← Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore
Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore
1216: Three Pillars to Scale Your Restaurant Group without Losing Control with Christin Marvin
01:21:00
Christin Marvin is a podcast host, author, and creator of , a consultancy business she founded in 2022. Christin was a Managing Partner at Bonanno Concepts in Denver from 2007-2012. She served as a Regional Manager at Snooze A.M. Eatery in Denver from...
Loading summary
Transcript207 lines
- [00:01]
A
What up Unstoppables? We have a great show for you today. I recorded this with Kristen Marvin and this was a live event recorded in Restaurant Unstoppable Network. So if you find yourself wishing you could have joined us live because this episode is so great. She really was awesome and you had questions. You could have asked her questions. And we have so many live events coming your way in September. So if you regret not being live for this conversation, head over to Restaurantstoppable.com live in September is the month to join Restaurant Unstoppable Network. So next week, week, the week of September 8th, I am off to Mexico for a wedding. But when I get back, things are popping off. This was a workshop, but we also have power hours and we have mentoring sessions and I literally reverse engineer your needs to determine what these workshops are and who I connect you with in the mentoring session. So I'm ready and willing to go to bat for you guys. Head over to restaurantstoppable.com live and be a part of the next conversation. Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1,000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guests and so many others and get one step closer to becoming Unstoppable. Do you wish you could have all of your restaurant needs and solutions under one roof? Well, you can. It's called Restaurant Systems Pro. And with Restaurant Systems Pro, you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and systems to create and implement checklists. And on top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro has their own native general ledger and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming serve because that's exactly what they do. To learn more, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com RSP where you can schedule your own demo. Watch a demo that I did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, or catch every and all testimonial we've ever recorded on the show. That's restaurantunstoppable.com RSP this episode is made possible by me is a digital recipe platform that helps you stay creative, build profitable menus, and nail food execution at scale. We know to scale you need consistency because consistency builds trust with your guests and your staff. We all want to know what the job done right looks like. And when you have systems, your systems are a picture of perfection, of what that job done right is, is. And that puts us to peace. We are so happy when we know we're doing a good job. Me's will be the one source of truth for your entire team. It's time to take control of your profitability. Learn more at www.getmes.com unstoppable. That's www.g-e T M E E Z.com unstoppable. This episode is made possible by US Foods. And did you know US Foods is hosting the Food Fanatics 2025 event at the Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's all going down between August 19th and 20th. This is going to be one you do not want to miss. I'm going to be there. I want you to be there. Here's what you got to do. And the clock is ticking, so do not delay. Register now at www.usfoods.com Food Fanatics 2025 or just go to usfoods.com and look for the banner with excitement. Allow me to welcome back on the show for a second time author and restaurant coach at Solutions by Kristen Kri Marvin. My lady. Kristen, are you feeling unstoppable today?
- [04:08]
B
Always. Thanks for having me, Eric.
- [04:10]
A
Always a joy to connect with you. And you know, the first time we had you on the show, that was episode 1096. Almost a year ago. Over a year ago. Tons of value. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed just sharing your story and you really impressed me. So I'm stoked to be able to have you back to go deeper into that noggin. You have. You have some great advice. I know this is going to be good. Today we're going to be talking about the three pillars to scale your restaurant group without losing control. Control. Those pillars, the teaser people, process and profit, which aren't really surprising pillars. You know, I think if you're a student of the industry, you're, you're hearing a lot of content. You, you hear things like that's, that's not a surprise. But looking at the sub bullets, there's some great stuff coming our way. So I cannot wait to get into it. And I think that you know this is coming. I hope you know this is coming. But we can't get started until, until we get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?
- [05:04]
B
Yeah, slow down to speed up. I think la. I think I used the same Mantra. Last time we recorded together, which you were in my living room. So I'm feeling a little bit distant from you today. I think I'm in your living room today or somewhere in your house.
- [05:18]
A
But my studio, I actually have a studio now.
- [05:21]
B
Nice. Nice. Yeah. Slow down to speed up is a mantra that I have been using since becoming an entrepreneur. And it's something that I talk a lot about with clients and, and it's just the, a lot of the beauty that I, the beauty of the work that I do is helping people really take a second pause, breathe deeply, and think deeply about every aspect of their business. And that's not something that we do a lot in the restaurant business.
- [05:50]
A
What does that slowing down look like?
- [05:53]
B
It really can look different for everyone. It's something that I kind of work on designing with people. But sometimes for people it's simply taking a 10 minute walk. It can be listening to a podcast, it can be walking the dogs, it can be taking a tech break, a 72 hour tech break, and spending some time in nature. It can be walking around in grass with your shoes off and just connecting to the earth. It can also be just a few deep breaths at a time when things are really stressful in the middle of the shift.
- [06:27]
A
Yeah. And I think those are micro examples, but I think it also could be taking a month or two, a quarter, maybe a year to work on the business. And you know, I think this is really true of today's conversation is about scaling. I think restaurateurs get super aggressive with scaling and they just, they think about, you know, they just put their energy out, out, out, out. And they don't put their energy into what they're doing better. And you know, you see this going from two to three or four locations or even just going from one to two locations. They think, oh, I, if I just have more of these, the money will come and things will get easier and then they just end up overextending them. They don't put the, the, the energy in to what you're doing today, better tomorrow, and constantly just making that thing that you do better. And that, that takes slowing down and really thinking and being intentional with how you do things.
- [07:22]
B
Absolutely. And really understanding the reasoning of rep behind why you want to scale. Sometimes people scale because of ego. Right. Or they want to build their brand and their name across multiple locations. Sometimes it's because they get bored, which I hear a lot. Right. They've opened one or they've opened two and they're like, okay, now what I think The Nats next, you know, next natural step is just to grow. I was having a conversation with the owner, with an owner the other day who six months ago, when we started to work, started our work together, was completely burnt out and ready to escape the industry because things were so chaotic. And after being able to put some of these systems in place today that we're going to talk about, he. He said to me last week, he said, you, you're gonna think I'm nuts, but now that things are going so well, I just got an opportunity to open a third and I think I want to continue to grow.
- [08:10]
A
Interesting. Well, let's see how that goes.
- [08:13]
B
So let's find the opportunity. Yeah, just comes and comes to them and they don't even. They're not.
- [08:17]
A
I think that's the way to do it. I don't think you need to. I think the best way to scale is to attract opportunity, not to go look for it. You know, I think, you know, I think if you do the thing well, enough people will come to you. And I don't know, man, maybe that's not a universally accepted approach, but I find that when you are good at what you do, the opportunity, you attract it, you don't go looking for it.
- [08:40]
B
I think it can work both ways, Eric. I think that, you know, for I. I'm learning a lot about myself as an entrepreneur and how I'm built and designed and how I should be working. And I'm finding that it's better for me when I wait for opportunities to come instead of chasing opportunities, because one is much more draining for me and the other one is much more sustainable. But I think that no matter whether you have an invitation come to you or an opportunity come to you to open a new restaurant, or you decide that you're going to open an additional location or multiple locations, there needs to be intention around how you're going to go do it. And that really starts with people and the first pillar. Yeah, today.
- [09:25]
A
Yeah. So let's get into that first thing. People, like, do your thing.
- [09:31]
B
Yeah, for sure. So these pillars are part of a framework, an independent restaurant framework that I built and put into my new book, Multi Unit Mastery. So what. And the why and kind of the backstory behind this was I've been coaching independent restaurant owners now for a couple years. And, you know, I've been, again, been in the industry for 20 years. I realized that there was a common theme, a few common themes that were really missing for people and specific pain points with every single person I talked to And I found myself coaching around very much some of the same things. And when I sat down and spent slowing down the speed ups and spent some time reflecting on what's going on here and what is the bigger opportunity here to support the industry, I was like, oh, this is something beautiful that I could put into a framework. I also really compared this to my previous experience. Right. So growing an independent group from two locations that were different and then opening five completely different concepts over five years, I saw that none of this framework was in place and it was incredibly chaotic. And what we did was we just found people that were really loyal to us and then we put them in leadership positions and then try to design roles for them. And what that does when you scale is it can be expensive from a salary perspective. If you're just bringing on too many people and you don't really know what to do with them, they can get really confused on exactly what their role is and where their skill sets can shine. And you just for the position that I was in and where the company that I worked with, we didn't continue to think about how to grow our people and multiply them. Every time we opened more concepts, we just kept putting more and more and more work on our team, which is going to burn people out. Right. So then moving to when I worked for Snooze and we went from six to 48 locations, I saw this framework in place, I just didn't know it at the time and saw how we were able to scale so quickly and so successfully and sustainably because we have these key components.
