[00:00:00] Pre meal, lineup, alley rally, whatever it is you call it. A pre shift meeting is crucial to keeping your team, getting your team on the same page and keeping them on the same page, right? It's a huddle where you get your entire team together, front of house, back house, maybe everybody all together and you get them focused on the task at hand. The thing is, so many of us do these and so many of us don't do them right. So I'm going to share with you some of the tricks of the trade, some of the things that I've learned from doing it the right and the wrong way. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:36] 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.
[00:01:07] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy podcast. We do two episodes every single week. We are cruising toward our 500th episode. All kinds of great stuff in store over the coming months. I appreciate you being here. Listen, I got this podcast, you know, that you find me on social media, on Facebook and Instagram, on TikTok. You can read my book, the Restaurant Marketing Mindset. You can find me on stages or all over the country, at conventions, at trade shows, at conferences. I also run a coaching program. It's a mastermind format. It's called the P3 mastermind. Currently I work with over 150 restaurant owners from all over the country, all specifically geared towards increasing the profitability of your businesses. If you are stuck in single digit profits, then reach out, get in touch. I can show you how to generate consistent, predictable 20% returns. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule Grab some time on the calendar. A 30 minute call. It's totally free. I promise you there is no pressure. You'll get to know more about me and the program I run. I'll get to know more about you and the restaurant that you run. And let's see if you're a good fit. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule as always, that link is in the show notes.
[00:02:23] Okay, so we're talking all about pre shift meetings, right? Whatever you call them.
[00:02:28] The huddle, pre shift lineup, alley rally. Everyone's got a name for it and everyone's got a different way of doing it. I want to share with you just a coup, couple of key ways that I think we screw it up. And then I'm going to give you a couple of key ways that I think we can make it better. This is going to be a shorty, short, sweet, to the point this episode. Let's start off with the ugly part, the bad part, the ways we screw it up.
[00:02:52] Here's the biggest thing, right? Every shift before your shift, you get all your staff together to lecture them for 20 minutes. The number one issue I see is the time.
[00:03:03] The time that you set aside for pre shift, it takes much less time than you than you would expect.
[00:03:08] Number two, it's the tone and structure of those meetings, right? So number one, it takes way too long. Most restaurants set aside way too much time for these. If they're going more than about 15 minutes, it's way too long, right? Number two, then the biggest thing is again, the tone and the structure of these meetings, right? No one wants to be lectured at for 25 minutes before they're ready to go. Go into battle in a restaurant and have people barking orders at them for the next 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours, right? Nobody wants to be lectured at than to just be bossed around for the rest of the shift, right? That's really, really important.
[00:03:47] Also when we drone on and on and no, here's another thing. And oh, here's another. And oh, here's another thing. And oh, here's another thing. It's a waste.
[00:03:56] It brings people down. And I think we know this.
[00:03:59] But I'm here to tell you that you will get more out of your team if you change the tone, structure and length of these meetings. So the biggest thing I want to get across here is the length of these meetings, right? The tone of these meetings, the structure of these meetings, it is problematic, right? And we've been doing these now long enough that I think we should know better. So if you want to start having good pre chef meetings, you gotta start, you gotta start by getting rid of the bad pre shift meetings. Here's the other thing, and this is worth mentioning here at the top. Before we dive too much further into this. I know a lot of you have done away with pre shift meetings entirely because you're staggering in time, staggering out times, right? Labor has become more expensive, especially with restaurants, restaurants that are in states where there's no tip credit. It's hard to bring in all of the front of house staff altogether. They're just so expensive to do it.
[00:04:57] So I get it. I think that's a mistake. I think that's a problem. Now you can do two pre Shift meetings, there's nothing to say. You can't do that. So maybe there's a team that's in at 4:30 and then a team that's in at 5:30, meaning, right, you're bringing half the staff at 4:30, half the staff at 5:30. Or maybe you bring a bunch of people in at 4:30, a bunch more at 5 and a bunch more at 5:30. Well then you run a meeting at 4:30 and you run a meeting at 5:30, meaning everybody who's there at 4:30, it, they do it then. And then the rest of the people, when they get there at 5:30, what happens is the 4:30 people, the early people will watch the stations, will watch the tables, while the late people, so to speak, come and go to the meeting. Now that puts the presence on keeping it short and sweet and to the point. At 5:30 you're starting to get busy, right? You can't sit there and sit people down for 25, 30 minutes, right? So even more important to not run the kind meeting that I was just talking about. So if you stagger your in times, that's fine, right? Let's say you got six people on staff, it's fine. You can pull four people aside at 4:30 and then another two people aside at 5:30 or whatever those times are for you. It's totally fine. You don't need an audience of 30 people to have a meeting. The meeting, the purpose of the meeting is to make sure everybody's on the same page. Everyone has all the information, right? We'll talk about the right way to run a meeting. But remember, the point of the meeting, point of the meeting is to get everybody on the same page. Make sure everybody has the information they need to succeed going into the shift.
