[00:00:00] Most restaurant owners believe it's their job to be the expert. And I know because I meet with a ton of restaurant owners every single week. Either the hundreds of owners that are in my P3 mastermind or the dozens of people I meet with every single week who are prospective P3 members. And I see it all the time, right? They've got this hero complex. They are the fixer, the closer, the one who has to have all the answers all the time.
[00:00:23] But here's the uncomfortable truth. If. If your restaurant only works with you when you are the linchpin, when you are present, then your restaurant is failing because your systems are failing. So today we're gonna talk about why. Systems aren't bureaucracy. They are freedom. All of that and more on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
[00:00:42] 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.
[00:00:52] This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
[00:01:13] Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close, and I am your host of this, the Restaurant Strategy podcast. We put out two episodes every single week. Over 540 episodes today date over the last seven years. And in case podcasts aren't really your thing, you can find us on YouTube. More insights there. You can find us on Instagram, on TikTok. I write books, I give talks. There is a ton of free information out there, all meant to help give you the tools you need to level up, build a more profitable restaurant. But can I get really real for just 60 seconds?
[00:01:47] Are you ready?
[00:01:49] Here we go.
[00:01:50] The Internet has no shortage of information.
[00:01:53] You can read books, watch videos, listen to podcasts. You can even attend trade shows. You can do tons of things to level up and learn more about how to build a profitable business. But I want you to be real with yourself for a second. I'm guessing if you're listening to this podcast, you are still not where you want to be. You are listening to this to try to learn more and get better. And kudos to you.
[00:02:17] But my natural question is, why aren't you there yet?
[00:02:21] Why has all this information not translated into more success, more profit, a better living, and a better way of life?
[00:02:28] If any of that resonates, if any of that's true, I think the things you are missing are community, perspective and accountability.
[00:02:39] Those are the things that we provide in the P3 mastermind. So if you are ready, not just for the information, but for the action plan and people to provide a point of view and hold you accountable to do the things that you know you need to do. Then I'm going to ask you to reach out and have a conversation. The conversation's absolutely free. It's with me or someone from my team. You go to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule, you grab time on the calendar and let's just see if you're a good fit. Again, there is no shortage of information on the Internet. But perspective is valuable, accountability is powerful and so is community.
[00:03:16] That's everything. That's why we created this program. So I've been running this podcast for the last seven years. I've been running the signature coaching program. It's called the P3 mastermind. For the last five, it has grown from 10 people in one group to over 150 people spread across four groups. It doesn't hasn't grown because we're such cool people. It has grown because the program works. The impact is real. We can help you make more money and have a better way of life. Spend more time on the other things outside of your restaurant that you care about. Again, restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule let's just have a conversation 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. 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, right when their shift ends. Kickfin integrates with all the major POS players. So Toast 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 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.
[00:05:33] So every day your team is being trained, whether it's intentional or not.
[00:05:39] See, training doesn't only happen during onboarding. It happens during service. It happens when they make mistakes. It happens when there are corrections that are made or not. And it happens especially during the silence.
[00:05:52] Every time you step in to fix something, you're teaching the team one thing. Don't worry, the owner will handle it. And that lesson compounds. That's why your phone rings. That's why you get texts all hours of the night. That's why people keep coming into the office and tapping you in the shoulder and say, hey, got a second? Hey, got a second? Hey, can I ask your opinion? Hey, what do you think we should do?
[00:06:12] Over and over and over, you are training, you're grooming a certain kind of behavior, whether you realize it or not. And if you haven't realized it up to now, let me be the one to say, let's come up with a better way that lesson compounds. We've been talking about this a little bit over the last couple of weeks here, but hero owners end up creating dependent teams. See, owners who are always available feel helpful. It feels like what you should be doing. They're there to answer questions. They're there to solve problems. They're there to rescue. Save the day. Rescue the shifts from. From impending doom.
[00:06:45] Let's see. Actually, what they're doing is building dependency.
