How to Get Your Restaurant Back on Track

I'm feeling pretty good because I've been on the phone with restaurant owners just like you for the last seven weeks, and you've turned a corner. It was pretty bad for a few weeks, but you are proving your reputation for resilience. 

One of the main reasons you’re still standing is you have learned to pivot your business. I’ve seen restaurant owners do all kinds of things they never thought they’d do, including running a to-go BBQ parking lot business to creating a grocery store and delivery service out of a restaurant, providing steaks, chicken, produce and prepared meals.

You've figured out curbside delivery, how to allow your customers to order online and how to operate more sanitary than you ever have before.

I know you are doing your best to make sure you’re going above and beyond in all areas, hoping to hold onto your customers’ trust, confidence and loyalty.

If you are still open right now, you have figured out how to survive. I didn't say that means you’re making money! But you're surviving.

So, what now? As states roll out various plans for reopening restaurants and other businesses, how do you reopen? How do you make sure that you get your product from your vendors? How do you make sure you have the right menu for this time? How do we bring back our employees when some of them are making more money on unemployment and may not be motivated to come back to our restaurants? Do you need and want them all? Can you support them all?

One opening strategy I’ve seen suggested is for restaurants to open up at a 25 percent capacity. In a smaller restaurant, that could mean only 10 people at a time in it. That isn’t even enough volume to handle your rent. It means what you’ve done to pivot your business to survive COVID-19 has to stay in place.

This global pandemic affected my business too. I was just days from releasing a four-part video learning series. It was literally supposed to start three days after the first state started to close. I pulled the plug, obviously. A crisis is not known as a great time to teach people long-term strategies! 

Much like you, I pivoted my business. I went right into crisis mode, and I started helping restaurant associations, food distributors, restaurant owners who reached out to me directly, and my own members on how to survive. I did free webinars for multiple restaurant associations, a seven-week series with Anne Gannon of The Largo Group to help people get through the PPP money, the disaster money and interpreting the constantly changing rules.

Through interactions with these hundreds of restaurant owners, there's some hope and some looking to the future and ways to change to be better.

So, I've decided that I'm going to get back on track, too, starting with that four-part video learning series.

I want you to be a part of it because the lessons I teach are what you're talking about:

• How to control your food and labor cost
• How to get your managers on board with your plans
• Putting systems in place
• Holding managers accountable
• Getting the most out of your business

These are the things I've been teaching since 2003. They are essential to your business survival. Unfortunately, a lot of restaurant owners considered them optional because the status quo was enough. But here are the reasons you can't count on your old ways:

• Labor costs are going up - $15 minimum wage is coming
• How you pay your employees is changing
• Food costs are going up
• Rent is going up
• The future is volatile

You thought the restaurant industry was hard before COVID-19? Get ready. We’re experiencing a major economic shutdown, and the turnaround is going to cost a lot. We're all going to be paying for it. Now is the time to adjust.

The lessons I teach in this four-part video learning series are more critical to you today than they've ever been because you can't go back to your old normal. There will not be an old normal. You have to put systems in place to get your restaurant through the next unknown period of time and then come out stronger than you were before.

If you want to learn how to:

• Eventually have freedom for your business
• Financial freedom for your life and your family
• Become a good leader

You have to:

• Put systems in every part of your business (a system, a process, a way to doing anything and everything in your business)
• Learn what you don't know and share it with your managers
• Hold people accountable to the systems

My father had a phrase:

Ideas are cheap. It’s the people who put them into action that are priceless.

So now's your time to take action.

On May 7, I'm releasing this four-part video learning series: “The Sure-Fire Way to Lower Your Food and Labor Costs.”

In the first three videos, I'm diving deep. These are real lessons, not just fluff. I teach and try to inspire you. I'm going to give you examples of restaurant owners just like you who put these things in place and had success.

The fourth part is a live webinar where I teach you what you have to do to make change in your business, get back on track and stay on track. It’s time to focus on your business and realize you can’t go back to how you were doing it before. Even if you had systems in place before, you have to do it better. The future of running a restaurant requires:

• Weekly inventory
• Recipe costing cards
• Sales forecasting
• Tracking your daily sales
• An accountable management team to do the work
• An ability to lead your team with systems
• And much, much more

If you want to get on the right foot, if you want to get back on track, take advantage of this resource. I want you to opt in to make sure you get access to the videos.

Sign up to receive the first lesson to be released May 7. 

I want to thank you for all your support. And I hope I've impacted you in your life in some way, whether in the past or more recently on some of the webinars and trainings that I've done to help you get through this pandemic.

If you think you could benefit from a series of videos about how to lower food and labor costs, please sign up to receive them. There's no cost to sign up or view them.