We are halfway through 2022.
It has been a crazy year already.
I want to give you my mid-year state of the restaurant industry
update right now.
Hey, everybody. Ryan Gromfin here, author, speaker, chef, restaurateur,
founder of therestaurantboss.com,
clickbacon.com and scalemyrestaurant.com.
And like I said, author of Make It Happen,
get a free copy at therestaurantboss.com.
But what I really want to talk to you about today is
2022 and the crazy year that it has been so far.
So the year started out with omicron going nuts.
My whole family got sick while we were on vacation.
It was just kind of crazy start of the year right from
November through December to January.
I mean we're okay. We were okay. It was a bad flu.
We're all totally fine and this isn't about COVID,
this is just about what's happening in the world but it kind of started with that.
And then now we're kind of like,
COVID's gone which is awesome
but then some places are like, COVID is back which is not awesome.
And there's all this kind of weirdness happening
but the big thing that's happening right now is inflation.
Inflation. Inflation. Inflation. Inflation. Inflation.
There's gonna be inflation. We printed so much money
over the last two years, I mean it's ridiculous. I don't want to get into
the debt and how much money we printed, again don't make this political.
Please don't, you know what go ahead put any of the comments you want but
this is not a political video.
This is not about who's right or who's wrong.
This is just about the facts of where we are.
It's not about policy or who's driving policy or what is happening.
This is just about the facts.
The facts are interest rates are going up,
inflation is going up, supply is down.
We're having a hard time finding staff, we're having a hard time finding labor,
and what I'm telling clients to do about this.
The first thing I want to talk about is that
gone are the days, I've been saying this for
five ten years but gone are the days of cheap restaurant labor.
It doesn't exist anymore. Cheap restaurant labor is gone.
You are going to pay top dollar for labor.
You're gonna pay top dollar times two or three for great labor.
If you're having trouble finding staff right now,
it's for one of two reasons. One, you're just not paying enough,
two, you have a culture that people don't want to work in.
Your restaurant has a reputation. Now whether you know that reputation or not.
And I'm not talking about what the guests see, I'm talking about what team members see,
cooks talk, servers talk,
cashiers talk. And when they go home,
if they say bad things about your restaurant,
no one's gonna want to work there.
So, one,
you have to address your culture at your restaurant.
You have to make sure it's a great place to work, it's a fun place to work.
You still have to get work done
being a fun place to work and getting work done have
nothing to do with each other.
You can be a fun place and still get work done, you can be serious
and still be fun, you can be a place that people want to work at
and we still are serious.
You can be strict without being mean and we have lots of videos about that.
But the point is would you work for you?
Have you created an environment that you would work in?
Number two which is the elephant in the room is you're just not paying enough.
I'm not here right now to discuss
how much could you pay, I'm just saying you're not paying enough.
If you're still having a hard time finding staff, you're not paying enough.
Which brings up the second thing that I wanted to really
adjust here in the mid-year update,
which is change.
Because if you can't pay more, if you're sitting here watching, it's going, Ryan,
you're crazy. I'm offering 22 dollars an hour for cooks.
I'm offering 25 dollars an hour for cooks, and they're not coming.
It's because the world has changed.
They have options.
They can drive for Uber, they can work for Amazon.
There are gigs out there, they can
stay at home and make money selling on Amazon.
There are gigs and other opportunities out there that weren't
there four, five, ten years ago,
that are now available to them.
So, maybe 25 isn't enough, maybe 30 is not enough.
I don't know what the number is.
But if you're having a hard time finding employees, they're out there.
Unemployment is at the lowest numbers, it's almost ever been.
Because people are working.
To say, people are not working is not true.
They're just not maybe wanting to work for you for what you're paying.
But how are you gonna pay more, you're gonna have to change.
If you have a huge menu that's hard to execute,
you probably have to shrink your menu.
If you don't have well documented training and systems and
processes and procedures,
you're probably going to have to do that work,
so you don't need as talented of a cook. Right.
Systems are the opposite of talent.
Let's take like a chick-fil-a.
Chick-fil-a doesn't need a talented chef or talented cooks.
High school kids cook at chick-fil-a
because their systems are so strong.
So, systems are here, talent is here,
right?Now my guess is if you're struggling
to find people and you can't pay enough,
it's probably because you need talented people that cost a lot of money.
Because your systems are here.
So, you're going to have to work on simplifying your operation
and increasing your systems. That's just part of what's going to have to happen here.
Also remember, this change doesn't happen slowly,
change does not happen slow. Our world didn't change slowly.
Our world changed like that, at least relative in time.
The world changed in march of 2020,
like that.
Now it may have taken two years for us to feel the
ramifications and it may have taken two years for us to get used to it.
But the world changed like that.
So, whatever you're fearful of,
whatever you're saying of we've got time or we're going to slowly change
or we're going to adapt,
while you're slowly changing, others are making plans for massive change.
And when their massive change takes effect,
your slow change is going to put you into a world of hurt
or potentially out of business.
