Top 10 Reasons Restaurant Management Fails

In this podcast, I break down the 8 biggest restaurant leadership problems I’ve seen after working with over 350 restaurants worldwide and evaluating more than 1,000 restaurant operations, from small mom-and-pop shops to multi-million dollar hospitality groups. 

And here’s the truth: the problems are always the same. The only difference is scale.

If you’re a restaurant owner, operator, or manager, this video will hit home. We cover real-world challenges around restaurant leadership, staff accountability, training systems, guest experience, and team culture and more importantly, how to actually fix them.

You’ll learn how to handle difficult guest interactions without lowering your hospitality standards, why allowing “small” issues like lateness destroys your culture, and how to create clear systems that hold your team accountable without relying on personalities. We also dive into how to deal with “bad apple” employees, how to turn around team performance through structure and consistency, and the simple behaviors that dramatically improve the guest experience.

This isn’t theory. These are proven strategies used across hundreds of successful restaurants to build high-performing teams, consistent service, and strong leadership cultures that drive revenue and retention.

So, If you’ve ever struggled with:

Inconsistent staff performance
Weak accountability systems
Poor guest experiences
High turnover or “bad apple” employees
Lack of training or leadership structure

…then this podcast will give you the clarity and direction you’ve been missing.

Transcript

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So we've worked with over 350 restaurants worldwide, and we've worked with countless leaders. And one thing that's been crazy to me, because we've evaluated about a thousand restaurants overall to see if we can work with them or not, the findings are always the same. The issues are always the same. That was the crazy part because sometimes we get a mom and pop shop from Arkansas, barbecue joints kind of in the middle of nowhere that does like$500,000 a year, and then we'll have like a hospitality group with a$250 million portfolio with dozens and dozens of concepts and uh across state lines. And so one thing we found to be true is that all the problems are the same. All the leadership problems are the same, all the staff problems are the same, all the training problems are the same, they're just bigger, right? Or maybe more elevated, more advanced, but they're basically the same thing. So we asked our leadership teams if they had any questions uh that they want to get answered right away. And I put eight of them together for you, and I'm gonna present them to you now. I'm gonna show you what their problems are for their leadership team, and I would be shocked if one, if not all, of these problems are something that you're facing or your leadership team is facing. And so I'm just gonna give you the nitty-gritty right here. And so the first question is are your guidelines on adapting the guest experience when a guest clearly prefers minimal interaction or is being rude or negative? First of all, we don't want to read too much into it, right? And we don't want to encourage that too much because if we train our staff saying, okay, if a guest wants a minimal interaction and you do this, that's a skill set that they kind of have to develop, but they have to develop it honestly because what's gonna happen is let's say we start enforcing these rules, then they're gonna always be saying, Oh, they didn't want it, they didn't want it. I can tell they didn't they want a minimal interaction, they want a minimal, they're gonna start just excusing their way out of it all the time. So let's say they get a secret shop, and you're gonna say, Well, they said they didn't want they want a minimal interaction, right? So you gotta be careful with that. It's all it's also for guests being rude. Now that's another thing, too, is we don't want them excusing their way out of a guest being rude because that's what's gonna happen when you're when you're training your servers or bartenders or human hosts, they're gonna say, Oh, like if something happens, the guest was rude. Oh, that guest was so rude. Oh, you have no idea how rude that guest was. I was just, I was just trying to like navigate it. They're rude. We don't know that. So we gotta have more of a mentality of saying, instead of saying if they're rude, you know, kind of pivot left or pivot right. Instead, we're saying if they're rude, let's just keep combating it with kindness, attract um flies with honey. Like, let's let's keep going on our trajectory, let's not judge the guests, right? I've had guests that are very rude before. I had a server that was that was really, really good with guests, and they had someone that had just like lost a family member. I forgot what happened. The guest was really rude and short to them about an iced tea. Um kind of went off on about an ice tea when they asked them if they wanted a lemon with the iced tea, but the server was so committed that it didn't even stop them, right? My apologies, I'll get that fixed for you right away, sir. And kept up with the kindness and and hospitality. And by the time he left, he said, I haven't smiled in a month. And this is the first time I did your server, it was amazing, right? We don't know what people are going through, so it's not our job to judge them. Also, with rude, I can have a group of 10 servers in right now, and I'll ask each and every one of them what they think rude is, and they'll all have different answers, right? What is rude? It's a subjective thing. So what we got to say is try and eliminate that. Now, if someone's