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 year absence. This company is a great business anyone would be proud to own.
Why have they asked me to come back? Things have deteriorated slowly and subtly – in a way that turned out to be hard to perceive from the inside.
So we got to work and now we know how to correct that and make the company better than it has ever been, increasing profit by 7 figures through increased service and staffing levels, hospitality, new menu items, education and training, and purchasing practices.
Another client’s restaurants perform well. Life feels good. Sales clock in at a record high, catering grows, unit count is going up, and profits look solid.
But that does not mean ownership is ready to relax. Instead, we initiate ways of accelerating success and making that company better than it has ever been before-including new focuses on marketing, branding, culture, levels of operational responsibility and accountability, and faster ticket times.
All this alleviates a periodic cash-flow challenge related to fast growth.
Get a Good Night’s Sleep
From the inside, it can be hard to see what is really going on until the warning signals hit the red line on the RPM meter.
Conversely, when things go well, contentment can lead to complacency. Maybe you’ve nailed your daily run so many times you never think about making it faster or longer.
In either case – whether you risk future crisis or complacency – once you realize it, you can’t sleep, either from excitement about opportunity or stress about decline.
As for me, I like my clients to be able to sleep soundly. Makes for healthier lives and better businesses.
Bring in Outside Perspectives
A ton of my work involves helping people find the pieces that really make a difference.
That brings a whole other level of leadership, inspiration, management, supervision, discipline, hospitality, service, and accountability.
On a parallel track, we take steps to make sure they don’t blow up and destroy what already works at their brands.
The Downside of Island Life
Many of my clients have focused so long and singularly on building their businesses that they have lost touch with the rest of the industry.
The result? They’re on an island of their own making.
They know very little about any company other than their own. They have heard about what the numbers “ought to be,” but they really don’t know.
Or they work in an area where they have no experience outside their company.
Highly successful, they and their brands either exist on an exciting trajectory or need a course correction.
Maximizing revenue, profit, and net worth, though-and speeding up that journey-requires outside knowledge and experience.