[00:06:36] So what's the wrong way to do it? Number one, the wrong way is to not do it at all. The wrong way is to have meetings that are too long. The wrong way is to have no structure and a tone where you're just lecturing people for 20, 25, 30 minutes. That's the wrong way to do it, right? You want to talk about the right way? We're going to talk about the right way in just a second.
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[00:08:06] Okay, so we're talking all about pre shift meetings, right? Whatever you call them. The huddle, pre shift lineup alley rally. Everyone's got a name for it and everyone's got a different way of doing it. I want to share with you just a couple of key ways that I think we screw it up. And then I'm going to give you a couple of key ways that I think we can make it better. This is going to be a shorty short, sweet, to the point. This episod. Let's start off with the ugly part, the bad part, the ways we screw it up.
[00:08:35] Here's the biggest thing, right? Every shift before your shift, you get all your staff together to lecture them for 20 minutes. The number one issue I see is the time. The time that you set aside for pre shift. It takes much less time than you than you would expect.
[00:08:52] Number two, it's the tone and structure of those meetings, right? So number one, it takes way too long. Most restaurants set aside way too much time for these. If they're going more than about 15 minutes, it's way too long, right? Number two, then the biggest thing is again, the tone and the structure of these meetings, right? No one wants to be lectured at for 25 minutes before they're ready to go into battle in a restaurant and have people barking orders at them for the next 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours, right? Nobody wants to be lectured at than to just be bossed around for the rest of the shift, right? That's really, really important.
[00:09:30] Also when we drone on and on and oh, here's another thing. And oh, here's another. And oh, here's another thing. And oh, here's another thing. It's a waste.
[00:09:39] It brings people down. And I think we know this, but I'm here to tell you that you will get more out of your team if you change the tone, structure and length of these meetings. So the biggest thing I want to get across here is the length of these meetings, right? The tone of these meeting structure of these meetings. It is problematic, right? And we've been doing these now long enough that I think we should know better. So if you want to start having good pre shift meetings, you gotta start, you gotta start by getting rid of the bad pre shift meetings. Here's the other thing, and this is worth mentioning here at the top before we dive too much further into this. I know a lot of you have done away with pre shift meetings entirely because you're staggering in time, staggering out times, right? Labor's become more expensive, especially with restaurants, restaurants that are in states where there's no tip credit. It's hard to bring in all of the front of house staff altogether. They're just so expensive to do it.
[00:10:41] So I get it. I think that's a mistake. I think that's a problem. Now you can do two pre shift meetings. There's nothing to say you can't do that. So maybe there is a team that's in at 4:30 and then a team that's in at 5:30, meaning, right, you bring in half the staff at 4, 4:30, half the staff at 5:30. Or maybe you bring a bunch of people in at 4:30, a bunch more at 5 and a bunch more at 5:30. Well then you run a meeting at 4:30 and you run a meeting at 5:30, meaning everybody who's there at 4:30, they do it then. And then the rest of the people when they get there at 5:30, what happens is the 4:30 people, the early people will watch the stations, will watch the tables while the late people, so to speak, come and go to the meeting. Now that puts the presence on keeping it short and sweet and to the point. At 5:30 you're starting to get busy, right? You can't sit there and sit people down for 25:30 minutes, right? So even more important to not run the kind meeting that I was just talking about. So if you stagger your in times, that's fine, right? Let's say you got six people on staff, it's fine. You can pull four people aside at 4:30 and then another two people aside at 5:30 or whatever those times are for you. It's totally fine. You don't need an audience of 30 people to have a meeting. The meeting, the purpose of the meeting is to make sure everybody's on the same page. Everyone has all the information, right? We'll talk about the right way to run a meeting. But remember, the point of the meeting, point of the meeting is to get everybody on the same page. Make sure everybody has the information they need to succeed going into the shift. So what's the wrong way to do it? Number one, the wrong way is to not do it at all.
[00:12:24] The wrong way is to have meetings that are too long. The wrong way is to have no structure and a tone where you're just lecturing people for 20, 25, 30 minutes. That's the wrong way to do it, Right. Spent the first half of this conversation talking about the wrong way to run a pre shift meeting. I want to talk about the right way to run a pre shift meeting. Number one most important, straight from the top, you got to say the number one most important thing is to actually have a pre shift meeting. Now you don't gotta do it like anybody, like everybody else do it. You don't. It can be different, it can be unique to your restaurant, to your company, but you need to have one. This is an opportunity to gather everyone all together, to look at them in the eyes and make sure that everyone has the information and everyone has the mindset to go into a shift. Most of you guys have busy, hectic, frenetic restaurants. So taking a minute with your team to look at each other and say, I got you. We're all together, we're all in this together. You take a deep breath together.
