Short excerpt from a YouTube video by Donald Burns titled 'The Profit Mistake Owners Ignore'. In this dialogue Donald Burns and a guest (Speaker B) discuss common restaurant profit problems: owners not knowing or managing their numbers, oversized portions priced too low (example: $8.99 meals implying food costs perhaps 50–60%), strong pre-COVID sales masking operational problems, and that adopting the TRC method helped the guest's restaurants survive. The tone is practical and cautionary, with first-person anecdotes.
Chapters
And what do you think is like, the biggest problem you see with restaurants when it comes to profitability?
Not managing your numbers or not knowing your numbers. Not knowing your numbers or managing them both.
Because just how many restaurants that we talk to, like, you know, in our group, like, don't even know their food costs? Yeah, it was like, oh, okay. We've gone into restaurants around here and we're looking, going, okay, there's like five, five customers and 10 employees wandering. Or do you go in those places, they do the huge, I mean, super sized portions and they're charged like 8.99. You're like, there's no way they're making money. No way. They're upside down. Like, their food cost has to be enough in a 50, 60% easy.
100%. Yeah, we see. You could just see. Unfortunately, you know, we were restaurant owners that we were restaurant owners.
Didn't know.
We didn't know. And, you know, when we, when we came to the TRC method and we started learning all this, I was just like, how in the heck are we even open?
I remember you said that. I remember, like years ago, you said, donald, I look at this, I don't even know how we stay alive. I don't know how we survived. But what happened was you were like, the number one thing a lot of restaurants do. Sales hide sins.
Yep.
Yeah. And you had really big sales before COVID And that hides a lot of sins because, hey, the cash is coming in exactly 100%.
Yeah.
You don't notice it when it's coming in like that. Yeah, when it's like that much, you don't notice it. Yeah. But then when it gets tight, you're like, yeah, exactly.
We would not be in business without the TRC. 100%. No way.
