Restaurant Ownership

Restaurateurs – Afraid You Don’t Know Enough? Hey, Join the Club!

May 27, 2025

Before, I never thought of myself as a group person.Sure, you could have even called me a loner.So I never expected that the groups I belong to would be some of the most significant contributors to my success.Now I know better.  Join the Club One … Continued

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How to See What is Holding Your Restaurant Back

May 12, 2025

It can feel lonely at the top – especially because being there forces you to take a long, hard look at yourself every day. Every entrepreneurial independent restaurant company reflects its owner. Whatever the owner does well and values, the company does well and values. Whatever … Continued

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Are You Ready For the Summer Break from Your Restaurant that You Have Earned?

May 5, 2025

It’s easy to joke about millennial and Gen Z workers who “quietly vacation” by slacking off in July and August (sometimes even simulating keyboard activity to give the appearance of effort) without their managers knowing. And who can blame them? In summer, life feels more … Continued

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The View from the Outside Your Restaurant: Gaining Helpful New Perspectives

April 28, 2025

Be honest with yourself: Are your restaurants continually getting better, or are they ever so slowly deteriorating? Do you have evidence for your answer? What are your guests saying? What do the numbers say? Recently, a longtime client has brought me back after a 7 … Continued

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Avoid Pitfalls of Restaurant Expansion by Planning in Advance

April 21, 2025

It could be easy to be stuck in your tracks right now. You look at a flat market, threats of tariffs that can upend the economy, and a stock market that bounces around daily like a basketball players’ “shooters bounce” that goes up and down … Continued

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How to Discover the Missing Pieces to Increase Your Restaurant’s Success

March 31, 2025

In this flat economy when you have to do all of the work yourself because the market is not going to do it for you, two questions hold the key to unlocking increased sales and profit: These days, you must have every possible element working … Continued

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Increase Restaurant Revenue By Learning from Southwest Airlines’ Really Big Mistakes

March 24, 2025

Restaurant owners – don’t be like Southwest Airlines! Southwest has decided to start charging fees on top of fares, thinking they’ll make more money that way. They used to be the only airline out of the big four not to charge for checked bags; now … Continued

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How to Make Productive Restaurant Partnerships Work

March 17, 2025

Early in my career, as an operator with partners, I experienced the joys of an imploding partnership: enriching lawyers and exchanging money, territories, and grief.  My CPA told me, “A partnership is a like a marriage: easy to get into, hard to get out of.” … Continued

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How Restaurant Owners Make Work Not Take Over Their Lives 

March 10, 2025

Which of these two statements do you think applies to most restaurant owners? After decades of working with successful owners of multi-unit independent restaurant companies, I guarantee the big issue is number 2: the work ethic (or paranoia) that leads to working too many hours. … Continued

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Restaurateurs Use Your Spectacular Victories to Unlock Even More Success

February 24, 2025

Let’s take a vacation from focusing on issues (aka “opportunities”) you might have at your restaurants and ask you, “What’s your latest victory?” Does anything come to mind quickly? Hopefully – after a day spent dealing with the competition, immigration, workforce issues, egg prices, renewing … Continued

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Re-Investing in the Restaurant “Goldilocks Zone,” Where It’s Just Right

February 17, 2025

Do you think your level of re-investment is too high, too low, or just right? Independent restaurant owners who understand the critical value of re-investing know that their real margins come from smart investments that help them keep up with guest expectations as well as … Continued

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How Restaurateurs Get Unstuck and Dominate in Today’s Market

February 10, 2025

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 … Continued

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What Successful Restaurateurs Learn From Chains To Beat Them

February 3, 2025

Chain restaurants have several competitive advantages over independent restaurants – on technology, marketing, and employee benefits. In comparison, your resources in those areas are less than tiny. Yet survey after survey finds that most of the dining public intentionally visit independent restaurants because they would … Continued

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How Top Restaurateurs Shore Up Sagging Dessert and Alcohol Sales

January 27, 2025

“Do restaurants make all their money from alcohol and desserts?” Years ago, that’s what one leader in a workshop filled with top consultants from around the world asked me. I thought “no,” but I said “yes” to avoid a long discussion about how you can … Continued

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Restaurateurs When You Lack Experience, Add Someone Who Has It

January 20, 2025

“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 … Continued

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The Greatest Alternative To Selling Your Restaurants

