Your Host Is Costing You Thousands (Here’s Why)

Are your hosts secretly hurting your restaurant’s growth?

Most restaurant owners massively underestimate the power of the host role and it’s costing them sales, guest retention, and long-term success.

In this podcast, Preston Lee talks why your host (or cashier in QSR) is actually one of the most important positions in your entire operation and how failing to properly define, hire, and train this role leads to mediocre guest experiences, poor reviews, and lost revenue.

You’ll learn how to reframe the host position, build a structured hiring process, and create a hospitality-driven culture that drives consistency, increases retention, and ultimately boosts your sales.

This isn’t about “being nice” or “smiling more.”
This is about building a system that creates repeat guests, stronger teams, and a scalable restaurant business.

In this podcast, I break down:
✔️ Why most restaurants completely misunderstand the host role
✔️ The biggest hiring mistake managers make in interviews
✔️ Why “the basics” are actually hurting your guest experience
✔️ How operating out of fear leads to underperformance
✔️ How to create a system that actually drives consistency and growth

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So I want to talk about something very important, and that's hosts. Okay. Your hosts are so important. And I don't care if you're a QSR, um, I don't care if you're a pizza shop, a cafe, or a fine dining restaurant, your host's important. Now, I get it, right? QSR, I don't have a host, Preston. Well, your cashier is your host then. So we gotta understand the host's role. And a lot of times, this is where I see companies fail, right? Restaurants fail, businesses fail. They fail because they improperly frame the role that they're giving their employees. Okay. So I'll give you an example. You're a host. Your job is to see people, greet them, smile, uh, try and open the door for them, make conversation with them, all these little things, but they don't really talk about the actual role and the importance of the role. They don't distill it down to what it is, right? Every role should be framed this way, but we want to talk about the fact that as a host, right? If I was hiring a host on, okay, I was interviewing a host, interviewing needs to be consistent. Your manager, supervisor, GM, owner, whoever it is, they need to interview the same way every single time. Okay? Now you might say, Well, Preston, what if I have three interviews with someone or two interviews with someone? You want to structure it as half of the interview is vetting the person, and then half the interview is setting expectations. So the first half, when you're vetting the person, right, that's when you kind of ask questions. And those should be good questions. If you're asking someone, for example, when's the last time a guest was upset and how did you make them happy? You just tee them up to give you a story that they could just make up. Because you gave them the you the result that you want, right? You said, What was a problem, and then here's a and how did you get to this solution, right? Well, when was the last time a guest was upset and what did you do to fix a problem? So, for example, that right there, I would say, when's the last time you dealt with an upset guest? And you stop right there. Now they don't know where to go with the story, right? They're obviously gonna figure out a way to tell you, but first of all, don't ever tee them up. Second of all, ask them questions they're not used to. Ask them questions like when's the last time you think that someone didn't enjoy working with you as a coworker? Now they have to actually dig, and if they're if they're making up stories, the more questions you ask, the more they have to dig and the more to make up, they start all of a sudden acting a little bit different, right? They start getting, you're putting them on their heels. And if someone's being honest with you, well, they're just gonna be honest with you and they're gonna tell you the their honest thoughts, and then you can make an honest decision, right? But those are questions that are important to ask, right? Those out-of-the-box questions. Because if you ask some uh a bartender how to make a drink, they're gonna probably know how to answer that question. When's the last time you did this? Are you on time a lot? What's your worst quality? What's your best quality? I mean, those are all questions that they it doesn't give you an answer, right? It doesn't give you a true answer of that person. But if you ask those really nuanced, reframed questions, it's gonna give you that person's real personality and what they're probably really like at work. You'll be sure you'll be shocked. Second piece is setting expectations. So if I'm interviewing a host, I would say, I want you to understand, first of all, it's really important to understand that your job, your number one job, your number one focus is to give the guest the best experience possible. That is our undying mission as a company, and that needs to be your undying mission as well. So, first and foremost, your job role, your job function is to make sure that you're giving every guest that comes in the door the best experience possible, that you're contributing to that experience, which means