To join my coaching program for restaurant owners, you must have a right-hand person who can help you. I call this person your implementer. This person will learn with you but implement and do the work. This a requirement because as the restaurant owner, your attention can often be required in...

My favorite podcast episodes are those with restaurant owners who have transformed their restaurants and their lives. The transformation these restaurant owners made is going to blow you away. Joshua Powell and Joseph Vericella are owners of Clay’s Cafe in Hebron, Ohio. Clay opened its...

Our guest today is Josh Kopel, a restaurateur, entrepreneur and coach. This is Josh’s second time on the podcast, and he’s back to talk to us about restaurant marketing and what it really means for your business. Throughout his 20-year career, he’s managed venues ranging from...

Today I want to talk about a silent morale and profit-killer in your restaurant that is often overlooked. That killer is decision-making waste. Decision-making waste in your restaurant is a silent profit killer that can slowly erode margins without restaurant owners even noticing. For example,...

In the restaurant industry it’s important to focus on numbers and performance because those numbers tell you the health of your business. As a coach, I teach restaurant owners how to use budgets and set goals and then measure them. When hiring managers, it’s important to find those...

Hiring in any business is a challenge, but the restaurant and hospitality industries are especially hard. There isn’t an entrepreneur who hasn’t been duped by a smooth-talking go-getter, a server who says they have experience, or that manager with chain experience who you think is...

I’m putting a flag in the ground: your restaurant is not a food business. It’s a hospitality business. If you tell people you are in the food business, then you’re telling them you provide the same thing as a gas station, which also sells food. Restaurants have the privilege to...

In the demanding restaurant industry, it's easy to find yourself consumed by the day-to-day operations of your restaurant. There is so much to do every day from the small tasks like opening the restaurant and pulling the cash drawers to big tasks like hiring employees and calculating dollars per...

If you’re ready to use systems to improve your restaurant’s operations, service and profits, there is one person you must identify now – your implementer. This is a restaurant manager or restaurant employee who can serve as your right-hand person when it comes to implementing...

Since the pandemic many restaurants are telling me tales of some of the most difficult customers I've ever heard. The frustration and impatience directed toward restaurant staff seems to be at a whole new level. But the truth is difficult customers have been around forever. The problem today is...

One of the goals I have for restaurant owners is to get them to a place in their business where they work on bigger strategic projects, such as restaurant marketing, and to do it in a strategic and thoughtful way. Since in my work with restaurant owners, I focus on systems for operations, I like...

The restaurant business is one that is full of daily distractions that make it easy to avoid working strategically. Sometimes it feels like it takes more work to be strategic than it does to just get the work done. And what does working strategically even mean? In this episode of my podcast, The...