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DSP: Hey there, restaurant pros, it's David Scott Peters, and welcome to episode two of The Restaurant Prosperity Formula­. I've been coaching restaurant owners since 2003 and the Restaurant Prosperity Formula™ is based on what the most successful restaurant owners I've worked with do on a daily basis to achieve their success. The basic premise of the formula centers around achieving prosperity, freedom from your restaurant and the financial freedom you deserve. To achieve prosperity you have to follow a very specific formula made up of leadership systems, training, accountability and taking action. Today's topic centers around the principle of systems.

Now, I want to tell you about our guest today. He has over 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 a 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 team training services. We had a great conversation. Darren talked about how you get the most out of your restaurant with three key building blocks as your foundation: leadership, systems and staffing. Darren dives deep into how you can use checklists, action lists and responsibility lists to assure everyone is getting what you need done on a daily basis. And towards the end of our conversation, Darren explains how you should train great hospitality and more importantly, how you can easily measure if your restaurant is delivering on that training. 

I want to welcome Darren Dennington to the show today. But first, a word from our sponsor. 

This episode is being brought to you by Repeat Returns. If you're a restaurant owner of a medium to high volume independent restaurant, multiunit or franchise operator and you're looking for a proven and realistic solution to attract, grow and retain customers, then you need to visit Repeat Returns. Repeat Returns is a modern marketing platform created by a restaurant owner for restaurant owners. It studies each customer's habits and patterns, predicts the most profitable outcome for your restaurant every single day, and deploys the marketing to make that happen. You'll never lift a finger. To see if Repeat Returns is right for you. Visit repeatreturns.com/dsp. 

Hey Darren, I want to thank you so much for joining me on Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast. I'm excited to talk to you. You and I are close friends, full disclosure. Travel all over the country, speak together. But you're also a competitor of mine when it comes to restaurant coaching, even though your main bread and butter is Service With Style. 

So, number one, dude, it's great to see you. Great to have you on here, miss traveling with you. How are you, my friend? 

DARREN: Things are good. Thanks for having me, David. I'm excited to talk. You know, you and I talk systems all the time, right? It's so, so critical. So I'm glad to see you this morning and ready to go. Thanks for having me.

DSP: My pleasure. So, yep, you hit my favorite topic, systems. I'm the systems guy and I talk about a restaurant systems and lot of people search the Internet. They look for restaurant solutions, restaurant systems. And I think those are synonymous. I think they're the same thing. But people don't really understand. A lot of times when they do searches, they find POS systems. That's the number one most important piece of equipment you'll ever buy in a restaurant. That data is critical to your business. Oh, I think I need scheduling software. Yep, got to have that. We need those numbers to control labor. Oh, I need food and beverage software, recipe cards, ordering, inventory. Yep, got to have that. But there's this whole other slew of systems from counting out bar drawer, to three hundred dollars the same way every single time, to advance things like Dollars per Labor Hour worked. But that's only still a portion of it. There is a system, a process, a way to doing anything and everything. And before we kind of get started into what you do and what I want to talk with you about is, you know, systems for employees and for service levels. I want you to tell a story. It's one of my favorite stories you talk about when I see you speak all over. And that is about how you systemized everything in your restaurants. But you had one kid that was responsible for light bulbs. Talk about that system, dude, because it is awesome. I share it all the time.

DARREN: It was Cody. It was one of those moments, right? You look back on your career and there's certain things that stand out to you that you created a system, more a solution, based on a specific scenario.

And I remember five minutes before opening my restaurant here I am up on the ladder and I'm looking over our little service wall and I see five employees standing around. And it was one of those days that I was just completely overwhelmed. Right. You can't keep up. And there's so many things going on and you're just trying to chase your tail all day. And I said to myself, why am I the one up on the ladder when I've got so many things to do to change a light bulb? So, I finish the lightbulb and I got down and, Cody came here and I said, I need a favor. He says, sure, Mr. Darren, what would you need? I need you to manage my light bulbs. And he walked away, he says, OK. Oh man, get your butt back here. Here's what I need. I said, here's the seven different types of light bulbs that we have. Here's a Lowe's card, so that when you run out, can you go to Lowe's and refill? Here's where you get the cash. Here's where the change goes. Here's where the receipt goes. Here's where we store the ladder. And every single day that you come in can you do me a favor? Look your head up, check around and look at every single light bulb and change the ones that are needed. Would you mind doing that for me? Sure. Absolutely. I can do that. Next two and a half years he worked for me I never thought about a light bulb again. And I just find that managers and owners get caught up with so many small things that you've got to dump those things off and it's not just asking somebody to do it, but it's putting a small, simple little system in place so it gets done and it takes it off your plate.

