Fix THIS or Your Restaurant Will Keep Struggling

Most restaurants don’t have a sales problem, they have a people development problem. When you break down inconsistent service, weak guest retention, bad reviews, and high turnover, it almost always comes back to the same root issue: underdeveloped training, weak leadership, and broken systems. 

In this video, we break down a complete restaurant training and onboarding system designed to fix that at the source.

What you’ll learn in this video ✔️

✔️ How to build a restaurant training system that creates consistency at every level
✔️ How to turn employees into high-performing “drivers” instead of passive “passengers”
✔️ How guest experience directly drives sales, reviews, and retention
✔️ How to fix leadership gaps by developing managers, not just hiring them
✔️ How to create a culture of accountability where “that’s not my job” disappears
✔️ How to onboard staff so they are aligned, bought in, and ready to execute from day one

We also cover mindset and leadership principles like Kaizen (1% daily improvement), the “driver vs passenger” mentality, and why discomfort is necessary for growth. You’ll see how proper onboarding builds buy-in first, before any real training even begins, and why that changes everything about execution inside your restaurant.

At the core of it, restaurants don’t scale because of better menus or more marketing, they scale because of better systems and better people. When you develop your team intentionally, you increase sales, improve guest experience, reduce turnover, and build a stronger culture across the board.

If you want to build a restaurant that runs on systems instead of stress, this is where it starts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So what if you had a staff underneath you that executed exactly how you wanted? You train them once and they executed exactly how you want them to execute. It doesn't matter if it's a GM, a cashier, a server, bartender, a host, director of operations, whoever, you bring this staff member in, you train them, and they execute exactly how you want to. You basically can clone yourself into them, right? It's absolutely doable, and a lot of companies do this, right? But a lot of companies don't, especially restaurants. Restaurants are the worst at training, the worst at developing people. We've analyzed over a thousand restaurants and we've helped scale over 350 of them. Big thing we've noticed, right? Number one problem, why you're not getting the results you want, that affects sales, it affects reviews, it affects employee turnover, it affects guest retention, it affects food product, it affects quality, it affects inconsistencies, it affects everything in the business, and that's that your people are underdeveloped. Why? Because your training's underdeveloped and your systems are underdeveloped. So you need to fix that. That's problem number one. That's the leak. Now, there's a lot of distractions, right? Oh, I have a sales problem. Do I need to lower prices? Do I need to increase menu items? Do I need to increase upsells? Do I need to cut labor, right? There's a lot of things that start going into the mix with stuff like that. But again, we have a sales problem because your people are underdeveloped. Like bottom line, period, right? If you have a sales problem, that means you probably have a guest retention problem. That guest retention problem is because you're giving a lackluster guest experience, right? And we're gonna go into that a little bit later. But that lackluster guest experience is leading to people not coming back as often, not telling their friends and family, not leaving good reviews, and even worse, leaving upset, never coming back, and then of course telling people never to come back there again, never go there. And now you have bad marketing, bad word of mouth going out like crazy, which is going to spread like wildfire eventually. We need to fix this problem first. We have to develop our people. So now you might say, well, Preston, we have a leadership problem because our leadership team isn't properly leading our people. Why do you have a leadership problem? You have a leadership problem not because you don't care, and not because you have a bad person in that role, it's because they're underdeveloped once again. We have to develop them as much as humanly possible. There's a saying in the marketing world that whoever can spend the most money on marketing will win. But I have a saying in the restaurant world for hospitality, whoever can spend the most time with their people will win. If you can spend more time with your people developing them, then you'll win. But it doesn't matter if you're spending time with them, if you're not spending time with them teaching them and training them and nurturing the right things, being intentional with that time. I can sit in a boardroom with them, sit in a booth with them all day long, sit in the office with them all day long. Doesn't matter if I'm not teaching them intentionally the right things, guiding them the right way, developing them in the right direction. I want to show you how to do that. So with a smaller company, if you have 10 units or less, this will be really effective. Now, if you have 10 units or more, feel free to reach out, we'll show you how to do this. You're gonna have to do it at scale, right? It's a different process, but it's still the same teachings, you're still gonna learn something major here. But if you have 10, check this out, okay? So I wanna show you what it would look like to do a proper onboarding, okay, with a leader. And if you're seriously dedicated, a server or bartender would benefit dramatically from having an onboarding process like this, right? So either a GM, an owner, or a director of operations or a