LIVE WORKSHOP - The 11 Habits of Outstanding Restaurants

There are four levels of restaurant excellence. Bad, good, great, and outstanding. The last one is for those that truly dominate their market. So what does it take to become outstanding? Stick around for this live workshop where I will tell you the 11 habits that all outstanding restaurants share. 80% are what I call bad restaurants. They're struggling. They're losing money, right? Orders breaking even. That next level up, 60% of restaurants in any market are surviving. That means they're making a very, very small profit. 1 to 2%, which I don't know about you, but 1 or 2% is not a lot of money. The next level up, 15% of any restaurants in any market are what I call thriving. These restaurants are getting towards the top of the food chain. They're actually the ones that people start looking at. And then that very top elite level. Only 5% of restaurants ever make it to this level. What I call outstanding. And they're really driving the market. They're the ones that people kind of copy, emulate and things like that. Now, the things that separates these things, these restaurants from different levels is that they focus on certain things. I always say, when you work in the restaurant industry for 40 years, you notice there's patterns. There's patterns to success, and there's patterns to failure. So what we're going to talk about today is some of the things we can do to help make our restaurants more successful. A lot of restaurant owners get off track because they focus on the wrong things. What do I mean by the wrong things? The wrong things are they start looking at sales. Sales, to me, is a vanity metric. And what do I mean that so many restaurant owners get so caught up on the sales numbers that, remember, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. Let me ask you a question right here. Would you rather. And I have clients all the time, come to me. They do $3 million in sales. That's a lot of money, right? But they don't make any money. They break even. Or 1 or 2%. Would you rather have a $3 million restaurant doing 2% profit, or would you rather have a $1 million restaurant doing 20% profit? I don't know about you. I'll take the 20% model every single day. Hashtag, write this down. You're gonna see me do this a lot. I'll say. Hashtag, write this down. If everything is important, nothing is important. Got to remember this stuff. You got to focus on the right things. Now, there are 11 traits that the most successful restaurants in the United States kind of all have in common. And I've basically pulled these out. And I'm going to give you kind of a checklist of the things that you can actually do to get to that top 5% today. To do that, I'm going to use this word trait a lot. But you could easily substitute the word habit. First one, write this down. Your restaurant is a reflection of your habits, period. Now, there's some good news and bad news to that. If your restaurant's running a little rough, or actually it was running smooth, then you're making some profit, right? You have more good habits than bad habits. Now, on the opposite end, too, if your restaurant's running a little rough, then you have some bad habits that have to change. The beautiful thing you have to understand is that habits are learned behavior. If you learned a bad habit, you can unlearn it and learn a good habit. And that's we're gonna work on today. I'm gonna show you some really good habits that the most successful restaurants all have in common. Now, if this is the first time anybody see me here, a couple times in Madrid, see quite a few. I see a lot of familiar faces in the crowd, which is awesome. I'm Donald Burns. I'm known as the restaurant coach. Oh. I grew up in the restaurant industry. My father was a chef. I started out like everyone else, washing dishes, worked my way up to the brigade system. I would do something to make my dad mad. I'd be back peeling vegetables, work my way up. Peeling vegetables, work my way up, peel vegetables. When I was 18 years old, he told me it was in my blood. I said, I want a transfusion. I don't want to do this. I really don't want to do this. So I joined the military, got into some special operations team, Pararescue. Learned how combat, search and rescue, stuff like that. When I got out of the military, went to college, got experience from high school, worked in restaurants. Found out I really love the restaurant industry without my dad yelling and screaming at me. Started working at the right restaurants, right? Chefs. 30 opened my first restaurant. 33 opened my second restaurant. Ran these two restaurants for a long time, sold them. Got recruited by a chef out in la. You might have heard of him, Wolfgang Puck. I worked for Wolfgang Puck for five years. Went around the country opening restaurants for Wolf. And then I started my own consulting company, and here I am. I have a couple books out in the market. My first book is your restaurant sucks, and my second book is your restaurants still suck. I have a third book. It's called you'd Restaurant Culture Sucks. The 11 Traits or Habits of the most successful restaurants in the U.S. let's jump right into them. Number one, they all have a compelling why or vision. There's a great author out there in the United States. His name is Simon Sinek and he has this really cool book. And, and one of the questions I want to ask you today is why do you do what you do? