So, you’ve been riding the wave of today’s challenging market – and you feel pride that yours isn’t one of the restaurants near you that has recently succumbed to tragedy. Your sales have continued to increase one or two percent a year – a little less than your menu price increases. So you experience stability, … Continued
A friend sent me a YouTube video (possibly the eight most dangerous words in the English language) with the title of “Restaurants are Empty” and a subtitle of “Why Restaurants Are Empty & Overpriced in 2025.” Total click bait for doomscrollers – and a real downer for someone in our industry. On top of that, … Continued
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 new Starbucks CEO is Brian Niccol. You may not know the name, but his strategy shows up as extremely relevant and helpful to you right now. Brian came to Starbucks from Chipotle with a mission to increase financial performance and get Starbucks’ stock price rising again. His main strategy? “We are getting back to … Continued
The people who brought you to the first level of growth will not be the ones who will amp it up to the next level. Bring in outside perspectives. A ton of my work involves helping people find the right experienced leaders, enrolling and hiring those leaders, and coaching them (and their new bosses) to … Continued
2023 gave us steep interest rate increases, a shortage of experienced workers, and breaking the record type summer heat. But there’s one more thing 2023 provided: clarity on where to focus so we can build and grow successful independent companies like the ones that you own and I work with. I’ve selected five especially popular or meaningful … Continued
Multi-unit restaurant company owners face two current compounding realities: a shortage of management talent and the need to grow multi-unit talent for the future. You must know how to excel when fighting both of these challenges. If you watched Ted Lasso last week, you learned a lot about “Total Football” – a fluid system in which any … Continued
You’d think that – when I start working with successful multi-unit restaurant companies looking to improve – matching their strengths with what they need would be easy. But experience tells me that thinking differently, along with new approaches, not old ones, make for successful growth. Just like the people who establish a concept are not … Continued
When Winston Churchill advocated the formation of the United Nations and the alliance between himself, Stalin, and Roosevelt, he coined “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” A year ago I told you the other side of the restaurant crisis portion of the pandemic would be a huge opportunity for restaurateurs who prepared. … Continued