What Restaurant Owners Can Do to Overcome Daily Obstacles

In episode 21 of my podcast, The Restaurant Prosperity Formula, I'm talking about the challenges restaurant owners are facing today from employee burnout and labor shortage to the need for stronger management and leadership.

My guest for this episode, Darren Denington, has 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry and has an extensive background as a food and beverage director, executive chef, general manager, restaurant owner, staff trainer, restaurant coach and consultant. He holds the most prestigious certification available for hospitality professional being a certified food and beverage executive. He is the founder of Service with Style Hospitality Group, a hospitality firm offering secret shopping, restaurant coaching and training services. Listen to this episode for a candid and open conversation about what restaurant owners need to do to overcome the issues that they face daily. Now, the bad news is there's no magic pill. The good news is you'll learn exactly what you need to do.

This episode’s topic centers around the challenges restaurant owners are facing today from employee burnout and labor shortage to the need for stronger management and leadership. My guest for this episode, Darren Denington, has 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry and has an extensive background as a food and beverage director, executive chef, general manager, restaurant owner, staff trainer, restaurant coach and consultant. He holds the most prestigious certification available for hospitality professional being a certified food and beverage executive. He is the founder of Service with Style Hospitality Group, a hospitality firm offering secret shopping, restaurant coaching and training services. Listen to this episode for a candid and open conversation about what restaurant owners need to do to overcome the issues that they face on a daily basis. Now, the bad news is there's no magic pill. The good news is you'll learn exactly what you need to do.

I invited Darren to be part of this episode because I know with my members, we're really seeing a lot of challenges out there right now. We all just came out of a year of unprecedented and unplanned business restrictions and challenges. Nobody wants to hear the word pivot ever again, yet we have to adapt to things that are forever changed, like third-party delivery never going away.

Not only is Darren a restaurant coach, he operates a secret shopping service that serves hundreds upon hundreds of restaurants on a weekly basis. I wanted to have a conversation about what each of us is seeing and sprinkle the conversation with a little advice to help bring restaurant owners get some of their passion back.

During the conversation we talk about:

• The struggle to find employees at the same time guests are swarming restaurants because they haven't been out. They want good food and good service. There's a lot of things coming together at once here.
• The challenge of finding employees and some of the reasons for that.
• What restaurant owners can do to increase their chances of being a restaurant employees want to work for.
• The importance of restaurant owners getting back to operations after 16+ months of working all the jobs and filling in the gaps left when everything shut down.
• Some strategies for building up your management and getting them more involved.
• How to get lots of small things done by spreading responsibility around.
• The importance and usefulness of systems, and the helpfulness of structure.
• How to slowly build the company culture you want to sustain your business and attract high quality, long term employees.
• Personally relating to your employees to find out what they want.
• Some alternative solutions to the dramatic increase in wages and how to pay a fair wage while keep your budget intact.

While restaurants are up against a unique set of circumstances and nothing is quite stable yet, the tips and insights in this episode will help now and for every obstacle in the future. There is no magic pill. Running a quality restaurant with a strong management team takes time and attention, and it’s not something you can ever mark complete. It’s an ongoing process. But when you’re passionate about your restaurant, your employees, your community and your product, the work you put in on the leadership and systems side will result in incredible rewards for you.