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you give in the morning and go to a restaurant and work all day and night? What drives you? What's your passion? What do you do, what you do. Now, Simon Sinek, in his book. It's a really great book, Start with why. He has an underlying kind of premise in the book, and it's this. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And that's what I want you to think about right now is why do you do what you do? He also has a thing in this book, start with why. He calls it the Golden Circle. And the Golden Circle really lets us understand why our communication sucks with how we're talking to people. Now. The Golden Circle, when you look at it, it's basically three rings, right? It's what. It's how and why. Every restaurant on the plant knows what they do. It's basically like, you know, I'm a pizza place, I'm an empanada place, right? Or, you know, whatever we are, whatever you do is what you do. Now, you know, a lot of restaurants know how they do it. That's different. Like we have a Jasper Wood burning grill. We use family recipes, things like that. Marketing pros call this your USP or unique selling Proposition. Now, very few restaurants in the world understand why they do what they do. And you have to understand is that the why drives behavior. The what and the how by themselves. They don't really stimulate or trigger a buying response. Not until we dig down to the why. And here's the issue. Most restaurants, when they communicate in their marketing messages, and you probably look at your marketing right now, you probably communicate from the outside in. You start with the what and the how. And I'll give you some, give you some really great examples, but I want you to write this down. People buy for emotional reasons and then they justify it with logical ones. We've all done it. I've done it too. I've bought those things online. And it's like, then I justified it. Well, I really needed it. Like you really need a new pair of shoes. No. Wow. I wanted them really Bad. I didn't really need them, but I wanted them. So now smart restaurants know how to communicate. So a typical restaurant starts on the outside. They start with the what and then they go to the how. So I would say a typical restaurant would be like this. They would communicate like this in their marketing. It'd be like, we're a local. We're a local empanada restaurant. We follow family recipes and we make our food fresh daily. Want to buy some empanadas? I mean, it's kind of boring. Smart restaurants communicate from the inside out. They start with their why and then they communicate outside. So a really, really great restaurant communicates like this. We believe that your food should be made in front of you fresh, where you can see our commitment to quality in our ingredients. We also believe that food should not contain any hormones or GMOs. Now, we follow family recipes sent down from our family from Barcelona for years and years and generation, you know, from generations ago. And. And we also believe that gathering around the table is where family and friends get together to experience and share life. That's why we do what we do. And then they also say, hey, we also make a damn great empanada. Do you see the difference? When you start with your why, it's compelling. It pulls people into your story. So you want to start communicating from the why and going outside. One of the best brands in the United States that demonstrates this is Chipotle. They are huge about this. Number two, all these top performing restaurants have high standards. Now, every week I'll have someone call me or email me and say, hey, Donald. Hey, coach. Hey, what's the. What's something I could do today that I could have a better restaurant? And my response is always the same. The number one thing that will change your restaurant and change your life is you must raise your standards. So raise your standards. That sounds kind of simple. It can't be that easy. Well, it's not that easy. It'll probably be the hardest thing you do. But I'm telling you, when you raise your standards, it changes the game for you and for everyone else on your team. Write this down. We don't get what we want. We get what we tolerate in ourselves and especially others. But when you're no longer willing to tolerate something, that's when your life changes. That's when your restaurant changes. When you declare no more. The difference from restaurants, Remember, you see a lot pyramid that I had. 20% in the bottom, the bad restaurants struggling, and 5% outstanding, thriving. You know, the only difference between Those two really is their standards. That's the only difference between the bottom of the level and the top of the pyramid is their standards. That's the only thing that changes. Raise your standards. Now, the main reason your standards have dropped is that you started giving yourself excuses. And we all have this. We all start giving. We call them softeners. It's not that bad. Could be worse. You know, it's okay because there's things, you know, deep down that you need to do. One of the things I say is all restaurant owners have this list of things that they should do. I should cost out my menu. I should market more. I should do some more video. I should integrate that online app. You know, I should fire that negative energy vampire sucking the life out of me and my team. I should, and I should. And I should, and I should. Basically, restaurant owners, when I say they should all over themselves, right? They should themselves into mediocrity. If you want to change