manager can walk them through this process, but they have to do it with a little bit of tenacity. They have to do it with a little bit of confidence, right? So, first of all, we don't want to look for indifference, okay? So now pretend you're the employee. I'm walking you through this process as a trainer. I'm gonna walk through the process. This is a system, right? This is a system that's dedicated to getting employee buy-in. Because right now, that's what you're missing, first and foremost, is employee buy-in. You need them bought in, then we can train them. We can't train them without them being bought in. They need to be bought in, then we train them. This is a buy-in process of the onboarding. So don't look for indifference. That's what I'm gonna tell them right now. Do not look for indifference. Don't sit here and tell me this is for the know-it-alls, right? This is for the person who's done it for a long time. This is a person who thinks they know best, or the person that doesn't want to be here. Don't look for indifference. That's a big piece of the puzzle, okay? And then we go to this image. Now, this image has a bunch of colors, right? A bunch of objects with a bunch of different colors, either green, purple, yellow, or blue, right? And I'll say, you don't want to look for indifferences, okay? So I'll ask them, I'll say, I'm gonna give you a test right now. First test, okay? Spend the next five seconds telling me how many green items are on the screen. And of course, they're gonna jump in, they're gonna be like, oh my god, they're gonna be looking and they're gonna be counting. Some of them might be like, they might yell the answer before with the five seconds is up. They're gonna go, oh, 16, right? And then you stop them and they're gonna say, How many items on the screen were purple? And they're gonna stop. And they're like, wait, no, I thought you said green. I did. How many items on the screen were purple? Well, I don't know. I was just looking for the green items, exactly. Don't look for the indifferent. Whatever you're looking for, you're gonna find, right? Today, when we do this onboarding process, when I'm teaching you things, when we're going through this process, whatever you're looking for, you're gonna find. If you're looking for negativity, if you're looking for the wrong answer, if you're looking for something that you've already found, that's what you're gonna find. But if you're looking for a solution, if you're looking to get better today, if you're looking to benefit your life today by learning something new, that's what you're gonna find. So what's your mindset at? You'd ask them that. Oh no, I wanna do something great, right? I'm no, I'm looking for, you know, I want to learn something new. Awesome. So now you're starting to shape their mindset little by little, right? You're starting to pattern interrupt. They might have done some training like this before, they might have done a restaurant training before, not like this. Now we're switching it up, especially for leadership, okay? Now we're going to this 20%. Why does this number matter? We tell people, this number matters. This number matters for everybody involved, okay? This number matters for you, it numbers it matters for the guests, it matters for me, it matters for everyone. Why does it matter? Because that's how much the cost of living has gone up since 2020. In over five years, and it's actually probably more by now, but in six short years, the cost of living has gone up by 20%. That's important to know, okay, for a couple reasons. One, if we kept up on that trajectory, the world would be crazy, right? But this made damage, okay? This made an impact, which means that every dollar I earn is now worth 80 cents since 2020. That's a big deal. And we have to focus on that. We have to understand that that's a big deal for us and for the guests, right? First of all, the guests' money is now worth less, which means that they're gonna eat out less, which means that they chose us, that they're going to choose us. And if they choose us, we have to honor that. Just like you, now that you know that your money is worth 20% less, you value it more, correct? Right? Well, so does the guest when they walk in the door. So we have to honor that. We're they're not just a number, right? They are a guest that chose us, and we have to honor that, okay? But also, we want you to understand that your money is worth less. And if you had a bet, do you think that number is going up or down in the future? Of course, they're gonna say it's going up, right? Yeah, that's right, that number is going up. That means your money's gonna be worth even less in the future. And why I'm telling you this is because it's gonna be harder and harder and harder to become successful. It's gonna be harder and harder harder to get the money that you want, to travel whenever you want, to have that time freedom, right? To live that life, right? To be able to go on vacation and spend money, right? That's gonna be less of an opportunity. You're gonna be stuck into a paycheck-to-paycheck life, right? No one wants to do that. So we wanna get you out of that. We want you to be able to retire when you want to. If your family needs money, you're gonna be able to provide them money. If a family member needs money, for example, they're in a hot tough situation, you can loan them that money, right? If you wanna buy something nice for your kids, you can buy something nice for your kids. You have that luxury if you're gonna be in that successful category. But becoming successful is just shrinking as this number goes up because it makes it harder and harder, right? I'm telling you this because I want you to be successful here so you can take some of those characteristics, some of those skill sets and be successful