In this conversational interview, Donald Burns and restaurant owner Bree discuss the common belief that the restaurant industry faces a labor crisis. They argue that the real issue is a leadership gap: restaurants rarely teach leadership or coaching skills, focusing instead on hard, technical abilities. Burns explains the difference between managing (reactive, compliance‑focused) and coaching (proactive, commitment‑building) and introduces the TRC Leadership Roadmap, a library of nine soft‑skill courses designed for restaurant leadership teams. The courses cover communication, active listening, stress management, time management, and other life‑skill topics that empower staff both on the job and beyond. Bree confirms that her team finds the training valuable and applicable to their personal lives, illustrating how leadership development can improve team cohesion, employee satisfaction, and overall performance.
Chapters
You know, a lot of restaurant owners will say to me, like, I'll get calls every, every week from, you know, new restaurant owners talking about their business and talking about, you know, what's going on with the industry. And they always think there's a labor crisis. You think it's really a labor crisis? Do you think it's really a hiring problem or you think it's a leadership problem?
I think it's a leadership problem for sure.
Mm-hmm. Why?
Yeah, I don't think it's a people problem. I don't think it's a this generation problem, you know, and, and From my experience in restaurants, you know, because I've been— you want to count scooping ice cream? Yeah, it's been since I was 15. And throughout all of, like, the other restaurants that I've managed before becoming an owner, places do not teach leadership, you know. They do not teach, um, you know, how, how to coach, I guess, instead of manage, because that is a huge difference, you know, that, that managing is extremely reactive instead of proactive, you know. Managing is you you know, do this, don't do that. You're getting compliance instead of commitment. You know, true leadership is, you know, teaching and helping someone get from point A to point B. And that's huge.
Yeah. Yeah. And then in the TRC method, we have like this huge like library, like the TRC library is really, really thousands and thousands of hours of of coaching material, training material. But one of the things we really— I've really focused on the last couple years is we started developing a library for leadership. We have— it's called, it's called Leadership Roadmap. And Leadership Roadmap has like 9 courses that like Bree can give out to her leadership team to help to get them those soft skills. Because like she just said, no one teaches leadership. We all teach— we work on the hard skills so much. We, we want cooks to be faster cooks, better cooks, cut better, so like that. But how do we teach people to actually communicate better? How do we teach better people how to listen? How do people— how to deal with stress? How do people deal with time management? How do we teach them just to be active listeners? So, we've really in the last couple of years, I really put a full-court press on developing this leadership roadmap. It's like a series of courses that like all my members, they can have access to, all their leadership team can have access to, to give them those soft skills that they really, really need. And I think it it, it starts making a big impact and stuff like that when your team starts getting on the same page with you.
Yeah, for sure. And they love it, you know. It, it doesn't feel like to them like, oh yeah, Bri's giving me some homework, you know. They're like, oh my gosh, this is so great, because it's not just leadership in the restaurant setting, it's, it's skills that they can take with them throughout their whole life.
They're actually life skills. Yeah, soft skills. I always say like soft skills are life skills. Doesn't matter where you are. I mean, everyone needs how to learn how to communicate better. Everyone needs to learn how to manage your time better. Everyone needs to learn how to manage your stress a little bit better. Yeah, the things we teach is like stuff like, it's just, it's basically life skills. It's not even just like, not even just restaurant skills.