when they're walking out the door, when they're walking in the door, if you're walking to the bathroom and they're walking out of the bathroom, if you're walking someone to the table and you cross paths with someone while you're walking the guest to the table, all of that matters. And you need to be actively doing things to make sure the guest has the best experience possible. With that, the basics won't cut it. For example, if you're walking a guest to their table and you walk and you ask them how their day is, that's not gonna cut it. That's not giving the guest the best experience possible. That is doing the basic, right? You're just going over a kind of like a script. You're being robotic. Sitting someone down, handing them a menu and saying, Brian's your server and he'll be right with you, enjoy your meal. That's the basis. That's not gonna cut it. We need someone who's going to be able to give a little bit more, who's going to be able to be more conversational, be outside the box, be more outgoing, really, really requires that kind of tenacity. Are you gonna be okay with that? Of course, they're gonna say yes, nine times out of ten. Some people might voice um concerns. I don't know, I'm a I'm a shy person. Okay, you're a shy person. If we're willing to work with you and we set up, give you tools to get you outside of your shyness, get you outside of your shell, make you better at communicating, which will help you a lot in life, by the way. It's gonna help you in your relationships, in your personal life, and you know, at school, everything, if we do that, would you be uh would you be okay? Would you take that direction? And if we give you milestones, would you be okay with hitting them and us holding you accountable? Is that okay, right? See, do you but do you see how you're starting to set expectations? And they go, yeah, okay, and yeah, but if someone's gonna say no, if a host tells you no, I'm shy and I want to talk to guests, and so I'm not willing to do that, no, but then that's a really good indicator that maybe you shouldn't hire that person. But nine times out of ten or eight times out of ten, they're gonna just gonna say yes, right? They're gonna say yes, absolutely. Okay, so you just just to be clear, if these things aren't met, right, about giving the guests the best experience possible, if we don't see an honest effort and these things aren't getting met, we're gonna hold you accountable. Are you okay with that? Are you okay with being held accountable? You know, you know, if it's gonna be a verbal warning and then a written warning, and then we're gonna find out if maybe this isn't a if this is a good place for you to work or not. Setting those expectations. Now it might seem harsh or intense, and I'm gonna already hear the backlash. Preston's so hard to hire hosts. Preston's so hard to keep hosts, right? If you're running your operations and your business out of fear, right? I'm fearful that I can't hire a host, so I'm gonna take less of a host, less less standards, or I'm afraid to hold a host accountable because they might quit, and it's hard to hire hosts, so I'm willing to lower standards. It's gonna be a rough road. You're going to always underperform. Your numbers are gonna underperform, your reviews are gonna underperform, your employee morale, everything in your business will underperform when you're saying I'm willing to operate out of fear. We're gonna have to set up a business and a culture and operations, a front of the house operations to where people are going to stay. You know, we're gonna have a hiring process and we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna pool correctly, but then when we hire people, we're gonna have an operations where people are gonna wanna stay regardless of the pay, regardless of the generation, because there's companies out there that do it all the time. And it's not about pay. The companies that have some of the highest retention rate are some of the lowest paying wages. And I'm saying like just barely above minimum wage in this role, right? But they're giving their employees an environment that they want to stay in. And that that means structure, that means good leadership, that means great training, and that means consistency. So we want to focus on that as the hiring process, right? Now we move into move out of the hiring process, we go into the training process, we're gonna train the same things, we're gonna train how to give the guests the best experience possible. We're gonna talk about that all the time. We're gonna make that our main focus. That should be something we talk about constantly. Not be really nice, people enjoy that. Hospitality is good, we like it. Try and treat them like they're your friends and family. Be smile really big, people like it. No, we wanna make sure that we're obsessively talking about hospitality and guest experience, giving the guests the best experience possible. That is our number one mission, number one goal. It's clearly an obsession in the company. It's clearly an obsession of all the employees, right? And we're going to talk about that over and over again in our training process. We're gonna give the technical piece, but for example, right, technical piece. It's like we're not keeping our eyes on the screen, we're keeping our eyes on the guest. We take a moment