being disrespectful, that's different. If someone's calling you name, if someone's like hitting on you, for example, those are things that are unacceptable. We don't uh allow that kind of behavior. But if someone's being short, uh, if someone's being difficult in the way of like they have a lot of needs, or they're maybe not being polite when they say that their food was overcooked, they're maybe being a little bit stern, then that's fine, right? If someone's ignoring you, that's fine, right? We want to kind of try and move past that. So you got to be really careful of letting things like, oh, if they're being rude or if they want minimal interaction, letting that dictate our hospitality experience because they will allow that to be an excuse, and then you're gonna find yourself with your hands tied behind your back. Lateness, any tips on how to turn around a great employee who does everything well except show up on time? This is a great question. I would never ever say because they do something well that this is okay, right? And I know that's not necessarily what they're saying in this question, but this shouldn't even be a factor, right? Because you're saying any tips on how to turn around on a great employee who does everything well except show up on time. The question would be would we be okay with everyone being late? And if we're not okay with everyone being late, that means we're okay with no one being late because we can't let anyone be late if we don't want everyone being late. Because if we let one person be late, we're basically saying you can be late, right? Now we go from leaving it up to the people versus leaving up to systems. Because if we have a system, like a system of accountability, then that's what where the standard lies. If we rely on the people, then our standard relies in our worst people, right? So if our standard is we are on time, but we don't have any systems behind it, that means we're relying on the people. And so the worst person who shows up late every day, they say five or 10 minutes every single day, that is actually our standard. So you're telling all of your employees, our standard is you're allowed to be five or ten minutes late. That's our standard. Okay, we're saying our standard is you have to be on time, but really our standard is you could be five or ten minutes late because we let one person do it, which means that's our standard. Now, if we say we say our standard is based off our system, that means if you're late once, no excuses, you're gonna get a verbal warning. If you're late again, you're going to get a written warning. If you're late again, you're gonna get an actionary warning. That's just an example. You have to do your own accountability ladder for your own legal reasons. That's what you want to do. So I would just say, I I I love that you're a great employee. I appreciate you, you're awesome, but you can't be late. And I won't let anybody be late. And none of the managers, because it's important if you're gonna enact this this this rule, this standard, every manager has to be aligned, every manager has to hold everyone accountable no matter what. Well, Preston, we're short staffed. Okay, so if you're short staffed and you're saying it's okay because you're short staffed, and you're saying our standard is if we're short staffed, you're allowed to be late. That's our standard. So if I'm an employee and I know that we're short staffed, I have the power and I'm allowed to be late. I have the power and I'm allowed to do X, Y, and Z. So that's what you're saying the standard is. So we have to make sacrifices. We cannot dictate it off a good employee, being short staffed, being busy, whatever it is, we have to hold the standard. Bad apples. In your experience, have you rehabilitated a bad apple to become a star, or is it typically an employee you need to seriously consider parting ways with? Um, that depends, and it really depends on the leadership. That's ultimately good fault on leadership. Here's the problem is that people say, oh, I they do they feel like they can't rehabilitate a bad apple because they don't really build a structure around them to do it, because it takes a lot of structure and effort to do it. Now, the good news is it's a mass. And also the good news is once you fix this and you keep it fixed, then you don't have to worry about bad apples in the future. So, first of all, let's just say I have an employee who's a bad apple. A lot of times what people do is they try and like basically like you're gonna get fired if you don't do this thing, or if you're gonna change, you're just gonna get fired. And then eventually they get fired because it's just kind of like that's the relationship, right? If you don't change, you're gonna get fired. If you don't change, you're gonna get fired. If you don't do this thing differently, you're gonna get fired, right? And then they maybe they fix it for a couple weeks, maybe they fix it for a month, then they go back to doing their old thing. It just becomes this really toxic element in the business. What we have to do is we have to create training and systems. We have to have leadership there that's consistent, and we have to say that we have our standards, like we just talked about being late, and that we uphold our standards through accountability, through consistency of accountability. That's how we're gonna hold the line across the board. So anything we want done, we're going to hold the line, we're gonna hold people accountable. And again, it's a verbal warning at first. It's not some heavy thing. It's talking to your staff every day, it's having the right pre-shifts every day, it's keeping that momentum going. And so it's easier to hold people accountable. You hold people