- [11:44]
A
So this framework is the pillar 1, 2 and 3 we're going to be covering today. People, process and then profit.
- [11:50]
B
Exactly.
- [11:52]
A
So let's break down that first pillar. People get into it.
- [11:56]
B
Yeah. So I put people first because no restaurant can operate, whether you're a single unit or multi unit, no restaurant can operate without people. Right. And it's about understanding, again, successfully scaling is all about understanding who exactly you need to hire and making sure that they align with the core values of your business. And some people know what their core values are and some people don't. And so that's okay. And you, it starts with identifying what the core values are for your business, hiring teammates that that fit with those core values and then ensuring that you're working on developing them. So what happens when somebody, typically when an owner opens a restaurant, right. They've got all the systems and the processes up here in their mind. And as you continue to grow and you hire more people, the challenge then becomes, how do I get all these systems and processes out of my head? How do I put them down on paper and how do I teach those to people when I'm still working in my current position? So it's about, you know, Dan Sullivan talks a lot about this. It's about finding the right who for your business. Right. Instead of thinking to yourself, I want to grow, how am I going to do this? It's about making sure that you're putting the right team in place.
- [13:04]
A
I think I have who, not how, on that shelf behind me.
- [13:06]
B
Do you have.
- [13:08]
A
Yeah, it's a, it's a great, It's a great book. Yeah. And it's. I think a lot of people, they think about, like, the what and the why and the how, but it's really, it's at the end of the day, it's all about the who's. Like, you don't have to be the, the end all. Be all.
- [13:21]
B
You.
- [13:22]
A
You can go to the people who are those things and, you know, they might bring the how to you. If you can find the right who.
- [13:29]
B
Absolutely. And, and when you identify, okay, here are the core values of the business. Here's exactly who we're looking for. Again, the challenge in the independent space tends to be, oh, well, let's just go find somebody that's been working with us and working hard for a long time and then we'll teach them how to do this skill. But sometimes that can be really challenging because the restaurant owner isn't great at marketing, per se. Right. Restaurant owners didn't get into the restaurant business because they're good marketers. So if you're trying to, if you have a skill set that's lacking, and then you're turning around and trying to teach somebody else that's young, that's got, you know, that's lacking in those same skills, here's how to do this. That's draining for both people. So again, it's about finding somebody with that skill set. And the beautiful thing about today's world is you don't have to pay somebody a salary and have that person be full time. Right. You can micro outsource. So once you identify what leadership components, exactly what roles you need in your restaurant, then you can figure out, okay, am I going to delegate this out to somebody on the team? Am I going to outsource this to a fractional CEO, fractional cfo, fractional hr? I mean, there's just all these really, you know, or is this an AI? Is this something I can use?
- [14:38]
A
AI, where Is the restaurateur in their life cycle, as you're talking right now, like, is this one location, two locations, three locations? This point of outsourcing, like you're discussing.
- [14:48]
B
Yeah. Where the biggest pain point I tend to see is going from two to three.
- [14:53]
A
Yeah.
- [14:54]
B
Two seems to be a little bit more manageable because they can be in both locations within a week.
- [14:59]
A
Yeah.
- [15:00]
B
Right. Three is when it's just like, it feels like the wheels are starting to fall.
- [15:04]
A
I have segmented my community into basically four groups that I haven't opened yet. Between 1 and 3 and 4 to 10 and 11 to 20. And those tend to be areas of like, evolution. To your point, at three locations, you can, it can all go through you up to three. But if you want to get beyond three locations, you have to start thinking about that mindset of owner, operator to CEO has to start kicking in where you have to remove yourself from the manager executive roles, where you really starting to surround yourself with the who's. Right. And you're, you're the visionary, you're the. You're the why. Or maybe you're. You're a technician. You could be somebody who needs to find a why guy or gal. Right?
- [15:49]
B
Yeah. Yeah. It's about understanding for the, the, the owner, first and foremost. What role do you want to truly be playing? Right. What's giving you energy, what do you want to get rid of? And then exactly who you need to have in place in order to get rid of those things.
- [16:02]
A
And you have a note here. Core values aren't just wall art. What do you mean by that?
- [16:06]
B
So it's important to make sure that you know, and this was a beautiful thing that we did at Snooze. Once you identify your core values, it's important to revisit them often because they're going to change as your business grows. They should, they should evolve. Not only the leaders does the leadership team need to know your core values, but they, the entire team, your entire staff needs to know what your core values are. And so those core values should be used not only to build your business, but to hire every single person on your team in your restaurant group. And they should be used when you're coaching, and they should be used in performance reviews. So they're always a living and breathing thing. If you just hang them on the wall and then you expect people to hold themselves accountable to them, it's not going to work. You have to teach people what the behavior is around each of those core values and then coach when that behavior gets off. Track.
- [17:01]
A
Yeah. So when do we resurface these core values? Like, when are the one of the right times to echo these things and to resurface them?
- [17:09]
B
Annual reviews are a wonderful way just to check in and just say again, as you're checking in with your vision, whether you've got a one year, three or five year, 10 year vision and you're doing annual reviews with everybody, whenever you start to say, okay, let's check in on how the business did last year and then let's talk about where we're going next year. Core values should be right there. Are we still living to our core values with this growth plan? And are our core values still making sense for the business today or do we need to make an adjustment or two?
- [17:38]
A
Yeah. I'm thinking of Mario Del Perro who talks about using rituals. Like in any culture across the world, there are rituals, there are annual rituals, there are decade rituals, there are monthly rituals, there are daily rituals. Like it's like. So like, how do you incorporate rituals with your core value so that you are forcing like there's habit around resurfacing these things? I think that you could do it daily. I think maybe pick one core value and cycle through. Maybe you have seven core values every week or every day of the week. Find an example of a time where somebody used that core value. Right. Or who live that core value and make an example of them in front of the group. Right. What comes to your mind when I say this?
- [18:24]
B
I mean, social media telling stories of how core values are showing up in social media is really powerful. Yeah. Pre shifts are a wonderful way to talk about them. If you have leadership retreats with your teams, it's a wonderful way to revisit them. I mean, you could have them on your menu. There's so many ways that they can show up in your business.
- [18:41]
A
Yeah. And I think the, you know, you said like core values aren't on your something that's, you know, wall art. It's even if you have these things written down, you're talking about them really. It's what you do every day that are your values. Like, it's not what you say, it's what you do.
- [18:56]
B
So it's a behavior.
- [18:57]
A
Exactly. You got to live it.
- [19:00]
B
Exactly. And you can't live it if you're not being constantly reminded of it.
- [19:04]
A
Right, Exactly.
- [19:04]
B
Because we forget things after 90 days. We're just humans. That's why quarterly check ins are so important and performance reviews are so important and coaching is so important.
- [19:12]
A
Yeah. Well, I like to say something Often, like, in terms of scale, like, what determines growth is people in cash flow. And you have a little note here about, you know, promotional traps promoting people like, like your best service to a manager usually fails. Like, get. Get into that.
- [19:28]
B
Well, again, it's. You know, Eric, I'm sure you hear this all the time. I'm still hearing story, you know, horror stories of people saying, I was promoted too soon. I was promoted without any skill set. I was promoted without any training, and I have no idea what my job expectation is. There's a lot of operators that I talk to when they say, hey, I need to find X, the first thing I ask them is, do you have a job description for that? And a lot of people don't. And, and it's. And it's surprising to me because. And again, I've lived this world. If you don't have a clear job expectation for people, they have no idea what success looks like in their role. And there is an. There's there. You lose an opportunity as a restaurant owner or a leadership team to be able to hold people accountable to something. So you lose that measurable component. And it's such a, you know, especially with AI now you can sit down and talk to, chat for a few minutes and start to draft a really nice job offer. It adds another level of intention and professionalism to your organization that is very, very easy to implement.
