8 Ways to Reignite Passion for Your Restaurant Business

Have you ever felt like you've had the crap beat of out after a long day in your restaurant? Like you’ve gone 20 rounds with the World Champ? Has this ever made you feel like you don't want to go into your restaurant? Or maybe each day is just starting to feel uncomfortable, and you don't get nearly as excited about going into your restaurant? You could be on your way to restaurant burnout – or already experiencing it. I have the magic pill for avoiding or overcoming restaurant burnout or getting: reignite your passion for your restaurant business. Watch this video to learn eight ways to do it.

The most successful restaurant owners I've worked with all have a passion for hospitality and their restaurants. They are drawn to hospitality and to offering memorable experiences. They love doing this, and they are committed to doing it. That’s not to say that if you have passion for your business things won’t get hard, or you won’t get overwhelmed. But that passion is what you come back to when you need to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

To keep your passion going or reignite your passion, you need to:

1. Focus on the keyword “freedom.” You must have life outside your restaurant. Spend time with friends and family. It can’t be all restaurant people all the time. You need to be able to go home and be present. You need that time with the people you love.
2. Get excited about learning. The most successful people I've ever worked with say they don't know what they don't know and they learn every single day. When you seek information, it can be something new or something you already knew, but you weren’t doing it. We all need reminders. Share what you learn with your managers and
3. Practice gratitude. Instead of looking backwards and looking at all the things that went wrong, look for what’s going right. “We're building sales all the time. I've got good people working for me. My community needs me.” Start to focus on those things that you're grateful for. Gratitude is important and is comes more easily when you make it a daily practice.
4. Remember your why. Remember why you got into business in the first place because that why is your drive. That's what sparked some of your passion to be in this business.
5. Hire people who fit your company culture and are excited about the opportunity. Don’t allow one, two, three people to tell you why change won't work in your restaurant. Don’t let them fight you on why they don't want to do things. Get rid of them. I tell restaurant owners all the time that I’d rather run short staffed than have the wrong people on my team.
6. Drop the excuses. It’s not too hard, you have enough time, you have enough people, you can build a management team, the government isn’t out to get you, your broadline distributor isn’t out to get you, either and not every customer is difficult. Excuses give you a reason to accept why action isn't being taken and things never change.
7. Stop the negative talk. I know that's tough. Some of us have baggage from when we were kids. Right? You hold on to it and that record plays over and over and over again. Do your very best when you recognize you're starting to talk negative, give yourself a safe word to switch out of it and go, I've got to focus. Remember the gratitude part? Focus on what you can control, what you’re grateful for, and change your attitude. You get to choose your attitude every day.
8. Recommit to excellence. Excellence in product, excellence in service, excellence in cleanliness and excellence in all your training. You want to be great at everything. Then you never settle and always striving to learn to become better, to train others, and all of a sudden, it's exciting to go into work because when you approach your business with a commitment to excellence. It's contagious. The next thing you know, your business is moving forward.

Here are a few areas in your life to focus your energy to further avoid burnout.

• Your health: I can tell you that if you're unhealthy, it will be harder to find that passion because your body will feel so terrible.
• Your relationships: Having freedom from your restaurant is critical to you being present with your friends and family. Those relationships are the people who are outside your business who will listen to you, who prop you up, who make you laugh, who love you. If you don't give the energy back, you become overdrawn and people will withdraw from you.
• Your attitude: Choose a good attitude. I'm not saying you can't have a bad day. You can have a bad day. You can cry yourself to sleep. You can overeat. You can drink. You can do whatever vice you've got. But only for one day. To be an entrepreneur, to be a restaurant owner, to be the leader your restaurant needs, you can only have one bad day. What you do the next day is what defines you.

If you work on these eight ways to reignite your passion for your restaurant business, plus work on your health relationships and attitude, you will be able to maintain or rediscover your passion for your restaurant. You'll be on a path to avoiding or getting out of the state of restaurant burnout.

For anyone listening to me right now who thinks these ideas won't help you for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. If you think this is BS, that it won't work for you, it just might be time for you to get out of the restaurant business. Because it's not going to get any easier anytime soon.

If you do believe these ideas can help, pick one, two, three ideas, put them into action, start to drive and lead your business forward. You won’t be able to help but get motivated to come in every day and provide the best guest experience possible. I guarantee it.

Be sure to visit my YouTube channel for more helpful restaurant management video tips.