accountable less because you're talking to them, you're you're being involved and engaged, you're spending time with them. And then when it let's just say if a bad apple, and let's just say, for example, they're gonna be on time, you're just gonna sit down with them and say, Hey, let's just be honest, you have a uh issue being on time. And that's and I'm not here to debate that or to even criticize that. What I'm here to do is just say, moving forward, we're gonna have a new policy that if you're late, even a minute, one minute, one minute past, my watch, that clock says one minute past, you're gonna get a verbal warning. And then after that, you're gonna get a written warning. And then after that, you're going to be possibly being, you know, we're gonna talk about if you can work here or not. Are you okay with that moving forward? Do you think this is still an environment you want to work in? Of course, they're nine times out of ten gonna say yes. They're probably gonna come up with the oh, I will, you know, the bus and the train and and COVID and this and that and this town and the the train that's right next to my thing, and like there's always a there's a thing, a kid, a you know, uh a previous and okay, that's fine, but here's the deal we need you to be on time. Are you okay with that moving forward and just knowing that I I can't tell you what to do, but you know, leave an hour early before. Leave two hours. If this job is important to you, leave two hours early before. Do whatever it takes to make sure that you're just here on time, clocked in in uniform. Is that fair? Then they're gonna say, Yes, okay, cool. Now we talk to every employee like that, but now it's our job as managers to not let that slip. We will have those hard conversations if it almost one minute late. Like that's the rule. That's it, that's what we do. And then when we set that precedent, the first wave, you're gonna get a lot of pushback and people, oh, this is so unfair and this and that, and blah, blah, blah. But then the second wave is acceptance. And they're gonna say, Well, this is the way they're doing it now. I now trust them that when they say they're gonna do something, they're actually gonna follow through with it. And I don't wanna get in trouble, I don't wanna lose my job, so I'm gonna start showing up on time. And so that's just an example. Now, and we don't just do that for the first month or two weeks, we do that for the entire time of our existence now. We take the time and effort to make sure that we're holding people accountable because we care, because we care about the business and we care about the employees and we care about ourselves, right? We care. So that's what we're gonna do. Now, when you set up that structure, right? That where you train them, you talk to them, you spend time with them, you hold them accountable, and every manager in the building is aligned and we're all consistent, a bad apples will be rehabilitated because you've now given them structure. You built their trust of them saying, when you say you're gonna do something, you're gonna do it, so I will listen. Versus you say I need to do something, and this is what's gonna happen if I don't, but then you don't follow through with it, there's no threat. I don't care, I'm gonna go back to my old ways as soon as you, you know, turn the corner. What small actions tend to have the biggest impact on making guests feel genuinely welcome and cared for? This is a good question. Small actions are eye contact, smiling, and slowing down. That's it. So when you're at the table, eye contact, right? You know, the whole time. Smiling when you can. You don't just sit there and smile, but just have a grin on your face. And then also slowing down. No matter how busy it is. Don't walk up to the table. Hi, how's it going? Can you start off something to drink, right? Hi, welcome. How are you today? Nice, very cool. Uh, my name's Preston, by the way. I'll be taking care of you. Can I start you off something to drink? First time here, first time dining with us, right? And then the last thing I'm gonna add that's kind of a caveat to it, because those are the basics. Let's get those down first. Because I can tell you right now, if you secret shopped your place, probably not happening 50% of the time. Those three things. Also, asking questions. We need to ask questions. We can't give a hospitality experience if we don't ask questions. If I never ask a question throughout the entire experience, I'm not giving hospitality. How can I be? Hospitality is unique, right? We can't make something unique and experience unique if we don't ask questions. Is it your first time here? What did you have last time you're here? Are you visiting from New York? Are you visiting out from outside of New York? Whatever it is, right? Having those conversations, the better the questions you get, the better the experience is gonna be. But if I don't ask a single question, that's just a transaction, then I'm being transactional. I'm going through a transaction, I'm going through steps. I'm smiling when I do it, and I'm really nice while I do it, but I'm still going through a transaction. As a host, what is the best way to avoid long conversations with guests when you have other guests to wait for you? So to avoid, so let's say someone's talking to you, right? Always just acknowledge the other guest and then politely just tell the other guests, like if they're if they're like talking to you, like if let's just say they're just talking, right? Not about when do you guys close or what do you recommend or what are you guys known for? How long have you guys been around? Those are questions you want to take the time to ask. But then if they just start talking to you, and