- [20:30]
A
Behind every great restaurant is a great person. The key to being great is to be of service to others. And this holds true for all organizations, not just restaurants. After spending a month in Phoenix, Arizona, being hosted by Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, I got to experience firsthand Fred's desire to serve. It all started when I got there. Fred gave me the keys to his house and to his office building. When Fred leaves work every day, I witnessed him go coach one of his two son's baseball teams. And when Fred's neighbor lost power when they were hosting their son's birthday party, Fred offered to host the party at his house. Eric, why are you sharing this? Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. And believe me when I say that the desire to serve extends to Fred's restaurant clients. There are no secrets or shortcuts to life or restaurant success. There's only discipline, hard work, and the desire to do the right thing. Fred and his team at Restaurant Systems Pro are here to serve you with the systems and resources to be more disciplined so you can do the hard thing, which nine times out of 10, is the right thing. With Restaurant Systems Pro, you Get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and the systems to create and implement checklists. On top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro also has their own native general ledger and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming served. And you know what, if you don't want to change your pos, that's absolutely fine because Restaurant Systems Pro integrates with all major POS providers. To learn more, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com RSP and you will find a link to schedule a demo with their sales team. A demo I personally did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley and all 18 of our testimonials that we've recorded since the beginning of Restaurant unstoppable. Again, that's restaurantunstoppable.com RSP right. I'm thinking of, I think this is EOS language. I think I might have heard it through Dan Sullivan too. But they have to get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it. And I think sometimes, yeah, like, and we just take these people like, well, you're the most dependable, like, you're the best at your job. So we're going to take you out of the thing you're the best at.
- [22:52]
B
Yeah.
- [22:52]
A
And give you this opportunity that you might not want or have the capacity to do or maybe you don't even get it, you know? So, like, reflect more on that.
- [23:02]
B
Yeah, I mean, I love doing leadership workshops with junior managers because when I sit down and ask them and I say, hey, we're going to develop a customized leadership style for you today. A lot of them say to me, like, I don't know what leadership is, I don't know what, you know, how I want to be showing up. And that's a really fun space to play in. But I think people don't understand, again, the difference between being a server and having great menu knowledge and being able to provide a great guest experience is one thing. But managing and leading a team are completely different skill sets. Right. And there are a lot of skills that you can bridge to set up a server for managers for a management role. But there needs to be a very clear, specific process. And again, it starts with clear expectations. So I love helping people set up a 30, 60, 90 day transitional plan for anybody moving into a new leadership role so they really understand. Here's where I should be focusing my first 30 days. Here's what I should be observing when I'm on the floor. Here's how I should be behaving and interacting with the team. Right. Being a sponge, soaking in as much information as possible, building relationships, getting to know the entire business from a leadership team perspective. Then in 60 days formulating, here are some of the problems that I'm seeing in the business. And then 90 days starting to implement some of those things and learning how to implement change in a really, really successful way. Because if you don't set those new leaders up with that confidence out of the gate, they will fail.
- [24:35]
A
Yeah. So as we're moving these, you know, high performers into management roles, giving them opportunity for growth, we have to fill that void. Right. And get into, you know, this, this next note that I see here on values based hiring. So how do, how do we use values as a filter when, when growing and scaling?
- [24:55]
B
Yeah. So I'll give you a great example. I've got a client that had, they have three locations and they just opened a fourth. So they have a regional manager who's in her mid-20s, first time she's been in a regional role. We've taken her from AGM to GM to regional over the last year and a half and she just went through her first opening and she, we, we got to sit down and, you know, help her figure out. She'd hired a few people for some, well, many people for the shops that she had managed, but she'd never done an opening before. So we really sat down and, and created a core values based interview sheet that she could start using and she ended up interviewing about 60 or 70 people. She needed to hire a team of 30. And when we were checking in and talking about how that process was going, she said, kristen, I've never said no so much in my life and this feels really weird. And the end result of that was a Rockstar team. Out of 30 people, they lost two people because they chose to take different jobs. But she's been able to hire a rock star team that was all aligned, all moving in the same direction together, believed in the purpose and the mission of the company. And now she's been able to develop, put three of them into management positions with the entire company.
- [26:10]
A
Well, I love that. I mean, I feel like people might be listening to this and it's just like, I just need to hire somebody right now because there's just not a lot of help out there. And do I really want to like be turning people away if they don't check all the boxes of our shared core values? What is the argument to that?
- [26:27]
B
Yeah, they don't have to check all the boxes.
- [26:29]
A
Okay.
- [26:30]
B
They can check. Let's say you've got five core values. Like I usually recommend three to five. Those are good manageable numbers. Let's say they check three and you need to coach them and develop them to grow into the other two. If there's a willingness and desire for someone to get more involved in those core values, let's say it's community or sustainability, for example, and you have programs or training in place in your company in order to train them and teach them those things. That's okay, right? Those core values are going to be showing up in the business now. Again, give somebody 90 days in the position and you see that they're not living up to some of those core values, then you can go in and coach and figure out what's missing. But they, you know, to have to have the expectation that every single person on your team is going to be aligned with every single value at every stage in their life just isn't realistic. Because we grow and change as humans. So our values grow and change over time just like businesses do.
- [27:28]
A
I think a lot of people get caught up in developing their core values values as well because they're like, they just want to cement it and put it away forever. And it's like, listen, like, what are your core values today? Like, something is better than nothing. Just get, like what? Like there are tests you can take, but really, you know, just start and know that you can evolve and give yourself permission to grow. If you're not growing, you're dying. So you're, you should be changing your core values as you advance as an individual, you know.
- [27:53]
B
Yeah.
- [27:54]
A
And as your organization advances. Actually, one of our attendees today, this is a struggle that he's been going through is getting his core values out. So maybe we can do a little Q A at the end of this. But I am curious. You said that you help people develop their core values or, you know, what are some of these exercises that you can do to get what's inside of you out?
- [28:16]
B
Yeah, I think for, for a, a solo restaurant owner, I love figuring out when they were happiest in their life and have them tell me that story of who they were surrounded by, what was happening in their life, maybe the job that they were doing, what their community looked like, where they were location wise, and what was impacting some of the decisions that they were making. Because just from hearing people tell a story, you can pick out a lot of things. Maybe community is important to them. Family is important to them. Integrity is important to them. Fun is important to them. So that's a great way to start building that list. And then from a company perspective, it's about just having a conversation with the leadership team of, what do you want your company to stand for? What are things that are really important to you as the leadership team? What do you believe in?
- [29:04]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I just recently reworked my own core values, actually, after a conversation I had with a past guest, repeat guest, Shawn Finter. This episode hasn't gone live yet, but he basically, like, you know, I share my core values with them. And, like, this is like a live. Like, he's like, kind of giving me this look. Like, I was like, shit, my core values suck, don't they? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, all right. And then I realized that my core values that I had in the past weren't really so much core values as much as they were guiding principles. And those. Those. They were, we have integrity. We are students. We are teachers. We are collaborators. We are communicators. We show up and we have fun. Like, those were the core values. I think I also worked in. Like, we prioritized. Freedom was one of my other core values. And the more I looked at that, I was like, these are, like, guiding principles of, like, what the most successful restaurant to. Is that the habits they have, they're not necessarily values. And then I started thinking, like, what got me here? Like, who am I and what are the things that got me here? And I was able to rework my core values. And now it's my number one core value is freedom. But it's freedom of purpose. It's freedom of relationships. It's freedom of time and then money, you know, and it's integrity. It's doing what you say you're going to do, like, follow through. Like, they do the hard thing. And. And it's transparency. Like, that is what got me here. Like, just being open, honest and vulnerable, having an open mind, hearing different perspectives, being a student first, you know, like, these are core values.
- [30:34]
B
I love that you and I share the same number one core value. Freedom is a huge one to me. I mean, I just, you know, uprooted my life and moved to Denver and start and starting over and. And, you know, I've got freedom all around me. And, you know, one of the things that I find a lot when business owners reach out, the ones that are struggling, sometimes they'll say, I feel like I'm out of balance, or I feel like I'm burning out. And the first place that we go to is the Core values. And I have them write down what they are, if they know them. If not, we discover them together. And then rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. Where are you right now? And then when you rate them, I have them put it in. Put them in like a circle of like pie or pizza, whatever. Exactly. And then when you, when you take a step back and you look at where you've rated yourself on that wheel, you look at what does, if this wheel was in motion, what does that ride look like? What does that ride feel like for you? Is it real bumpy right now or is it great? Smooth? Exactly.
- [31:26]
A
Yeah, I've done this exercise. It's fun.
- [31:28]
B
Yeah, it's fun. And then have them rate where they want to be. Right. And so sometimes when they, when they look at that and they understand where they're at today, you can really see, oh, exactly where my life is out of balance. And then picking one area to start to move the needle on actually helps all of those values increase.
