Hey, restaurant owners and operators.
Do you ever feel like your staff is just not prepping efficiently?
Like you could just go in the back and do this ten times faster than they could?
And it's driving you crazy.
Well, I'm going to explain to you the theory of efficiency in restaurants
in manufacturing business, which is basically what a restaurant is right now.
Hey, everybody. Ryan Gromfin here – author, speaker, chef, restaurateur,
and founder of TheRestaurantBoss.com,
as well as ClickBacon.com,and ScaleMyRestaurant.com.
I used to feel like this all the time, it would drive me crazy. I would watch my staff,
I would be like, oh my god! Like seriously?
Just get out of the way and let me do this for you because they were doing them so slow and so
inefficiently,
or I would see all these steps and things around the restaurant.
It would drive me crazy.
It drives me even more crazy now when I go visit other restaurants
as a consultant to do analysis and training in their restaurants
and what I see is just mind-blowing to me.
I'm like, who taught this guy or this gal to do it this way?
And a lot of times the answer is, what do you mean? We didn't teach them how to do it,
we just told them what to do, right?
So, that's going to be part of what we're going to talk about here, but
I always like to talk about the why and the theory.
So, let me start with kind of four
main factors that are related to improving efficiency or efficiency
in any manufacturing type business.
Basically, a restaurant is a small manufacturing plant.
We take in product in one form, we convert it to another form and then we sell.
So, a lot of manufacturing principles apply to restaurants.
The first is transitions. The second is order.
The third is speed, and the fourth is method.
So, Transitions, Order, Speed, and Method.
Now, I'm going to explain all of this to you more in a second,
but when you think about those four things and then think about the assembly line,
the assembly line that Henry Ford created,
it shows why the assembly line is so efficient.
There's no transitioning back and forth between projects.
This is what you do, you do it all day.
The order has already been predetermined by
very smart people who study this,
so your line-level staff
doesn't have to transition and they don't change the order in which they do things,
it's already been predetermined. The speed is already set.
The products are running down the line at a certain speed
and you got to get it installed on time in your timeframe before the next one comes down,
and then the methods again have been scientifically researched and studied over and over again
to be the best. And it's that constant and never-ending improvement theory.
Well, I love assembly lines, but assembly lines are not
a very normal or a very practical
method for production in your restaurant.
There are certain items that I used to do quote-unquote “assembly line” methods on,
like when we would make homemade raviolis at one of the fancy restaurants I worked at,
we would set it up like an assembly line where one person would roll out the dough,
pass it down, another person would pipe the filling,
pass it down another, person would cut and seal them,
and we would just keep this going, so we would kind of all get our prep done
and then we would all meet in the back for like a half-hour and make enough raviolis
for four or five days or whatever it was. So, there are times, but generally,
you're not running an assembly line.
You got one person who has multiple things to do
instead of one person who has one thing to do.
So, let's first talk about this Transitions.
Transitions is the amount of time it takes your brain to adapt
between projects.
I'm sure you've noticed this.
You'll be very in-depth into doing one thing and then someone interrupts you
and it takes you 15 or 20 minutes to get that focus back
if you can even remember.
Or you'll be on the phone and you'll be talking about something,
then maybe a bolt of lightning of thunder or
someone slams a door in your office or something happens and you get kind of jolted,
and then you're like, oh, where was I again?
So, this can mean different things to different people,
but it has been proven over and over again in any sort of
effectiveness or speed training or
anything related that the more transitions we have to make,
the more we have to move from one project to another project,
the slower we get.
The way that we combat transitions is to predetermine the prep.
the prep. Predetermine what needs to get done.
Instead of finishing an item then figuring out what to do,
then finishing that, then figuring out what to do,
take some time in the morning or teach your team how to take some time in the morning,
right out of proper prep list, or you should be providing a prep list for them,
but then basically, they don't need to think anymore.
For me in my life now at my home business consulting,
I plan my entire week the Friday before.
So, Friday afternoon, the last thing I do is plan out my whole week
using a calendar. Maybe some of you have seen
my calendar different programs or videos before,
but when it comes to Monday at 8 a.m.,
I don't need to think about what to do, I know what to do Monday at 4 p.m.,
Tuesday at 2 p.m., Wednesday at 8:00 a.m.,
whatever it is.My entire week has been planned out.
I just do what's in the calendar.
That eliminates that 15 to 20 minutes
every time you move between a project.
The next thing is the order at which we do things.
It's astonishing to me when I watch people
do very quick and easy projects early in the morning,
and then put very complex and detailed things on in the afternoon,
and then they rushed through finishing them.
So, the order that we do things is very important.
If you've got a soup that needs to cook for two or three hours,
well get that soup on the stove and then while it's cooking, do some other things.
I know that sounds obvious, but you would be shocked
if you walked into your restaurant and studied it the way that I would walk into your
restaurant and study it.
When was the last time you stood in your kitchen for eight hours just like this
with a notepad watching the amount of steps your people take?
The messed up order at which they're doing things?
So, the second thing is just the order at which they're doing things.
The third is of course the speed. Speed comes from training,
speed comes from practice, but speed.
There is just a raw factor that some people are going to be faster than the others,
but are you pushing? Are you working on speed?
Are you teaching speed? You know, my son said to me the other day, he wanted to run faster,
he wanted to beat one of his friends at school
and I said great. Every night, we're going to do 10 Sprints,
so we know about what a 50-yard… what 50 yards looks like in front of our house
from one house our neighbor's house and every night, we're going to do 10 Sprints.
