The Restaurant Prosperity Formula

Hiring in any business is a challenge, but the restaurant and hospitality industries are especially hard. There isn’t an entrepreneur who hasn’t been duped by a smooth-talking go-getter, a server who says they have experience, or that manager with chain experience who you think is going to take your restaurant to the next level. It happens to the best of us! How can you limit those hires? Tune int...

I’m putting a flag in the ground: your restaurant is not a food business. It’s a hospitality business. If you tell people you are in the food business, then you’re telling them you provide the same thing as a gas station, which also sells food. Restaurants have the privilege to create memories in their customers’ lives. Your job is to create memories for your guests and keep them coming back time...

Your prosperity is my goal. Prosperity is at the core of what I coach restaurant owners, like you, to achieve. Prosperity is freedom from your restaurant when you want it, confidence in your business, confidence in your restaurant’s numbers, the ability to have a life outside the restaurant and, finally, financial freedom. In this episode of The Restaurant Prosperity Formula, I am going to focus o...

In the demanding restaurant industry, it's easy to find yourself consumed by the day-to-day operations of your restaurant. There is so much to do every day from the small tasks like opening the restaurant and pulling the cash drawers to big tasks like hiring employees and calculating dollars per labor hour worked. It can be hard to prioritize your personal life and remember there is a world outsid...

If you’re ready to use systems to improve your restaurant’s operations, service and profits, there is one person you must identify now – your implementer. This is your right-hand person when it comes to implementing systems in your restaurant. Your implementer is someone who buys into your business, into your dream and you. They're excited to learn, and they are organized and able start and finish...

Since the pandemic many restaurants are telling me tales of some of the most difficult customers I've ever heard. The frustration and impatience directed toward restaurant staff seems to be at a whole new level. But the truth is difficult customers have been around forever. The problem today is difficult restaurant customers can do a lot of damage if your team isn’t prepared to handle them because...

One of the goals I have for restaurant owners is to get them to a place in their business where they work on bigger strategic projects, such as restaurant marketing, and to do it in a strategic and thoughtful way. Since in my work with restaurant owners, I focus on systems for operations, I like to leave restaurant marketing to the experts. One such expert is on this episode of my podcast, The Res...

The restaurant business is full of daily distractions that make it easy to avoid working strategically. Sometimes it feels like it takes more work to be strategic than it does to just get the work done. And what does working strategically even mean? In this episode of my podcast, The Restaurant Prosperity Formula, I talk about what it really means to work strategically on your restaurant business...

Just about every week during my group coaching calls with restaurant owners someone asks for tips on finding and hiring great employees. Restaurant owners share their successes with things like how to write job descriptions to attract employees who want to work in a great culture, suggestions for where to place those job descriptions, how much to pay their employees in their different roles and wh...

I am sure you’ve been told you need to calculate your food cost. Heck, you’ve probably heard from several experts that your food cost target is a 34% food cost, or that you’re supposed to mark up each of your food items on your menu 3 times. Well, neither of these methods are correct. Flush them from your mind because they are total BS. In this episode of The Restaurant Prosperity Formula, I will...

I love what I do! I get to help restaurant owners change their lives. I get to help most of them make more money than they've ever made before in their restaurant. To date I've worked with literally thousands of restaurant pros, so I've seen a lot, including a lot of restaurant owners who don't pay themselves. There are a lot of reasons these owners don’t take a regular paycheck, but what so many...

Labor costs are a real challenge for restaurants that want to make money. Restaurant owners have to battle with a lot of variables to control their labor cost and create success from things that are out of their control. For example, there is rising minimum wage – going as high as $22/hour in some places, labor laws that require a set number of hours for staff, a fear of working people so hard the...

These past three years have led many restaurant owners and managers toward restaurant burnout. As a restaurant owner, it’s easy to have a feeling of despair that has been almost impossible to shake. Between group coaching calls, one-on-one coaching calls and discovery calls, I talk with a lot of restaurant owners just like you. I can tell you that I hear you and feel your pain. While challenges in...

Every couple of months I like to invite a restaurant owner who has benefited from my restaurant coaching program onto podcast. It’s a great chance for the restaurant owner to reflect on all the work they’ve done and the results of their work. It’s also a chance for me to take a minute to remind myself in the hustle and bustle of every day that what I teach works. That reinforces my motivation and...

Hiring a restaurant manager is a challenge, but there’s no greater challenge than finding the right kitchen manager. A lot of restaurant owners look to chefs as an ideal manager in the kitchen. After all, they are people destined to help create an experience in a restaurant that results in pleasure and lasting memories. But often a chef is unprepared to lead the restaurant because the higher the p...

It doesn’t matter if you're brand new to the restaurant business or you’re a seasoned veteran, food cost challenges will plague you. From regular price increases on a variety of products to natural disasters that drive prices up on commodities like chicken and oranges. Here’s the deal, though. You can count on the prices you’re paying for food to fluctuate and to increase dramatically without much...

When I first started developing operational systems in restaurants, I relied heavily on spreadsheets. Excel was revolutionary, and I pushed that program to the max. Spreadsheets were the best way to organize the systems, track numbers, track inventory and do all kinds of operational tasks in the restaurant. But they were dangerous because you could end up with duplicate copies, lost data, corrupt...

If you’re interested in learning how to own a restaurant with a great atmosphere for guests and employees, I want to introduce you to Gina Sidebottom, my guest for this episode. Gina's family has owned Maria's Mexican restaurant, which was started by her mother, Maria, in 1992. They love serving their community not only great food, but great service. In this episode of my podcast, The Restaurant P...

I talk about the importance of restaurant budgets all the time. One of the best parts of my job as a restaurant coach is completing a budget with a member. It fills my heart with joy to see the hope they feel with a real-life plan to achieve their restaurant goals. Completing the budget process is the MOST important thing I do with each of my members in my Restaurant Transformation Intensive group...

Owning a restaurant is one of the most challenging businesses to run. It is not an overstatement when I tell you I talk with restaurant owners on an almost daily basis, whether that be on discovery calls, one-on-one direct access coaching calls, group coaching calls, or late night and weekend “oh crap” calls. I make myself available to the restaurant owners I coach. My world is all about helping i...

When I talk about coaching, I’m talking about having tools and support to transform your restaurant and your life. Avery Ward, who is the CEO of Little Italy Pizza in Groveport, Ohio, is a shining example of a restaurant owner who knew there had to be a better way of doing things in his restaurant, so he signed up to be part of my restaurant coaching group. When he joined the group, he was burning...

I grew up in the restaurant industry and some old-school processes were ingrained in me that I have had to unlearn. One of those is tipping. When I was a restaurant employee, I never believed in tip pooling, other than behind the bar. Nowadays, tip pooling with the entire restaurant, other than managers, of course, is becoming more and more popular, for good reason. It allows restaurants to recrui...

Challenges in the restaurant business are a given, but sometimes there are so many in a month, a week or even a day, that you find yourself feeling fed-up and burned out. Losing your passion for your restaurant is the worst thing that can happen to it and everyone involved. If you feel like you are starting to lose or have already lost your passion for the business, that motivated and able to push...

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 1 million times: the two most important systems any restaurant should have are budgets and recipe costing cards. Let’s talk budgets. I am probably on at least one to two budget calls a week with members asking where their numbers should be. Some calls are a simple numbers review because we have already created their budget and now they are measuring for success....

These days running a restaurant comes with a lot of technology. Starting with the most important, there is the POS system followed by website and social media management. After that, take your pick! Tech is available for reservations, online ordering, third-party delivery, scheduling, waitlists, loyalty program, food and beverage management, food safety, payroll, accounting, team communication, it...