A restaurant owner with decades of experience describes how his business declined after COVID—losing staff, hiring "warm bodies," and losing culture—and credits a book (and working with the speaker) for reversing the decline over roughly two years. The speaker reports buying multiple copies of the book for managers and says the restaurants no longer "suck."
You know, I've been in business as an owner for 30. We're in our 38th year. But after Covid, you know, we took a dive, man. Our culture took a dive. We were. We lost a lot of people. We're in a university town. There are two colleges in this town. And we were used to, for over three decades, hiring only a candidate. We could pick and choose A plus. That's it. A plus candidates. But after Covid, you know, we were. We were hiring warm bodies. Yeah, it takes a whole different management skill set to manage warm bodies than it did A plus candidates. And we weren't good at it at all. And we took a dip in every aspect of our business, and culture was gone, basically. And I was probably before I made my first call to you, which I actually did, the book on tape, your restaurant sucks. Your first. And then I went to Amazon and bought, like, 10 copies and started passing them out to all the managers, because at the time, our restaurant sucked. Like I say in the forward to your new book, the first line in the piece, I think is the very first line says, my restaurant sucked. Yeah. And it did. But you know what? Today, I think we've worked together for a little over two years. None of our restaurants suck today.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