that, it's the easiest thing in the world. I want you to change that word should and replace it with must. I must market more. I must cost out my menu. I must start doing videos. I must integrate that new online app. I must fire that negative energy vampire. It's sucking the life out of me and my team. Change that word from should into must, and you're going to see a radical, radical difference in your restaurant. And I want you to take something out of the playbook of Hernan Cortez, the famous explorer in Conquistador. One of his things. I always say, you know, if you want to take the island, burn the boats. Because when you burn the boats and you give yourself no other option but to go forward, it's amazing what happens. You want to get to yourself. You want to put yourself in a position where you have no other option but to go forward. You got to burn the boats. Fair enough. What holds most people back, and this is the truth, is that we have guarantees. We want guarantees from other people, but we are not willing or we don't ask for guarantees from ourself. That can stop when you make a decision that I'm going to start expecting more from myself, and then I'm expecting more from my team, the French Laundry. United States is well known for their super high standards. They are, like, the epitome of, like, high standards in the United States. Thomas Keller and his team, they raise the bar super high, and they do not tolerate anything less than perfection at their restaurant. Now, I don't. You don't have to go that crazy. He's pretty crazy, but you have to go that crazy. But I want you to raise your level right? Raise the bar a little bit for yourself. Number three, they attract a players. What do I mean by a players? Well, you can't make great soup out of rotten ingredients. Correct. You can also. You can't build a great team with C players. The best restaurants in the world, what they do is they constantly are recruiting and they're attracting top talent. They don't just put up job ads when they have an empty slot on the team. And what do I mean by recruiting? How many people put up job ads and they get like nothing, right? Yeah, most people put up job ads. Recruiting is what I'm actively out there recruiting, looking for talent. I'm actually looking for people. Everyone here has a business card or you have a digital business card. You run into people every single day in your normal life. At the grocery store, at the gym, in retail stores. You're looking for personality. Find someone has a personality, give me your card and say, hey, listen, you know, I'm not sure if you're looking to make a change, but man, you're really great with people. Have you been to my restaurant? No, never. Never heard of it. Why don't you come on down and have lunch with me and I'd love to talk to you about some opportunities. That's recruiting. You're actively out there looking for people, right? The top places are always attracting top talent, also by their messaging that they send out with their guest experience, also their team experience through marketing. I hate to say this, but the restaurant world, we have a horrible, horrible reputation for. We treat people like dirt. And you've probably seen pictures like this on the Internet. And we've treated people so bad for so long that many of the younger generation don't even look at the hospitality industry as a viable source or a viable career. What's our number one thing we always do? We're going to treat you like dirt. We're going to pay you bad. You're never going to see your family. If you have a dog, you have to get rid of it because you're never going to be home to feed your dog. If you're lucky, you get to sit on a trash can or a pot in the kitchen and eat a meal. Man, we got to do better than that. The labor crisis in the United States, actually around the world. I know Tina talked about it earlier. It's basically a self inflicted wound and it's caused by decades and decades of mental and physical transgressions. Between restaurant managers and restaurant workers, we got to start doing better. How do we do that? There's a couple things. We got to start promoting the right things. What I mean by promoting the right things? All right, let's not promote this kind of this self sacrificing chef culture. You know, the chef that works 16 hours a day and sacrifices their life for their craft. Let's not do that. Let's also not sack. Let's not also promote the restaurant owner that hasn't taken a vacation in seven years because they have to be at their restaurant. Let's not start promoting that stuff. What I want us to start doing instead is I want to celebrate our culture. I want to celebrate our diversity, and I celebrate our team. Most restaurants, I'll tell you right now, they don't market very effectively. They put out really bad energy. If you think that your marketing is just about your food, you're totally missing the point of what social media is about. It's about marketing your energy of your brand, not just the pictures. Trust me, they're beautiful, beautiful pictures. But every restaurant in your market puts out the same damn boring pictures. Show me your team. Show me your culture. Show me people having a good time. Show me why you're different than the other restaurants. If you don't tell me why you're different, I assume you're like every other restaurant in the market. You're going to treat me bad, you're going to pay me dirt. I'm never going to see my friends and family. You're not going to feed me. Hashtag, write