How to Run a Restaurant Successfully in Uncertainty
Wouldn't it be nice to know how to run a restaurant successfully in uncertainty? Running your restaurant during the COVID-19 pandemic feels like trying to navigate your way home through a raging forest fire, like the ones that ravage the West Coast. It's frightening. If you take action too late, you will not make it. Ultimately, if you don't make it, it can cost you everything. What you need is a road map and help. And that help comes from two very specific things. Systems and an implementer. Click below to watch this tip or keep scrolling to read it.
Much like a forest fire burns homes to the ground and devastates communities, COVID-19 is raging through the restaurant industry. As a restaurant owner, you have to do everything you can to obstruct its impact on your business and your life.
How? Here are two things to have in your restaurant business that can do this: one is systems and the other is an implementer.
Number one, when I say systems what do I mean? I mean everything you do that somebody else could be doing. Whether it's counting out your bar draw every single time the same way, or it's opening and closing your restaurant. It could be sending in payroll or ordering food. You create your system, your process, your way. This allows you to impose your will so that people do it your way even when and especially when you're not there.
Why systems and how do systems and an implementer work? Well, remember, I say it allows you to impose your will. By having your systems in place, you operate much like the chains do. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be cold and sterile and serve packaged food hot out of a microwave. You're still the same restaurant owner with the same set of core values. But you are going to set standards and train people to those standards. The obstacle for most entrepreneurs is themselves. Even if you want to create all those systems and execute all those systems and train all those systems, you don’t have the time. Instead what you want to do is get somebody to help you get it out of your head, document it and actually implement it. That's called an implementer. Simply put. Find one person who helps you get it all done. That is how you can have success with systems.
The good news about systems is you already have them. That's the beautiful part. All you need to do is document them. Once you document them, you teach them. Teach your implementer all the ways of the restaurant, have that person document them all, have them bring it to you to edit and then BAM! You have documented and trainable systems.
Here’s a BONUS tip that makes it even easier. Grab your cell phone and video yourself walking through the restaurant and performing all the tasks. Then have your implementer type it all up step by step. Then follow the same procedure. Review what they’ve capture, edit it, finalize it and BAM! Systems documented. Keep the video and it becomes a training tool for new employees.
As a restaurant coach I want you know that I teach restaurant owners a whole series of systems that literally help you organize your whole restaurant. The systems I teach cover your restaurant operations through what you do every single day. And that gives you comfort. It gives you direction. It allows you to get through the ebbs and flows of running your business, even when there's a high level of uncertainty like it is today with COVID-19.
The truth of the matter is, if you truly want to make a change in your business, you've got to put systems in place and you've got to find an implementer because that's how you get to take action.
I cover Restaurant 101, putting systems in place and more in my book. Order your copy of Restaurant Prosperity Formula: What Successful Restaurateurs Do here.
You can also complete a free restaurant evaluation. It's a great way to identify immediate opportunities where you can make things better in your restaurant.
Be sure to visit my YouTube channel for more helpful restaurant management video tips.