Because the things that are happening right now in our industry are mind-blowing.
Robots are being developed at a faster pace than ever.
Self-served kiosks are being developed at a faster pace than ever,
delivery is growing at a massive pace, curbside pickup.
The way that people dying is changing.
I have restaurants that are installing pizza robots.
I have restaurants that are installing sushi robots.
I have restaurants that are looking for technology
and improving their systems and simplifying their menu because
they can't wait three years for these changes to take effect.
Change happens like that.
It may feel like it takes a long time but it doesn't.
The world changed on 2000 or in 2001
in an instant,
the world changed in 2020 in an instant.
The question is are you making those changes fast enough?
So, the whole purpose of today's update,
the whole purpose of me coming out here and not trying to scare you.
But maybe presenting what I believe to be some very honest information
is that what changes are you making?
If you are operating the same way,
you've been operating for 5, 10 or 20 years
and you're just complaining about how expensive everything is getting,
but you're not changing, you are going to be left behind.
If you're complaining about how hard it is to find staff
and you are not changing, you are going to be left behind.
If you need help
putting together a strategy for change,
if you need help with ideas for how you can change,
if you don't know what you don't know
and you need me to come out to your restaurant
or we can hop on the phone and we can do a top to bottom audit.
And I can show you the areas potentially that you need to make some changes at.
We have those options available to you at the Restaurant Boss.
You can go to the restaurantboss.com
and you can look at our membership which has
two trainings every,
or two meetings every month, one training one ask me anything live
as well as access to all of our trainings, like scale and ghost kitchen boot camp
and restaurant manager certification
and all of our past trainings.
We have Click Bacon which is awesome for helping you manage your restaurants.
You can click on the hire me tab and we can look at either
coming out to your restaurant or doing a strategy session over the phone.
Grab a copy of my book, it's free. You just have to pay a couple bucks for shipping.
There's all kinds of ways I can help you, but in this video,
what I really wanted to address
is that point of change and how fast it happens
and how if we wait for change slowly or we slowly change,
there's going to be an instant like that, where you're going to be irrelevant.
So, look,
I think we're going to go and do a slowdown, an economic slowdown,
I think call it a recession,
call it whatever you want, we can't have
raising interest rates and
inflation at the pace that we are going
without there being some hurt.
And unfortunately, that hurt is coming because people don't change fast enough.
People don't slowly cut back their expenses,
they wait until they can't pay their bills,
then they cut back their expenses because change happens in an instant.
Restaurants don't unfortunately
slowly change, they wait until they can't
pay their bills anymore and then they close.
Because change happens in an instant.
Don't wait for that that mentality is what will lead us to a recession.
If people start making changes now and make them fast,
we might avoid a recession.
But I don't think we will avoid a recession, and so, when we get to a recession,
when the word recession gets out on the news,
everyone is going to change instantly.
And that means that they're going to stop eating your restaurant as much.
Or if your restaurant isn't the best in your community,
they're going to stop eating there as much. If you don't offer the best value,
value has nothing to do with price.
You can be a high-end restaurant and offer good value,
you can be fast food and offer good value.
Value has nothing to do with price.
Don't confuse that conversation. We have a video about that, I'll link to it.
All I'm saying is we need to start getting ready
for change.
You need to change faster,
so I'm rambling on here. But I think it's really, really important
that we talk about this and that I share with you.
And you know what, reach out for some help.
This is what I do all day, every day. I help restaurants all over the world.
It would be an absolute honor and an absolute privilege
if you were to reach out and we can assess the situation and then
determine what the best course of action is for you.
Like I said, there's different ways that we can meet.
But this is what I do every day.
And nothing brings more joy to my life than being on the phone with someone this morning
who has cut their expenses by 40 in four months.
Nothing brings me more joy
than getting on the phone with an operator or five units
changing around their menu a little bit,
helping them develop some checklists and some
prep sheets and some systems and some processes, and lowering their labor
by like 20% and now introducing some robots
which are going to simplify their operation, lower their labor by like another 20,
probably, like another 5 to 10 percent.
So, like a 30% reduction in labor in the three or four months that we're working together.
Now that restaurant is ready to open up more
locations because their P&L is fixed. Now they're making money again.
Nothing brings me more joy than doing that
than seeing a brand that I worked with
for the last four years go from zero to ten locations,
and now opening up
two locations next month.
And then I think they have eight more planned for this year,
they're gonna go from zero to twenty locations in
five and a half years.
That's what I can do for you if that's
what you want, and if you're willing to put in the work.
So, let's hop on a phone. Let's make this change happen like that.
And let's get ahead of this economy instead of waiting for it to
crash on us and get behind it.
What do you say?
Listen, remember that systems create freedom,
freedom creates value and value creates scale.
This was a long video.
And I apologize for making it long but I think it was super important.
I love every single one of you crazy restaurant people.
I'll see you next week with another great video, just like this one. Bye-bye.
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Remember, systems create freedom,
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Manage systems, develop people and be awesome!