and we input it, right? And then we or we write it down before we actually take them. Because there's a million ways you can run a host stand, and usually nine times out of ten, people do it the worst way possible. Now, there's a couple of things too when you set up your host stand. First of all, one thing you want to make your mission, okay, and this is where restaurants fail, because you have to understand the United States is one of the few countries where the host is not a management role. So if you go to, like, for example, Australia, if you want to become a host in Australia, you have to get moved up into that position because that's basically like a management role. It's the first management role you'll get, kind of like a supervisor, right? So if it's like, I want to become management, okay, cool, absolutely. First, we're gonna move you up to host, right? And that'll be your first management role. And you're gonna run the host stand. That's what you do when you come in, you run the host stand. Why? Why do they have a manager role? Because that's the most one of the most important roles, right? That's a first thing people see, it's a first impression. It's the it's it's also dictating the the flow of business. It could be the difference between a half a churn because you have the right host. Instead of trying to force a minimum wage host to understand that, get it, and do it, it's a lot easier to train a manager who's bought in, willing to do it, understands the task a lot more. So that's how important this role is. So we have to stress and press upon them why that role is important. I can give you example after example after example after example that even good restaurants have weak host operations. And you as a consumer can feel the same exact way. You as a consumer can say, I've gone to uh, you know, a hundred restaurants, and I can tell you 90% of the host experiences are lackluster at best, are mediocre at best, right? That's average. And there's a couple of things you can pay attention to that you can change right now in your restaurant if you so choose to. One is the computer screen, right? We have to train our host and give our host tools and give our host accessibility to not stare at the screen. There's a couple of different ways around this. One, they write the information down. For example, they put the information in after they seat the guest. What was your last name? Okay, and your phone number? Awesome. Okay, fantastic. I'm gonna seat you at your table. Are you ready? There obviously, if there's a reservation, they're gonna have to look, but that's we talk about it like it's a quick look, right? We're just glancing and we're back up into our eyes, right? We're very rarely talking while we're inputting that. That's a definite, like a non-negotiable. You don't talk to the guest as you're putting in stuff, looking down at the screen. That lat that cuts off person ability all the way through, right? You're automatically letting them know this is just an this is just a transaction. So we're gonna eliminate that right away instantly. We're gonna fill this information out. And so the next piece is high level. We have another host on, okay? Either we we restructure the hosts the way they're set up, if we say it's a Saturday night or even a Thursday night, because I want to take my company seriously because I want the most guest retention possible because I'm trying to increase my revenue as high as possible. So I'm gonna do things to make sure I do that. Well, one of them is gonna be I'm gonna staff properly, right? And so I'm gonna add another host on a Thursday night when maybe I normally run with one or only two. And the reason why is because you want the host to be stand up like this. One host stands in front of the host stand, one host stands behind the host stand, one host sits, right? Guest walks in, the first thing they see is a guest host in front of the host stand, and she starts walking up to them. Why? Welcome, please, right this way, right? We go to the host stand. Did you have a reservation? Yes, it's under uh Lee. Awesome. The other host looks it up, they start a conversation. Um, are you celebrating anything tonight? Is your first time here? Uh, you know, whatever. As they're looking it up, oh, I found it, Mr. Lee. Okay, table 51. Awesome. So, Jennifer, it's gonna take you to your table. We're so excited to have you. Thank you very much for being here. I've heard people tell me before that's overkill, which is crazy to me to think that giving someone more attention and more of an experience and more care is going to be overkill. I think you might be in the wrong industry if you're thinking that. Now, here's the crazy part, right? This will work with restaurants that are expensive, restaurants that are, you know, a higher price point. It works really well. But it also works for other restaurants, right? I've had a burger and beer place that it worked at phenomenally. It's the point where sales went up, their church, um, customer satisfaction, right? The reviews went up. Obviously, there's some other things at play, but we're just fixing the hosts for now. But what was really crazy is um we saw uh reviews and sales go up at a pancake house, right? I can't say it because there's an NDA to it, but there was a pancake house we work with where the owner