Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] There are moments in business that don't feel significant when they happen, but then years later, you realize that they change the way you think forever.
[00:00:10] I remember the day that I realized I was the bottleneck in the restaurant. I had one of those moments standing in the middle of a busy lunch rush and nothing was actually wrong. Guests were happy, tickets were moving, the team was working really hard. He every few minutes someone would come and find me and they'd say, oh, can I comp this appetizer? Should we seat this table now? Hey, can I switch with Sarah on Friday? Do you think we should order more gloves this week? And see? None of those questions were difficult to answer. In fact, that's what struck me. I could answer each and every one in a matter of seconds. So I did. I answered them all. And at the time I felt useful, I thought I was doing my job as a manager. And looking back, I was doing something entirely different.
[00:00:56] All of that we're gonna dive really deep on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:01:01] 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.
[00:01:32] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. Two episodes every single week where we focus on both marketing and operations. Because they're two sides of the same coin running a profitable restaurant business. I give talks, I write books. You can find me all over the Internet helping people level up and build that more profitable restaurant. I also run a group coaching program. It's called the P3 mastermind. I'm surrounded by a team of other coaches. Chris Hughes, Saratolo, Rev Ciancio, and together we are coaching hundreds of restaurant owners every single week to teach them the things they need to know to dial in profits and eventually grow. If that sounds like you, if you are ready for a better, more profitable restaurant, go to rsp, learn more about the program, sign up, grab time to chat with me or someone from my team and we'll see if you're a good fit again. Rsprofit.com as always, that link is in the show notes.
[00:02:31] 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 the 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. 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%.
[00:03:17] 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 chip as always, you'll find that link in the show notes.
[00:03:50] So when we talk about being the bottleneck, when I talk about that one afternoon that I still remember so vividly, naturally the question is, what was really going on? See, what was happening is I was teaching everyone around me that the safest decision was to ask me first. And that realization was uncomfortable because it challenged something I had always believed about leadership. I thought great leaders were the people with all the answers. In fact, I thought my value came from solving problems quickly. The faster I could answer questions well, that meant the better I was at my job. And it took me far too long to recognize the flaw in that thinking. See, if every decision has to pass through one person, you've built a business that's only as fast as that person's availability. Worse yet, you've unintentionally trained your team to stop exercising their own judgment so they don't become more capable over time because they never have to.
[00:04:49] Why risk making the wrong decision when the owner will simply make it for you?
[00:04:53] See, what happened in the end was that the opposite of what I wanted to happen happened. And there's an irony in that, right? The irony is that I created the very problem that I was complaining about. See, I remember walking around telling people, man, I wish my team would take more initiative. And what I failed to see was that initiative had been slowly coached out of them. In fact, every time I stepped in with an answer. I was reinforcing the idea that they shouldn't trust their own instincts. And that's a hard truth to admit, because leaders often wear responsibility like a badge of honor. I know I did. And I'm sure that resonates with a lot of you. See, we tell ourselves that our restaurant depends on us because we care more, we work harder, or we simply know more than everyone else. And yes, sometimes that is true, but sometimes they need me is just a nicer way of saying I haven't built a system where they can succeed without me and understand that those are two very different things.
[00:05:55] There was a big shift that happened on the day that I realized that. I'm going to tell you about that in a second after a word from another one of our sponsors.
[00:06:05] This episode is sponsored by rightwork, a labor optimization platform built specifically for restaurants.
[00:06:14] If you own and operate multiple locations, the challenge isn't just making schedules. It's making sure every store is staffing to real demand, that every store is staying on budget and following the same operating standards without adding more work. For managers, rightwork helps turn sales patterns and service models into smarter staffing plans that then it gives the managers the tools to schedule accurately and efficiently. Restaurant strategy listeners can get free onboarding, a free labor model build out, and three months free of right work usage. To claim the offer, visit Right Work Chip again, write Work Chip and yes, that link is in the show notes.
[00:07:00] Now, this, this big shift we're talking about, right? In fact, one of the biggest shifts in my career came when I stopped measuring my value by the number of problems I solved. And I started measuring it by the number of problems my team could solve without me. And man, that's a completely different scorecard. Instead of asking, how can I make better decisions? I started asking, well, why does this decision require me at all?
[00:07:28] And that question changed everything.
[00:07:31] See, sometimes the answer was training. Sometimes it was a missing process. Sometimes expectations simply weren't clear.
[00:07:39] Occasionally, yes, the decision genuinely belonged to the one in charge. But actually, far more often than I wanted to admit at the time, I was simply the default because I'd always been the default.
[00:07:51] And so when we talk about freedom, right, there's something liberating about realizing that your goal isn't to become indispensable to the daily operation. Actually, your goal is to become indispensable to the direction of the operation. And those are not the same. They are not the same role.
[00:08:10] Direction has to do with vision. It's deciding where the business is going, what it stands for who it serves and what kind of culture is being built.
[00:08:19] A daily operation is deciding whether to comp a dessert. One deserves your best thinking and the other simply needs a system.
[00:08:28] And so I've come to believe that the healthiest restaurants aren't the ones where the owner is involved in everything. They're the ones where the owner has created enough clarity that people can make good decisions with confidence and listen. That doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen by disappearing.
[00:08:45] It happens through repetition and coaching and the trust you build with the team and the willingness to let people occasionally make the wrong decision or a decision that's different than the one you would have.
[00:09:00] And see, that's the part that so many owners, so many managers struggle with, right? And if the owners struggle, then so do the managers. And if the general manager does well, then the floor managers below them struggle as well.
[00:09:13] See, really what was happening with me at least is my boss, the owner wasn't very good at this stuff as well. Which is to say we all struggle with this in some way. It doesn't make us bad as long as you are committed to your continued development.
[00:09:27] Here's the hard truth. We say we want empowered teams, but empowerment is messy. People won't always make the exact choice that you would have made. Yes, they'll make mistakes, but. But guess what? When done right, they'll learn. And in time, they'll improve.
[00:09:43] And yeah, guess what? That's the price of building a business that doesn't revolve around a single person. But I think it's a price worth paying.
[00:09:51] When I look back at that lunch rush. Now, I don't remember most of the questions that people asked me, but I do remember what those questions revealed about me and the operation. See, they weren't interruptions. They were feedback.
[00:10:05] In the end, they showed me exactly how the business was dependent on me instead of being dependent on clear expectations, clear systems, clear processes. Again, I used to think that the mark of a great leader was being needed, but now I think it's something else entirely. The best leaders build businesses where they're free to think about tomorrow because they aren't trapped answering every question about today.
[00:10:32] And that's not losing control.
[00:10:35] That actually is true leadership. Finally, at the end of the day, I want to remind you that I answer each and every email I get. Chip close.com c h I p k l o s e.com and honestly, I'd love your perspective. Give me this one answer to the question, what's one decision that you find yourself making over and over and over again that now that you think about it, your team should probably own instead of send me an email with the answer to that question. I look forward to hearing from a whole bunch of you. Thank you very much and I will see you on the next one.