at the next stop, wherever you end up, or become wildly successful here and we can make you rich and prosperous, right? If you have a you know a big enough company where you can have a big enough ladder. If you don't, awesome. I want you to take these skill sets and go to the next place. And you might say, I hear this sometimes, Preston. So you want me to train them up and then they leave? Yes, absolutely. Because if you can train up a rock star who absolutely becomes a killer with full buy-in and eventually, yes, they're gonna leave. That's what people do, that's life, right? If the company doesn't grow and they can't grow with the company, then they'll leave. That's okay because we just learned how to train rock star, right? We're training rock stars, we're building them up. They can come into our ecosystem and we're gonna get a lot out of them, way more than if we had a GM that stuck around for 20 years, giving us a half uh effort, right? So we wanna focus on this heavily. We wanna focus on developing our people at the highest level possible and getting them motivated, understanding we wanna make you successful, we're gonna teach you some skill sets to do that. All we're asking you to do is show up and give us 110%. Outside of that, we're gonna develop those skill sets for you, but you're you're required to do that. This is what we do, this is our philosophy or ideology or mindset. Are you okay with that? Yeah, absolutely. Let's go, right? Now they're starting to get a little bit excited. Now we're starting to give them a mission. Now we're starting to show them that they're part of the plan. We care. We're here to develop them. They're not a workhorse, they're not just here to exert energy, we're here to develop them into a better version of themselves. Now, going into this piece too, we're talking to them, okay? Right now, we're gonna be talking, we're gonna be learning, this is an onboarding process. Knowledge is not power, okay? Knowledge with action is power, okay? If we know the knowledge, but we don't take action, what's the point? It's all for nothing. If you have a guy who goes into a kung fu studio and trains for six months, gets his face punched in, and you have a guy who reads about kung fu, studies it in a book for six years. Who are you putting your money on if they get into a fist fight? I'll take the guy who's getting his face punched in, okay? And now we also want to go into the lobster effect. I want to talk to them about this as we're onboarding, right? The lobster effect, basically it's a it's a it's a philosophy, right? So when a lobster has to grow out of its shell, what happens is a lobster gets really big in its shell and it gets super tight, and it gets to a point, it gets so uncomfortable, it signals to the lobster's brain that it needs to go into a dark cave underwater, shed its shell in order to grow a new one. So that's what it does. It goes underwater, sheds its shell, grows a new one. What's the moral of the story? In order to grow, we have to get uncomfortable, right? And that's what you want to explain to them too. What makes you uncomfortable? As a leader, as a server, as a bartender, as a host, what makes you uncomfortable right now? Is it having conversations with people when they walk in the door? Is it having uncomfortable conversations with employees that aren't living up to our standards? Is it being consistent with accountability? What is it? Is it calling people out in the moment when you have to get them to execute their job? Whatever it is, let's talk about that and let's start developing that skill set, right? Let's get you uncomfortable in order for you to grow. And we're expecting that of you. We're expecting you to get uncomfortable to grow. And so we wanna have a certain type of employee with a certain type of mindset. We want you to be successful, but we need you to reframe where you're at, right? We need you to focus on these things, okay? What does success look like? And so we break it down into these two categories, drivers and passengers. Really simple, right? A driver, I'll do it now. A passenger, I'll do it when, right? So a driver, we'll give you a task that do it, we ask you to execute something, you got it, I'm gonna do it right now, and we're on it. A passenger, I'll do it when I get more staff. I'll do it when we get more resources, I'll do it when we're not understaffed, I'll do it when it's it becomes an excuse driver, right? A driver compares themselves to their potential, a passenger compares themselves to other people. So a driver is comparing themselves to potential, right? How did I do today, right? I did, I didn't do as well as I think I should have done, right? Because I think I'm capable of this. Today I performed up here. Even though it wasn't bad, right? I should have been up here and I know it. I know I fell short of my standards, I know I fell short of my potential. I gave 90%, not 115%, not 120%. I need to focus on going back to that version of myself where I give 120%. Versus a passenger who compares themselves to other people. Well, he's not doing it, she's not doing it, why should I do it, right? That's a passenger. A driver, the successful seek feedback, right? Passengers, the unsuccessful seek validation, right? So a driver, I want feedback, okay? I want constructive criticism. I want you to tell me how I can improve. And I'm not gonna get offended, I'm not gonna get upset, I'm going to listen to get better, right? I'm going to listen and get better and grow. I want to grow, I want to get better. I'm not gonna say, oh, because I'm maybe older than you or I have more experience than you, or I just think I'm just better at this job than you and you're my leader, that I don't have to listen. I don't have to no, I wanna listen. What do you have to say? I'm gonna listen and try and get better. I take all kinds of constructive criticism. A passenger, I want validation. Tell me I'm doing a good job, right? Tell me if you don't tell me I'm doing a good job, why does he never say I'm doing a good job? I work so hard, they never acknowledge it. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? No, no, no. Tell me how I can get better, right? I know when I'm doing a good job. I'm aware of it, right? I have my standards, I'm fully aware of it. Now, just tell me how I can get better. For a driver, success is built on no matter what. For passengers, failure is built on if everything goes right. Okay, so a driver, right? I we're gonna accomplish this no matter what. If you give me a task, it's going to get done. I'm not gonna let time get in the way, I'm not gonna let energy get in the way, I'm not gonna let resources get in the way, I'm not gonna let people get in the way. I am going to execute that. I'm not gonna let knowledge get in the way, right? If I don't know how to do it, I'm gonna figure it out. A driver, I have to have perfect conditions, right? I have to have perfect conditions, I need to have the perfect amount of staff, or I need to have the perfect amount of tools, or I need to have the perfect amount of energy, I need to have a perfect amount of things going on that are well going well in my day. I have to be in a certain mood, right? I have to have the perfect amount of knowledge. If you don't tell me exactly how to do it, then I'm not going to execute it. Those are the differences, right? Drivers, high performers master the mundane. Passengers, the average are distracted by the novel, right? So high performers master the mundane. We master the simple stuff, we master the boring stuff, we but we can't stay consistent and do it every single day in order to raise everything else, right? To raise the standard, to raise the tide. Passengers, they get distracted by the novel, right? I want to try this shiny new thing, or maybe I want to cut a corner, make it make it simple, right? But it has to be exciting for me to be bought in. And so we have to ask them, what are you a driver or are you a passenger? You can't pick and choose. If you're just picking passenger stuff, then you're probably a passenger, right? If you're picking a driver stuff, you're probably a driver. If you're picking mostly passenger, you're probably a passenger. Even if you pick one passenger, that probably means you're a passenger disguised just as a driver, trying to disguise yourself as a driver. A driver is a driver full through, full in, full out. And so as we're talking to them, we're getting to understand, oh my gosh, they might say, I am a passenger, but I want to be a driver, right? I didn't even connect the dots. We're just framing things and putting things into perspective for them. And also setting expectations. We want you to be a driver. Okay, can you be a driver? Is that possible? And people that might have never thought of themselves as drivers all of a sudden see a path to do it and they're more motivated to do it, right? Now you've given them goals, you've given them milestones to start hitting. And then obviously you're gonna build that into your training and your systems in your actual restaurant. Sounds complicated, it's not. And then we go into this quote, right? Napoleon Hill, an amazing author, um, really focuses on mindset, changing your mindset, getting you out of the paycheck-to-paycheck mentality. The man who does more than what he's paid for will soon be paid for more than what he does. And I always tell people, this is it. This is always going to be true. Nothing's gonna change this. The man who does more than what he's paid for will soon be paid for more than what he does. If we're showing up here to get a paycheck and we're saying I'm never gonna work past this paycheck, then that's exactly how much you're worth. Your time is value, right? We need to leverage our time to make our time more valuable in the future. If I'm making$15 an hour, how do I change that to make$1,500 an hour? Well, I can tell you what I can't, well what's not gonna do that, is if I work$15 worth an hour, right? That's not gonna do it. But if I work$45 an hour and then train myself to work 60, 70, 80, 90, eventually my pay is going to chase that, right? My pay is going to dictate that. It's gonna follow that, right? In one way, shape, or form. But I have to start working more than what I'm being paid for. And if I sit here and say, well, I'm only getting paid$15 an hour, so that's all the work I'm doing, well, then you're labeling your time and you're making your value, that's what I'm valued at. I'm valuing my own time at$15 an hour versus I'm gonna value my time at$80 an hour, I'm gonna work$80 an hour worth of work. And right now I'm not getting paid that, right? But I am working that, I'm training myself to do it, I'm teaching myself to do it, I'm growing my, I'm leveraging my time now, so in the future, my time will be more valuable. And so this quote means everything. And we can't let our ego dictate our job performance. And a lot of people do that, they attach their ego to their job. So this is my ego telling me that I'm better than this job. This is my ego telling me that I'm I I deserve more money, I deserve better, I deserve something, right? There's the conditions aren't perfect, so I have an excuse of why I'm not performing at a high level, why I'm only showing up at 80, 70, 60%, right? Why I'm coasting. I have an ego telling me that. Because deep down inside, I have my standards, I know my standards are telling me you're you're wrong. You're failing, you're dropping the ball, you're letting yourself down. But my ego comes in and says, no, no, no, no, right? You're better than this job. So it