- [31:44]
A
Yeah, 100%. So looking at some of the things you want to get out relative to people, we have this line of like, you know, creating that pipeline, promotional pipeline. What, what does that look like?
- [31:58]
B
Building a bench of talent to help you scale. Right. I think again, a lot of people will say, oh, we're going to open another location, we found this great opportunity, and then go, who is the leadership team that we're going to need to hire put into place? And that can be backwards thinking and very, very dangerous because, I mean, sometimes you have 18 months to put a team of people together, sometimes you have six. So if you have an intention and a very clear vision with your business out of the gate of, okay, we're going to open three locations, one each year, then you know how many managers, supervisors, chefs you need in order to fill that, that need in three years. And then you can start working backwards from there. But opening and chasing your tail is just a recipe for burning people out. And again, continuing to throw people in positions that they're not ready for.
- [32:49]
A
Right.
- [32:49]
B
So again, slowing down and having that intention and that really clear vision on exactly what the numbers are and then exactly how you're going to go hire those people and what you're looking for will help you just really be more sustainable.
- [33:01]
A
What do you mean by knowing exactly what those numbers are? What numbers are you referencing?
- [33:05]
B
So again, so if you open, let's say you open, you want to open three restaurants, and for each restaurant you need one GM, you need one chef, and you need two managers per location. At the end of three years, you're going to need three GMs, you're going to need three chefs, and you're going to need six managers. Then you can start working backwards from there, right? Just like if you want to hit a labor cost of 30%, how do you work backwards from there? Right. In order to have the goal. But it's, it's much easier to get there if you have the goal versus just saying, well, now we're going to open a location. I don't know how many managers I need. So let's just start, you know, let's try to find people internally or externally and then put them into place.
- [33:44]
A
Yeah, back to the statement. Cash flow and people are what determine growth. I see this all the time where people, they're like, oh, like I have something special. Like we are, we have interests in investors. We got a scale, scale, scale. And you know, they, they scale at and they lose the thing that made them special, you know, because they're just taking any. Because they have these voids and they just have to fill the voids. And it's like what you, like, when do you know it's time to scale? When you have like depth, you know, like depth where if you don't scale, you're going to lose people. And I think it's only creating opportunity for others that is the primary reason why you scale is that if I don't, then I'm gonna lose somebody who's truly amazing. And I want to be their opportunity. I want to bring them in, I want to share the wealth. And it's that, that mindset of like going further together. But you need togetherness to go. Like, if you don't have the people, you're going far on fumes and you're going to run out of gas.
- [34:47]
B
You're so right. And again, it goes back to really understanding the why from the gate of what your intention is to scale. If it's all about you and it's all about building your brand and it's all about ego, it's going to be really, really tough for you and it's going to be very difficult to scale. But if it is about bringing your people up, that's a beautiful culture to breed success in. Right. When you're collaborative and it's team focused.
- [35:11]
A
Yeah, right. So there's one more thing we haven't touched on the power of one on ones. We talked about annual reviews and stuff like that. But let's tap into the why one on ones matter before we move on to the next pillar.
- [35:22]
B
It's such a crucial I, if anybody asks me what's the most important thing I can start doing to change my business right now, I would say without a doubt, it's one on ones. One on ones help you go from complete chaos to recognizing problem, recognizing problems before they even become problems. And so it completely shifts everything you do from reactivity to proactivity. So I have a client in Australia, in Sydney, Australia, has two restaurants once been open for 12 years. One's been open for three years, reached out to me because one of the restaurants is not doing well. And we've really been peeling back the layers of what his communication looks like. He runs his restaurants with no managers. It's just him and a chef. And so. And he's not on the floor seven days a week, he's doing other things and so. And he doesn't want his role to be on the floor. So because he's removed a little bit from the business. The first thing that we implemented was one on ones opening up communication from the team, understanding how to handle team complaints and not take them personally, but view them as opportunities and feedback. Give the teams an understanding and start to train them on how to bring solutions to one on ones and not just problems. So he can start to shift and develop them to be empowered and think like owners when he's not in the building. And that has completely shifted his stress level, his time and energy and focus. And now again, he wants to scale.
- [36:56]
A
Yeah, I love that. So like in this, this bullet here that you know, when you, you bring up the one on ones and moving from checking into developing leaders, I think back to that quote we shared earlier. Do they get it, want it and have the capacity to do it. But if you, if you establish these, whether they be quarterly check in, check ins or annual reviews and you really go into that not trying to be heard but under, to understand like if, if you can reverse engineer, like back to you, like get it, want to have the capacity to do it, what do you want? What does this person want? Not yeah, in this job, but in their life. And if I can give them a vertical to get exactly what they want in their life and if I can verify and confirm that they have the capacity to do it, if you can give people tangible paths for growth within your organization, that is amazing. Tell me they're not going to show up different for you, but you have to open up that channel of communication to understand what is it that you want? How can I serve you?
- [37:58]
B
It's so true. And so some people will say, I don't even know how to start doing one on ones. Kristen, what does this process look like? How am I supposed to meet with my entire team and what's the frequency? Right? It starts with, you can choose, you can sit with somebody for 15 minutes. One person, 15 minutes each week. I guarantee you everyone can find that time. And it's about building relationships first. Right? Because. Because one on ones don't happen frequently in the industry. Employees are terrified of them. So when you start to ask for one on one from somebody, they're like, oh. They're immediately like, oh, I'm in trouble. So it's about establishing trust and building that relationship to let people know I truly care about you. And I am going to just sit here and listen. And all you have to do is ask a few pointed questions. Are you happy? What are you enjoying most about your job? And what do you want to learn? Want to learn more about? Right? Learning where they're happy. You can keep them in a place where they're going to continue to feel like they're thriving and they're enjoying their work and they're making an impact. When they tell you that they want to learn more about something, that's a wonderful opportunity to immediately start developing them. And that doesn't mean that you have to do that yourself. That means pairing them with somebody on your team. Again, finding a who that can help that person continue to grow and develop. And you just do that cross training, right? You just do that. And rinse and repeat, and rinse and repeat, and rinse and repeat, repeat. And just watch your team start to develop each other. Because you're listening to one little component that somebody said that's giving you the clue to what to do next in your business.
- [39:30]
A
First, seek to understand, then seek to be understood. One of those highly or seven habits of highly effective people. Okay, let's move on to pillar number two. We're already over 30 minutes of talking. That was supposed to be 18 minutes. I guess when I just talk to you, we go. So we covered pillar number one, People building your leadership foundation. Pillar number two is process creating consistency without micromanaging. Get into that. That.
- [39:56]
B
So, and, and some of this stuff is going to be, you know, some of this. We went into a little bit of the processes, right? Once you've identified pillar one of the people, exactly what rules you need and then you start to get them in the place. It's about how to nurture them and how to develop them so that you can Retain them. Right. Systems are wonderful for your business because systems provide support to your team when you're not in the room again. So it's about taking those that all that knowledge that's in a restaurant owner's head and putting it down on paper or in a tech platform or whatever, what have you. So it lives and breathes within your location when you're not even in the room. It gives people the tools to be able to problem solve on their own. I had a meeting a couple weeks ago with a restaurant owner who has three locations and we sat down for an hour and he, I, I'm not kidding you. 20 text messages and phone calls over the course of an hour asking, where do I purchase this ingredient? My refrigerator just broke down. What do I do? Somebody just called in sick. What do I do? That's not sustainable. Right.
- [41:01]
A
Are those systems or those protocols?
- [41:04]
B
Well, the.
- [41:05]
A
We're kind of leading into. Yeah, we're kind of leading.
- [41:07]
B
There's a difference between systems and procedures, Right.
- [41:10]
A
So what is the difference between a system and a procedure?
- [41:12]
B
The system is the bigger picture goal. Right. So let's say that the system is the entire ecosystem around this. We are going to provide a really great guest experience in our restaurant. That system is made up of the bar, the host, the busser, the servers, the kitchen, every single aspect. The procedures, though, are the step by step ways that you're going to achieve that.
- [41:36]
A
The system, if you're looking, is the watch. A watch is a system.
- [41:40]
B
You got it.
- [41:40]
A
A gear is one element of the entire system.
- [41:43]
B
Yes.
