How Do I Work Less in My Restaurant Business?

Do you wonder how you can work less in your restaurant business? It’s a common question I get and it has many layers. But for the purposes of this tip, I want to explain how the restaurant owners I coach have a minimum of two days off in their restaurants, have time with their friends and family, time to pursue hobbies and take vacations. Let’s talk about how you can work fewer hours in your restaurant business but still be there as much as you want.

First, let me give you a few examples of my members who completely transformed their restaurants and their lives in the process.

• Avery went from burning the candle at both ends, working his pizza oven every Friday and Saturday night, to never being on the schedule, working from home, walking into the restaurant only when he has his manager meetings, or when he wants to, and has a fully capable restaurant management team that is helping him explode his sales, his service and profitability.
• Neely and Ryan went from owning two restaurants in a summer resort town that required them to work endless hours with a management team that couldn't make decisions without asking them questions. They were dicing tomatoes daily just to keep up with the business because the summer season was so busy. Today Ryan surfs every morning, goes into the restaurants to work on tasks he wants to work on, and Neely works from home being able to spend time with their kids and explode their catering business.
• Matt went from stumbling every step of the way because his business went from a package good store to a full-service restaurant out of necessity and making mistakes that cost him money and lots and lots of time, requiring him to be in the restaurant daily. Now he works as a part-time physical therapist because he loves it, has a full management team in place with systems to ensure the restaurant runs the way he would run it if he was in the building and has dinner with his family every night. Also, he doesn't work any shifts in the restaurant.
• Deja and Matt started a brewery that had a pizza oven just so people had something to eat. It exploded almost overnight into a full-service restaurant with incredible sales. But the restaurant was owning them. Deja decided she needed to leave her teaching job just to help manage the restaurant. All of this made it not only difficult to run a restaurant and a brewery, but they have young children at home who needed their parents. Today, Matt, who's also a CPA, was able to work this past tax season full time. Deja was able to work on the major projects, from redoing the menu to implementing checklists and training systems and take a couple of family trips, while her management team ran the restaurant the way they wanted it run, all while exploding their profitability.

You get the picture, right? Yes. You can work less. Here's the exact formula they followed.

• They set goals because they need to know why they wanted to put the work in.
• They identified their leadership style and what they needed to work on because they knew that being a restaurant leader was critical to their business.
• They implemented checklists for every position, from management to any position opening, closing, side work to create a culture of close-to-open. That way, every night the restaurant closes with the restaurant 100% ready to open.
• They learned the formula for successful delegation and how to hold their management team accountable because they needed to get the tasks off their plate and onto other people's plates and make sure they're doing them.
• They cleaned up their chart of accounts so the numbers actually meant something. While there’s no wrong chart of accounts, I teach you exactly how to set it up to make the numbers mean something to you and your business.
• They implemented systems from sales forecasting to tracking their DSR invoice and paid out tracker and a manager log just to start the daily administration stuff that the managers would start taking over.
• They created budgets to ensure they were tracking the right numbers to make change in their business.
• They implemented systems to reduce waste, reduce theft, and have their managers order on a budget instead of just fixing all their problems by writing a check.
• They put their managers on a system to prevent theft, reduce waste, stop the dumbass mistakes and order on budget.
• They implemented systems to schedule on budget. They didn’t just copy the schedule from week to week. They scheduled based on sales and efficiencies.
• They wrote their core values out and started working on their organizational chart. Just like the big companies out there, it doesn't matter how small you are, you're still a business.
• The short answer is all these people put into place the foundational systems that ensure you'll have a management team that follows your systems, your process, your way with accountability to those systems, thereby creating a business where you, the owner, get to lead the business. Instead of all the “tasks,” you work on budgets, marketing, developing your management team and moving the business forward. You think strategically.

If you want to follow in their footsteps, click here to watch my free video series. After you watch the video, you can choose to do it on your own, or you can get on a discovery call with me and my team today.

Be sure to click on the video above or visit my YouTube channel for more helpful restaurant management video tips.