In this conversational panel, the speakers examine why restaurant profit leaks occur, emphasizing that leaders often react emotionally—hiring more staff or blaming market slowdown—rather than applying strategic frameworks. Speaker B recounts their pre‑TIEC experience of fluctuating sales, over‑staffing, and reactive hiring, and how adopting the TIEC/TRC method helped them step back, assess true head‑count needs, and implement flexible scheduling that lets employees shift between 35‑ and 40‑hour weeks. The discussion also highlights missed revenue opportunities: while seated dining declines, private events, off‑site catering, and wholesale channels can offset losses if leaders overcome limiting beliefs. Speaker C critiques the industry’s tendency to accept the status quo, introducing the “Circle of Control” concept to shift focus from external excuses to internal actions. Overall, the dialogue underscores the importance of mindset shifts, data‑driven labor management, and diversified revenue streams to plug profit leaks.
Chapters
When before you guys started with the TIEC method, what was like your biggest, you think your profitability leak?
I think riding the roller coaster and these peaks of valleys of sales, you know, I think we would just say, yeah, we're just slowing sales. We're, you know, we're okay with running 18, 19 hourly labor. That's just, is what it is. We'll be busy in a couple weeks. You know, flexibility of that. I think we've become more flexible because we communicate better to employees. We've done a better job at finding efficiency. And so we don't need a lot of people. And so when we, when we flex down, those people go to 35 hours. But when we flex, when we get busy, they just go to 40 hours, you know, and they can live within that. And I think we've done better at understanding the head count, you know, that we need as opposed to having a bad Friday night that was really two hours of bad. And then thinking, oh, we gotta go hire four people. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. But we just gotta solve the two hour problem. And I think that's a mindset thing. That TRC method kind of helps you step away from and then solve the actual problem as a. As opposed to letting emotions make the problem bigger than it actually is. And then the other thing is maybe our mindset on new opportunities is that because we're busy, we're not looking at off site events and catering. And where can Loblolly really, you know, run this wholesale thing? I think, I think we just kind of had limiting beliefs on where some of this stuff could go and grow.
What it could be yet.
And I think we've been able to, we've been able to really key into that as we've seen kind of a little bit of a downward trend in like seated dining that we've been able to kind of make up for that in private events and off site catering and stuff like that, which has been really nice kind of counterbalance that has happened and in some situations, uncertain financial times for a lot of people.
So I think, I think so many leaders in the restaurant industry just accept the status quo. Like they just think, well, that's just.
What's that?
That's just what it is. It is what it is. And I always say, no, it's what you, what you allow. And when, like, you know, you can take it for face value, like, oh, it just slow market slow, you know, sales are down, people aren't coming to restaurants, or you can say, okay, well what. What am I going to do about it? Like, what do I have control of?
We talk about that CoC, circle of control a lot. Like, what's in your CoC. What's in your circle of control? Well, there's a lot of things inside your circle. Control.