DSP: Oh, I loved it because, you know, we talk about working on your business, not in it. And all too often is, as restaurateurs we're superheroes. Right. We open up our shirt and there's the Superman S or Super Woman S on there. And you're like, I can do it. If you want something done right, do it yourself. The truth of matter is, if you train them what their job is, how to do it, how well it should be done, more importantly by when, other people can do. And the truth is, man, if they do it eighty-five percent as good as you it's a home run. But something as simple as a task of light bulbs is often so simple nobody does it. Right. They think somebody else will get it and so you've got to assign everything. And that leads right into service and their employees. Man, there are systems for everything. Talk a little bit about when we talk about the employee side of things, when we say systems for employees. What does that really mean?

DARREN: Well, I can start where my mind was at the beginning of the year and how I always looked at it. As you said, you and I travel a lot together and give a lot of presentations. So, the beginning of the year, I always look at what's really needed in the industry and where the pain points are, and I try to put together some presentations for that. This year it was total team make over. It was the employee piece. And when I really started dissecting it and I kind of broke it down into building blocks, that there's twelve, fifteen, maybe seventeen blocks or categories in every restaurant that if you run all of them really good, now you're an excellent restaurant. And what I really found was that there was three building blocks at the bottom that if you didn't start with these three that you were never getting to anything good. It's leadership, systems and staff. When you've got the right people on the leadership team and they communicate together and they respect each other and they meet and they're on the same page, then that team starts to develop the operational systems to help take the knucklehead stuff off their plate. Right. Divide and conquer and get everybody involved. And then you work on the really good employees. And when the really good employees see that they've got a strong leadership team and the leadership team has these systems to ease their day and to divide and conquer and get all these things done, leadership, systems and employees, then I take a look at what are the priorities, right? Is it a menu? Is it costing cards? Is it a POS system, a financial program, a marketing program? And I look at those as individual projects so that the foundation has to be there. When I look at the foundation of employees, typically it starts with your hiring practices. And it sounds so easy that somebody walked in the door and they need a job and you need a server and they've got black shoes and they can start tomorrow. Well, that's where it begins on service, is the hiring practices. So, if you've got some interview score sheets and some questionnaires, you know what you're doing. You understand that two managers interview and we do interviews on two different days and it's gotta be two different times. And that's where the system starts to play in. I then carry that forward to orientation and training and onboarding and all the pieces. But I guess one of the biggest systems for me, and we'll probably dive into it a little bit deeper, is it's the checklist, the action list and the responsibilities. Those are three systems that I've kind of lived my life by of how to delegate and get other people involved.

DSP: Yeah. I mean, you sit there. How much different your philosophy and my philosophy are in running a restaurant? They're not. We use different language as far as I use Restaurant Prosperity Formula, leadership plus systems, training, accountability and take action. Well, how different is that from your three foundation, the building blocks, the foundation you put together? They're not, right? We're leading people. You gotta have good people on your team. Got to hold them accountable to those systems. But you take it to another level, like, you know, as far as, you and I've talked all the time, I say we start with Restaurant 101, hot food hot, cold food cold, clean, safe work environment guests and employees. Wow customer service, incredible product. We're going to end our discussion day really talking about that, really honing in on that, because if you don't run a great restaurant, you don't have an opportunity to create incredible hospitality and what that really means. From there, we go to checklists and cash controls and man, you and I know, like tell me every time we talk somebody, hey, you really need a checklist and they roll their eyes like, checklist don't work, like you're shitting me. It means your checklists suck and you're holding the wrong people accountable. But you take checklists to a whole new level when you talk about the tasks that need to be done, the projects, the really ticking down on what's important and making sure your management team, even your employees, focus on those things on a daily basis. Talk about that.