[00:13:22] Now, the wrong way, remember I said, is to make it too long. It's gotta be under 15 minutes. If you can make it 10 minutes, great, right? Number two, you gotta change the tone. You're not lecturing people for the duration. Number three is to give it real structure, not oh, and this. Oh, and this. And also make sure you're, make sure it just feels like you're piling on to people, right? So keep it short, give it some structure and change the tone, Change the tone away from this lecturing mentality. Again, if you don't do meetings, here's your invitation to do it. If you are not doing them now and maybe you got rid of them post pandemic because you are a staggering end times.
[00:14:05] You now have my permission to run two meetings, three meetings, it's okay. It's a chance to huddle people up and say, hey, this is what we need to know. Going into the meeting here is the very best way that I know to run a pre shift meeting in the year 2025.
[00:14:20] You got to think of the 8020 rule, right? So 8020 is Pareto's principle. We're going to bend it a little bit for our purposes here. You got to make sure that 80% of the time you are not speaking. This is really, really crucial. 80% of the time during the meeting, you should not be speaking. Now, when we do the meeting, we're going to have everybody else speak. You have to make sure that each department gets heard. Now, I come from the full service, right? I come from a lot of fine dining experience. And so we had a lot of different departments, right? We had the wine department, we had the bar department, we had pastry, we had savory, we had front of house, we had service manager. A lot of people had their hands in the pot. A lot of people had something to say. Here is something really crucial. You give it structure. So the meetings look the same every single time, right? Usually I would say general manager welcomes everybody, quick reading, there's anything overarching that needs to be said that gets said.
[00:15:16] Then we go to the book, we talk about what's going to go on. This is how many covers we have coming in. These are the important things, the birthdays, the anniversaries, the VIPs we have coming in, whatever, right? So welcome to the night. Here's what's going on with the night. Then we go to the kitchen, right? Chef talks, Then we have pastry chef talks. Then we go to bar.
[00:15:37] Finally we round out with any service and then we go back to the GM who talks about again, any overarching last minute thoughts for the team. In my experience, that's the best way I know how to run these meetings. Here's the best way to actually execute it. You, right? Meaning you, the manager, the owner is not doing the majority of the talking for the most part. You do the beginning and the end.
[00:16:00] Here's what I mean by that, right? That those, the welcome and the couple of notes and the final thoughts and the goodbye. That's you, that's the owner, that's the general manager, right? When you go around to each department, for example, when you talk about the reservation book, GM doesn't need to do that. Manager doesn't need to do that. That could be the host. If the host, right? 15$20 an hour host is going to be responsible for greeting everybody and saying goodbye to everybody. Let's let them take ownership of that. Tell us what's.
[00:16:32] There should be structure to it, right? Tonight is Thursday night. We have X number of covers coming in. Our big pushes are at this time and this time, here are the notable guests we have coming in. The VIPs, the whatever. We have these people celebrating birthdays or anniversaries or graduation or promotion. This is what you need to be aware of. Right? Any questions for me regarding the book? You teach your host how to confidently run down the night, right? And sometimes it's going to be easy. Hey, guys. Sort of a light, light night. It's going to be 55 covers tonight. If we get a push, it's going to come right around time. Boom. Any questions for me? No. So we don't have to drag it out. And that doesn't have to be a 20 minute thing. Going over, the book, going over, like, what's going to happen tonight can take two minutes, right? Again, then we go to culinary. Because it's a restaurant, people are coming here for food, right? So we go to the chef, we go to talk about savory food. Mostly what you're trying to get across of is there, are there any 86s, are there any swaps, are there any new items, are there any specials? Now, what's really crucial is that the chef doesn't have to say, these are the things we're out of. These are the new things in the menu. Here are the specials, blah, blah, blah. If you're running specials, I'm guessing this is like the second or third or fourth night you've run them. So it's easy for the chef to say, hey, we have this special, Tell me who was here last night. That can describe it, right? Let the servers do it or the bartenders or the people. Let the hourly staff take ownership of it. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, we had this grouper special. I saw it last night. My guests loved it. This is what it is. And then the chef can say, yep, you got it. All right. But don't forget there's this garnish, right? You do the same thing with pastry, right? For the most part, everything's going to be the same. Maybe your cheeses are going to change, maybe your ice creams or sorbets are going to change. Maybe the garnish on something, right? Let the staff, hey, who's been here this week? Who can go through the ice cream sorbets and the new, you know, in the new, the new dish we've got coming on, right? Let somebody else go through that.