[00:06:48] See, when you do that, your teams stop thinking, your managers stop deciding. Initiative disappears.
[00:06:56] See, what you want is for people to feel a sense of ownership. And all that stuff doesn't happen because people are lazy. It's simply because the system has trained them that way. You, unwittingly, perhaps, have trained them not to think, not to decide, not to take ownership of their little corner of the world, their little corner of your business.
[00:07:17] See, systems exist to make the right action obvious. A real system answers the following. It tells people what good looks like. It tells people what happens when it doesn't. Right? Who decides how success is measured? Great systems do that. And without the systems, everything becomes subjective. Subjectivity creates hesitation. Hesitation creates. Creates escalation. And guess what? Escalation lands on you. Every time it's going to land at your feet.
[00:07:48] See, most of the owners that I work with document too little and they document too late. Systems don't need to be perfect, they just need to exist. There's this old thing. Liz Gilbert, famous author, she wrote Eat, Pray, Love, right. Says done is better than good. It was something she learned from her grandmother that has been repeated over the, you know, thousands of years. Right? Great is the end. You know, perfect is the enemy of great.
[00:08:12] Thousand different ways to say it, but done is better than good. Because once you get it done, then you can go back in and make it good. Maybe somebody else can go back in and make it good. Maybe somebody on your team creates an SOP and it's done. And then you go in and make tweaks and make it better. You make it good.
[00:08:31] The systems don't need to be perfect, but they just need to exist. And what we find most times is that most owners wait until they're burned out, till they're frustrated, until they're overwhelmed, and they just do it when they're back, when, when they're backed into a corner, right? When they try to document everything at once and that fails. Systems should grow gradually. They should be built where friction exists.
[00:08:54] There's this thing. Cody Sanchez, she's got the Big Deal podcast and she's got the three by three rule, and it's something that she's implemented for all her companies. And she says if a task takes three or more steps to complete and it's done three or more times over the course of the month, then it requires an sop. So everybody on our team is trained to do that. Like, oh, this requires multiple steps, and I do this multiple times a month. Boom. It needs an sop. So it gets done, it gets logged in their, their, their main system.
[00:09:21] It's not a bad way of thinking, especially in the restaurants when there are so many things, right? So how do we take inventory? How do we place orders? How do we prep this sauce, how do we build, make this stock? How do we set up garment, how do we. There's all kinds of things that require multiple steps. How do we clean the dishwasher, how do we set up? How do we. How do we set a table when we reset for the next seating?
[00:09:43] All of that needs to be documented. The three by three rule. Cody Sanchez's rules. A great way of thinking about it.
[00:09:49] Here's the, here's, here's the thing. Systems are not for micromanagement. They're actually quite the opposite. It allows you to step out.
[00:09:59] Because what happens is that when systems are set up, they mostly work. You only then have to step in when they don't work, either when they're not being attended to, when they're not being implemented, or when the system you wrote down actually doesn't work, it's ineffective or inefficient, then it will become obvious. Then you'll step in and just micromanage that. Fix that.
[00:10:16] It's not like you're doing every little thing I'm telling you. What you're doing now is probably micromanagement. Without systems, feedback will often feel personal, discipline feels arbitrary, and standards feel inconsistent. But with systems, expectations are crystal clear. Accountability is predictable. You and trust actually increases. See, good systems end up protecting your relationships. That's how you build longevity. That's how you build legacy. That's how you get real institutional knowledge. People know where they stand. They know what they need to do, what they need to not do. It's absolutely crucial that you understand that systems are not micromanagement. They are absolutely the opposite.
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[00:12:00] Now, if you're always needed, and again, maybe some of this I hope is resonating with you. But if you're always needed, you gotta admit that you are the problem.
[00:12:11] I've spent a lot of time focusing on this in my business and I've tried to learn a lot about this because it helps the businesses I work with. But too often the owners are the bottleneck and this is the hardest truth out there to embrace. If every issue ends up routing to you, it's not because the team is incompetent it's because decision making was never transfer.
