It turns out that the barriers holding your results back aren’t unique to you. Sure, you are special, but not that special.
And today’s flattish restaurant market does not do the work for you. You have to do it yourself.
Even though I write consistently about the four most important things to focus on in your restaurants now—guest experience, value, raising managers up to coach and lead, and having a message your guests want to hear—some people still look stuck, do the same things they always did, or can’t seem to create traction on any of these initiatives.
I Want So Much More for These People
Companies that put up with not getting what they want look like those who know they need precise and revealing financial information, yet their P&L is inaccurate or incorrectly organized, so they just leave it in unusable in file on their laptop. I still see a few of those and correct them too.
With the stuck crowd, when we start looking around for root causes, I always find that the people who lead (and the others they have chosen) aren’t focused on the most important things—or organize and educate people on what to do. Always.
So when I walk into a restaurant company and hear, “We have never done it that way,” or, “So and so used to do that and, when they left, we stopped,” or, “We plan to grow and realize we have to start doing things differently, but we don’t know where to start”—all of which I have encountered in the past few weeks—I know exactly what to do.
We have to identify the new so-and-so, and we must teach people to be capable of success by showing them what they must be doing to build the chosen result.
That’s how you:
- Raise sales in a flat market—I have clients who enjoy the high single digits of revenue increase.
- Ensure guest experience remains the best it has even been (see above: Raise sales in a flat market)—I have clients who know how to deliver non-monetary value in a way they never have before.
- Stay on top of your numbers so you can fine-tune an increase in profit—My system drops 2% to your bottom line by finding .25% eight times.
- Allow a restaurant owner to take some (or a lot of) time off and do what they want to do—They have earned that privilege.
Things really take off when we focus on:
- Importing best practices from the top restaurant companies in America
- Identifying the out of position person you felt sure could do the job if they would just: a) work harder b) focus more, or c) not allow distractions from getting the work done in the first place.
- Discovering whether you should import senior management from companies where they have already learned what you need.
If you have not been handling your business, start now.