this down. Your vibe or energy attracts your tribe. The energy you put out on social media attracts the people that you want to work with. All of my clients do not have a labor problem. The only problem they have, they have too many people applying because they take these things to heart and they start advertising and marketing their culture on their social media. None of my clients have a labor problem. They have too many people applying. They don't know what to do with them all. So a lot of them are now expanding their brands, doing second, third, fourth locations because they need. Now they got such so many people on their team, they need actually more revenue or more avenues to open their brand up. That's a good position to be in. A great example of this United States is Chick Fil A. They are known for culture. They are kind of. They are like the standard in the United States for culture as Chick Fil A. Right? Number four, they live their core values. Words, tell me what you say you are Your actions tell me the truth. I can tell you with 100% accuracy that the very best restaurants in the world not only have a crystal clear why or purpose or why we do what we do, they also have a solid set of core value that they live. Not just a poster in the employee break room, not just a list of words on the employee manual that you hand out when they first get hired. These are actually core values that they talk, breathe, and practice every day. They hold their leadership team accountable to be examples of their core values. The very best restaurants in the United States, they use their core values. I always say your core values are kind of like a compass. How many people feel like you feel like you're stuck in your restaurant? Anybody feel like they're ever stuck in a restaurant? If you ever feel like you're stuck in your restaurant, I'll tell you right now why. It's because you're the compass for people. You're the ethical compass. If you always have to tell people what the direction is and what they're doing, oh, you're doing that wrong. You're doing that right. No, that's good. That's better. No, that's bad. If you're always the person pointing out what's wrong, you're always got a job as the police in your restaurant. If you ever want to elevate yourself where you're not having to do that, or if you have multiple locations and you wonder how come our, you know, I got one location that's really great, one location that's not so good. It's the culture. I'm telling you right now. Chick Fil A is known throughout the United States. All their restaurants have the same culture. And when they adapt, this kind of thing is these core values are how we operate. They become the compass for your team. And I tell all my clients, you just tell your team to do this. When they take that core value card and they take that core value, if they make any decision about the brand, if it's in alignment with the core values and from the heart, you can't make a bad decision. You really can't. When you. Everything you do is in alignment with your core values, I highly recommend that you make actually a real core value mission card that you talk about with your team every single day. I have all my clients, we talk about, we call it the Daily five sermon. There's five things they have to talk about through their team all day long. One is their mission. Two, their core values, their vision. Four, standards and expectations, and five words of Appreciation or affirmation. Good job. You know, the two most powerful words in the English language, thank you. And yet we don't say them nearly as much as we should. We just assume. In fact, I have them actually make these core value cards. And it's actually a physical card. They print out. And every time they talk to someone on their team, that card is between them and the team member. And they always use it as a reference. And one of the things we always do is we critique the performance, not the performer. We always use these core value cards. Every time they have an interaction, that core value card comes out. One of the great examples United States is Danny Meyers, Union Hospitality. Union Square Hospitality Group is known for their enlightened hospitality core values. They have great. A great example, number five, they have multiple revenue streams. Did Covid teach us anything that, you know, you put your eggs in one basket. Don't be upset when your basket gets stolen. Right? That's what Covid told us right away. The pandemic taught a lot of restaurants, you need to expand your revenue streams. You need to expand your revenue streams. I have clients now that during the pandemic they were actually making kombucha and they started bottling their own kombucha. And now because of opportunity, this, this brand right here, it's called the Vegetable Hunter United States in Pennsylvania, they have their kombucha not only in like all the grocery stores in Pennsylvania, all the convenience stores in Pennsylvania, it's turned into a such a huge revenue stream that they actually had to open a separate company just to keep up with production. That's a good opportunity to have another way you can diversify your revenue streams. Ghost kitchens have become a huge thing. Meredith and Carl, they wrote a great book out there called Delivering the Digital. They have a fantastic book. They will tell you everything you need to enhance your digital experience and get your best restaurant on the map. How you can increase your digital revenue streams. Virtual brands