← RESTAURANT STRATEGY
RESTAURANT STRATEGY
Consistency Beats Creativity
00:15:55
#550 - Consistency Beats Creativity ***** 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 ***** Consistency over creativity. Every. Single. Time. ***** If you want to snag a copy of Chip's book, The Restaurant Marketing Mindset... CLICK HERE: https://www.therestaurantmarketingmindset.com/ If you're ready to learn more about the P3 Mastermind... CLICK HERE: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/p3-mastermind-program If you want a free 30-day trial of our Restaurant Foundations Membership Site... CLICK HERE: https://www.restaurantstrategypodcast.com/Foundations-b If you want to leave a 5-star rating/review on Apple Podcasts... CLICK HERE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/restaurant-strategy/id1457379809
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Most restaurant owners think their problem is a lack of creativity. They say things like, we need better ideas, we need something new, we need a fresh angle. But here's the truth. Your restaurant doesn't need more creativity. It actually just needs more consistency. And today we're going to talk about why consistency is boring, why it's uncomfortable and wildly profitable, and why creativity is often the hiding place for indecision. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy. There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. 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. Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. I am your host here of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. You know me by now. I write books, I give talks, I run a membership site. It's called Restaurant Foundations. I also run my signature coaching program. It's called the P3 mastermind. There's actually two versions of that program, the P3 mastermind, which is how we work with, let's say 90% of the people and then P3 plus we, which is if you want more personalized individual connection. So if you want to meet with me privately every other week, if you want to get me on site, this is how we do it. If you want to come to our summit, if you want to come to the leadership retreat, this is how we do it. P3 and P3 plus. The best ways I know how to help restaurant owners dial in profits so that they can grow. It's really specifically geared towards multi unit operators. People who have got like 2, 3, 4 locations that are looking to get to like 5, 5, 10, 20 locations. This is the piece you need. Dial in profitability. We talk a lot about consistent, predictable 20% profits, if that sounds good. Meaning, listen, if you got a $10 million operation right, you should be clearing $1.52 million to the bottom line every year. If you're doing that, congratulations, you're in a. You're in a. A very select group. If you're nowhere close, then we should have a conversation. There's no pressure to join the program. It's just a conversation where we ask each other a bunch of questions and see if you're a good fit. Because if you are, I promise change everything for you. Restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule go there, grab some time on the calendar. Again, you'll chat with me or someone from my team. Let's Just see if you're a good fit. All right, so one of the coaches who works with me is a guy named Rev Ciancio. I think he is hands down the smartest restaurant marketer I know. He works at hundreds of restaurants all over the country and he's an operator himself. He's a restaurant owner. He works with the P3 members. He teaches the weekly marketing call that we do in the program. And then again, he. He acts as like a fractional CMO for hundreds of restaurants all over the country. Did you know every time he works with a new restaurant, he insists they use Marquee, Right? We recommend Marquee all the time, but he insists on it. It helps with listings management, SEO and reputation management. With Marquee, you get to manage and respond to all of your reviews, right? From Google, Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Grubhub, on and on and on in one central place. Because of that, they help you improve your star ratings with consistent review responses. They will even respond for you if you don't have time. Marquee also makes sure that all your hours, menus and information matches across the entire Internet, which places you higher in near me searches, which ultimately helps you get more butts in seats. If you're curious to learn more, visit marquee.com that's M A R qi.com as always, you'll find that link in the show. Notes Creativity feels productive, right? And consistency feels boring, right? So let's be honest about that. I mean, creativity feels good. It feels energizing. It feels like progress. New menu items, new promotions, new content ideas, new campaigns. And consistency on the other side feels dull, right? Same message, same standards, same execution, same expectations. So owners chase novelty not because it works, but because it feels like movement. You'll hear me say this over and over again, but I want to remind you, Dave Ramsey has been delivering the same content, right? Telling the same message for three plus decades, right? He is a personal finance guru and he basically says