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Welcome to the Surrender News/Blog.  Get the latest news, trends, tips and information to help you succeed and thrive in the workplace. For older blogs click the Archives or a Category.

  • Restaurateurs When You Lack Experience, Add Someone Who Has It
    “Fake it ’til you make it” is a horrible strategy for developing a multi-unit team, building a restaurant company, or come to think of it – anything else.          So how do you supervise your first operations director or marketing director? Or business manager or CFO? Or learning-and-development person? Successful restaurateurs look in the mirror and ask themselves … Continued
  • The Greatest Alternative To Selling Your Restaurants
    As the year begins and we make resolutions, no doubt you have realized how time is finite – and you don’t want to waste any of it. But owning a restaurant can make you feel like all 24 hours in a day belong to the business, with no time left for you to experience the … Continued
  • Your Restaurant Company’s Game-Winning Focus for 2025
    We exist in a stable economy, and that’s something we have not been able to say for years. Yet “stable” doesn’t mean nothing’s changing. Change is constant. The change could be positive (new economic policy/lower taxes) or negative (tariffs and deportations). Whatever happens, we will conquer it together. Still, no one predicts great growth for … Continued
  • The Five Best Things I Told Restaurateurs This Year…and Why
    In 2024 we learned how to operate successfully and improve results in a flat market. Not the most enjoyable subject, but one that will remain valuable for the rest of our careers. Forget this lesson at your peril.   I started out the year reminding you to focus on guest count and employee retention, and built … Continued
  • Maintaining Healthy Margins in the Time of Inflation
    Technomic forecasts a 4.25% increase in restaurant revenue for 2025 – with 4% of that coming from menu price inflation. So, as you protect yourself in 2025, you will raise your menu prices, taking price in small increments. Because you can’t afford to let margins erode.  More Carefully and Less Often Even with inflation currently … Continued
  • How To Respond To The Leadership And Coaching Shortage
    It’s a lot easier to cut your grass with a riding mower than with scissors.  And achieving success shows up in every KPI you can think of when your managers truly lead and coach.  Together, management, leadership, and coaching are a combo meal – where you have to pick all three – yet, at a … Continued
  • The Biggest Consumer Changes Affecting You Right Now, Part 3
    At QSRs, they call it a “value meal”: a group of items bundled at a lower price than the price paid for buying each item separately. That whole concept messes with your head—because it defines value as price, and nothing could be further than the truth with the restaurants I work with. With my clients … Continued
  • The Biggest Consumer Changes Affecting Your Restaurant Right Now, Part 2
    10 years ago, I worked with a couple of burger clients, one of whom would not do delivery because of “the quality of the burgers by the time they travel” – and another who, for the same reason, did not even offer to-go orders.  Flash forward to today and that thinking has vanished, like talking … Continued
  • The Biggest Consumer Changes Affecting You Right Now, Part 1
    It used to be that a restaurant could be packed all the time even if its food and service were just OK. Not anymore. This example turns out to be a permanent change in our industry, and the sooner you accept that the days of punch-card loyalty programs, dried flower arrangements, and old consumer behaviors … Continued
  • How To Take The Right Steps Toward Mastering Your Restaurant Financials
    Have you set up your company properly to track financial success related to your management development efforts, value of the guest experience, and branding and cost management initiatives?  Do you share accurate information freely, presented in a format and cycle common to the industry?  Do the professionals you hire easily use it, and does it help … Continued
  • Restaurateurs When You Want Change, Should You Think Big or Small?
    It may seem like “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” (thank you, Winston Churchill, for the quote), but one of the great advantages you have as an owner of a small (or even medium-sized) business remains making big moves quickly. And in times like these, big moves are what you need if … Continued
  • How to Set Yourself Up for Great Holiday Revenue
    Q4 starts today.  Everyone wants to maximize Q4 through the holiday spend. When you see that Christmas and New Year’s Day occur on Wednesdays this year, you know that 2024 provides the optimal set up for making money in Period 13.  Many of my clients experienced a flattish year. Others take action and have increased … Continued