has three locations, and he had his actually just paid his manager, he brought in his manager, one of his managers, to sit up front and work that host stand in the front. And man, killed, killed. Knowing their name, shaking their hands, making conversation, right? Because they're on a wait usually, because that's what they do. They're busy, they focus on these things. So they're always on a wait in the mornings every day. And they're just and the and the manager is just there schmoozing the guests the entire time. And then and the first thing a normal owner would say was, How do I afford that? The owner we work with on this company is saying that's an investment, right? The second they heard it, they were the first company at their price point to embrace this strategy that we have, which I was a little bit surprised, but I was very happy about. And they invested in it on top of that by bringing on another manager to work that front. And the owner said, night and day, right? Our sales went up by almost 10% because we were able to churn, because we were able to focus on churning, because we were able to shake hands, we were seating people faster, having more conversations with them. By the way, we have a 45-minute wait. I know you see we're super slammed. Normally, guests would get upset because they would make the server say that, and usually the server wouldn't say that, the server would say it at the end, and then it would be messy, or the server wouldn't say it at all, and they would just hang out. But when the manager who's smoosing them and making them feel welcome and and and and them at building a relationship, the manager's now that we've earned that ability to ask them, they're much more uh happy to do it. Oh, yeah, you got it. Anything for you? Absolutely. We're like, we'll make sure you have the best experience possible. But if you could do that, that'd be so amazing. I would appreciate it. Thank you so much, right? Of course, we're happy to help. We like you, right? Their tables turned faster, and then their wait actually got longer. So what happened was people actually started enjoying waiting there, right? So before they would have a wait, okay, let's just go to the next restaurant. But no, I want to see Steve, right? So they'd go in, they would wait, and they would see Steve, and Steve would be schmoozing them as they'd go, and he'd be working the whole area. And so people enjoyed waiting, so the wait lasted longer. So instead of their breakfast window wait time ending at 11, it was starting to end at 1231, which means more full restaurant churns. So this has a lasting impact, right? That's why it's an investment because when we're working the tables, properly training the staff, allocating our resources in the right way, we're gonna be more successful. Now that's only one aspect of the business, right? What do we do when we start talking about food runners and servers and bartenders and you know the managers themselves, right? What role do they play to actually execute and increase brand value and guest retention, right? How do we increase guest retention? Through a hospitality experience, a consistent hospitality experience. Like remember one thing guest retention is basically another word for consistency. My consistency meter will directly impact my guest retention. It's a mirror, right? It's literally, right? You're never gonna get more consistent and less guest retention, but you will get less guest retention with less consistency, right? Again, it's a mirror, right? It's never gonna do this, it's always going to do this. So the bigger, the so the higher I can raise my consistency, the more guest retention I'm making. So basically, what I'm saying to you is the more you can master consistency in your business, the more revenue you'll bring in. And it's a compounding effect because it's retention. So retention works in a couple different ways, because one, we're retaining the guests, but two, they're gonna be start, they start becoming marketing machines for us. So they're gonna multiply as we go. So this will actually expand as we go up, right? So not only are we our guest retention is going up, but the amount of guests are actually going up as well. And so what we got to do is fix consistency. And and inside this consistency, trifecta are three things good food, good ambiance, amazing hospitality. Okay, good food, most people can get down. 90% of restaurants get it down. Good ambiance, is it clean? Make sure your place is clean, make sure you fix any tears in your upholstery, make sure that there's no spider webs and random spots, make sure that everything's clean, there's no sticky menus, there's no sticky tables ever. Oh, it's really busy. So what? So it's busy, we're gonna give the guests a less of experience and have an excuse for it. Hey, sorry about the table. We will we lower our standards when it gets busy. We let things happen like that. We accept it. No, we're gonna just keep those clean so those are consistent. And the third thing, which is what 95% of restaurants never get down. And the ones that do, you see them, right? Chick fil A, Bing Tai Feng, those big, giant corporate billion dollar companies, get the third one down. That's the secret, right? That's the difference. Master all those three consistently and watch your guest retention go up.