DARREN: Well, you're right there with me on checklists, right? You used to have one on how to clean your bathroom at your house for your kids. The tasks that come in, we get tied up in these all day long because as managers or you think you're the superhero and you get everything done. And it's also a fact of, well, that's easy I'll just knock that out. And if you're not delegating and passing it on to somebody else, you are the one doing it every single time. So, I like to take a lot of time upfront and set the expectations and put a little time into training Cody on the light bulbs. Right. So that he understands every single part of it. The amount of tasks that come into my personal life is a lot, right? Running Service With Style and restaurants and the way that I manage that is through delegation. And especially now, right? My whole team has been working from home and delegating's a lot tougher right now. So the checklist, action list and responsibilities inside a restaurant, I look at that as, every single task that needs to get done falls within one of those three areas. The checklist every day, every position signed off by a manager. Now, a lot of people say checklists are useless and well they just sit up on the wall and nobody follows them, if you focus on them, they work. And the checklist is designed to take the simple things off your plate. And the action list now becomes the middle ground. The action list is...

DSP: And this is a big one. I want to make sure everybody understands this is probably one of the most powerful things you teach people. It's not like rocket science, but, man, when you hone in on what you're about to share, you change your world. I mean, I've seen you coach restaurants and they've changed their world just with this. So sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but I want people to pay attention to this action list.

DARREN: Action list is every step that, every task that needs to get done that doesn't fall within a daily procedure. Right. When your sink is dripping, it's not a regular task to call on a plumber. So, the action list is the catch all. But what I do is I use it number one, for my leadership team. And I also use it for key employees to get them more involved and learn a little bit more and put a little more onus on what they're doing. The action list is every single week, right? Every Monday I sit down and do my action list and my wife calls me crazy. She says, Can't you hand that off to somebody else? You spend a couple hours every single week doing it. I said, if I don't do this action list, it'll probably cost me 12 to 20 hours of additional work. So, it's assigning the task. It's a one piece of paper and it's what's the task, a little description. I put a priority on it so that the employees know which ones to work on first. But the best thing that it does is it stops anybody from ever saying there's nothing to do. Go to your action list. Right. If you take a server that's there for 40 hours or 35 hours a week, you can't tell me that they can't find 12 minutes to clean the soda machine station. Well, they don't do that, or they don't organize the cabinet because they haven't been asked to and they don't know to do it. So, Monday morning I walk around the restaurant and I write down all these tasks of things that need to get done. I put them on a piece of paper, I hang them up, and then the team goes back in and starts checking it off as they get it done. So, they always have something extra to do. It's not foolproof, but if you work it and one person is responsible for completing the list, it's just a delegation system.

DSP: But you use that even with your management team on if you know, because I know for a fact that you plan out your marketing calendar for a year like you and you preached that to restaurant owners like you shouldn't be doing Valentine's Day promotion three days before Valentine's Day. Holy crap. What do I need to do? So, you literally whether you have the pieces all together, you have steps of things that have to happen to get that Valentine's Day promotion out to keep riding that example all the way through. Do you find that it makes it easier for you to delegate to your management team and to hold them accountable to those tasks? Like, is it that crystal clear on what they need to do that you find that most of the time it gets done? Or how much follow up do you really have to have with that?

DARREN: So, that's the thing. That's where it started, was that I got so fed up with oh, I didn't realize you wanted me to do that. And assigning the task is the first step, right? And any good manager, you have to follow up. You've got to be going back and working with them and talking. What I do currently is, I use Smartsheet. Right. You can use paper checklists. There's a lot of great apps out there, but I assign all my tasks on Smartsheet. So, I have my daily tasks, my weekly tasks and my one-time tasks. And it's just a simple way for them to go in and how we work it is every Monday I post the new one and then the last day of their week, I want to make sure that they go in and they've updated it. Not every single thing gets done all the time, I get it. But it's just they know what we're working on. And one of the biggest keys for me is I find everybody has different priorities, right? You think the menu needs to be worked on and I want to work on the marketing plan and no, we got to redo our dining room and everybody's priorities can be distracting. When you come together as a management team and you say, what are our priorities? And you get five people now working on a training system, five people can knock out a dynamite new program for training. But if you're working on menus and I'm working on marketing, then we never really get it done. So, you come together as a team, identify the tasks, and then you just assign and follow up and hold them accountable.

