Full House, Keep Up, No Days Off

Three operators. One discounting their way into a corner. One whose kitchen is cracking under the weight of their own success. One who hasn't taken a real day off in six years. Different situations, same pattern underneath all of them. The problem showing up isn't the problem that needs solving. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Every restaurant has a suggestion box collecting dust somewhere near the host stand. This show is a different kind. Operators send in their real challenges, staffing, costs, culture, systems, anonymously, and we talk through them on air. If you've ever felt like your operation is running you instead of the other way around, you're in the right place. I'm Ryan Hornebrook, founder of Elevated Restaurant Solutions, and this is the suggestion box. Welcome back to week two of the suggestion box. My name is Ryan Hornabrook. I am your host. Last week I introduced myself. Make it quick again if this is your first time listening. Uh I am an operator of 15 plus years. I have experience in both corporate and family-run environments, and I have a pretty good idea at this point of what you need from both concepts to run a successful operation. Now, as far as this podcast goes, uh the suggestion box was created for owners and operators that might be running into challenges that they don't necessarily know how to communicate. Uh, could be with people on their team, could be with anyone in general. Um, you know, asking for help is a weird thing. You got to swallow your pride. There's uh certain challenges in itself asking for help. So I wanted to create a safe space for owners and operators and industry pros alike to be able to express the challenges that they're going through. Uh, and I can provide whatever insight I have for whatever it's worth. Now, to start this series, it will most likely be just me, but I do want to invite other industry pros that I know and that I don't know to almost run color commentary on these situations moving forward. Um, so if you would like to hop on board and do a show with me, I would be more than happy to entertain having uh guests on to not only talk about them and boost what they have going on, but to provide some extra insight to some of these owners, operators, and industry pros that are having some issues navigating what they're going through. So if you would like to join, please reach out to the suggestion box at elevatedrestaurant solutions.com. Now you can also use that email if you have any challenges that you would like for me to discuss on air and provide whatever insight I can. So last week to start this series, we had three submissions that had a common theme. Um, the episode was titled The Symptom and the Source, mainly because that is a pattern I see the more and more I talk to owners and operators. And I think as we progress through this series, we're going to find more and more that the symptom and the source are almost never in the same place. And that's essentially the operating thesis of this whole show is that we want to discuss these challenges because a lot of times we're trying to solve the wrong problem. And the bigger problems are actually more common from concept to concept and restaurant to restaurant than most believe or most would believe. So continuing that narrative, uh, I'm sure we'll see more of the same today. Uh, not necessarily the same situations, but the same pattern where, you know, the symptoms are not going to be where the source is. The problem might be not what you thought the problem was. Um, and we can just open it up. Open up the box. Uh, just a reminder before we get started the box is open. So if you're sitting on something, you want to send it in, it is anonymous. There's no wrong submission, there's no pressure. Uh, it's the suggestion box at elevatedrestaurant solutions.com. So go ahead and send those in. We air this every Monday, and we're happy to do it.