- [41:44]
A
Yeah, yeah. So I have to, you know, I had McClasky, David McClasky from the McClasky Excellence Institute on the show. And he echoed a sentiment from Rudy Mick, somebody who I love and respect as a restaurant coach and consultant. And, and really what at the sentiment of excellence is like. Your job as a restaurant tour is to paint the picture of what the job done right. Looks like. And that's what systems are. It is literally like if, if you could like walk around your, like walk around with a camera on your chest for the entire day, like, what are all the things you're doing? And just document all those processes and like, like this is what the, this is what. Take a photo of the food. Like this is the job done right. Like this. These are like, that's why I love restaurant systems pro so much. People struggle with budgeting costs, costing, purchasing, you know, inventory, like all these things, labor management. Like those are very complex systems. You want to go create that from scratch or do you Want to like literally get handed a. This is how you do it when it's done exactly right and you have the software around it to support it and it's all fully integrated. Like, you're never going to build that on your own, like plug it in, reverse engineer your business around the best systems.
- [42:58]
B
Yeah, absolutely. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel here. And that's again, what this framework is entirely about, is just getting back to basics. There's not a tech platform mentioned in here. This is about taking care of your people, making sure that you've got systems and processes in place to set them up for success and achieve the results that you want and then how you measure that and the result is the profit.
- [43:19]
A
So as you scale and you know, as you get more and more locations, you get more and more complex systems and communication can break down. So how does that information get lost?
- [43:33]
B
You can say one thing to seven people on your team and they're going to hear it seven different ways because everyone's perspective is different and everyone's experience is different. And so in person, communication is absolutely key. But it's very difficult to do when you're scaling, when you have multiple locations. That's why it's key that you are having one on ones with your leadership team and that they've clearly understand the concepts that you're talking about and they have the tools to successfully implement, implement those things through their entire staff. Sometimes some. I read somewhere recently that sometimes you have to tell people something seven times in order for it to click, which is really challenging when you're growing a business.
- [44:18]
A
Yeah. I mean, I feel like even, just like, you know, one of, one of the, the, the core values I used to have, which really, again is, is not necessarily a core value, but a guiding principle is we communicate. You have to have systems around communication because you don't instinctually. I mean, you might be good at communicating with the people that are right in front of you. You might be a good natural communicator. Mean, meaning like, you know, you can speak with inflection, you have great body language and you can listen really well, but that's not good communication. In an organization, you need systems for information to flow.
- [44:52]
B
Yeah. It's like training. Right. When you bring in a new server and you're training them, you're providing all this information in four days or five days or seven days is. There's no way that they're going to retain 100% of that. You'll be. If you're, if you're training them visually and through auditory and somatic training, they're going to retain 60% of what they learn. That means you're going to have to retrain the 40%. That's where training materials come in. Right? Testing steps of service, you know, training materials, menu testing, whatever you have in place. There needs to be a resource once they're out of training for people to go refer back to. And again, when you're scaling, all those things just become so much more crucial. Because when you're constantly growing and you're changing things in your organization, you're just constantly feeding new information into your team.
- [45:39]
A
Right. I mean, this is why tools like Opus and wisetail and me's have been on the rise lately. Because you need a centralized place for all that information to live. I mean, you can also get by with Google being able to use Google Docs, where if one, you know, like that one document is the single source that everyone references. So you update it in one place, everybody has access to the latest information.
- [46:02]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [46:03]
A
But that's not enough. Right? There's more. We need, we need systems around meeting architecture. So what does that mean? Get into that.
- [46:11]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll, I'll give you another example here. My client down in, in Arizona, I was referencing earlier three locations getting ready to open six in the next next couple years. So the leadership team is really the owner and the regional manager. Now. Owners are visionaries. Right. I'm the same way. And they say nine out of our ten ideas are complete. So the visionary is constantly coming in right. To the, to the organization and bringing new ideas and the regionals trying to figure out what's important and what's urgent and which one of these things do I need to say yes to and what can I say no to? So setting up a structure with these two of quarterly meetings is really helping us again, understand, okay, what's the one year vision? What do we want to go accomplish this year? How are we going to get there? And then each quarter checking in and saying, what are the three to five things that you're going to focus on this quarter? Let's keep it small, let's keep it focused, let's keep it intentional. And so every time the visionary comes and says, I want to do this and this and this, and I saw this and this is really cool, I said, I want to, you know, implement this, that I saw at a competitor, that quarterly review is the check to go. Does this align with us or is this something that we need to put on the Long list.
- [47:21]
A
Right. Are you familiar with eos?
- [47:23]
B
Yeah.
- [47:23]
A
Yeah. So this is why EOS is so powerful. There is nothing in EOS which stands for the operational. Sorry, the entrepreneurial operating system, which was, which was introduced by Gino Wickman in the book Traction. But you need systems for information to flow and for like, you need systems for growth. And part of the most important thing to growth is, is. Is everybody pulling in the same direction? Does everybody know their responsibility? Are we achieving our individual goals that are crucial to the whole ship getting to where we're going? No. Why or why not? Let's all help each other solve our problems so we can achieve those goals. And that's exactly what EOS is, the level 10 meeting. So like, so like you said quarterly, but what about like, like weekly meetings?
- [48:08]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Weeklies are super important as well, right? Weekly operations meetings. I think I forgot to include this in here. But you're right, like Gino talks about the fact that we, as humans, we lose our focus after 90 days, right? That's why it's. That's why those quarterly meetings are super important. So you start with your quarterly focuses and then you make sure you're following through on your weekly operations meetings. You've got those targets in your scorecards that you're setting up, right?
- [48:32]
A
Scorecards are the numbers. Like, are we removing the needle?
- [48:35]
B
Exactly, exactly. And then in the one on ones, making sure that if somebody's falling down, if one of your locations is falling down in one of those areas, you're able to get in there and coach and understand why, why that's happening. And then. Course correct.
- [48:49]
A
Selfish plug here. If you are interested in eos, I'm working with a implementer, actually the son of Mark Winters, who's one of the authors in the Traction library of books. This is. Dude grew up in a house of EOs. And we're basically like, we're helping each other out. If you're a restaurateur and you're interested in leveraging this, come join one of our conversations because it's super powerful.
- [49:14]
B
Very cool.
- [49:15]
A
So, okay, anything we have not, I mean, a lot we still have to cover in the world of process. We just talked about the importance of meetings, performance management, moving from reactive to proactive leadership. How does that happen? Happen?
- [49:28]
B
It's really, again, through communication, through having, creating. You know, the restaurant industry is so different every single day and it's chaos, right? And there's so many things that you can't control, but there's so much that you can control and so again, creating this structure of having clear job descriptions for people so that you have something to measure their performance on, which you do in one. On ones and coaching, again, it's. All of these things are tied in together. Right. All of these components of the framework work together. It's. You know, I just implemented something with one of my clients of just having a. Again, from a regional perspective. She. Because she just got out of opening and now the opening is done and everything is feeling settled down. She's like, okay, now I have four locations and I'm completely bored. What do I do? It's like, well, we need to go back to your original job description and go through what exactly should you be looking at every single time you're in one of your locations? And creating an audit for her to look at and then an audit that the teams are going to be doing as well. So. And again, and then taking that audit and then building it into their bonus structure. So you're creating a system and then figuring out how it can be measured and used to reward results, incentivize growth. Yeah, exactly.
- [50:52]
A
Yeah. So we talked about the importance of systems, the difference between systems and procedures. But when we're going through this process of documenting, like, how do we know what should be documented versus, you know, what systems to document versus what we shouldn't have to worry about?
- [51:08]
B
You know, it's. I would say anything that's being trained needs to be documented. You know, it gets a little gray sometimes when you're talking about coaching. If you have an opportunity to document everything, I absolutely would. Is that feasible? It depends on what's happening in your location and where you're at and how big your company is. There are very easy ways to document conversations. Like right now we're using a note taker to document this conversation. You can do that if you're meeting with your teams virtually and or in person. Those notes from a conversation that you have with someone are really great nuggets because you can use those in performance reviews to celebrate wins, and you can use those when you need to coach someone. And so when you sit down and you need to write a coaching document for someone, let's say it's a negative coaching document. Instead of having to rack your brain and have all the emotions flood and say, I don't really know what to put in here. I don't know what to say. You can go back to this amazing. Tiago Forte calls it a second brain, Just a data storage information system. You can go back to your folder of all these Notes of the conversations that you've had with people and just, just pull from that and put that right into the performance review. That way it's not so it doesn't feel so emotional and personal. It's. It's factual. These were conversations that were had. Here's what we're celebrating and here's what needs to be worked on next.