are another thing. Retail outlets are again, I know a lot of restaurants that did pop ups during COVID or start doing pop up events. Huge, huge opportunities. There's lots of ways you can expand your revenue stream. And think about that. What could you do that could take off some pressure from filling your dining room? How many of us have that pressure? Because we only have one revenue stream and that pressure is if my rev. If my dining room is not full tonight, I'm screwed. Wouldn't it be nice to have some different revenue streams where you'd have to worry about that as much? It'd be nice, like if we had a great night in the restaurant. I mean, it'd be cool. But if I have some other revenue streams, I'm not committed to just having to be worried that my restaurant didn't fill up. Hashtag, write this down. It's never a lack of resources to hold people back. It's a lack of resourcefulness. Just being creative. And if you ever feel like you don't have that, I don't know what to do, and stuff like that, hey, reach out to me. I'll sit and talk to you for a while and I'll share all kinds of ideas. We'll brainstorm and think of a hundred different ways you could increase your revenue streams. I actually did a mind map with my clients and we actually came up with alternative revenue streams. I think we came up with 145 different revenue streams that restaurants could tap into because everyone, when I asked everyone the same question, what could you do to take the pressure off? I don't know. Let's talk about it. We brainstormed down. We had like 145 different revenue streams. It's not a lack of resources, lack of resourcefulness. Hold you back. Doghouse is a famous brand in the United States. They have some virtual brands. They have one called Bad Mother Clucker, which is a chicken concept, and they have badass breakfast burritos. They have taken their, basically their brick and mortar restaurant called Doghouse. They've expanded out into the, into the virtual world, and it works really, really well for them. What could you do to expand your brand in the digital format or a digital space that wouldn't really take away your attention or your focus on your brick and mortar restaurant? That's the things I want you to think about. Number six. They're committed to training. We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. That's so true. I would say the number one thing that separates those restaurants at the top from the restaurants at the bottom is they make training part of their culture. In fact, remember that pyramid? There's different levels of cult. There's different levels of restaurants. Bad, good, great, outstanding. I'll tell you, there's a culture that goes with each one. Bad restaurants, toxic culture. Good restaurants, surviving restaurants have a training culture. They train you on the front end. When you get hired to give you a little bit of training, you follow someone around for three days and that's it. Great restaurants have a learning culture, and the very top have what's known As a leadership culture, the difference between the top and the bottom is really this restaurant's at the bottom. The team runs the restaurant, but they run it their way. The top level, outstanding restaurants. The team runs a restaurant, but they run it your way. Pretty close. But one is like, you're in like stress and panic all the time. And a great example is McDonald's. Did you know McDonald's? You know, everyone hears the story of McDonald's, you know, they've been around for like 66 years. One of the things a lot of people don't associate with McDonald's is that they actually started the first kind of national training for all their franchises. They started this thing called Hamburger University and they made this kind of portal where they have everyone go through and get consistent training and they come back for more training all year round. It's not just a one and done. You don't just come to, you don't come to Hamburger University. You actually have more stuff now. You want to create this environment, this learning culture where your team is constantly learning, constantly asking, constantly wanting to be better. You want to get to this point where they're coming and going, hey, what else you got? Hey, that was great stuff. What else you got? I want to get to this. One of my favorite things in the world, I say to all my clients is I have this little wristband and I say this phrase a lot. I have this saying, I walk around all the time and I ask my clients this all the time too. I say, what's next? I always want to keep what I call trigger phrases, where I'm always asking people, what can I do to get them to think about in the future sense, what can I get them to think about moving forward? So I always just think, what's next? What's next? And I know I always got people when they start walking up to me afterwards and they say to me, hey, what's next? I got you now. Now I got you saying it. Think about this. In a 10 year lifespan, 96% of restaurants won't make it. I don't know about you, that's scary, okay? In a 10 year time span, especially United States, only 4% will actually make it. And here's the thing, make it does not mean they'll be very profitable. They're like that, surviving, they're making 2%, 3%. I mean, I don't know about you, man, but working that hard, that long for that little bit of money is horrible. Love them or hate them, everyone in this room has heard of McDonald's they have brand recognition and they're also really well known for their