Hey, restaurant owners. I'm sure at some point in time, and it might even have been me.
Somebody has talked to you about a mission
statement and how you need a mission statement in your restaurant.
Well, I was wrong.
You don't need a mission statement in your restaurant,
you need something called a promise,
and we're going to talk about it here in this video.
Hey, everybody. Ryan Gromfin here – author, speaker, chef, restaurateur,
and the founder of the Restaurantboss.com, as well as clickBACON.com.
And that's right. If I have told you in the past that you need a mission statement,
I was wrong. About a year ago, I discovered something else,
something different
that I've kind of created but I kind of took from some other businesses,
it's called promises and I love this and I'll tell you why right now.
In your business, you need at least two kinds of promises, sometimes three.
You need at least a few customer promises.
You also need some employee promises.
Some of you are going to take this to a whole another level
and you're going to have business
or operation promises,
which are going to be a little different if you're a larger business
and you have shareholders or partners, I suggest you do that,
but at the bare minimum,
replace mission statement with a customer promise.
Here's what I mean.
I'm going to give you an example of one of the better restaurant
mission statements that I've heard. You know they're all kind of fluffy.
They're like, we're going to provide the best value
possible to our customer at the most affordable prices.
They all sound something like that they're all total BS,
but Panera Bread has a great one. It's a loaf of bread under every customer…
I'm sorry! It's a loaf of bread under everybody's arm.
A loaf of bread under everybody's arm, which is great.
It's kind of tongue-in-cheek, we know it's not real, but that's kind of their thing.
It’s a fresh loaf of bread for everybody.
And I like that, but what does that really mean?
The way I discovered this is about a year ago,
I was working with a client and I was really being hard on him.
Asking him some questions about his pizza restaurant
and how his pizza restaurant is going to be better or
different than all the other pizza restaurants in the area, and there were a lot.
He said, well, we're going to have better service,
we're going to be known for service.
And I said, tell me about what that means? Tell me about customer service?
And he starts talking about customer service but none of it
was really making any sense. See, it's really hard to define customer service.
We all say we have great service, but what does that really mean?
So then this just came out of me and I said,
tell me a promise you're going to make to a customer?
And we kind of played with this for a little bit,
but then something came out of his mouth that was like, you know what?
I want to be the pizza restaurant for families.
Most the other ones are kind of dirty and kind of grimy and
there's nowhere to sit down and people pick up their food and leave,
but we want to be the place where families feel comfortable.
So we kind of worked on it, and then out of nowhere,
something came out of his mouth along the lines -
we're going to treat your kids like they were ours,
or I think it was something like,
we're going to love your kids even when they're bad,
something like that. I don't remember the specifics,
but it was a very distinct promise.
We're going to treat your kids exactly like they were our like they were ours. Wow!
I am having trouble getting the words out here.
And so that's what a promise is.
So, I started doing more research on this and I see
that some of these newer companies have this on their website things like this.
More customer promises than mission statements.
Like a restaurant that I was at a couple of months ago had something
along the lines of - we won't start cooking your food until you order it.
Will always call your order by first name
with a friendly smile.
If it's not exactly what you wanted, we'll make it right.
See these are promises and they make people feel safe,
they make me willing to try new things.
I get excited when I hear customer promises
and so I've been doing this with all my clients.
We've been writing these customer promises
and they've been really helpful because they're black and white,
they draw a line in the sand. If you have a customer promise that says,
if you're not incredibly happy or if we didn't exceed your expectations,
we'll make it right.
Well then it's black and it's white. If you're home or you're out of town
and your manager is dealing with something,
the customer promise says, we're going to take care of it right here right now.
The customer promise doesn't say, “well, let me call my owner.
I can't get through to them. Let me get your number.
Well, someone will call you tomorrow.”
No! Your customer promise says, if we didn't exceed your expectations,
we'll make it right.
So, I highly encourage you.
Go back to the previous video if you haven't watched it yet about vision,
mission, goals, projects, tasks, action items;
replace that mission with promises
and figure out what your vision is,
then write some promises to your customers,
put them on a wall where they can see it, put them on your website,
draw the line in the sand.
Write some promises to your employees.
If you're struggling attracting the best employees,
maybe we're not clear enough at how #well you want to treat your employees.
Maybe you're not treating your employees well enough
but put those somewhere for your employees to see it,
put those on your website.
Here are customer promises, here are employee promises,
and then if you have some partners or some investors,
maybe some business promises, right?
Like we promise to provide financial statements
by the fifth day of every month.
We promise to
be open and transparent with all business dealings, right?
Something that makes your investors feel safe.
We promise to contribute to the community,
that could be a customer promise,
that could be a business promise, but the point is,
I want you to start retraining your mind about promises
instead of mission statements.
I hope this helps you operate a higher profit better restaurant,
and I hope you have more fun doing and it can
take a little more time off with some of these tips.
Enjoy a little more freedom in your lives.
I got another video coming up for you next week.
This has been Ryan Gromfin with the Restaurant Boss. Have a wonderful week.
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