doesn't even matter how you perform here. You have those two things fighting. You got to get rid of your ego and understand what it's talking to you because your ego never presents itself as an ego, presents itself as a voice of reason. You have to be able to understand when that is, and you let your standards tell you, right? If your standards are telling you something's wrong, you should listen. Okay, so now we go into Kaizen. Again, I always ask people in the room, if there's if there's multiple people, I say, who here isn't a personal development? Who wants to get better as a person? In some way, some shape, some form. Of course, everyone raises their hand. Okay, what have you done lately to do that? Um, well, I uh okay, it sounds like you don't have a plan or you've kind of fallen off of it, and that's okay, right? That's normal. But what we want to figure out is why. And usually it's because people just don't have a game plan, right? They want this thing, but they don't do the work. And it's not because they're lazy, it's just because they don't have a game plan. We're gonna give you the game plan, right? It's called Kaizen. It's a Japanese philosophy of getting 1% better every single day. Can you commit to getting 1% better every single day at some aspect of your job? Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. What if you did that for 100 days in a row? What would that look like? Well, that'd be 100%. Okay, great. Now we're cooking with fire here. So what we want to focus on is Kaizen. How are we gonna do that? Well, you're gonna set your alarm on your phone to go off at 8 a.m., whatever time, every single day. You're gonna label it kaizen, and then it's gonna remind you did I get 1% better yesterday? If I didn't, why didn't I? And what am I gonna do today to get 1% better? It's just a reflection, right? It's a reflection, it's understanding, it's being consistent, and it's again mastering the mundane, right? But this is how we start getting them to change their mindset to get bought in. And then we start going into the actual training. So now we've actually molded their mindset a little bit, right? We got them thinking, we got them thinking outside the box, right? We got them caring, we got them feeling cared for, right? We're talking to them, but we care. That's why we're bringing up these things, that's why we're not going straight into business. And then we go into the experience, right? What is our mission here? What is our one mission? Our one mission is experience. Through and through. Bottom line, they were here to give the guests the best experience possible. We're here to give the customer the best experience possible, whatever it is. We're here to give them the best experience possible. That's why we exist. If you're a restaurant and you think, well, I exist to serve food and then create memories, okay, sure. What does that end result look like? It's an experience. We give them experience. When they walk out the door, they've officially had an experience with you. What experience did you leave them with? A great experience, an okay experience, a decent experience. Hey, the food was great, services okay, it was fine. It was mediocre. They were really nice, right? Kind of checked the boxes. Seemed like the guy didn't want to be there, but he was nice. He smiled the whole time, checked the boxes, not really impressed. Food was good. Yep, food was really good. But there's also really good food down there, and there's also really good food down there. The only difference is down there, the servers seem like they freaking want to be there and they seem like they really care and they're really nice, right? If I have an issue, I can ask anybody. Here, this hostess was okay, right? Food runner seemed like they didn't want to be there. Buster seemed like he hated his life. Server was pretty nice, right? Checking boxes, but down there, hostess, busser, food runner, everyone in the building's freaking amazing. I don't know where they get their staff, right? I'm gonna choose that place. We have to give the guests the best experience possible. That's why we exist. Everybody's job is the same. Our job is to give the guests the best experience possible. That is our end result of our job. How we execute that, maybe hosting, right? Maybe that's the main function, but ultimately our goal is to give the guests the best experience possible. Now, when we have that mantra and that mentality built into our restaurant and our culture through and through, what that does eliminates one dreadful comment that people make all the time, which is that's not my job. Because that is your job. Your job is to give the guests the best experience possible. So if I ask you to do something outside the scope of your main function, then you're happy to do it because it's part of giving the guests the best experience possible. Okay. So I go over all of this. We have a whole training process. I'm just showing you, I'm giving you a peek of how you can train outside the box, how you can actually get buy-in from your staff, how you can develop your people slowly but surely to make them full bought-in rock stars, right? We no longer rely on hiring rock stars because one out of ten is gonna be rock star if we're lucky. Instead of doing that, we're gonna hire 10 people and seven of them are gonna be developed into rock stars, right? Instead of us saying, hopefully we get one out of that 10. All of a sudden, all of our success metrics go up across the board in the restaurant, sales go up, reviews go up, morale goes up, culture goes up, everything goes up across the board in the restaurant for you, in your business, whether it's a restaurant or not, it's gonna go up if we spend time developing our people intentionally and in the right way. Hopefully that helps.