The pandemic changed what people tolerate.
Today, after all they’ve lived through; owners of successful independent multi-unit restaurant companies have less tolerance for organizational blind spots.
They’re not content to just let initiatives be like conversations that go on year after year with no tangible result.
Companies return to investing beyond existing and future units – into soft costs related to future growth and stronger organizations.
Moving on to How We Operate Now
Human beings aren’t built to permanently operate in crisis mode.
Your shock about commodity prices, supply chain, and the labor shortage…those are now just more things you have to deal with.
If science comes up with a pill for that, you’d take it.
Until then, these days my clients operate in the groove – this is how we operate now.
Allocate Capital Where It Does the Most Good
My clients are going into one of the “periods of hyperactivity” I talk about.
They’ve already:
- Taken a sober look at senior management and been ready to make an upgrade when they realize long-time leaders have plateaued.
- Upped their systems and accountability game so they can increase and accelerate results and profit.
- Educated managers to truly manage and identify objectives, solve problems, and then stack those solutions and move on to the next one.
- Developed a technology plan and scheduled short-term and long-term technological additions.
Make Your Restaurants More Profitable and Popular
None of the money it takes to do these things buys the kind of assets that appeal to your banker like inventory, equipment or real estate.
At least at the beginning.
Then the outcome of all this activity makes restaurants more profitable and poplar.
Soft costs yield cash flow and confidence to pay for hard costs.
You can buy a lot of drywall, comfortable booths and tons of vent hoods when your company runs a lot better.
Owners who do not see the value of soft costs end up with the worst of both worlds: They slow down their success instead of accelerating it, and fall behind their peers who have invested in those soft costs.
Meanwhile, the money they would have spent on soft costs becomes spent (i.e., wasted) through lost opportunity.
I guarantee that, if lost opportunity appeared on your P&L, you would be feverishly addressing it.
Over to you. How will you step up to increase your results? What will go on in your future period of hyperactivity?
