Restaurant Alley

The Owner vs. The Entrepreneur

If you are starting or already running a business and you haven't had the pleasure of reading any of Michael Gerber's E-Myth books, I would highly recommend that you grab one. E-Myth stands for the "Entrepreneurial Myth." In his books, Michael dispels many myths about being an entrepreneur and talks about working on your business vs. working in your business.

It's fairly common to see a struggling restaurant that was started by a chef or just someone with a passion for food. They own the restaurant, they run the restaurant, and they work at the restaurant. They have created a job for themselves that they can't easily walk away from. They are the restaurant. Now if you just want a job, there are better and less stressful ways of going about it, but if you want to build a company, then you need to work on it and not just in it.

What does it mean to "work on your business"? Basically, you need to spend some time outside of the kitchen and outside of the dining room and think. The goal is come up with a manual for how to run your company. Pretend that someone wants to franchise your restaurant, how would you tell them to do it?

What is the brand? How should the place look? What food should they serve? How should it be prepared? What kind of people should they hire? What kind of service should they give? What should their guests expect? What should their staff expect? How do they increase sales? How do they cut costs?

After you've taken the time to write down the answers to these kinds of questions, you'll have created a manual of what you do, how you do it, and why you do it. This manual, filled with all your systems and processes, creates tremendous value for your business. As you implement these systems, you become replaceable. The restaurant knows how to run itself. You can spend more time planning for the future and less time being the "key" employee.

It's easy to forget the "what", the "how", and the "why", when you're working 6-7 days a week, but it's time to step back and look at the big picture.

I look at it like this... It takes passion to start a business, but it takes process to build one.

FSTEC Day #1 Update

Day 1 at FSTEC was fairly quiet, but I did meet some good folks and had some good conversation. As I walked around the show floor, I was a bit uninspired. It's many of the same old companies pushing the same old things promising the same old results.

Where is the new technology? There was a great presentation on Web 2.0, but it's hard for me to imagine that 20% of the exhibitors just 20 feet away could tell you what "Twitter" is.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to fix it, but something needs to change. They need to lure more exhibitors doing new and interesting things, and let the attendees know about these new things. If it were me, I would find new ways to create social and educational opportunities. It should be a celebration of the future for the industry we all love, instead, it feels like a reunion of the past.

I'm sure the current economic climate is partly to blame, but I'm not sure there is an incentive to change for the same old companies that sponsor the event.

The power of "ONE"

It sounds like the title of a book from a self-help guru (maybe it is), but the power of one is an interesting idea for any business. Basically, I mean that one person or one action can have a tremendous amount of impact - good and bad.

I live in New York City where pizza shops are plenty. Most residents have at least 2-3 choices from which to buy pizza. My five year old daughter always wants to go to the same place because on our first visit, the gentleman behind the counter joked with her and now she loves to go back and see him.

That one person with that one action of connecting to my daughter brings them our business every week. Do you have one of those people working for you? Imagine what having three people like that working for you could do for your business.

On the flip side, my parents can't resist telling people their story about a particular chain restaurant because of a bad experience. That single experience has resulted in them never going back and they have shared that story several dozen times over the years.

Just imagine the different story that my parents would be telling if just one of the employees had noticed them and their issues and managed to turn around their dining experience into a positive one. Not only would that employee have stopped dozens of negative comments from spreading, but would have potentially sown the seeds for dozens of positive comments and at the very least guaranteed a return visit. This is quite a big swing and it's just one example. If you multiply it for every employee, for every guest at every location you can quickly see the potential.

I'm not suggesting that you merely comp a bunch of items to make someone happy. Your guests want genuine, authentic, positive interaction. That's what hospitality is.