[00:18:31] So again, you've now done the book, you've now done savory food, right? Chef has talked. We've talked about the food, then talked about pastry. The desserts and then we go to the bar. Same thing. If there are 86s on liquor, wines by the glass, beers, specialty cocktails, let's let the bartenders go through that. There's no reason for the wine director or the bar director to do that.
[00:18:54] The bartenders can talk about that, and then the beverage manager, whatever, can put in their two cents at the end. Yep, that was great. The only thing I would add is this. Hey, one thing to be aware of is this. Put in their two cents. So far, we've gone almost all the way around the horn, and we've had our hourly staff talking the majority of the time.
[00:19:14] And again, I always recommend we go to service. Let's talk about things that we're aware of. Maybe things that got screwed up this week or last week. Many things.
[00:19:21] Maybe something that we're trying to particularly focus on this week. Right.
[00:19:27] We talk about that. Or. Right. The service director says, hey, so this week, all week, we're talking a lot about second beverage sales. Somebody explained to me what we talked about earlier in the week, right? And somebody raised their hand. Yeah. We talked about how the key way for getting second beverage sales is to blah, blah, blah. We talked about three different opportunities. Blah, blah, blah. Somebody else can say that note. Then finally, we come all the way back around and it comes back to the general manager or the owner who gives some last words to wisdom, some overarching things. Hey, don't forget, open enrollment ends next week. Or, hey, remember, we've got that buyout party next Thursday. Everybody is working. Hey, remember, we have these new uniforms coming in. If you didn't get me your size, whatever sort of the big stuff is, send last words of wisdom, motivate your team, inspire them to have a great shift, and then say goodbye, get back out on the floor.
[00:20:14] All of that, even in a fine dining scenario, can go relatively quick. And it shouldn't take more than about 10 or 15 minutes.
[00:20:22] The best way to run these is to keep them short and then to give them structure so we know what happens, how it happens, and people start getting the rhythm of it, right? Then we change the tone because it's the staff trying to.
[00:20:36] Trying to educate each other.
[00:20:38] It's the staff trying to help each other. It's not managers lecturing or speaking at a staff staff. It's the staff, you know, really leading that meeting. Finally, finally, super important, I would say at some point during the meeting, maybe even two points, find a way to inspire your team. Right. If you want to read positive reviews, right? So a positive review that was posted, hopefully you're getting one a day or one every other day. You can say, hey, this was just posted on Yelp. Congratulations, great job, everybody. Right? Or if you get a thank you note from a customer, thank you for making this night so special.
[00:21:12] Share that with the team. Right? We used to do something really cool at the meetings. One of the restaurants that I had helped relaunch, I don't know, about eight years ago, we were doing this thing where we call out each other, talk about, we'd call it the above and beyond award. Somebody who worked the night before has to call out somebody else who worked that night and say, hey, I saw Ellen go above and beyond with her table 12. She did this, this and this and this. And that was really inspirational. And I.
[00:21:44] That's really what we're all about here. Make it cool to care, right? Make it cool for other people to acknowledge the great things that other people are doing that will help bring more positivity and optimism into your team. And again, they get bossed around so much all night. That's what the hospitality industry is. They're long hours, late nights, a lot of time on our feet. We're tired, we're exhausted.
[00:22:08] So just take that time to just inspire people again. Also with keeping it short, if it's a long meeting, people settle in, they start dazing off, they lounge in their chairs and all of that. If you can keep it short and sweet, it's great. If you can keep people standing, it's great because it keeps them active. If you're going to have them sit, don't have them sit so long that they're going to get comfortable and like grumble when it's time to stand back up and go back out on the floor. That is the right way to run a pre shift meeting, right? So again, we talked about the wrong way and the right way can't tell you enough what a difference this makes. And if you don't do them or if you got rid of them because you've been staggering in times, I'm here to tell you it's really, really, really easy thing to do. Along with pre shift meeting, I always recommend having notes, right? So a lot of this stuff is written down as notes so people can fold them up, put them in their pocket or they get posted in the back somewhere so that if somebody runs in late so that if somebody forgets something that was talked about at the meeting that they can easily peek and. And they got a little cheat sheet in their pocket, they got a cheat sheet in the back. That's it, guys. Just trying to level you up little by little by little every single week. Again, my name is Chip Close. This is Restaurant Strategy. Appreciate you guys being here. One final request, if you get any sort of value from this show, please help me out. Go to Apple Podcasts, leave us a five star rating and review. Simply let other people know why you listen and why you think they should listen. That would help us grow this community, which would be awesome. Thank you very much, guys, and I will see you next time.