Full House

SPEAKER_00 4:21

So let's get started with our first submission here. Talks about discounts. Uh, it says, I've been running happy hour specials and discount nights to drive traffic during our slow periods. It's working kind of. We're filling seats, but at the end of those nights, the numbers don't look any better than before I started. I feel like I'm just training my guests to wait for the deal. How do I get out of this without killing the traffic that I built? I feel like this is an extremely common trap. So many people do happy hours, so many people do discounting, and I mean the instinct is understandable, right? It's like, how do we get people in? Um, let's chop the price in half. That'll drive some traffic. Um it feels like it's working because when you do that, the room gets full. So typically, the mirage is that when the room is full, we're busy, we're successful. You walk into any restaurant and you're told that there's a 45-minute wait and you see every seat is full, you would think that that restaurant is wildly successful. The fourth wall that is hardly ever broken, guests don't see what's happening behind the curtain. Now, I know the fear is if you stop the discounts, then the traffic disappears and you're back to square one. And that's valid. I mean, if you pull the plug, it's gonna sink the whole ship. But that thought process is also what's keeping you in this in this loop. Now, let's also not give this thing too much power, right? Let's talk about this. Discounting doesn't solve a traffic problem. You're borrowing against your margin to temporarily mask the traffic problem. So, what I mean by that is you're literally chopping your margin to ignore the fact that you don't have people coming into your restaurant regularly. Now, when you discount something or everything or a group of things, people come in for that discount. They're not coming in for your restaurant's experience. Everything that you've built, everything that you want on a regular day-to-day basis. That experience goes to the wayside. They're coming in for the thing that you took money off of to make it cheaper for them and make it more expensive for you. You're building the wrong customer base. Now, I know that there's a side agenda where it's, hey, if we can get them in here with that incentive, then the intangible value of them seeing the place, them seeing the staff, interacting with everybody, we have them at that point. And you do, but you also don't. Because everybody who leans into that discount uh mentality, you're gonna have to fight tooth and nail to undo that because as you do it more and more, your guests have now recalibrated their price expectations to whatever that discount promo is. I think a better approach to this would have been asking why you're slow. Is it a demand thing? Is it a marketing or a positioning thing? I don't think it has to do anything with price. I think your prices might your prices your prices might be good. But, you know, ask yourself, hey, why is Tuesday always slow? Or is this neighborhood just behave differently on different days? Are people aware enough of what we're doing? Um is there competition nearby that also does something when you're slow? Is there is there something that's pulling them away that you need to kind of rethink what you're doing in those moments when they when they are doing that? I feel like the straight discount promo is uh a panic button, so um just need to ask better questions. Now, in terms of what to do moving forward, I don't think you cut the discounts cold. I think you're gonna it's gonna be culture shock for everybody that has now come in for those things. But you can shift. Listen, we talked about this first episode. Now you shift to perceived value. Now you can change it to, hey, there's money off this item and migrate towards, hey, there's value added to this item for this price. Because before they're coming in on Tuesday for a specific item or a specific menu from three to six, and there's money coming off the top of that item. So what their understanding is I'm getting this at a discounted price because it's not worth that full price. Or I know they're just trying to get me in here, I'm gonna take advantage of the price. That is not the same as a value add, where it's you dictate the price. So say it's 40 bucks and it's an entree, but with that $40, you get an extra appetizer or salad or some kind of addition that maybe it costs you three or four dollars to make. But what it does to the guest is it makes them think, wow, I can't, I can't, this is great value. I'm getting this what normally is whatever. You're boosting guest spend and you're telling the guest, hey, I'm gonna go above and beyond to give you extra to make sure that you understand we appreciate your patronage. We appreciate you being here. You're creating an experience, a memorable experience for that guest. And do stuff that works in your favor, too. I mean, you can create an experience where it's like a club or a loyalty thing where for that period, for your slow period, is this boosted offer, this value add, but in order to access it, you have to be a rewards member or a loyalty member. Now you're gathering email, phone, whatever that you now own that relationship. And when they leave, you can tell them about your weekend specials coming up or something that you really want them back for to experience. And now they feel like they're a part of the family. They just got this value add. And now you're letting them know, hey, listen, super secret, shh, don't tell anybody. But because we communicate this way, here's 10% off your next bill. Come in, come hang out with us. That's so much different than somebody coming in and saying, Oh well, I'm going there because I can save $4 on uh an appetizer. So the goal is to graduate the deal seeker into a loyal guest. And the only way that happens is if the experience is good enough to stand on its own. Filling seats is not the same as building a business. The metrics that we look at, the the guests per labor hour, the revenue per cover, um, it those are the the business growth metrics that we monitor for a reason. Because when we look at costs, everybody obsesses over food cost and and labor costs. And those are all outcomes of actions or inactions. So let's focus on boosting revenue, let's put focus on boosting our staff, let's focus on boot. I use the word boost all the time and build and boost because that's how you scale. That's how you that's how you grow. Nobody grows by chipping away at margins and chipping away at at value. It doesn't work like that. So

