Do you suffer from a total lack
of professionalism in your restaurant?
If you believe you do, keep watching.
I want to start off today's video with one of my favorite quotes.
Hospital corners on beds,
save lives in the battlefield.”
Not exactly sure which general said that,
but a modern American general said that.
Hospital corners on beds save lives in the battlefield.
If you don't know what a hospital corner is,
look it up it's a really tight way to fold a
bed so that way you get these great corners
on the mattress, you can bounce a quarter off of it, whatever, that's not the point.
The point is, how does teaching a new recruit
how to fold a hospital corner on a bed save lives in the battlefield.
Well, the answer that is very simple. Its standards,
it's being able to follow directions.
My name is Ryan Gromfin. I'm author, speaker, chef, restaurateur,
and I am the founder of TheRestaurantBoss.com,
as well as Clickbacon.com, and ScaleMyRestaurant.com.
And that's right. It's about standards.
See, if I'm out in the battlefield
and there's a guy that has never been able to make his bed properly,
has never been able to wake up on time,
has never been able to do the simple things
that we needed him to learn how to do in his first six weeks or eight weeks
in basic training,
how am I supposed to trust
that he cleaned his weapon properly and it will fire when he needs it to fire?
How am I supposed to trust
that he paid or she paid close enough attention during the briefing
so they know what the plan is
and will actually do what they're supposed to do
when they're supposed to do it?
If they can't make their bed properly,
I don't want that person as a partner in the battlefield.
That person can risk my life.
I love that expression.
Hospital corners on beds save lives in the battlefield.
No detail is too small in your restaurant.
So the reason I'm bringing this up is when I engage with a new
client on our first phone call,
one of the things I ask them to do is to create a list,
their homework for the next phone call is to create a list
of everything that frustrates them, everything that makes them angry,
mad, pissed off, perturbed,
frustrated, whatever, err.You know what I'm talking about.
And it's really funny because
80 to 90% of the people really struggle with this.
They'll only come back with one or two things on their paper,
and then I'll have to probe and probe and probe to get further.
And it's not because there aren't things that frustrate them,
they're on the phone with me because there's things that frustrate them.
It's that they self-edit.
They don't just write it all down.
They are about to write something down and go well,
I know how to solve that, so I'm not going to write it down.
Here's the thing - I encourage you to do this, I encourage you to make a list,
write everything down there that frustrates you. Don't self-edit,
but a couple of weeks ago,
I got a list from someone who had 74 items on it, and I loved it.
I loved that. This person did not self-edit,
they wrote everything down. Half of them were
the same problem in different words, but there's subtlety to those words,
there's messages to those words, so don't edit,
but I want to read a few of the
things that this person wrote down.
You tell me if these sound familiar to you at all.
When walking into work instead of worrying about orders,
I see staff chit-chatting and lost.
Too much chit-chatting causes orders to be delayed,
everything is slow, there's no urgency.
They don't do the work until I put pressure on them or push them.
Work is a sign but then not taken seriously.
Staff comes in late often. Staff is absent often.
There's a general lack of professionalism.
Any of that sound familiar?
Well, what I do with clients is I take these
lists of items and we put them into buckets of similarity
of how we're going to solve that problem,
but I want to talk about that general lack of professionalism.
It goes back to what I said about hospital beds on
corner or Hospital corners on beds,
and it goes back to what I said about,
no detail is too small to ignore.
If your standards are not set so high,
everybody on your team will literally scrape their elbows
to get under the bar that you set.
So if your bar is only set down here,
they're going to go here.
If your bar here, they'll go here. If your bar is here, they'll go here,
but if your bar is so high that even when they go under the bar,
they're still exceeding expectations,
they're still being as professional as possible.
That's what we need to do.
You need to set your standards so high and maintain those standards,
but all too often,
I hear this list of frustrations and then I look at the actions
that ownership is taking,
and it's no wonder people come in late, there's no repercussions.
It's no wonder people are just chit-chatting,
there's no one there managing them actively.
It's no wonder orders are late,
there's no one there expediting and pushing them along.
The standards aren't set.
When I see this list, I guarantee you people are out of uniform,
the restaurants dirty, there's no spec sheets,
there's no recipe sheets, there's no checklist,
there's no prep sheets. If there are checklists,
they're probably a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. There's no standards.
This might sound a little bit off-topic,
but see, I have no respect for major league baseball,
I don't watch it. I have no respect for football, I don't watch it
because there's no standards in those leagues anymore.
They're not role models.
Half of these guys are terrible human beings off the field, not all of them,
but they're not role models, there's no standards.
I like watching the Yankees
because ownership at the Yankees employs standards.
None of the Yankees have their shirt open,
big gold chains hanging out, long hair off to the side,
beards that aren't trimmed. No way,
if you want to wear the stripes,
if you want to play for the Yankees, you'll have a tight haircut,
clean shave, and you put on that uniform properly.
You want to work in your restaurant, you put on that uniform properly.
You want to be a part of this team, we have standards here.
Hospital corners on beds save lives in the battlefield.
If there is a lack of professionalism in your restaurant,
it is due to a complete and utter lack of standards
and the maintaining of those standards.
Raise your standards, you will absolutely raise the professionalism
in your restaurant. Raise those standards,
raise the standard on the smallest thing like a clean t-shirt
and people will start coming in on time.
Raise the standard on the simplest things like
following a recipe and people will stop calling out sick,
and you may not see that correlation yet and you may think it's hard to get there,
and it is. We're talking about shifting a culture dramatically,
and it's going to take time.
The worst football team in the league doesn't become
the best football team next year, it takes three or four years,
but you're in this for the long haul, aren't you?
So, let's get started on the work. Let's raise the standards,
let's increase the professionalism,
let's get rid of this chaotic terrible behavior of
not wearing uniforms and standing around and coming in late.
Let's raise our standards,
let's raise our expectations of our staff,
and let's create a great professional environment here,
where you and your team can thrive.
No detail is too small to ignore.
Hospital corners on beds save lives in the battlefield.
Are you struggling to grow your restaurant business?
Are you failing to find the time to do all the things you need to do
because you're stuck doing everybody else's jobs?
This sucks, I know. I've been there,
you're not alone.
The difference between where you are now and where you want to be is a plan
and some new tools.
And that is why I created Scale.
It's my newest course for restaurant owners
who want to grow their businesses and build an extraordinary brand.
Learn more at ScaleMyRestaurant.com
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.