DSP: Yeah, the key is accountability, that follow up. Often, you know, I talk about how delegation's so important, but people feel like they advocate. Right. Michael Gerber, Emyth Revisited, says give it away and pray that it gets done basically and it doesn't get done. And then managers think, man, if you're checking up on me, you're micromanaging me. No, I say micromanaging you is give it to me, you idiot. I've got it. There is follow up. There is feedback. There is, we as owners, as GMs, have to ensure the process is working. In fact, I always say it's our job to never let our managers fail at the tasks that are in front of them. You can't just let it go. You've got to follow up and say, hey, hey, we're from the state of Missouri. Why? Because what's on the license plate it's the Show Me state how you coming on recipe cards. Great, great. Show me. Like there's no conflict in that. There's no I don't believe you. There's no nothing.

Now, out of curiosity, some of things like cleaning soda station, you know, I always preached the checklists of here's your daily opening, closing, side work checklists. Here's your weekly checklists. Every Thursday, this station, you know, if you're assigned to the station, you got sugar caddies and so on. And a monthly checklist, here this piece of equipment gets looked at and so and so forth. Do you ever find that that action list some of those things fall, like if they keep getting repeated, they fall in on those checklists? Is there a lot of flexibility in that?

DARREN: Well, there is, and that's where I tie in the three systems, right? The checklist, action list and then the last one is the responsibilities list. So that's where you kind of divide and conquer and put somebody in responsible for areas. So, if you look at every area inside the restaurant, maybe there's 35 or 40 different categories that you divide. So, of course, your chef should be over the inventory, but maybe now we're going to put the assistant kitchen manager over the inventory. And all it means is that that particular person is managing it. The responsibilities list falls into who orders our uniforms and who does our inventory and who redesigns our menu, who programs our POS. And what I find is that when you sit around a manager meeting, something comes up about the POS, well, we all know that Jennifer takes care of that, so perfect. And hey, we need new uniforms, Ron, you got those, right? Absolutely. And it just, it helps with the communication. It helps with the clarity. So if you have a responsibilities list, you go right down it. Who takes care of your maintenance and who calls the plumber? So, it's systems.

DSP: I think it's awesome because, you know, I always preach, I'm going to bring up Michael Gerber's book again, The Emyth Revisted. I love it because if you buy it, it leads you towards me because, hey, you need systems for your restaurant. And it's really, it's a fantastic book following this woman and a pie shop and her struggles and how systems help change your world. Well, one of the things that he talks about is creating that org chart for the company you hope to have in the future and creating the job descriptions. And the truth of matter is, when you create a job description to the level that you and I have been trained to do so, we're talking about what the job is, how to do it, how well it should be done, more importantly, by when. And that means it gets pretty detailed. It's not just a list of all the tasks that need to be done. And then you go one step further and you say, OK, I want to get it done this way, here's what the job is, how to do it, how well it should be done, by when. That's great. Oh, my gosh, it's over and over now. But wait a second. Somebody does the job. Somebody oversees the job. Somebody approves the job. And all of sudden it gets, it gets mangled and mired and it takes I tell people that org chart can take six months to really do. And what's fantastic about when you talk about these responsibilities is you can circumvent that difficult process and start getting results right now because what you're doing and I'm doing, by when I follow Michael Gerber's process and what you're doing, is just a bright line on who the hell supposed to do what. Who's in charge of that, right? And that makes things so much easier for your employees and management team to know exactly what they're supposed do or who to go to, right?