let's say a guest walks up, just be like, just really quickly. Oh, sorry, give me one second. I'm sorry, I have a guest. Hi, how are you? Welcome, right? And then talk to that guest, deal with the guest, walk away with that. Other guests still wants to continue the conversation, awesome. But take take a two seconds. I'm sorry, give me one second, right? Just I gotta help this other guest. Give me one second. Sorry, sorry to cut you off, right? Hi, how can I help you? So just be very polite and cut them off, but just stop. I mean, literally, that could be mid-sentence, and I would do this all the time. If someone walks up, I always make it like I have to serve the guests, right? This is a job I'm doing, but I'm super polite about it. Give me two seconds. I'm sorry, sorry, hold that thought and then jump in. How should we tell guests that we are uncomfortable discussing our personal information without offending them? I would have to know more information about that, but I would have to know like what personal information. Like if they're asking you like what school you go to or something like that. I don't know. Like if it would like let's say if it's what school you go to, you can just say, Oh yeah, I'm you know, I'm studying in the area or you know, I'm studying, I'm studying in town or studying locally or something like that. We have to, you know, give some personal information as long as it's not revealing anything, right? But I mean if they're asking you like if you're going to school, I mean, I would think that that's okay to talk about. But if they were asking, like, if you have a boyfriend, you just tell them um I don't I don't discuss my personal life with guests. That's totally fine. That's when when you start getting uncomfortable, totally fine. You know, I'm really sorry, I don't like to discuss my personal life with guests. I get a little bit uncomfortable, you know. That's it. And they should respect that. And if they don't, you need to grab manager. What small details do you think make guests want to come back again? Again, asking questions and showing that you care. That's it. And so someone asked me the other day, how do you show that you care? You care. You have to just care. You have to care about the guest experience. That's it. You have to truly care about the guest experience. And it's our job as leaders to make sure that we're enacting that culture and talking about that. Not just like, guys, you gotta care, you gotta care, you gotta care. But like, like I said in the training, there's pre-shifts that we do this with. There's different ways to get them to care. There's mindset training, there's all this, there's all there's all types of ways to do it, and it takes a little bit of time, but we want to do that. The good news is once you flip the culture and everyone is bought in, everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid, when people come in, they it's like turning on a light switch, right? They instantly get bought into what we're doing because everybody else is already doing it. The problem is you have someone come in and you're saying, I want you to care, and here's how, and blah, blah, blah, and no one else is doing it, or 50% of the people aren't doing it, well, then it's gonna get hard to get them to bought in because it's it shows them that the culture isn't there and it's not encouraging. You want your culture to be able to lift up everybody that walks in the door. How should we deal with guests who are unhappy or have complaints? Go above and beyond, always. And it's not about money. I always tell people this. So I always say, like, if you're dating someone and they buy you a gift on your birthday, right? And I always say, Would you be happy? And of course, you're like, Yeah, of course. Yes, I would be happy. Okay. Now, if you're dating someone and you're having a really tough week, and you're having a really tough day in that week, and it was like though, it was just like one of those days that you want to like forget the day ever happened, and and you just want to go home and curl up in a ball and like and just like pass out. Like, I always want to go to sleep and forget Alice, forget everything that happened today. It's just one of those really tough days. And you get home, and your significant other, the person you're dating, is sitting at the kitchen table and they have a gift wrapped up and they just push it forward towards you and they say, Hey, I just got you this gift to let you know that I love you and that everything's gonna be okay. Would that mean something to you? Would you appreciate that? Of course, the answer is yes. Which one would you appreciate more? The gift that you got randomly or the gift you got on your birthday? Of course, it's a gift you got randomly because there's so much thought and care that went into it. Someone went out of the way to show you they care about you. The birthday gift is nice, but you better buy me a gift on my birthday. I'm expecting it, but this is the thought of thought and care. Now you say, what if the birthday gift is worth more money? Double, triple, quadruple the price. Doesn't matter. I like this gift, it's gonna have an emotional impact on me. That's like that's that's almost priceless. This is money, right? Someone can just go out and buy me this. This doesn't prove anything to me just because you're spending more money doesn't mean you're proving anything to me. My point is the same thing with recovering a guest. If a guest is unhappy, we don't want to just say, well, our solution isn't buy a ticket, right? That might be part of the solution. Yes, I'm not saying don't do that, but I'm just saying that's not the end-all be-all. We gotta show them that we care. We gotta go above and