank you very much and I will see you next time.