Keep Up

SPEAKER_00 12:30

all right. Our next submission is from someone who built the traffic but now can't keep up with it. They right. We've been growing. Covers are up, we're getting some buzz. The dining room is full most nights, but the kitchen is starting to crack. Ticket times are getting longer, mistakes are up, my chef is burnt out. I don't want to slow down the momentum, but I also can't keep sending food out like this. I feel stuck between the front of house winning and the back of house losing. Okay, so this is actually, believe it or not, a good problem to have. But there's risk that comes with this problem. Growing without infrastructure is how a lot of restaurants lose the thing that made them good in the first place. Now, I had actually worked in a restaurant with a similar situation to this. I was managing and uh it was a family-owned restaurant. I had just started with them coming off of a corporate stint for a couple years, so I was super high on um systems and rigid thinking, process. This is how things are done, uh, efficiency, all of that. Now, this family-owned restaurant had been doing certain things a certain way for so long because they didn't need those systems, they weren't at that level. But as I explained to ownership when I was there, um, there comes a time where you have to understand that the things you're doing are so good that you need to invest in the system. So I there's this analogy I use all the time. If you're pouring liquid into a glass, the the glass is the operation that is sustaining the liquid. There comes a time where you keep pouring, you keep pouring and getting better, and and more liquid is entering this vessel, it's gonna overflow. And at that time, you need a bigger glass, you need a bigger vessel. You gotta upgrade your systems, you have to change the way you're doing things. Now, it was such an organic place, and I say that in terms of you know, payroll was uh with somebody they had known and they've been doing it that way for 20 years. Um, the there was everything had a system and a person and and a relationship behind it. Now, I respect that wholeheartedly, but again, there comes a time where your systems and your infrastructure needs to match your growth in order to sustain, in order to scale, because if you don't grow with that volume increase, then the perception is that you're failing and negative reviews can't keep up with it, and new people coming in see the crumble because you're married to the old way or you never moved with the growth of your front of house. Now, the burnout chef is actually the loudest signal here because when your key people are running on empty, you're one bad week away from a real crisis. Uh, there's a reason why when we're on an airplane, when we all take a trip, they all stand there in the aisles before we leave, and they say, make sure that if the plane is going down, you do what? You put on your oxygen mask before you help anybody else with theirs. There's a reason for that because if you're not good, then you are no good to anybody else. And let's also say out loud that the kitchen is not cracking because of the volume. There's just not systems built for this type of volume yet. There's a difference between a kitchen that's busy and a kitchen that's overwhelmed. And it's almost always prep systems, line design, roll clarity, you know, all that stuff. Now, there might have been systems for that with your old volume, but now it needs to be reevaluated because you're at a different you're at a different level. And with that different level, you know, not just the line needs to be evaluated, the whole operation, the menu. You know, I'm sure your menu was fine for the volume you were having before, but uh a menu built for 60 covers is it's very different from a menu built for 100 covers. And most operators don't ever revisit when volume climbs. I would ask, you know, the questions that we kind of go through for menu engineering and just kind of seeing if it's working with us or against us is how many active items are on the menu. Are there any of them that are labor-intensive uh in terms of scaling? Uh what a tighter menu actually serve the guests better for right now. Maybe it's just a temporary change. I mean, we talked about this last time, but I I try and audit the menu four times a year, seasonally, every 90 days, running a product mix and and seeing what's working, what's not. I'd also check in with the the chef and and see if he has any help behind him. You know, who's backing them up and what does the kitchen hierarchy look like? Does he have somebody that can step in and say, hey, listen, I uh I got you for this? Um I definitely wouldn't slow the front of the house down. You know, we're gonna shore up the back of the house and it's gonna catch up to the front. I would bring your chef in fairly immediately and do a menu edit. You don't have to do a full redesign. I wouldn't, you know, sit there and say, oh my god, we gotta change everything now. But identify two or three items at least that are creating a ton of friction when you guys hit that peak. Um and either rotate them or simplify them or make it limited time in your off hours, you know. Um I would also, I'm not sure if you're doing this or not, but when you're in those big heavy peak times, I'd be there. Audit the line during a full service. Where are the bottlenecks happening? Which station is uh choking, fix fix those things and see if that has any effect on uh the operation on a busy night on a peak, peak hour, peak hours. And then I would have an honest conversation with your your chef. Like not just the hey, how you doing? But listen, we're gonna keep growing. I want this thing to keep growing. You have a major part in this thing continuing to grow. What do you need to sustain this pace and uh and what has to change? Because again, going back to the the analogy of protecting the machine, um the liquid is is continuing to pour in. You're you're overflowing, you gotta invest in the infrastructure to make sure that you're not slowing down. You're you're building something that's gonna last for a while. So growth is only an asset if the operation can hold the weight of it. You know, it's a great thing. We all talk about it. Uh of course, people want to grow. And we'll talk more about this, but a lot of people think growth is in marketing and and advertising. I don't, I don't uh listen, it definitely has a part, but growth is in making sure that your infrastructure and your foundation is sound, solid, and monitored throughout the growth process. It's gonna look different in the beginning than it does the end, and it's gonna continue to change. So make sure you're on top of it, make sure you're in tune with your operation, not just the operation, but the people that are running the show. Um, because they're gonna let you know. They're always gonna let you know what makes your place great, what could make your place better? So, all right,