the same thing over and over again. Spend less than you make. Except he says it in all different places. In books, on tv, on the radio, podcasts, talks live, on tape, on stage. He does it over and over and over again. But it's the same message over and over again. Now go look him up. Is Dave Ramsey successful? I think you'll find he's wildly successful. And not because he's gotten creative and like novel. No, it's because he's been painfully consistent. Again, one of the pain points I see is that Owners are constantly chasing novelty, not because it works, but because that feels productive. That feels like what they should do. Most restaurants overvalue ideas and actually undervalue the execution of ideas. But here's the truth. Ideas are easy. Execution is hard. Execution is uncomfortable. Now why? It's because execution requires, you know, saying the same thing over and over and over again, enforcing the same standard over and over and over again, correcting the same mistakes over and over and over again, holding the same line again and again and again. That repetition is exhausting. So owners jump to something new. But didn't we learn this in Danny Meyer's book Setting the Table? He talked about that salt shaker theory, right? Over and over and over again, long after you've gotten bored. Staying on message, being consistent, fortifying that over and over and over again. Yeah, it's exhausting. But jumping resets momentum every single time. So here's the deal. Customers don't want surprise. They want certainty. And here's the beauty part. Even though you're an operator, even though you run a restaurant, you're also consumer. You go out to restaurants, you don't want to be surprised. You want to know it's a sure thing. You know, you want to know what you're getting. And this is a big misunderstanding. Owners think that guests want to be surprised. They don't. They want to be reassured. They want to know what this place feels like, what they're going to get, how the night will go, that the experience will be worth the price, the cost, the effort. Surprises create anxiety. Certainty creates trust. Now, can you delight someone? Can you go above and beyond? Yep. There's a, there's a way you can surprise people that way by elevating the experience. But don't, don't for a second misunderstand, don't for a second think that you have to do that over and over and over again. Certainty, consistency is actually what you need to do. And then find very key moments to go above and beyond will. God are wrote an entire book about it. Unreasonable hospitality. And don't miss the message there. It wasn't that you should constantly reinvent and be creative and think outside the box. It wasn't. His message is that to make the best restaurant in the world, food's got to be top notch. Beverage program has to be dialed in. Service has to be on point every single time. And when all of that stuff, right, table stakes, when all of that stuff is done well, then we can find really key moments to create a spark to go above and beyond. But his restaurant at the time did not do sparks all the time. It was just very specific places where he did it. Again, certainty. Consistency creates trust. And that's what we're after. The reality is consistency is actually how brands are built. Brands are not built through moments, they're built through patterns, right? Repeating moments over and over. When people say, oh, we always have a good time there, they're always solid. It's always what I expect. That's not luck. That's training. That's fortification. That's excellent. That's standards. That's consistency. Creativity without consistency actually creates confusion. See, here's what constant creativity does. It blurs identity, it fractures messaging, it confuses your staff, and it resets the guest expectations every time because they don't know what to expect. See, staff doesn't know. It matters. Managers don't know what to protect. In the end. That's actually not innovation. That's just a lot of noise. Creativity creates noise. Consistency builds trust. Pop Menu has reimagined the restaurant. They're breaking the mold of the menu, taking the kitchen doors off the hinges and serving up their most comprehensive technology solution yet. It's called Pop Menu Max. It comes with all the previous ingredients that we've mentioned here on the podcast. Right? So we websites designed with SEO marketing tools to keep you top of mind with guests and of course the patented interactive menu technology. But this new recipe brings automated phone answering to the table, third party online ordering, aggregation, wait listing and more. Pop Menu's phone answering, for example. That technology has your ringing phones covered. It uses AI, right? So artificial intelligence and makes the simple questions that keep your phone line tied up normally now can be handled by the computer without pulling a staff member from your in person hospitality. So no more missed reservations, no more people asking for your hours or missing out on revenue. And that's just the beginning. You have a passion for food. Pop Menu has a passion for technology. Together, it's a recipe for restaurant success. And now even more digital ingredients are in that technology pantry. And Pop