- [52:23]
A
Right. So, I mean, so there in my mind, the procedures are relative to like an individual role or a task that has to happen daily. Right. Or maybe it's a monthly task or a quarterly task or an annual task. It's more like ritualistic. But what about the things to your point like hey, the refrigerator broke down or you know, somebody like, like any event that is random that could happen at any time, it happens frequency frequently. Is that a procedure? Or like, how do we document that? What is that?
- [52:55]
B
So one of the things that I did when I was a GM and I was 25, I carried around a piece of POS receipt paper with me at all times during service and a pen. And any issue that would come up, I would just write it down. So refrigerator breaking is a great example that's going to happen every once in a while. However, you have a ton of different pieces of equipment in a restaurant. And again, thinking about scalability, when you've got three or you've got six, what do you want to happen and who do you want handling that? So we put in place an oh shit guide. When I was managing at SuiteCount, we had seven locations and our entire staff were high schoolers and college kids. It was awesome. Awesome. We didn't call it that. I just called it that. It wasn't very professional, but it was basically a. A little booklet and we wrote down every single problem that could go wrong in your. In your space. So if your Internet goes out, troubleshoot like this. If your TV goes down, do this. If your refrigerator goes down, do this. We gave them six or seven troubleshooting steps to try first and then the next step was to call me.
- [53:58]
A
Right.
- [53:58]
B
So the cool thing about that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So the staff would be super excited. Nine times out of 10, they were solving their own problems and being able to troubleshoot on their own. And sometimes they just call me to tell me that they did it and they were super proud of themselves. So even though something seems like a one off, you've got to understand in terms of the bigger picture of operations, how much money could this potentially cause us if it's not taken care of? And how do we make this experience easier for the teams and not impact the guest experience.
- [54:28]
A
Right. So these are more protocols, if this, then that. And in my experience as a commercial pilot, one of the things, how they train, like how the, the flight instructors would train this behavior in you is you ask a question, I don't know, you tell me was always the answer. It's like, I'm paying good money to go to this, like private pilot school. Like, I'm asking you questions and what they're trying to do. You know, when, if you're up at 30,000ft by yourself and you have a question, you can't call a buddy sometimes, you know, you got to know where to find the answer. And that's what the operations manual is. So like, if you have, if you're going through the process, if you're writing down these things as they're happening and you're documenting them and you know that the answer to the question that's being asked is documented, develop the habit of saying, I don't know, you tell me. And then your team is going to start to realize that it's documented and they don't have to know the answer. They just need to know where to find it.
- [55:23]
B
It's so true. And I used to tell them if I knew it was in the training materials and somebody came and asked me something, I'd say, let, where do we go find that? Let's go find it together. I had a conversation yesterday with a husband and wife who owns a company and they're getting ready to scale and they, they had a conflict because when the employees go to go to her, she coaches them and educates them on how to find the answer. Same thing, ask them, what would you do? So she's building them that trust and judgment, right? Building their good judgment, strategic thinking skills. The husband just tells them the solution. So it's very, it's very confusing for the staff. And so the staff started to choose sides, right? Like, I'm going to go to this person because it's just a lot easier. I immediately get the answer that I can get on with my day. So we just talked about the completely different styles and again, what the end result is. Because the husband said, I'm so sick and tired of everybody calling me and texting me on my days off. And I was like, well, you've trained them to, to come to you because they know that you're going to give them the answer. So now you've got to retrain them to think on their own two feet and to go find Their own solutions.
- [56:24]
A
Yeah. So one of the whole reasons why we build these systems and we document these systems is so that we can remove ourselves from having to do those things because there's a picture of the job done right. Documented that we can keyword here. Delegate. So in, in terms of delegation, can you offer any framework?
- [56:42]
B
I. It's. Delegation is very. It's very, very challenging because you've got to figure out who you're delegating to. I was listening podcast this morning, one of Dan Sullivan's podcasts, I think it was. I think it's called who, not how as well. On. On the fact that delegation can be really successful or it can be really challenging. So if you're delegating something, let's say you're a restaurant owner and you want to get some tasks off your plate because they're draining your energy and you're not good at them, and you turn around and you start delegating them to somebody on your staff who does not have that skill set. Now you've created more work for yourself because you're going to have to train them and you're going to have to hold them accountable and you're going to have to help them try to figure out how to find the resources to develop their skill set. So when you're talking about delegation, when you find something that you want to delegate, it's important to understand, again, find the who. Who is the best person for me to delegate this to and make sure you're delegating up to somebody that has a skill set so that you can grow your business. Right. If you're managing 10 things, you're. I guarantee you you're not an expert in all 10 of those areas. And if you are, you probably don't have the time or energy or the bandwidth to be able to put the, the focus and energy and the quality into that work that you want to. So go find those people who are going to help you elevate.
- [57:57]
A
Got it. We've covered people pillar one, we've covered pillar two, process, and we're about to get into pillar three, profit tracking what actually matters. And it's funny, I feel like there's a, this like, avoidance of profit in our industry, especially with young people. Like profits evil. It's not about the money. Maybe, yes, I agree with that statement that it's not about the money, but there is a level of fiscal responsibility that should be a core value. So let's get into that profit. You take it from there. This episode is made possible by me's ME is a digital recipe platform that helps you stay creative, build profitable menus, and nail food execution at scale. Consistency builds trust with your your guest and your staff. No more messy spreadsheets or scattered systems. Whether they want to admit it or not, your team loves systems because systems equals peace of mind, because we all want to know what the job done right looks like. And ME paints the picture of perfection and is the one source of truth for your entire team. By locking in recipes and training before service starts, ME makes sure every dish is consistent, every team member is aligned, and every location runs like clockwork. So when the report rolls after the sale, they tell the story you're after. Higher profits, better margins and repeat guests. It's time to take control of your profitability. Learn more at www.getmes.com unstoppable that's G E T M E Z dot com unstoppable this episode is made possible by US Foods. And did you know US Foods is hosting the Food Fanatics 2025 event at the Man Delay Bay Resort in sunny Las Vegas, Nev. It's all going down between August 19th and the 20th. The theme this year is every second counts. And that could not be more true. If you want to be unstoppable, you really got to be intentional with your time. And there's no better way to be intentional with your time than going to this year's event. Because I'm going to be there and there's going to be so much going on. Here's what you can expect Networking opportunities with 5000 industry peers, live demos, giveaways, games and more. Celebrity chefs and keynote speakers, Billboard musical performance at the Mandalay beach exclusive Zook nightclub reception. You can also sample the latest on trend dishes in what's an event without expert breakout sessions to learn and get inspired by. They'll be covering marketing, staffing, profitability in the future of food service. I know I'll be attending the Training to Retain session and there's also a dynamic pricing demystified session that I do not want to miss. It's time to get inspired, get connected, get fanatic. The clock is ticking, so Register now at www.usfoods.com Food Fanatics 2025 or just head over to usfoods.com and look for the banner. Space is limited. Get on it.
- [60:59]
B
Well, it's I agree with you. I've heard that and I think this is this is something that is a really difficult topic to chant to to tackle when, especially when you're an independent group and you start growing. There seems to be, with growth, seems to be more of an emphasis on profit. And so I would recommend for anybody that's listening to this, if you're not talking about profit with your teams today, please start. You cannot operate a restaurant without profit. I hear people say sometimes, oh, 1 to 5%, that's all we can do in the industry. And so they. They keep themselves in this limiting belief cycle because they just think that being in the restaurant industry and owning a restaurant is all about grit and you're never going to be profitable. And if that's how you think those thoughts are going to inform your decisions.
- [61:47]
A
Perception is reality.
- [61:49]
B
Absolutely. It's very important for your team to be aligned on what does it take to run a really successful business and what is the result of that success? It's a great culture, it's happy teams, it's development, it's growth. None of that can happen without profit. Profit. So figuring out how to not make profit a dirty word and have it be a beautiful end result of the work that you're doing and something that is celebrated within your organization, that's a completely different mindset.
- [62:16]
A
Yeah, you know, I think a lot.
- [62:17]
B
Of people need to make, I think.
- [62:18]
A
Traditionally people who were profitable, not all those people were necessarily. What's the word? I guess it's. It's not a matter is profit bad? I think it's a matter of what you choose to do with the profit. Are you taking that profit and putting it into your pockets and living like a king while the people that are making you profitable are scraping to get by? Or are you using that profit to put it back into the business to. To invest in assets, to maybe do profit sharing, like to your point, like, like, it's not a dirty thing, it's what you choose to do with it. You know, just like privilege isn't a dirty thing, it's what you choose to do with it, too.