training systems. If you want to rise to the top of the market, then you have to commit to being known as the restaurant that trains their team more than any other. And here's the beautiful thing about that, is that you can make that commitment today. You can say, hey, you know what? Starting today, we're going to train more than any other restaurant in our market. And you want to be known as we are the restaurant that out trains everybody. It's the easiest thing to do. It doesn't cost you anything, a little bit of your time. It's so, so valuable, though. It will change your organization overnight if you adapt this thing. McDonald's and pizza chipotle, all well known for having integrated continuing education for their teams. You want to be known. You want to be that brand in your market that's known for training more than anybody else. Number seven, they create raving fans. You have two types of fans. You have internal and external fans. Don't sacrifice one for the other. The very best brands in the world understand they have two types of guests. You have the external guest who comes in your restaurant and they purchase your goods and service. Then you have X. You have internal guests that actually create the experience for the external guests. So two types of guests. Internal. External. Most restaurants, I hate to say, they focus on the guest experience the external guest and they forget about the team experience the internal guest. Flip that around. The very best restaurants in the world focus more on the team experience than anything else. Outstanding restaurants, again, focus more on the team experience than anything else. You focus on the team experience and you trust that when I really work on my team and focus on the team experience, it's going to enhance and improve my guest experience. There's a great saying out there. You don't build a business, you build people, and then your people build your business. Hashtag, write that shit down. You don't build business, you build your team. You build your people, and then your people build that business. Remember, if you're always the one doing everything, you're the clog in the wheel and you're never going to get a life. I'm so adamant about restaurant owners getting a life back. And then the biggest mistake, most people think, is that culture and brand are the same thing. They're very similar, but they're not actually 100% the same. Right. They're a little different. I'm going to give you the definitions of both. Brand is what your guests say about you, what they Say to their friends or family. Online culture is what your team says about you online, to their friends and to their family. Most everyone on this thing can easily tell you what your brand says. You just look at your online reviews. You can tell me what your what people think about your brand. Have you ever really sat down and talked to your team? What do you guys, what are we doing? Good? Hey, what do we do? Hey, man, what do we suck at? How can I be a better leader? We start asking better questions. You get better results. And you want to think of brand and culture kind of like yin yang. They live in a symbiotic state. They need each other. Brand needs culture, culture needs brand. But yet we focus so much on that brand Persona that we forget that that culture part, it's so integral to success. That's why my next book is all about culture. Your restaurant culture sucks because I find culture is the defining factor. In N Out burger chick fil a. 2American brands known for culture. They are known for having that team experience. They actually elevate. They are so focused on the team experience. And we were talking earlier today about Hillstone Restaurant Group was talking with Carl and Meredith and they were saying, hillstone Restaurant. Basically they take out tables of their restaurant because they want to have a better guest experience. I mean, people would think that, you know what, I'm going to take out 12 tables out of my restaurant because I want to have a better guest experience. Most people think that's crazy. I need the revenue. No, what you need is a really damn good guest experience, and that will build your revenue. We get these numbers backwards so much. You got to focus on the right things. Remember number eight, they're focused on market domination. What do I mean by domination? Life's way too short to play small in the world. You got to pick up your game. The very best restaurants in the US Brands, they don't dabble in marketing. They go all in every day with content that tells their story and shares their culture. I mentioned this earlier. They make a commitment not just to post, but rather they want to take you on a little journey with them. It's the coolest thing in the world. I want you to look at your social media feed when you get a chance. Not right now. Just what does it say about you other than you sell food? If I looked at your social media feed right now, what would it say about you? Would it give me a sense of you're a fun place, that you care about your team or just be like more about your team experience or More about your guest or your food and stuff like that. What would it tell me if I looked at it? Would you take me into a story? Would you invite me into a story? What would you show me why you do what you do? Do I feel you care more about me as a guest or about yourself? My very first book, your restaurant sucks. The first quote in the book is a great quote. It says, the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. So