And he gets faster because he does his Sprints.
Well, he stopped doing them now but the point is. If you want to get faster,
you have to have a goal and you have to measure and you have to improve.
So, are you helping your team get faster?
Or are you just accepting the slowness at which they're doing tasks?
And then, the last is method.
Sometimes method will increase speed,
sometimes it's a matter of holding your knife right,
sometimes it's a matter of instead of peeling an onion
every time you need to dice it of having onions already peeled in the fridge,
or instead of peeling one onion,
dicing it, peeling another and dicing it. Peeling all four onions then dicing them.
So, a lot of these overlap each other because part of that is also
order and part of that is speed and part of that is method and part of that is transitions,
but sometimes when you break it down, you can understand these concepts a little better.
I want to end with a very quick story, which is about - we don't know what we're capable
of doing until we actually do it. We don't believe it's possible
until we believe it's possible.
There's a great story about Roger Bannister,
the first person ever to break the four-minute mile.
Where he was at like 4 minutes 8 seconds, 4 minutes 10 seconds.
He just couldn't get a 4-minute mile.
There were actually people studying as scientists who wrote down in a journal that it's impossible.
The human body just can't move that fast.
Well, guess what? One day he ran a sub-4-minute mile
and within 3-weeks, 6 other people around the world did the same thing.
So, how is it possible that from the dawn of time,
no one could run a sub-4-minute mile until one person did,
then everybody else could. Now, its standard for professional runners.
It's because they didn't believe who was possible until they believed it was possible.
A better story for you relates back to one of the restaurants I was operating
way back in the day -
we had a deli, so we did a lot of our prep in the morning and put it out hot and cold cases.
Well, one of my cooks was a great guy, a good hard worker and he would come in at like 6:30
in the morning and get everything ready and he'd go home at about 11:30.
He'd have the deli case hot and cold ready by about 11:00.
10:45 was the plan, sometimes 11:00, and then he'd do a few things and go home and it
worked out great.
Part-time employee worked for me three or four, maybe five days a week,
but only about five or six hours a day. He was phenomenal.
Nothing wrong with this guy at all. Salt of the earth, incredible guy!
One day he called out sick and I was really tired, I was out late the night before.
And when I got the call, it was already early and I'm like I'm just going to come in later.
So, I came in at like 8 o'clock and I got the station set up by 10:30.
And I was like, how did I do that? I came in at 8:00 and was ready by 10:30. He comes in at
6:30 and doesn't get it ready until close to 11:00.
So, I called him up. He's like, no, not possible, not possible. I am like, “no, really I did.
So, I worked the station for a couple more days until he felt better and then when he came in,
we worked the station together and we started at like 6:30 in the morning.
We were done by like 9:30 or 10:00. He's like, how is that possible?
So then, the next day, I said, you know what? I don't want you to help me,
I just want you to watch and when he just sat back and watched,
he saw some of the things that he wasn't doing right in order,
speed. He learned that he could do that faster, he learned
that he could do it in this order. Now that's just an innate ability of mine. I'm just good at that.
I grew up working in restaurants, in very high-quality restaurants at a very young age,
so this is second nature to me but for others, it's not.
And then after about a week or so of me coaching him and talking about it,
he was able to start coming in later, almost two hours later,
and get all the same amount of work done in about two hours less time.
So that took some coaching,
but it took some believing. It took me doing it first and then teaching him how I did
it for him to then be able to do it.
So, if you're having challenges with your team not getting enough
prep done in the right amount of time, I would highly encourage you
to write down these four things on a piece of paper and then go stand in your kitchen and audit.
Audit their transitions, audit the order of which they're doing things,
audit the speed at which they're doing things, and then audit the methods
that they're using and teach them better ways.
And if you don't know better ways and you don’t know how to do this audit,
then maybe consider hiring someone like me to come out to your restaurant or to
talk you through how to do this. I'd love to help if you're looking for it.
Just email us at support@therestaurantboss.com,
or go to therestaurantboss.com/hire me
There's a tab for it somewhere at the top of our page. Anyways, today's been a long video. I want to wrap it up here.
If this is a topic you're particularly interested in and want to learn more about it,
below this video either on YouTube or on our blog will be a link to a Facebook live
where we go back and take the previous week's video
and go into much more depth on it. So, that link will be there for you.
Hope you have an absolutely wonderful week and remember,
the quality of your systems will dictate
your level of success.
The quality of your systems equals your level of success.
Have a wonderful day. Be a boss. I'll see you next week.
Want to improve your skills as a manager and make more money?
Did you get handed the manager job and weren’t given the support you need?
Are you nervous about applying for a restaurant manager position?
Managing restaurants, bars, and kitchens is not easy.
I know, I have been there. I want to help.
The difference between where you are now and where you want to be is
a plan and some new tools.
That is why I created the Restaurant Manager Certification!
It’s a boot camp for aspiring restaurant leaders
designed to simplify your path to the top.
Learn more at TheRestaurantBoss.com/Manager
I hope you enjoyed this week's training video.
If you haven't subscribed to our channel yet,
would you go ahead and smash the like button right up there,
so you can get notified every week when we release a new
free training video.
I've also gone ahead and put a couple of videos for you here and here
that I think you're going to enjoy. Remember,
systems create freedom, freedom creates value,
and value creates scale.
Manage systems, develop people, and be awesome.