10 Shocking Lessons Learned From Coaching 2500 Restaurants

Want to know the biggest mistakes that restaurants make? Stay tuned, because things are about to get crazy. Hey, welcome back to the channel. I'm Donald Burns, the restaurant coach, and my mission is to help you build your brand, strengthen your team, and increase your profits. Now, I keep detailed coaching notes from every client I've had over the past 14 years as the restaurant coach. Some of those stories make it into my books, speaking gigs, podcast, or sometimes just a solid warning to new clients about what not to do. Never fear, the names have been changed to protect those that probably have a restaurant that sucks. Side note, if you just ask yourself the question My restaurant suck, chances are it might. But don't worry. Listen to the rest of this video for ways for not to have your restaurant suck anymore. You know, working with so many diverse clients is an incredible opportunity for shared lessons and challenges that I see with restaurants all around the world. Oh, and if you think your problems are special or just apply to your restaurant, they're not. All business problems are people problems. The goal is to get the right people to solve those problems. You see, it's not that our problems are all that different. It's the solutions and how you deal with those problems that are the great divide between those restaurants that struggle from those that thrive to the very few that drive their market. Now, let's be honest, I'm not a fan of competition. I think it's only good for the consumer, not for businesses. Your goal should always be to dominate your market. So here are 10 lessons I've learned so far from working with over 2,500 independent restaurants. Number one, most restaurants don't know their numbers. You know, I'm always shocked when I ask an audience how many people know the exact cost of every item on their menu and less than 5% raise their hand. If you don't know your numbers, you don't know your business. In fact, you actually have more of a hobby than a business. And sadly, it's a very expensive hobby. You'd be better off closing your doors and just going and buying horses. Number two, people don't know their core values either. Another shocking result I get when polling audiences that less than 2% of the crowd knows their core values. If you don't know who you are and what you stand for, then why are you in business? Number three, bad hiring is a disease. I know the labor pool shrinking. It's hard to find quality people out there. But let's turn that kind of statement upside down and ask you a few questions. A Do you actively recruit talent each week or just place a couple of boring job ads up hoping that the next superstar is going to walk through the door. B. Do you really have a culture that attracts top talent? Truth Bomb A Players don't want to work for a C level culture. Number four. Your time management most likely sucks. Please stop saying you're too busy. I have clients that track their activities for a week and they're always shocked when they see how much time they waste doing stupid activities. If you would just focus your energy and attention on a few key tasks each day, you'd be totally amazed at what could get done. You're not as busy as you think. Number five. You're not marketing enough. I hate to say that a lot of restaurants post on social media. Very few actually really market the same boring food. Posts that you put up a couple times a week are competing against the restaurant down the street that's also putting up boring food pics. Stop being boring. Start getting attention by using video storytelling. Number six and you're not going to like this one. You should fire about 20% of your team now. You know you have some people on your team right now that you should get rid of. Those negative energy vampires that just suck the life out of you and your culture. Facilitate their freedom to go down the street to your competition where their negative energy will do you no harm. I kind of like to think of this as like a really nice form of legal sabotage to your competition. Number seven. You don't take care of yourself as you should remember that too busy mentioned before. Well here it pops its ugly head up again. In the hospitality world we give and give to others, but who gives to you? Self care is pretty self explanatory care for yourself. I want you to think of it kind of like the oxygen mask on an airplane. You got to put your own mask on first before you help others. For heaven's sakes. Eat better, get more sleep, go for a walk every now and then and also stop snacking on those french fries in the kitchen. Number eight. One of the main reasons for turnover is unclear standards and unspoken expectations. Communication is key if you really want to build a badass culture. We have way too many false assumptions of what people should be doing and then jump on them for not reading our minds and knowing exactly what we expected. I call this a true recipe for failure. Yet every day managers and owners play this game of well they should know. Well here's the thing, they don't know. So do a better job of explaining clearly what the standards and expectations are and yes, it means you have to talk to your team face to face. And side note, if you don't like to talk to people face to face, perhaps it's time to think about a career beyond leadership in the hospitality industry. I think maybe Uber is hiring. Number nine, communication in restaurants just sucks. I know I mentioned communication. However, it's such a big part of the problem that restaurants experience that really needs to be addressed again, stop sending text messages, emails, and posting memos without face to face communication with the team. Communication can be really broken down into three ratios. 7, 38 and 55. 55% of how we communicate is non verbal, 38% is related to tone. And that small 7% is just the words themselves. So when you send out that group text, that email, or hang up that memo on the bulletin board, you're only effectively communicating 7%. And we wonder why restaurants suck. Shameless. Plug right here for my books. So your restaurant doesn't suck at number 10. You gotta remember where the word restaurant really came from. So let's take a trip back in time to Paris, 1765. There was a tavern owner by the name of Monsieur Bollinger, and he had this kind of entrepreneurial bug and he wanted to sell his soup to the public. The problem was is that the guilds or the unions controlled the selling of food to the public. So told no. His solution, well, there wasn't a soup guild at the time. So he went to court and won the right to sell his concoction to the public. He called it a restorative. And the word restaurant derives from the French verb restorer, which means to restore. So when people come to your restaurant, I want you to really think of them as they're coming to have their souls restored. And if you think about that's a big responsibility if you take the word restaurant to heart. Now here's the question. Do you treat people in your restaurant as weary travelers looking to have their soul be restored for food, hospitality, and drink? Or do you see them as just a table number and a sale? See, the answer is the difference between those restaurants that survive and those that truly, truly thrive in their market. Getting the restaurant you want starts with investing in yourself. Reading books, listening to audiobooks, going to workshops, joining a mastermind group, getting a coach to help you break bad habits and also install new ones. Hint, hint, see? Your restaurant will improve when you improve. I tell clients all the time that restaurant success isn't rocket science, it's people science. Hey, make sure to hit the like and subscribe button. And share this with someone that you think needs to hear this message. In my next video, I'm going to tell you why working in your restaurant isn't working.