Today, I want to share with you the six biggest mistakes
restaurant owners make in their business and how that's keeping them for more money,
more freedom, and more joy in their lives.
Hey, everybody. My name is Ryan Gromfin. I'm an author, speaker, chef, restaurateur,
and the founder of TheRestaurantBoss.com,
as well as RestaurantProfitAndPerformance.com.
And today, I want to share with you part two of the six biggest
mistakes that restaurant owners make.
In the first video last week, I shared with you one, two, and three.
The first three mistakes that I see restaurant owners all over the world making.
If you haven't watched that video yet,
below this video whether you're on YouTube or on my website,
there'll be a link to come back to my website and watch that first video,
but here you are. So, let's get right into it, let's see what that fourth biggest
mistake that restaurant owners make in their businesses.
What I find is that restaurant owners focus too much on attracting new customers
instead of delighting them.
You know, marketing is crucially important but you have limited
time and resources.
We're not all on these huge budgets.
We can't spend all of our time and money marketing.
We have to spend a lot of that doing the work in our business because we're busy.
Independent restaurant owners are busy.
We don't have unlimited resources
and so,
it's really hard to get new potential customers to change their current habits.
Meaning, if no matter how much time, money,
and effort you spend on marketing;
it's really hard to get potential customers to change their habit.
I'm not saying you stop doing that, you need to keep doing that,
but that cannot be your only source,
that cannot be where you spend most of your time
isn't trying to get new customers.
You know, there's a great quote from one of my favorite business coaches.
His name is Keith Cunningham and he says,
“if every customer you ever had was still a customer,
you would not have time to worry about marketing”.
So, I go back to the fourth biggest mistake I see restaurant
owners making is they spend too much time attracting new customers,
instead of delighting their current ones.
Go out of your way to delight your current customers.
They're your referral sources, they'll come back more often.
It's easier to get them to spend more money.
There's all kinds of marketing that you can do
and efforts you can make by operating a better restaurant.
So, what I always say is, spend more time focusing on your operations
than on your marketing when you're in the growth phase of your restaurant,
which sounds counterintuitive, but it's true.
The fifth mistake I see is that restaurant owners try to manage people
instead of systems.
Now, what does this mean?
Well, people are not manageable
I get a lot of flak for that whenever I say it,
especially when I say it onstage in front of a big group of
people because we've all been trained in
different management techniques and all these different words
and animals and shapes and sizes that we assign to people,
but here's my thought.
I don't believe people are manageable.
I believe that people have too varied needs,
wants, desires to manage them.
So, what I believe in is that we manage systems not people.
Systems are manageable. A system is black and white.
It's either done right or it's not done right.
It's either done on time or it's not done on time.
And then we develop our talents and
I call them talent,I don't refer to my staff as staff or employees.
I refer to them as Talent because that's what they need.
If you don't have a talented staff,
you're going to struggle. One thing here though is that we develop talent,
you don't find talent.
I hear from restaurant owners and my clients all the time that - they say,
there's no good staff out there,
I can't find any good employees.
It's because they're looking for the most talented people to fill that position.
If you have the system set up properly in your restaurant.
you can find average talent and develop them.
but good people and what I mean by that - are you higher on the soft skills?
You hire the smile and then we develop the talent.
Now that's sixth mistake that I see restaurant owners
make and this one is crucial
is restaurant owners never build a real team.
And by a team, I don't just mean the employees in your business.
I mean an entire team.
Owning any business cannot be done alone.
I don't care what kind of business it is, whether it's a restaurant
or a doctor's office or a law practice or a real estate investment firm;
owning a business cannot be done alone.
You need an entire team of people to help you out, not just employees,
but vendor and other kinds of support to help you do this.
So, stop thinking about your team as just your employees
and start looking at your vendors as part of your team.
Start looking at lawyers, start looking at accountants,
start looking at bookkeepers as part of your team
and really build that team.
I like to tell restaurants to create an advisory
board that meets once a month that could be with influencers in the community,
accountants, lawyers, a few of your customers.
Have them all into the restaurant for dinner and talk about what kind of marketing you're doing,
what direction you're going, what you're thinking about doing
and have them help advise you, have them help you build your team,
but most importantly, when it comes to building a team -
treat your staff and your vendors
as well as you do your customers.
If not better than you do your customers,
treat your staff and your vendors as well if not better than you do your customers.
Now, some of you need to work on treating your customers a little better
and really need to work on treating your staff and your vendors better,
but what I mean is - the guy who's delivering your food,
the guy who you order your food from,
your bookkeepers, your accountants;
if you don't treat them incredibly well with the highest levels of respect
and loveand encouragement and really make them part of your team,
they could be one of your biggest referral sources and they're not going
to refer people to you because the way that you treat them.
My refrigerator repairman knew everybody in the community.
I took such good care of him.
He was such a part of my team not only because I needed him to
repair my equipment,
but he was always coming in to the restaurant for dinner,
he was always bringing people in to the restaurant for dinner.
He was part of my team and he's part of my team now when I go into other restaurants.
He comes with me to help look at their equipment.
So, we went over the six biggest mistakes that restaurant owners make.
We went over them kind of quickly. I suggest you watch this video a couple
times and really dig into them because I've worked with hundredsof restaurants
across the entire world.
These are the six mistakes that I see no matter
what kind of restaurant.
no matter what kind of owner, no matter where in the world.
And if you can avoid making these mistakes.
you will have more money, more freedom and more joy in your life.
Wherever you're watching this video,
if you're on YouTube or if you're on my website,
there'll be a place where you can like this video and share some comments below.
I'd really appreciate if you could do that for me.
That's how I'm able to keep sharing this great content with you.
I answer those questions in those comments as quickly as possible
and I want to really thank you for taking the time
and sharing this message with your friends and other restaurant owners out there.
My name is Ryan Gromfin. And I hope that this video was helpful for you.
If it was, please share it, please leave a comment.
And have an absolutely wonderful day.
Thank you. Bye!