My second-grade daughter – and all the second-graders in the Dallas Independent School District – are spending time learning the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. When Stephen Covey’s book first came out in 1989, it was revolutionary, cutting-edge thought about how to live your life. I used 7 Habits in my business, taking my nightclub management teams … Continued
How do you do that? Simple. Make sure all your managers get better every year. If you want to run great restaurants in the current labor market, you have no other choice. “We all strive to be better every day, and that includes me.” When I start working with successful owners of multi-unit independent restaurant … Continued
In over 30 years in this business I have never seen anything like it. Restaurant managers. The shortage. Last week I heard about a new restaurant that opened two months late: Everything was ready to go—but there were no managers. You Can’t Order the GM Robot on Amazon…Yet The hamburger-flipping robot may be here, but … Continued
A very talented general manager in one of my client companies looked like the frustration emoji when telling me, “Our weekly operations meetings, it is the same thing every week—it feels like Groundhog Day.” The issue? Getting together yielded no process to develop the people in attendance. Want your managers to stay, and your restaurants … Continued
What would your employees text you—the successful owner of an independent, multi-unit restaurant group—if they had the chance? Michael Lastoria, CEO and founder &pizza, gave every one of his 750 employees at his 35-units his cell number—and the open invitation to text him. You may have read about him last week in Nation’s Restaurant News … Continued
Nothing happens in a restaurant dining room until someone creates a recipe, orders the food, preps and cooks the food, and an expediter puts the order together. The best successful multi-unit independent restaurant companies create enthusiasm and loyalty with their back-of-house personnel by constantly telling them – through shift meetings, staff meetings, or just one-on-one … Continued
The professionals at the top of your successful multi-unit independent restaurant company are critical to your success, but they are not irreplaceable. In some cases, replacing them will actually propel you forward. Experience in the restaurant industry is very important, but there’s also a lot to be said about the role of fresh ideas in propelling … Continued
Too many successful multi-unit restaurant companies budget like people who go to the grocery store and take a list of what they ate last week without any thought for what they might enjoy in the future. The result? They get good things, but not great things — nothing new, interesting, or life changing. Many companies like … Continued
I was recently talking with the CEO of a 30-unit organization, who asked me, “Are you the guy who brings in the technology and the software that will give me more data? My data is good, but it can always get better — and there are several issues in operations I want to target.” When … Continued
If you are an owner of an independent restaurant company, there is a good chance you have walked through your dining room wondering to yourself, “Why doesn’t anyone see what I see?” Sound familiar? I recently talked to two such operators who asked me that question incredulously. One of them wondered when the people around … Continued