true. What does your social media say about you? Domination occurs when you have a steady flow of content that lets the world know your why, let you know your purpose. Also lets me know what, what your team is all about, what your culture is all about. If you're not sharing your story, your culture, your passion, your mission, you're just making noise on social media. And trust me, there's way too much noise on social media right now anyway. You don't want to make any noise if you don't have to write this down. Connect with people on social media through emotions. Remember we talked about that? What, How. Why always start with the why start with my mission? We believe we do this because of this. We're only committed to using this thing. We only buy food from these local vendors because we're committed to local. Show me. Don't just talk about it. Show me it. Take me on an adventure. Take me on a journey with you. Starbucks next year. Juice bar, Modern Market are great examples of restaurants that really have a strong social media, but they actually really convey their why, their purpose and their commitment to their team. Number nine. They embrace the spirit of hospitality and use technology to keep connected. Did you know the word hospitality comes from the Latin word hospice, which means to be a host? So when you're actually acting in the essence of hospitality, you're actually. You want to make people feel like they're a guest in your home. That's what being in the essence of hospitality is. Hospice is actually the essence of being the ultimate host. Some brands have an easier time doing this because they have a lot of different contact points. So in a normal kind of guest journey, there's basically 12 contact points. We have online reputation entry, the greeter, the dining room, the restrooms, the team, the food and beverage, the check back, the cash out, the farewell. Now this has changed because Covid's changed a lot of the game. So you have to start rethinking the guest journey. And what can I do to enhance the guest journey along the way? You have to interact and have to maximize the interaction, especially if you take away some of the guests, the touch points. When you take away some of the touch points, you have to maximize your interactions. A lot of guests have adapted and started looking at your brand, a new sense of things. And again, Carl and Meredith can talk to you for days about this. Online is huge. Here's the thing about technology. You got to embrace it, even if you don't like it. I have a lot of people like saying, oh, and this is, I always say in coaching, we have a lot of bs. You heard of BS before Simpson? Bullshit. No, it's belief systems. You have a lot of belief system. You have a lot of bad belief systems. Like I'll have someone say, I don't need to be on. So I don't need to be on Instagram. My, my, my, my guests don't use Instagram. Oh, bullshit. They use Instagram. You just don't want to get on Instagram. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that guests aren't there. Right? I have it all the time. Oh my. People don't do this. Well, they do. And Meredith and Carl can give you tons of data about that. I don't have the data. They're the data people. I'm not the data people. Your guests and your team always embrace stuff before you will. They also want it. How many restaurants I know are so resistant right now to TikTok? Oh, TikTok is just a dancing app. No, it's not just a dancing app. It's actually a really, really well connected social media platform that gets you a lot of recognition if you do it right. Don't ignore stuff. Which talk now, which technology should you use? Online ordering app. You should have a mobile app for your restaurant. Text message marketing is huge in the United States. Loyalty programs are huge also. I'm a big, huge believer of having loyalty programs. Every restaurant we've been to in Spain so far never asked us to join a loyalty program yet. Starbucks Noodles and company Mod Pizza, well known for their digital technology, their loyalty programs, their online interactions, all well known. Starbucks is probably has probably one of the best loyalty programs in the world. Noodles and company has another great loyalty program. They're amazing loyalty programs. Number 10. They constantly protect their brand. Always be aware of what I call as mediocrity creep. Mediocrity creep is something you've worked so hard to create, something okay, you have to protect it at all times. This goes back to that kind of one of those first slides I talked about raising your standards. Raising your standards and keeping them up there, I call them. I have all my clients make a list. I call them non negotiables. You know the beautiful thing about non negotiable, it's non negotiable. Under Armour has a saying that's become their foundation of their brand, of their culture. Protect this house. They actually have T shirts. They have signs all over their restaurant, all over their retail stores. Protect this house. When I worked for Wolfgang Puck, it was an amazing experience. And the thing about Wolf that was really, really great is that he had that kind of mission. You want to make your restaurant better by developing your mission, core values, vision. And why, when you raise your standards to be the best version you can be of yourself, you are going to become a target. Do we aim for the low restaurants in our market? Like, man, that restaurant really sucks. I want to be just as good as they