Donald Burns introduces the "Profit Rocket," a program aimed at restaurants operating below 5% profitability. He frames the approach as a three-part ‘triage’—Airway (budgets), Bleeding (P&L), and Circulation (organic marketing)—arguing that fixing those three areas restores financial health and connects to cultural and communication issues within teams.
I have a new kind of a program I've been teaching. It's called the Profit Rocket. And the Profit Rocket is all about. It's designed for restaurants below 5% profitability. And we focus just on three things. And I usually. I got the idea from my pararescue days from being a paramedic in combat search and rescue. And the thing was triage. In a triage situation, when you walk up on a patient, you check three things. Airway, bleeding, circulation. Because that's also very critical for any restaurant underperforming below 5%. So airway to me is budgets. If you don't have, you know, if you don't know where the money's going, you're just gonna like, you have no air. And then bleeding, of course, is your P L. Because most restaurants bleed out in their P and L because they don't understand the complexity of the P and L and understand where to really find that money that's missing or bleeding out. And then that C. Circulation is all about organic marketing. You've got to be top of mind. You got to stay up first of people. You got to keep that. That just that marketing machine going all the time. So this new protocol we've been teaching has been really, really powerful, and it kind of just ties into what you've been talking about is like people's man. They still. They don't have budgets or they blow their budgets or no one's. Everyone's communicating the budgets. It also goes back to that culture piece that you talked about also, as well.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
