By David Scott Peters

Make your restaurant fun and profitable again

I teach independent restaurant owners how to use operational systems to be more efficient and to position themselves to compete with the chain restaurants around them. But running a successful restaurant goes beyond systems. It requires the right attitude as well.

You work hard every day to make your restaurant a success. But if you’re not having fun, do you think your employees are? So give yourself a timeout and see if your restaurant could benefit from implementing any of the following ideas. I know you can make your restaurant fun and profitable again.  

• Appreciate your guests. There is an acronym in the industry that focuses on putting your customer first. GUEST stands for greet, understand, educate, satisfy and thank. Without your guest, you have nothing, right? So show them that you appreciate them and that you appreciate that they want to spend their discretionary income in your restaurant. Make them glad they chose you to do business with.
• Appreciate your employees. One of the best ways to make work fun is to make it fun for everyone who works with you. And you can make coming to work and being at work more fun in the way you treat your employees.
• Try some new and inexpensive marketing ideas. When you’re lean on cash and can’t afford a lot of advertising — outside your four walls — I encourage you to look inside your four walls for advertising opportunities, also known as four-wall marketing. You’ve got them in your doors, now you need to tell them what you do. Give them more reasons to come back. 
• Increase the chatter. Teach your employees that they have everything to do with how much money they make. If they simply take orders instead of taking an opportunity to sell with each order, it’s their bank account that suffers. If they can increase ticket averages, they can increase their take-home dollars. It’s the art of the upsell.
• Create a little competition. Develop server incentives and contests that encourage upselling and increase sales. Not only teach them how to upsell, but pick items, whatever it is that you want to sell, and create a concept, something fun. For example, the server who sells the most specials one night gets the prize. Or whoever sells the most bottles of wine in one night wins. Get them to compete with each other, increase their ability to sell, increase their average ticket. They make more money, you make more money. It may have cost you a little bit of money to put up, whether it’s a cash prize or movie tickets or whatever, but it’s a lot less than advertising. And it fuels great customer service, giving your customers the feeling that they’re special.

You spend a lot of time inside your restaurant’s four walls and so does your staff. But it shouldn’t be a struggle. A few simple things can make work fun again. I challenge you to implement just one of these ideas and see the response you get from customers and employees. If it works, let me know.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

Sound advice and real life solutions

 By David Scott Peters

Your general manager should be your right hand person. The one person you can count on to operate your restaurant the right way. After all, you can’t be there all the time, but your customers expect to have the same experience every time. So how do you find the person who sees it the way you do and understands the importance of the systems and processes you’ve put in place?

Let’s be honest, looking for a reliable general manager is an overwhelming task. In the best of situations you can’t recruit from within, but when that’s not possible, I have some tricks for finding someone who fits.

First, you have to find candidates. You can try management recruiters, newspaper ads and so forth. But you don’t usually have the luxury of a lot of lead time. To get candidates in a more timely manner, use the Internet. Post your position on places such as Monster, Career Builder and Craig’s List. You will get results, i.e., resumes and applications, immediately.

You will find today’s marketplace is full of readily-available candidates, but not all of them will have perfect resumes. Try to look past the imperfections and find those who have the experience needed to be successful in your restaurant’s culture.

Once you’ve narrowed your candidates down to about five, come up with a list of questions to ask each of the candidates during the interview. This is a patterned interview format. Consult with your team and find out what they would like to know about each candidate.

One of the benefits to going with the patterned interview format and having questions prepared is you will get to evaluate each candidate equally because they all answer the same questions. Now you can compare apples to apples when looking at responses. It can also keep you out of lawsuit territory. You never know when you might be accused of unfair hiring practices by a disgruntled candidate who didn’t get the job. But if everyone answers the same questions, then every candidate is treated fairly.

This process should get you to the second interview. Your initial list should now be less than five — those that made you think twice. In fact, you probably find yourself trying to visualize each of them in the position for which you’re hiring.

As you approach the second interview, ask yourself, “What do I hope to discover about each candidate during this interview?” What questions were left unanswered from your first interview? You’ve already asked them to explain their past experiences, they’ve told you a little about themselves, and why they’re leaving their current job or why they left their former job. Now you want to get the details of what they know and what skills they actually have when it comes to restaurant operations, marketing, dealing with employees and how they might fit in to your restaurant’s unique culture.

For this interview you should also have a preset list of questions.

After you complete the second round of interviews, you should be ready to make a selection, which can be a terrifying process. This is when we come down to basic human instincts — your gut.