- [63:00]
B
And how. And how you explain it and talk about it. Right. And. And getting people bought in. I mean, I struggled with this in my career where we were rapidly growing with a group that I was with and the managers were working so hard and they were watching all these new locations pop up and maybe they were working in an older legacy location with equipment that wasn't functioning properly or holes in the floors or whatever, and then being told they'd get a 1 to 3% raise at the end of the year. Year, you know, like they, they didn't understand what growth truly looked like. So when we're talking about vanity metrics and vital metrics. It's really about having your teams aligned on. Okay. This is our vision for the year. And that envision includes how many leaders we want to promote, what the goals are that we want to achieve. Maybe it's guest satisfaction ratings, maybe it's event sales that you want to bring in. But here's the amount of sales that we want to generate and here's the amount of profit that we want to generate and here's what going to, we're going to do with it. Just like you said, we're going to turn it around and invest it right back into you guys this percentage and then we're going to invest the rest of it in the business. If they, if you treat them like owners and you explain to them the big picture of the business, you're going to see that output one more time.
- [64:14]
A
I want to make sure we document them.
- [64:16]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So sales, what's your sales goal for the year? Right. That's assuming a one year vision. I mean it could be sales goal. Obviously you've got to look at your labor, you've got to look at your cost of goods. Let's. And then your revenue streams. Right. If you've got online sales, that's a component. If you've got event sales, that's a component.
- [64:34]
A
Is it opportunity for growth?
- [64:38]
B
Yeah. If you, how many, how many locations you want to open this year, that's a target. And then how many managers you're going to need in order to make that happen?
- [64:44]
A
How many people do you want to promote?
- [64:46]
B
Yeah, 100. And then what's the percentage of internal promotion versus external promotion? And what's that percentage look like? And what's that batch balance there?
- [64:53]
A
Right.
- [64:53]
B
Because that's a whole different conversation.
- [64:55]
A
And I think the, this is a line from Mike Ganino, the number one most important number you should be tracking. I think you know what it is. I think you mentioned it earlier. Yeah.
- [65:05]
B
Like happiness. People happiness.
- [65:07]
A
Like literally every day when your people leave and they check out. On a scale of from 1 to 5, where are you today? And if you get any threes or twos, like okay, like let's schedule a one on one. What's going on? How can, how can we get you back to a five?
- [65:22]
B
It's so true. I'm so over, you know, hearing people say, oh, there's just not good getting any good people out there anymore. Making generalized statements like that is really, really dangerous for our industry. And again it just, I, when people say that, I just question what their hiring practices look like. And do they know what they're hiring for and do they know who they're hiring for? Because not every single person is different. And there are. With the leadership workshops that I'm doing and the experiences that I'm having, there are a lot of good, good people out there that want to learn and grow. They're just not that experienced in the industry like they used to be.
- [65:55]
A
Right. I think there's one other thing that you mentioned the first time through. You're, you're sharing those numbers that you want to track and it's customer satisfaction score.
- [66:02]
B
Yes, yes. And comps. Right. You've got to see what you're losing. You've got to, you've got to manage your waste and you've got to manage your comps.
- [66:08]
A
Right. There's, there's three tools I know out there right now in terms of customer satisfaction, you know, or at least customer reviews in terms of in store, like the QR apps that you're seeing. People, whether that be Ovation or Sunday App. I've heard Ovation is a better option when it comes to QSR or fast casual. But if you're in store, if you're a full service, I would highly recommend checking out Sunday App because they also offer a payment solution that is like an amazing, like guest experience, like the user experience. And that payment solution is really great. And then in terms of online, a tool like Marquee, any, any thoughts there or in terms of getting that customer feedback?
- [66:51]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think I, I listened to a webinar that Eat Denver had with Marquis, I think it was last year, and I was, I don't know a ton about some of those platforms that you mentioned, but I think Marquis, what stood out to me was that they pull from, from all of your platforms, your Googles, your Yelps, and they help you respond to all of your positive and your negative. And obviously you can customize what you want that to look like depending on the severity of the review. But being able to have all of those reviews coming to you in a one, you know, one stop easy shop is, it's, it, it's a beautiful way to offer hospitality beyond your four walls. And it's, and it's such a easy way to build repeat guests. And I did a, an episode on retention on my show recently. But Ewan said that people he focuses on coaching and restaurants around retention, people that come back the second time spend 20% more and they bring in two to three more guests.
- [67:47]
A
Right. And if they come back a third time, they're like 70% more likely to be a lifetime guest.
- [67:52]
B
Yeah, it's just, it's absolutely incredible. So retention from guests and retention from customers and you know, a lot of those times too, depending on what concept and what industry you're in, those guests success become your employees.
- [68:06]
A
Yep. 100. So as we're scaling, profit leak can happen. So we're, we're like the, the, the, the secret killers. The, the things we have to be aware of in terms of where we lose money as we scale.
- [68:20]
B
There's just so many. Right. Because people's focuses are just pulled in so many different directions. And so it's, it's any food prep. Right. So prepping on the line, if your recipes are not consistent, you're gonna make, you're gonna be losing food in the kitchen. You've gotta constantly be keeping an eye on your prep cooks and checking in.
- [68:39]
A
Actual versus theoretical costs.
- [68:41]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. What's your waist look like there? Same thing in the bar. Right. Are they using jiggers? Do they have recipes? Are they over? Is, you know, is your team over ordering? Are they under ordering? If they're under ordering, are you going to the grocery store which messes with your cogs? Are you. Because you were paying a different price for something? If you're substituting something that's going to mess with your, your cost of goods as well. Gosh, there's so like, there's, I feel like there's so much in terms of waste. Looking at how you're seating your tables, are you seating two tops at four tops? If you are, you've just lost two seats.
- [69:16]
A
Right.
- [69:16]
B
For a turn. Right. So there's a lot of different ways.
- [69:19]
A
So it's maximizing your resources.
- [69:21]
B
Absolutely. Looking at your labor, if people are clocking in 10 to 15 minutes early, that's a loss of productivity.
- [69:27]
A
So when you're talking about the profit leak and the multi unit operators where they're losing money without knowing it, are these the things you're talking about?
- [69:34]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [69:35]
A
Got it. Anything else to add there?
- [69:42]
B
I think the reservation book is another one. This is a great conversation I just had with, with a client as well. What does the pacing look like and where, when people, when you have to say no to people, how are you doing that? Are you saying no, we don't have a 7 o' clock or are you offering a 6:45 or 7:15? If a walk in comes in and you're not ready for them, are you saying no or are you saying go to the bar. I'll buy you a round of drinks. I'll be able to seat you within 20 or 30 minutes. Waste is not just product. Right. It's people too. And retention is a huge component of that.
- [70:18]
A
Yeah, 100%.
- [70:19]
B
Exactly.
- [70:20]
A
So. So talk to me about strategic planning and how strategic planning ties into profitability. Why it's not just hoping to be successful, but actually having a plan for growth.
- [70:29]
B
I had a conversation yesterday with two brothers that own 16 locations and they're looking to put a new leadership team in place because there's no one between them and the locations and they're drowning right now. One has a current full time job outside of this, the other one just quit their full time job to manage 16 locations.
- [70:46]
A
Wow.
- [70:46]
B
16 locations. They want to grow, but they need somebody in place in order to do that. Potentially a team. And my first question was, what's your goal over the next year? What do you want? They have no idea. So they feel like they're spinning their wheels. All they do is sit around and brainstorm and it doesn't lead to action. So the first thing we did was sit down and come up with a really clear vision again. How many locations you want to have next year? How many? What do you need in terms of sales in order to do that? What does profit need to look like? What does your profit margin need to look like? How many team members do you need? And then now you've got the plan, you've got the target. Now you start building the roadmap to get there and then you can start removing those roadblocks. That's strategic planning.
- [71:31]
A
Another one of those seven habits of highly effective people. Start with the end in mind. Right. And going back to this, this organization, EOS that I promote all the time, like their V, the vto, the Vision Traction organizer, or before you gain traction, you have to know where you're going so you're, you know, you're moving in the right direction. It's nothing new. It's nothing earth shattering.
