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STORYTIME (3) - Putting Kids at the Center of Everything
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#566 - STORYTIME (3) - Putting Kids at the Center of Everything ***** Tickets are available now for the Restaurant Profitability Summit! This is our biggest event of the year, but attendance is capped at 200 people. Get your tickets now. LEARN MORE: https://go.restaurant-strategy.com/summit-2026 ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: MARQII VISIT: https://marqii.com/ This week's episode is brought to you by: POPMENUVISIT: https://popmenu.com/restaurantstrategy ***** Human beings are storytellers. It's how we make sense of the world around us, give meaning to the things we experience. Today I want to talk about putting kids front and center. I promise: it changes everything. ***** If you want to snag a copy of Chip's book, The Restaurant Marketing Mindset: https://www.therestaurantmarketingmindset.com/ If you're ready to learn more about the P3 Mastermind: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/p3-mastermind-program If you want a free 30-day trial of our Restaur...
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The only way that people get to know about your restaurant is if other people talk about your restaurant. We know the power of word of mouth. Word of mouth happens when we tell stories. So I want to tell you the stories that I tell about restaurants more than any other story, right? So I have hundreds of stories. I'm telling you the 20 stories that I think are the most impactful, the ones I tell most. So we started this just a couple of episodes ago. This is episode number three again, more stories. I want to continue this theme of kids and how places go. Have gone above and beyond for my kid. All in today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
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There's an old saying that goes something like this.
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You'll only find three kinds of people in the world.
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Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
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Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. I am your host here of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. Over 550 episodes to date. You know, I give talks, I write books, I host a coaching program. It's called the P3 mastermind. I also run one big live event every October. The next one is coming up October 18th, 19th and 20th. It happens in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Restaurant Profitability Summit is a two day event unless you get the VIP ticket. Then it's a two and a half day event. Because you also get a welcome dinner with me and my team on Sunday night, October 18th. But then all day Monday, all day Tuesday the 19th and the 20th is education 10 to 6. We do a big party on Monday night. Every ticket, general admission or VIP gets into that. And the whole point, day one is about how we better manage our expenses, right? From a labor and cogs perspective, the entire second day is how we grow revenue. Both from an operations and marketing perspective. AI is going to feature prominently into this event. Managing, not cutting, but managing properly so you can maximize profitability. Talk about consistent, predictable 20% profits. I believe it's possible. I've done it over and over and over. We see it with our P3 members all the time. That's what this event is all about. Tactical how to a series of playbooks, right? How do you grow catering, private dining business? How do you have better retention of your staff? What's the difference in leadership and management? How do you grow? Check average so you can add 10, 15, 20, 20% to top line revenue in the year to come. All of that is covered and I literally give you all of the playbooks. Nothing is gated. Everything is given to you. In this event, you're going to find the link in the show Notes. Go click buy your tickets only 200 spots. If you want to be in the room, you've got to get one of those 200 spots. As of the recording, a little less than half the tickets are available. If you want to be there, I want you to be there. Again, the link is in the show Notes. Go get your tickets and I'll see you there. Today's episode is sponsored by Marquee. With Marquee, you get to manage and respond to all of your reviews on Google, Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, on and on and on. They're all in one central place. They help you improve your star ratings with consistent review responses. And guess what? They'll even respond for you if you don't have the time to do it. Marquee also makes sure that your listings are buttoned up, meaning your hours, menus and other online information is accurate across the entire Internet. What does that do? It places you higher in near me searches, which ultimately helps you get more butts in seats. We recommend Marquee. We have been recommending Marquee. We will continue to recommend Marquee because it works.
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Curious.
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To Learn more? Visit marquee.com that's M A R Q I I dot com. As always, you'll find that link in the Show Notes. Okay, so you know, I travel a lot and a lot of these early stories really have to do with Europe. So the first story had to do with Italy. Second one, Spain today, has to do with France. When I was in Paris, the very first TR we took as a family all together was 2019. We went to Paris for the holidays on Christmas night, right? So on Christmas we went out to dinner to the Four Seasons. They got a couple of restaurants. They had a one Michelin star restaurant. And again, make no mistake, this has nothing to do with it being fancy. This has to do with the hospitality they provided. So it's a beautiful prefix menu. We're going through the menu right around the last savory course. Before we get to desserts, they bring my son, my son, who was 4 at the time, he's starting to flag. They bring him a bag of candies, homemade, like gummy candy candies, pad de fui and other gummies. And tied to that bag was a red balloon. I don't have to tell you what candy in a red balloon is for a four year old. It's like catnip, right? It Totally kept him absorbed. If he was flagging and maybe only had 10 or 15 minutes left, it kept him engaged for the next 30 to 40 minutes. So guess what? We didn't have to just like chow down on our dessert and get out of there. We could sit and have a coffee or tea or. What we ended up doing was having an after dinner drink because he was occupied, he was still engaged, he was having a good time. It was such an easy, stupid thing to do at that restaurant to just give him something. It is the story we tell more than anything else. Again, a lot of these stories have to do with Europe going above and beyond the hospitality that's provided. We talk about old World hospitality, Old World charm. This is what we're talking about. It's not only the awareness, but the desire to do it, the drive to do it, the understanding that by doing this we will, we will make for a better guest experience. Number one, it made it better for my son. Number two, therefore it made it better for the parents of a young, of a young child. I can't tell you how meaningful it is if you occupy those children so the parents can have a glass of wine and catch up over the day and relax without having to shove their kid in front of an iPad screen. Right? If you can keep him engaged