No Days Off

SPEAKER_00 20:52

last one today. I've been running my restaurant for six years. It's doing okay, but I can't take a day off without something going sideways. I'm the one who knows where everything is, how everything works, who to call when something breaks. My staff is good, but nothing runs without me. I don't know how to fix it without feeling like I'm handing my baby to people who don't care about it the way I do. Okay, I can I can relate to this. I feel like everybody in the business can relate to this. There's a probably a little bit, every independent owner and operator has a small portion of this in their their blood. Um, for me, I'll speak on I'll speak on my own behalf, it was about identity. When I was like that, it wasn't necessarily about the restaurant. Um it was about me being needed. Uh, I wasn't the owner, but I was a senior level manager, and I wanted to show my value by doing everything w without delegating anything. Um it was more about me. My presence, you know, being there and and having my hand in in everything. It's it's not irrational to feel protective of something that you're building or something that you've built. But there's a point where that protection becomes the ceiling because you can only do so much. I mean, you literally can't grow arms, grow legs, grow hours in the day. And when you're locked into that, you aren't building a restaurant or or building your your establishment. You're creating a job for yourself that requires you to specifically be there all the time. Um that's not a staff thing. Uh has nothing to do with the staff being able because the staff is probably more than able and they probably want to take some of that stuff off of your plate. Um, it's just more of a psychological thing. Uh there's there's absence of systems, you know, when when you are the system, no one can learn to be it because no one's gonna be you. So it it comes off as nobody cares about my place as much as I do. No, it's not just not true. You're just not allowing them. I mean, I'll give another example. When when I worked for that family-owned restaurant that I was talking about earlier, um I there I had real close proximity to ownership. And I had to work really hard to show him that, hey, I care a lot about what I'm doing. And if what I'm doing is making your brand better and making your establishment better, I'm gonna pour my heart and my soul and make decisions based on if this was my real place. So I had to like hammer that point in there for him to just relinquish any sort of control and allow me to show that I truly was there to make the place better. And it took a couple years to get to that point. But the point is a lot of people are probably similar to me in that they want to help make your establishment better. A lot of people want purpose, you know? You just gotta give them the purpose and allow them the time and space to show that they do care just as much as you do. You obviously are gonna care more, it's your place. But my point is that people will show that they they're capable of caring the way you want them to care. Um, you know, uh ownership of something isn't transferred by telling someone to care more. Yeah, if you're just saying, uh, you need to care the way I do, they're not, it doesn't work like that. It's it's transferred by giving them clarity, authority, and accountability and autonomy. And if this is six years of this pattern, that means that this is six years of staff learning that you're always gonna step in to do whatever needs to be done. And that it takes intentional effort to shift that. If I were you, I would start by writing everything in your head down, everything that only you know your vendor contracts, your opening procedures, when to do a walk-in, uh, what happens when the alarm goes off. Get all that out of your head, pull it all out, write it down, and have it documented. And then I would pick one person on your team. Not everybody, you don't need to build a whole team to do this. Pick one person that you trust, could be there forever, could be found, whatever. Pick one that one team member and start deliberately teaching them one of those systems at a time. Not the whole thing, don't give them the whole packet, but just one thing and then let them own it. Leave it. Let them own it, don't intercept it for a shift for an afternoon. And then if it needs to go sideways at a certain point in time, let it go sideways. You know? Small failures when you're reachable are how people are gonna learn how to handle the big ones when you're not reachable. The first step in you being able to take a breath for the first time in six years is allowing somebody to own a system. And you have to resist the urge to fix everything the moment you come back in. You know, you can ask what happened, you can ask what they did, and uh then build on that. So, you know, let them have the space to figure it out on their own. And this is not, you know, say, hey, you need to care less, you need to stop caring. But you need to build something that carries your standards even when you're not the one carrying them. When you're not in that building, you need to know that it's in the hands of people that have equity in it enough that they're gonna handle it the way that you would. So if your restaurant can't run without you, then you don't own a restaurant. You have a very stressful job with no days off, and again, this is more of the same pattern um uh that we're seeing with all of these submissions, is that the symptoms that you're seeing are not necessarily caused by the problems that you think there are. The problem presenting itself is rarely the problem that needs solving. It's just how it works when you're inside something and you can't read the label from inside the jar. So thank you, everybody, that submitted this week. Again, the value of this show is not having all the answers, it's being willing to ask the questions that are harder to ask yourself. We open up different lenses and invite different perspectives to the challenges that you, the operators, the owners, and the industry pros are seeing every day. Uh, takes a lot of guts to name something that's actually going on, uh, even if it's anonymously. So we appreciate people sending stuff in. Um, and uh whatever the problem is in your operation that you've been trying to solve um that stayed the same for a while and you can't figure it out, um, is it still not solvable? And if it isn't, then we would love to hear from you. Uh, you can email the suggestion box at elevatedrestaurant solutions.com. And if you're not following yet, if this is your first time listening, go ahead and follow us on Spotify and Apple. So every time an episode airs, it'll show up automatically for you. And we will see you next week. Um, again, if you would like to join me for an episode uh as a guest, I'd also love to hear from you. So thank you again to everybody that contributed and have a great week.