[00:12:31] Systems are how leadership scales. People own certain areas and they report to you, tell you what problems or what struggles they're dealing with, what challenges they're facing, and they get you to weigh in when necessary. But hopefully you're surrounding yourself with a whole lot of experts, people who are better at the given task than you are, and you just let them do your thing. That's why so many people say it really begins with the people who matters more than how right the who matters more than what to get the right people, the right who's in place. They'll tell you what, you don't even have to worry about it.
[00:13:05] So there's a long term cost of not building systems that I'm guessing you guys have are feeling. It's. You hear it a lot. We talk a lot about systems. Not just me, other podcasters, other authors you hear to trade shows, right? I'll remind you that a system is just this like made up corporate word and we sort of buck against it. But a system is just a repeatable set of actions, right? It's about goal setting and proper systemization. A goal is where we want to get to. I'm at point A, I want to get to point B. How am I going to do that? I'm going to build a system, meaning I'm going to do this and this and this to get me from point A to point B. So when we talk about building systems, it's what are the things we need to do to get the outcome we desire?
[00:13:45] Without systems, growth will stall, burn, a burnout will accelerate, managers will churn, and yeah, quality dips. But with systems, with really good systems in place, I think you're going to find the restaurant stabilizes, the owner gets the space and grace that they need, and leadership emerges. This is how you identify real key players on your team. And so here's the shift I want you to make. Here it is. Ready? Your job is not to be needed. Your job is actually to be totally, unnecessarily unnecessary. Your job Is to be 100% replaceable.
[00:14:23] And that's not ego loss. That is what success looks like.
[00:14:27] Danny Meyer does not cook anything, does not seat tables, does not take orders, does not pour wine. And yet Danny Meyer's business is incredibly successful. You can say the same thing with Michael Mina, with Stephen Starr, with Thomas Keller, on and on.
[00:14:41] They are now executives making decisions at the highest level. They are not operating in the same way.
[00:14:48] There's a whole other level of ego that you get when you pull yourself out. And I promise you, it gets better.
[00:14:55] Here's the action I want you to take. Answer this question. What problem do I personally solve every single week? That is a problem that needs a system.
[00:15:04] The other tool I always do and I have my. Have my owners do this, say, take out two pieces of paper. On the one piece, write the things that actually only you can do or the things that you love to do.
[00:15:16] And on the other piece of paper, please list all the things you're currently doing that can and should be delegated out. They're not delegated because you don't have anybody to do it, or you don't trust anyone, or you know, you just haven't passed it off.
[00:15:29] We can chip away at that list, but we need a list first. Before we do that, here's the deal. If your restaurant needs you to survive, there's no way it can grow. And there's a lot of different ways we can define growth.
[00:15:41] Growth is expansion. Growth is franchising. Growth is just stepping away. Growth is a sale, right? A proper exit.
[00:15:51] If your restaurant needs you to survive, it can't grow. Systems are not the enemy. They're not the enemy of culture. They're not the enemy of progress. They are what makes culture repeatable. It's what makes success inevitable.
[00:16:07] I know there's a lot of great podcasts you can listen to. I appreciate you making this part of your week. I'll remind you how we started this episode. There's tons of information out there on the Internet, not the least of which this podcast. And I hope this helps. But if you are not yet where you want to be, I promise we can make a profound difference in your business, in your personal bank account, in as little as three to six months. That's the power of the P3 mastermind, right? Perspective, community, profitability, progress, all of that can come restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule, grab time on the calendar. Let's have a conversation that conversations absolutely free. You'll find there is no pressure to join. If you're a good fit, we'll tell you so if you're not a good fit, we're also going to tell you so. But if you're ready for more, I think what you need is community, is perspective, is some accountability ability. Appreciate it, guys. I look forward to chatting with many of you in the coming week.