- [71:49]
B
It's just, it's, it's not. I learned it in coaching and my coaching courses and it's. And it doesn't just apply to business, it applies to every single aspect of your life. Right. You want to lose weight, you set a target.
- [71:58]
A
Right?
- [71:58]
B
Right. It's, it just, it applies to every single aspect. You want to be happier, you got to figure out what that looks like.
- [72:07]
A
I think people, they set these audacious goals, like, what's your five year plan? I want to be 10 times where I am. Today, maybe 20 times where I am today. And then you start figuring out, well, how are you going to like, what is it going to take to achieve that? And then you start thinking to yourself, holy, how the hell am I going to pull this off?
- [72:21]
B
Got to find the who. Now you're talking about Dan Sullivan. TEDx is easier than 2x, which I'm reading right now. And I love that he talks about, you know, two if you're going to 2x something, you're not going to change a lot of your behaviors because it's Fairly easy to 2x something. But if you want to 10x something, you have to change 80% of what you're doing. And I'm working on doing this right now with my business business. And it's to just the thought of changing 80% of how you're doing something is so incredible. And yes, it's scary, but it immediately means I've got to go find the who's right. I can't do this on my own if I'm going to change all these things.
- [72:54]
A
Are you familiar with Dr. Benjamin Hardy, the co author in those books?
- [72:58]
B
He's on the podcast so I've been listening to him the last couple weeks.
- [73:02]
A
He, Dr. Ben Hardy, like so he has a lot of stuff that kind of compounds on those earlier books that you're discussing. One of them, the, the latest book is the Science of Scale. I actually have it right here on my, my desk ironically, which gets into like the psychology. But he also has this other book in terms of like the. I think they call it, you know, one is, I got this other one right here.
- [73:25]
B
I'm like, you would have thought we planned all this.
- [73:28]
A
Be your future self now is the title of this book and it's this idea like, okay, who, okay, so you want to be. This is your five year plan. Be that to like what is, what can you do today to be a closer version of that thing. And he also talks about the gap and the gain. I don't know if you've heard of that. That's another.
- [73:44]
B
Love it. It's just like measure, measure the gain.
- [73:47]
A
What are the wins? And focus on the wins. And the thing is you can get very intimidated by your goals, but if you just focus on what you can do today and the gains in taking one bite at a time, it compounds.
- [73:58]
B
Yeah, it's pretty awesome stuff.
- [74:00]
A
Yeah. So, okay, we've been talking about a lot of things. It's hard to keep track of all the. Our little check my world Eric. So we talked about Strategic planning and why that's so important. I think we've gotten a lot into the financial literacy for operations. Understanding your numbers. Beyond the P. L. Is there anything that we, you know, left on the table there that you want to.
- [74:20]
B
I think it's just, again, seeking to understand, right. When you're looking at your team's numbers, really, the numbers just tell part of the story, right? And making sure that your team understands why those numbers are that way and what things they can impact.
- [74:34]
A
I can't help but think of Jack Stack and the great game of business. Make it a game. Back to the idea of a scorecard. Like, those numbers are the best ways to measure your success. And it can be fun. Like any game, you gotta get a scorecard.
- [74:48]
B
It's so true. I first learned of the scorecard concept at Snooze. And so I don't know if we had 48 locations at the time, but we were getting there there. And we launched the scorecard. And the cool. The really cool thing about it was somebody produced it for us in the mothership and handed it over to us once a week, but we could see the entire company. So we weren't just competitive within the Colorado market and with the managers that we knew. And we could call and say, hey, how did you hit this? What are you guys doing differently? We were competitive with the entire company, which was just an absolute blast. And so it was very colorful. We had the reds and the greens and the yellows. Right? And it was like you knew exactly where you could move the needle. And it was really awesome to see that progress every week.
- [75:27]
A
How should we measure and compare unit success?
- [75:31]
B
It depends on square footage. It depends on location. It depends on sales volume. It. You know, again, every business is very different. So there's. There's definitely not a one size fits all here. But it's, again, understanding what your metrics are that you want to measure. And if people are hitting those targets, that's what success looks like. And also success outside of the metrics, too, right? Like cleanliness. How does it feel in there? What's your culture feel like? What's the environment?
- [75:57]
A
You can even create scorecards on that. Like, you can define what a 5 out of 10 is, you know, and you can start measuring that stuff. But what about, like, okay, we've covered a lot. When do you know in terms of, like, understanding numbers and the profit? I think a lot of times you see people overextend, you know, they grow too soon or too fast. And when do you know it's the right time to open your next, next restaurant. Like what metrics do you to measure there?
- [76:23]
B
I would say, well, you again, you need cash flow. Right. You need cash flow in order to open a business. If you've got a strong budget and strong projections and you understand how much cash flow you're going to need in case something goes wrong. Right. Give yourself a Runway of 6 to 12 to 18 months, depending on what kind of concept you're in and what location you're in and what your money market's like. Start with the cash flow and make sure that it's a smart business decision. So you're not making decisions based on emotions, you're making them based on data. And then you need to look at your team. You know, I worked for a company where every single week the owners were coming in going, we're going to look at this location, we're going to look at this location, we're going to look at this location. And it, at the time it made me feel like I wanted to throw up every single time I heard that. Because there was never any conversation around what leadership structure do we need in place in order to make this successful. We were never a thought in that decision making process.
- [77:21]
A
Yeah. I always say like growth doesn't come from the outside.
- [77:24]
B
Right.
- [77:24]
A
It comes from the inside. You put your energy into what you're already doing in the people you're doing it with.
- [77:30]
B
Yeah. If you start to talk about expanding and your team goes silent, there's a problem.
- [77:35]
A
Right.
- [77:35]
B
So pay attention to your team and start asking some questions like what do we need? What do you all think we need in order to, to be successful here with the scalability?
- [77:43]
A
Kristen, we've covered a lot. The three pillars. One more time, people. Process and profit tie it all together for us.
- [77:52]
B
So again, this is the independent restaurant framework. It is available in the book Multi Unit Mastery. Simplify operations. I gotta look at my title.
- [78:02]
A
That's right.
- [78:03]
B
Simplify operations. Maximize profits and lead with confidence audience. Thank God it's behind me. You can get, anybody can get a complimentary copy of this book that's listening to this show@www.irfbook.com and anybody that's listening, if you would like, I would be happy to gift you a coaching session so you can check in on where you're at with this framework and then what success or what potentially you need in order to successfully scale. And you can do that by reaching out to me. Me@kristenmarvin.com contact beautiful social handles. LinkedIn is pretty much where I live 24 7. So at kristen-marvin. And my first name is spelled C H R I S T I N.
- [78:49]
A
And it's Kristen L Marvin on Instagram?
- [78:53]
B
Yes. Am I allowed to share that or solutions by Kristen? Yeah, got it. Yeah, There's a lot.
- [79:00]
A
So I like to wrap up every episode. We already did the, you know, contact information. How do we get connected? But who do you respect and admire right now and all the work you're doing? Who's out there in terms of operators that you think are just doing it right, who are successful, who are willing to get vulnerable, open up and to share with my audience and with me how they got to where they are today.
- [79:21]
B
I had a wonderful conversation this week with a restaurant owner and I'm not going to say who they are, but they. I had a great conversation with them. They're very people focused. They want to grow. They know they need a strategic partner to give them a different perspective and an outside perspective on what's going right in their business and where the gaps and the blind spots are. So we had that conversation. I then went and ate at their restaurant, which I haven't been and probably three years. And every single component of the guest experience was extraordinary. There was intention in the greet and the design and the cleanliness and the food preparation and the steps of service and the presentation of the food, the seasoning, the execution, the thank you on the way out. It was beautiful. It was very well orchestrated and I thank you think I don't see a lot of that in the industry.
- [80:23]
A
And you're not as much as I use operator is.
- [80:25]
B
I'm not going to say who you.
- [80:27]
A
Tell me off air so we can try to get them on the show.
- [80:29]
B
Yeah. All right, awesome. When you come to Denver, we'll go eat there.
- [80:32]
A
Kristen, thank you so much for taking the time to reconnect, to go deeper, to get granular, to share your knowledge. I love today's conversation and I just got to say it. There is no questioning my lady. You are are unstoppable.
- [80:47]
B
Thank you, my friend.
- [80:48]
A
And now we're gonna go to Q A. If you're in restaurant stoppable network, you could join us live and ask your questions. Head over to restaurantstoppable.com live. Thank you very much.