Why It Is OK to Let Your Restaurant Manager Go

As a small business owner, one of the most difficult things to do is let someone in management go. Especially in an independent restaurant, these people can be like family to you and have put a lot of themselves into your business. But as you grow and adjust your expectations, some people just can’t grow in the job. Other times, they are just not a good culture fit. No matter the reason, concluding that it’s time for that manager to go sucks. Nobody likes to fire people, especially when you really care about them personally.

In this episode of my podcast, The Restaurant Prosperity Formula, I want to teach you:

• How to know when it’s time to fire a manager
• Why I would rather run short staffed than have the wrong people on my team
• What to do put yourself in a position where when a manager leaves voluntarily or through disciplinary action, you’re not worried about it.

Also during this podcast I share several examples of what the restaurant owners I coach have done when faced with this issue:

1. The kitchen manager who is good until he gets busy.
2. The GM that was full of excuses.
3. The chef that was destroying company culture.

As people in the hospitality business, we care about people. It’s often to a point where you bleed financially because you give your kitchen people overtime, you give your people the time off they need, and will go short staffed. So when you care about somebody and ultimately they're putting you in a position to have to make a decision about their employment, that's really hard.

Here are some ideas I explore as part of this restaurant podcast:

• The manager is the one who put themselves in this situation.
• Sometimes people rise to their highest level of competency and can’t grow or learn more.
• Never settle, because if you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.
• Your other employees deserve for the poorly performing manager to be removed.
• Leadership and training are essential to building a great management team.
• Why I like to focus on managing systems instead of people.
• You are responsible as the restaurant owner.

There's nothing new in this business, but you have to be willing to change. More importantly, while you may have created the situation, you can get yourself out of it.

Click the podcast player above to listen in, or you can watch the video on YouTube, click here to download the latest episode.