January 13, 2025

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 … Continued

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Your Restaurant Company’s Game-Winning Focus for 2025

January 6, 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 … Continued

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The Five Best Things I Told Restaurateurs This Year…and Why

December 30, 2024

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 … Continued

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Maintaining Healthy Margins in the Time of Inflation

December 16, 2024

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 … Continued

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How to Conquer My 3 Stages of Restaurant Business Growth

December 9, 2024

For my best clients, it doesn’t matter what curveballs life throws at them. They stay on a strong growth curve regardless – remaining in control of their destiny and putting the right information to work. And when you do that, great things happen, like jumping … Continued

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How To Respond To The Leadership And Coaching Shortage

December 2, 2024

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 … Continued

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The Biggest Consumer Changes Affecting You Right Now, Part 3

November 18, 2024

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 … Continued

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The Biggest Consumer Changes Affecting Your Restaurant Right Now, Part 2

November 11, 2024

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 … Continued

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The Biggest Consumer Changes Affecting You Right Now, Part 1

November 4, 2024

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 … Continued

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Restaurateurs When You Want Change, Should You Think Big or Small?

October 8, 2024

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 … Continued

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For Independent Restaurants, the Future of Technology Is Now

September 23, 2024

It turns out that the turbo-charged technology boost that independent restaurateurs experienced in the pandemic era now looks like a dress rehearsal for the next wave.  Today, my clients ask when the bells and whistles they have read about chains developing will become available at … Continued

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Why Childcare Is the Right Policy Focus to Excite Employees

September 3, 2024

Only in a presidential election year would both major candidates be supporting a fiscal policy of no tax on tips. I understand why this excites people in the industry and our associations.    But I’m not one of those people . I get it. When … Continued

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How To Cope And Succeed In This Wild Restaurant Real Estate Market

August 26, 2024

Everything starts with real estate – and I have never seen a restaurant real estate market like this: The days of landlords chasing you down to do deals are a distant memory, like telephoned restaurant reservations and hard-wired internet. Among my clients, the more established brands are … Continued

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The Value of Making Radical (and Not-So-Radical) Changes At Your Restaurants

August 19, 2024

Next year, passengers on Southwest Airlines flights will be able to find their assigned seat and, for an upcharge, get to luxuriate in an extra 5 inches of legroom – just like they do now on Delta, American, and United. The days of open seating … Continued

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10 Impactful Areas Restaurateurs Need to Focus on Now

August 6, 2024

Wow! It’s already that time of year again: with your kids either excited for or dreading going back to school. While kids and teachers face the results of their “summer brain drain,” now’s a good time to remember that learning happens outside of school, too. … Continued

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How the Great Become Even Better Through Coaching

July 30, 2024

Michael Jordan and Tom Brady had coaches. The CEO of Ford has a coach – I’ve met him (the coach, not the CEO!). However successful you’ve been, and no matter how talented you are, coaching will bring out even more from you. So, who coaches … Continued

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Only 3 Worthwhile Places to Look When Developing a Healthy Restaurant Business

July 23, 2024

Do your guests smile, feel happy, enjoy their meals, and tell their friends about that? Do your financial statements appear predictable and healthy – making you proud? Does your culture deeply permeate your restaurants every unit, every shift, every table, every time? Do your people … Continued

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What I Said at The Texas Restaurant Show About Retiring in Place

July 16, 2024

I am just back from another great Texas Restaurant Show where I spoke Saturday at the TRA/Morgan Stanley pre show Investment Boot Camp about 5 ways to finance restaurant company growth and on Sunday on the show floor Innovation Stage about the Silver Tsunami, unlocking opportunities with … Continued

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Meet Me This Weekend at the Texas Restaurant Show!

July 8, 2024

At the Texas Restaurant Show this weekend at the Henry B. Gonzalez convention center in San Antonio – on Sunday, July 14, I will be part of an all-star team talking about “Silver Tsunami: Unlocking Opportunities With Restaurant Owners Who Want to Sell of Step Back”. It … Continued

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How to Steal Valuable Lessons From That $6 Salad Place

July 1, 2024

I admit it: I’m fascinated by Salad and Go’s business. It’s a QSR with no dining rooms, a footprint as small as 750 square feet, core menu items in the $6-$7 range, and an AUV north of $1MM. In all, they’re about as different as possible from … Continued

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