Menu is helping restaurants attract, engage, remarket and transact with their guests on a whole new level. Trust me, if you're a restaurant owner, you need Pop Menu to take your business to the next level. And for a limited time only get a hundred bucks off your first month. Plus you get to lock in one flat unchanging monthly rate. Go to popmenu.com RestaurantStrategy to claim the offer. Again, that's $100 off your first month by visiting p o p m e n u.com RestaurantStrategy as always, you'll find that link in the show notes. The more we talk about consistency, the more we have to go back and talk about leadership. Because leadership is really where these ideas are fortified, right? Consistency requires the courage to lead. And here's why consistency is actually so rare. It requires that you say, this is who we are, and you have to know it. This is what we do. And you have to deliver. This is how we do it. You have to train people to do exactly what you want them to do. Again, this is who we are, what we do, how we do it. And then not changing it the first time someone complains. That takes real courage, takes real guts to hold the line. That's why it's so hard. And see, most quote unquote boring restaurants are boring to the owners, but not boring to the guests. Remember that, owners, you will get bored long before your guests will see. Guests don't notice. The fifth time you post the same message, they will not notice. The hundredth time, you reinforce the standard owners do. So owners change, but the guests get confused. And here's the real shift I want you to make. Right here it is. Creativity gets attention once, but consistency builds preference forever. Over and over and over. I started off early in this episode talking about Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey is a really helpful example. He tells the message over and over in all kinds of different channels, right? Has people call into his radio show that have different situations, but they're all opportunities for him to reinforce the same thing. Spend less than you make, right? So the creativity or the variety, I'll say comes from him and his team finding all different ways to say the same thing. But it would be impossible unless they knew what they wanted to say. What they wanted to say over and over and over again is to have a strong financial future, you have to spend less than you make. And then let's deal with a whole bunch of individual situations where I'll say the same thing over and over again. The creativity, the variety is important, but only works. It only works because of the consistency of the message. So here's what I want you to do today. I want you to ask yourself, what are we changing that actually doesn't need to change? Man, that's crazy. You'd be amazed how many people change specials every single week when they don't need to. Maybe it's just they have the same cycle of a couple specials that, you know, come and go. Maybe have the same special for three weeks or a month at a time. Maybe they have Five specials, and they cycle through them all. April, May, and June. So these are our spring specials. Each night's gonna be a different one, but we've created the four or five recipes. We know those dishes, depending what we can get in what's good that day, then we'll know which of those five specials we do. But we don't have to keep changing it over and over and over again. Because, remember, most of your guests, let's say 85% of your guests, 90% of your guests, aren't there week after week after week after week. Maybe they come once a month, once a year, but they don't know that you're not changing your specials every single week. You know that you don't change them, but most of your people won't. So again, ask yourself, what are we changing that actually doesn't need to change? Because I think you'll find that's where consistency is actually being sabotaged. If at any point during the day, during the week, your restaurant feels chaotic or scattered or exhausting to market, and I promise you, you don't need a better idea. You simply need to commit longer to the one you already chose. Consistency over creativity every single time. As always, I want to thank you guys for making this show part of your week. I know there's a lot of great podcasts to listen to, and I hope you go and find all of them. I feel strongly about this show and the way that we're able to inspire and help and guide you and take action if you want more help, more personalized att. That's what our signature coaching program is all about. The P3 mastermind. You get started by simply scheduling a call and having a conversation. I promise you, there's zero pressure. We bring 10 to 15 new members into the program every single month. My simple question is, why not you? You will join an incredible community of owners and operators who are all leveling up, trying to dial in profitability, consistent, predictable, 20% profits so that they can move to the next level. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule. Grab some time there on the calendar. Grab you'll chat with me or someone from my team. As always, you'll find that link in the show notes. I appreciate you guys very much. Have a great week and I'll see you on the next one.