are. No, no, we. We pick the best restaurants and they become a target for us. Right. As you raise your standards, as you make your restaurant better, trust me, people will start gunning for you. If people are not imitating you, copying your brand, knocking you stuff off, you're not. You're not out there pushing it far enough. You want to be the brand that gets copied. You want to get the brand. Like, you know, I used to love when I have my own restaurants and hey, hey, hey, hey, chef, man. Hey, the restaurant on the street knocked off your pork dish. That's cool, man. Awesome. I love that. That means I'm doing it right. If I'm making enough waves in my market where you're starting to copy me, that's where I want to be. Gotta be aware of what's known as crab mentality. Crab mentality is basically, if I can't have it, I'm not gonna let you have it. Anybody ever see crabs? When they harvest crabs, you know, they don't put a lid on the bucket. Cause the crabs will pull each other down. That's called crab mentality. You have to be aware. It's a big warning flag right here. Beware that crab mentality can come from your competition. Everybody have competition. Competitors write bad reviews about you. Yeah. And you know they're just bs, right? And that actually wasn't belief system. That was bullshit. That kind of bs. And you have them. But you also got to be aware that sometimes that crab mentality could come from someone within your team being subversive, sabotaging your brand. We call those negative energy vampires. And you have to get rid of negative energy vampires as fast as you can. Like I said, When I worked for Wolfgang Puck, he always preached all the time. We make all our decision based on what would protect the brand the best. So how do you protect your brand? Do you have written standards? Do you have written recipes? Do you have a multi dimensional training system? If you do not, these are the exact things you want to start with. And number 11, they practice what's known as Kaizen or Kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy and it basically is like this. If you're not getting better, you're getting worse. All outstanding restaurants, those ones at that 5% level, and all restaurants around the world, they never settle for what was accomplished yesterday. You want to adopt this kind of philosophy of kaizen. And kaizen basically is this kind of. It's a word in Japan. In Japanese, it basically means constant, never ending improvement. The way I have my clients all do it is we call it the 1% rule. We adopt this philosophy that we want to be 1% better today than we were yesterday. Because you know why? It's doable. I can have everyone on my team can buy in on that. Hey guys, this wants to be 1% better today than we were yesterday. A little bit faster, a little bit cleaner, a little bit smoother. Just imagine if you just 1% better every day. A year from now, you'd have a wholly different restaurant. And it's so easy. But we don't enforce it, we don't maintain it, we don't keep the team on target, on target about this. And we kind of like soon as we get some resistance or pushback. Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I was like pushing a little too hard. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You're going to get resistance. That's their job to push you back. Remember, it's a commitment each day to be better than you were yesterday. That's the 1% rule. And I'm telling you right now, when you adopt this into your life, into your culture, amazing things happen to your restaurant and amazing things will happen for you. And when I say this 1% rule starts with you, I'm a huge believer. Culture flows down, it does not flow up. Culture starts at the top. It starts with you as the owner, operators. Your culture, your attitude, your mindset flows down to the team. When you have this kind of culture of this like improvement, this 1% improvement, you're going to enjoy the journey of success more. You're going to find that you don't get bored. You're also going to want to seek to learn and understand the world around you. And you're not going to worry about the competition because you're going to make them worry about you. That's where you want to be. How many people in here? And probably, if you all are honest, you probably at one time or another said you've worried about somebody in the competition. No. From now on, I don't ever want you to worry about the competition. I want you to make them worry about you from now on. The 11 traits I showed you today, if you practice these, and I say if you take them and you apply them, apply them is the big word here. That's why it's bolded out in orange. You have to apply them. The tools I talk about today are just merely potential. A hammer on the table is not really a tool. It's just potential. It's not until I pick up that hammer and actually apply it that it has actually any value. Everything I talked about today, these 11 things, they're the same thing. You have to pick them up and you have to apply them. I want to say thank you to Ava and Manuel for having me back. I mean, the hospitality and kindness in Madrid has always been spectacular. Again, this is my fifth year here. I love it so much. My mission has always been to help independent restaurants build their brand, strengthen their team and increase their profits. If I can be of any service to you, you can always reach out to me@Donalderestaurantcoach.com I want to say thank you for being here today. I Finish up at 27 seconds left.