Restaurateurs: Stop Hiding and Seek Your Greatest Restaurant Success

People think that what got them started will continue to be a foundation of their future scaled success.

Those people are wrong.

When you add something you did not have at the beginning – when everything was new and exciting – you create phenomenal success in your life that you may not even be able to imagine.

When I work with clients, installing that missing piece creates incredible breakthroughs.

Add a guest focus, service, accounting, structure, management training, or marketing piece and WOW!

Are you hiding from this?

How would you know?

What does hiding look like?

If you are doing something simple that looks important – just to avoid the real work – that’s hiding. 

Parable of a “Busy” Restaurant Manager

Busy Friday night. Full dining room.

Managers? Running food.

We all know food needs to move out of the window onto the table in front of a delighted guest.

That’s just something that has to happen – because the alternative is to let it deteriorate under the lights in the window or, worse, be cold.

But why are the managers running food?

Do they think their servers are less than optimal at the task and are in need of support?

Or are they just hiding?

It is more valuable for managers to talk to guests, connect to them, and orchestrate their shift plan.

What a waste!

Take two otherwise-identical restaurants – but one of them has managers who truly engage with their guests.

Experience tells me that the one where managers engage with guests will have 10% more sales!

10%! 

No Place to Hide

As a successful owner of an independent multi-unit restaurant group, if you want to amplify your output, find an equivalent in your work life.

Our time hiding prevents us from doing the work that creates the greatest gains.  

We avoid the work that is more unfamiliar or challenging – the things that don’t come naturally, or aren’t an organization’s original strength.

Instead, seek learned behavior.

For instance, start to focus on marketing or growth strategy instead of on training and education.

Or make the transition from being tactical to being strategic.

1. Reflect on how you spend your day and where you hide.  
2. Step up and delegate as many as possible of those things that come easily to you.
3. Once you open up that time in your schedule, resolve to focus on the harder stuff.

Over to you. Look in your heart and see where you hide and what you avoid. Self-aware people realize what this means to them instantly. If you can’t figure it out, seek someone else who you trust to point this out to you.