throughout the meal, it does wonders for their enjoyment of the meal. And we've gone on and had meal after meal after meal at nice restaurants, at casual restaurants, at fancy restaurants, everything in between. But we've dined with my son more because we've been able to keep him engaged. This place was like the first really fancy meal we ever took him to and they went out of their way. This was unprompted and it wasn't like he was fetching or like crying or whining. He wasn't, but they could just tell, this kid's gonna start flagging soon. This kid is about done. Cause guess what, it was sort of late at that point. It was like 9 o', clock, 9 o'. Clock. The kid was jet lagged. It's Christmas, he's already hopped up and it's sort of late for a four year old, right? So they kept him engaged. There's another part of the story, maybe even a better part of the story. In just a second, after another word from our sponsors, Pop Menu has reimagined their restaurant. They're breaking the mold of the menu. Take the kitchen doors off the hinges. Serving up their most comprehensive solution yet. It's called Pop Menu Max. So it's Got everything you've already heard me mention, right? Websites, SEO, marketing tools, all of that. But now we get phone answering. Now we get third party online order aggregation. We get first party ordering, we get wait listing. All of that is now in the, is now in the in the bag. Pop menu is phone answering. For example, that technology gets your ringing co phones covered, right? AI AI helps the simple questions get answered so your phone line's not tied up, right? So you don't have a staff member just answering the phone that can actually be there for your in person hospitality. No more missed reservations, no more missed orders, no more people asking for hours, Anything. And that's just the beginning. You have a passion for food. Pop menu is a passion for technology. Together, it's a recipe for restaurant success. Listen, if you're a restaurant owner, you need pop menu. It's gonna take your business to the next level. For a limited time only, get a hundred dollars off your first month. Plus you get to lock in one flat unchanging monthly rate. Go to popmenu.com restaurantstrategy to claim this offer. Again, it's a hundred dollars off your first month. And yes, you're gonna find that link in the show notes. Okay, so we're talking about the stories, the stories we tell more than any other. And I end up telling this story about Paris when we dined at one of the restaurants at the Four Seasons because it illustrates a really important point, the way that we take care of our kids. So the last time, you know, in the last episode, I talked about when I was in Spain. And that became like, like a core formative memory for my son. Getting to meet the chef, take pictures of the chef, get a chef's coke, go back to the kitchen, all of that. But before that, right, we will rewind the clock from 2025 to 2019. The very first time we ever went abroad and the very first time we were ever in Paris. First nice, nice meal we ever took my son to about two thirds through the meal, maybe three quarters of the way through the meal, right? If you were getting finished with Savory. Moving to the dessert courses, they brought my son candy and a balloon. It was unreal. Well, guess what they did after that. After that they ended up right. We paid the check, we get up, they take us. Cause there's a beautiful place to take pictures. And they say, we want to show you this. And then out there, there's also this big Christmas tree in the lobby and there's like train cars there. So it was like so we still were finishing our after dinner drinks, and basically they said, don't pound it and don't leave it to waste. Come out here. And they knew there's something else we can show your kid to keep him occupied. So there was like a train that went around the big tree in the lobby. And so there we go. We go in there, my son gets on his hands and knees and he's playing with these toy tr. Making them go around and around, the presents and the Christmas decorations and all of that. And then we go over to this beautiful little area they have set up in the courtyard where we can take pictures. So we're doing that. We take pictures, right? They come out, they re up his candy stash, they put more candy in the bag, they get us our coats and they send us out the door. Well, guess what? That extra re up of candy. Now he's got candy. He's eating from the Four Seasons bag all week long. So it wasn't just about giving him candy to keep him occupied, but now it became something of evangelism. Right now he's walking around eating his candy all night, all week. Every single night after dinner, he has a piece or two of candy, right? All week long. Yeah, we could get, you know, we could get other, you know, treats, other sweets, other chocolates, things. We're certainly in Paris. There's no shortage of that. They made sure that the Four Seasons was top of mind with him over and over and over. It was such a simple move that probably cost them a euro, right? A euro in candies. €2 in candies. When we just spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars at this really beautiful, high end, fancy Michelin star meal. Not only did they take care of him, give us extra mileage at the table, but they show them, showed him a way to stay engaged out in the lobby again, creating now a formative memory, right? Oh, where was that place that we took the pictures in the, in the igloo with all the Christmas lights? Oh, was that the same place with the, with the trains? Oh, remember, they gave me candy before they left. When they brought me our coat, when they brought our coats, they. They brought us candy. All of that to go above and beyond, create a memory, create a story, something we would talk about. So guess what? I hardly remember what we ate that night. I do not talk about the food or the bottle of wine that we ordered. I. I don't know. What I talk about is this experience. I talk about the way I felt. I talk about how they went above and beyond. I can you how little food, wine, service matters in your restaurant. It obviously matters because it's table stakes. It's got to be good because people just go somewhere where the food's better. But it is not. I don't think why people return over and over and over. They return because people look them in the eye and remember them by name. They make them feel special. They take care of their kids. They give them a tour, right? They give them a little something extra. They take something off the check. They call them on their on the holidays. They send them an email. They engage. They're human. That's what keeps people coming back. I promise. If there's any takeaway to this story, it is that again. One final reminder that the Restaurant Profitability Summit happens October 18th, 19th and 20th in Minneapolis. There are 200 spots available. We've sold about half of them as of this recording. If you want to be there, I want you there. It is. How to it is Tactical, a series of playbooks. You're going to have no less than 30 playbooks for growing check average for growing catering and private dining sales, for getting your labor under control, for getting your food costs under control. You're going to learn menu engineering. All of this +AI. AI is going to factor prominently in this event. If you want to be there, I want you to be there. The link is in the show notes so you can go and get your tickets. Again. General admission tickets available and vip. Thank you guys very much for making the show part of your week. I look forward to seeing you in Minneapolis.