beyond. And so when you go above and beyond, so if someone's unhappy with something, first of all, you always side with them, you always listen, right? People will over-exaggerate. People will to tell their story or to get their point across. People might not be 100% truthful. Our job isn't to sit there and decipher the truth from the false, right? We're not sitting there going, that's not true, sir, that's not what happened, and I won't let you say that, right? Okay, that's fine. I'm not here to decipher that's not my job. My job is to make sure you leave happy. It's okay that you over-exaggerated or whatever, or you might be retelling the story a little bit falsely. Obviously, if they're saying that someone called them like a racial slur and that didn't happen, yeah, that's different. What I'm talking about is they're saying, my food came out wrong, my server was rude, the hostess was rude, my food took a long time, right? I had a reservation, and and now you're saying I didn't, right? Okay, cool. We want to flip them. So we want to first of all listen. You always listen first, let hear them out, don't like interrupt, you know, shake your head, have concern on your face, slow down, and slow down too. Like I've had you know, managers we sit there like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, okay, uh-huh, uh-huh, right? No, no, no. We gotta be like listening, you know, slowly, showing concern on our face, right? After they get done talking, don't snap back. Okay, so here's what I would say to that. Or, okay, here's what you know to give it a little bit of pause after they talk. Think about it for a second. Okay, well, first of all, I want to say that's unacceptable, right? We have dropped the ball here, and I am not going to let this uh dictate your night. What I want to do is I'm gonna go fix this thing. I'm gonna talk to your server, I'm gonna talk to the host, whatever it is, I'm gonna go talk to the kitchen, but I'm gonna fix this thing. What I ask you to do is can you give me 15 minutes to fix this? And my goal here is to make sure that you leave as happy as humanly possible. Would you give me 15 minutes to fix that? Is that fair? Okay, awesome. I appreciate you doing that now. And then you can start fixing the problem. You just have to show them that you care. And then you have to go over the top. Let's say they got an overcooked steak. I'm gonna fix that steak for you. First of all, unacceptable. We pride ourselves on our steaks. I'm gonna fix that for you. While you're waiting, though, everyone else is eating. Can I bring you like a salad or a soup? Comes out very quickly on the house, of course. You bring out the steak. Of course, you're not able to enjoy the steak with everyone else. You're not gonna pay for the steak. But that's you know, I I know it's not about money, but I'm just I I I'm not gonna let you pay for that steak, okay? I want you to enjoy the steak. Come back two seconds later. Is it good? I don't want to bug you too much. Is that how is a steak okay? Awesome. Awesome. Is it worth a wait? Okay, cool. And then at the end, maybe bring out a gift card, maybe bring out a dessert, you know, something else, and just showing that you care. Again, it's not about the money, it's just showing that you care and being creative with it. The gift card could be for$15. A dessert is not, you know, uh it doesn't cost a lot of money, right? You can just bring it out on the house without them asking, but just a showing that we care and talking to them, checking in on them. Introduce yourself, right? By the way, my name is Preston. If you guys come back here, by the way, on a Saturday night, obviously you see it's busy and you can't get a reservation, text me. Here's my card. Just shoot me a text, shoot me an email, I'll get you in. I'll make sure we'll get you in. You know, like you're that now you're like, oh wow, thank you, right? Awesome. And the goal is because here's the thing you have to understand is that 80% of people won't complain in restaurants, right? So if they do complain, that's an opportunity. We should be excited. Thank you for telling me that you're not having a good time. I'm excited about it, I'm happy about it. Now you can go and fix it, but not only that, statistically, it takes people three times to have a great experience at your restaurant to earn their loyalty. So they have to come in three different times. And the drop-off is like 40% and 40% to get to the third time. For whatever reason, they can have a great experience, still 40% drop-off, they come in a second time. And then if they come a second time, another 40% drop-off. So the third time is rare, but then you earn their loyalty. With a guest recovery, you can earn their loyalty instantly. If you do so much for them, if you go over the top by just showing them how much you care, true care, honest care, then they're gonna say, I want to give back. Because that's human nature. You want to give back when someone gives you something. Like if you have someone that gives you a really nice gift on your birthday, all of a sudden you're like, oh, now I have to give them a nice gift on their birthday, right? You just want to give back. That's how humans are. So when you give someone so much care, they're like, I want to give back. I feel so taken care of. I want to give back. How do I give back? Well, I'm coming back, first of all. I'm gonna tell my friends and family about this place. I'll probably leave a five star review. I'm gonna come back here. Now they want to give back, right? So you earn their loyalty instantly when you go above and beyond. So hopefully those questions helped or those answers helped answer those questions. If you uh have any more questions, happy to answer them.