You want someone who has the skills, experience and feels right. Don’t settle for less. And if you have to — start the whole process over again. Settling will likely only cause you more problems down the road. This is a position that is too important to your restaurant’s success. The person you choose must be the right fit in every way.

When you’re ready to make an offer, you’ll likely have to answer the following questions for yourself:

1. Do I offer the requested salary? If they are asking $75,000 and you’re about to offer $45,000, you’re wasting your time. It’s important that when you narrow your job candidates down to the final interview, that you take salary into consideration. In this case, the $75,000 candidate would not make the final stage because you know you can’t afford him or her.

On the other hand, if someone is asking for $60,000 and you can only offer $55,000, you’re in range. Remember, it’s like anything in life; if you don’t ask, you’ll never get it. In this case, your candidates might be asking for more than they really think they’ll get just in case they do get it.

2. Do we tell him about your current management situation, staff, business, etc.? Yes! When you offer the position, tell everything … the good, the bad and the ugly. You want to make sure the candidate enters the job with a clear understanding of what they are about to walk into. This allows them to make an informed decision.

If you don’t tell the candidate everything up front, when they start working for you and start to discover on their own the skeletons in the closet so to speak, you may find yourself looking for a new general manager much faster than you could ever imagine.

If you follow these suggestions throughout your hiring process, it will help you turn the nightmare process of hiring in to a dream come true.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in systems for independent restaurant owners. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

By David Scott Peters

I just wrapped up a quarterly Elite Member meeting in Michigan. It was our second quarter get-together where members come together to focus on a specific topic and use each others’ experience and knowledge to help each other make improvements in their restaurants. (It’s one of the mastermind groups with TheRestaurantExpert.com.)

The topic this time around was customer service, and we focused on the principles taught by John DiJulius because he focuses on creating a “world-class experience” for guests. We covered establishing the core values for each restaurant owner in attendance. These are the non-negotiables, such as cleanliness, health code and such. Things that can put you out of business when not done right.

Then we talked about mapping out the customer service cycle so everyone in your restaurant knows what’s expected of them and how to treat the guests. One of John DiJulius’ examples is a “beat the greet” standard where you or someone in your restaurant greets every customer before they can greet you. This ensures no one is left standing at the door wondering what to do next.

And then we talked about what each restaurant owner wanted to do to set up a WOW customer service experience for their customers. And this was a great brainstorming session because we have members who own all types of different kinds of restaurants, from family style to BBQ to full-service white tablecloth. So the ideas were all over the place. And when an idea came up that seemed not to fit into one style of restaurant, there was a room full of peers offering ways to make it work or other ideas that worked better.

It was a great meeting. And like every member meeting we have, there was an unannounced theme. If our official theme was customer service, then our unoffocial theme was expansion.

There was a lot of talk about growth and opening new restaurants. The opportunities are ripe. The commercial real estate market is expected to reach its bottom this year into next and the time is great for looking at expanding.

Of course, part of expanding is having the numbers in line. The banks are pretty tight with the money these days, so it’s essential that independent restaurants can show a bank the appropriate financial reports. Make sure you find a CPA who can really help you, and as always, here at TheRestaurantExpert.com, we teach the systems you need to get those numbers in line.

I took away from this meeting that the independent restaurant still has the ability to offer a WOW customer service experience every time. There is a formulat to it – but a formula you can make your own. You just have to make sure you train your staff to your expectations and hold them accountable. And then you have to know what you’re willing to do to make sure every customer leaves thinking, WOW, and wanting to come back for more.

Any members out there have anything to add?

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in systems for independent restaurant owners. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

By David Scott Peters

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in systems for independent restaurant owners. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

By David Scott Peters

Restaurant Tip of the Week

Hire a Good Manager to Improve Business 

Think hiring a good manager isn’t that important? Just take a look at what a manager with good interpersonal/communication skills can do for your restaurant, and consider it before you decline a raise or higher the guy willing to take less money:

1. Build a climate of trust and respect in which communication is encouraged and messages are communicated with respect.
2. Express clearly what needs to be done, using language that employees can understand, resulting in things actually getting done.   

Build a positive work climate where employees can and will work productively. A climate where they can do their best work and achieve their highest potential in their jobs.

A good manager is worth the investment for your restaurant.

If you’re looking for something to keep your managers working for you and motivated, or if they’ve been after you for a good bonus program, I’ve got the perfect tool for you. It’s the “How to Structure a Restaurant Bonus Program,” which provides you with all you need to create a bonus program that rewards your management team, but doesn’t rob you of your profits. Check it out here.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in systems for independent restaurant owners. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.