Donald Burns calls 60% of restaurants "quicksand" - good enough to stay open but bad enough to trap owners working endless hours. The harder they push, the deeper they sink, unable to think clearly or fix what's actually broken.
Good category. Those restaurants are basically surviving, and they make up the bulk of the market in any demographic, any country I'm in, the bulk of the restaurants are what I call good. That's 60%. And this stage right here, the good category is what I call quicksand. What do I mean by quicksand? I'll give you an example. You're working in your restaurant, and you think everything is going fine, and then something bad happens, and then something else happens. And the way you fight back is the only way, you know, you start throwing more hours into work. But the problem is, by trying to fight with the only tool you have, throwing more hours at it, you basically sink deeper and deeper until you can't breathe, you can't move, you can't think clearly because you're in over your head, just like quicksand.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