DARREN: Well and think about just sitting in a weekly manager meeting. Now you have to have a weekly manager meeting to start. But we, as any manager in restaurants and I find that every single person listening can easily do this. We identify problems. It's very easy to say, oh, that's wrong and you should be doing that. So, if you're sitting in a manager meeting and you're identifying problems, OK, great, that was helpful. Then I find that the good managers start to offer solutions. Right. Here's how to fix it. Well, I want the great managers that say I got that and I'm going to come back next Monday with the system for our new bar drawer counts. Right. We've got to start pulling it. Here's the checklist. Because what I always found was, we come back to the next meeting and I would turn to somebody and say, so how's the new system going on the bar counts? Oh, I thought you were gonna do that. And weren't you going to? And it's pointing fingers and it's nobody taking responsibility. So, the first step is identify the problem, offer the solution and then it's, and I'm preaching to the choir here, it's the actionable step, right? It's the people that take action that are priceless. And at the end of every single meeting that I have, we pause and say round about what are your takeaways? And whoever manages that action list, right? That one person that types up the one piece of paper and hangs it on the wall and in the manager office every week, starts making notes. OK, Cindy’s going to order the uniforms and Ron's going to call the plumber. And it goes on a list because you come back to the next meeting, oh, that's right, I was going to call the plumber. I'll do that today. Well, we've got other things to do because this is a business of getting it done. It's things, it's you've got to be check, check, check all day long. There's so many things to do in restaurants. And that's what ties up our managers.

DSP: Absolutely. Again, preaching to the choir, but it's kind of funny. We've known each other now. 18 years, 17 years. Literally, until COVID-19 hit, we probably see each other damn near on a monthly basis at some food shows, some restaurant show, speaking together or things, events that we do together. And we've seen each other speak so many times we could give each other's speeches. I mean, it's kind of there. And what's funny is why we have the same message, what's awesome is some people learn differently, how they hear, how you present it from the three building blocks, how I present it through the other. Doesn't matter how you get there, it's the same frickin principles. There's nothing new in this business. To be a great leader, to be a great manager in your business. It's the same stuff. But what I love is you break things down into a very easy-to-follow system. And that's what it's all about. Now, is there anything else about employee systems, or anything like you want to talk about, because I really want to get into service.

DARREN: Well, there's a few that you have to set up, right? You have to have a good manual. If they don't understand what your policies and procedures are, then they're never going to follow. You need a good training manual. And I know you've got one of the best ones out there. You have to have a training program in place, and you need some communication. Communication doesn't just happen. And systems for communications are, we talk about this stuff during a weekly manager meeting. We hold regular shift meetings to pass on. We have shift meeting cards, so we understand what message we want to pass out to them. But it's also on the discipline side, before we get into service, you have to manage the employees. And I find that there's a big difference in how you would manage a person compared to me. So, when we come together as a management team, we have to be talking about our employees inside our manager meetings. Typically, what I find, one of my favorite exercises is, OK, let's talk about the staff. Everybody identify one or two superstars, right? Who's really doing it right? And then we identify three, four or five that aren't, they need a little bit of work. So, the couple superstars, hey, who's gonna go back to them and thank them? And then maybe we start to train them for a key employee or how do we elevate them? When you come to the employees that need some work. I go through five steps and the first thing we do is identify the names. So, we've got John, we've got Mike and we've got Cindy and, OK, everybody, let's talk about John. And for one minute, everybody throws, well he was late last week and he's just not doing his side work at the end of the day. But he's super wonderful with me. So, we talk about it as a team. And then what you're trying to do is assign a number one through five. So, one means let it go. Everybody on the management team now knows we've got to keep an eye on John. Two is a verbal conversation. So, somebody is going to go back and talk to him. Three's a written warning. Four's a suspension. Five is a termination. And if you write down John four, then you're going to assign a manager name to it. So, who is going to go back and suspend John or verbally talk to him? And if you do that every single week in a manager meeting, the way you discipline your staff starts to become a lot more consistent and a lot easier. Now your staff starts to understand that they talk about us during the meeting. We should be on our toes. So, the discipline system is a big key to setting up where you go for service.

DSP: I think it's phenomenal and I always get frustrated. I just had a coaching call, just the other day and said, you know, saw a server did a certain thing, was about personality and they were biting off, a server bit off a dishwasher's head, didn't treat them with respect. And the owner went to the dishwasher, hey, I'm sorry dah dah dah dah dah, but never went to the employee to say that's wrong. Like, we cannot see something go wrong, bury your head in the said and go, ah, I can't believe it. We owe it to our employees to make sure we tell them exactly what we want done. The moment we see something that is against what we want done, you've got to take care of it right down there. With the exception of maybe you're in the middle of a lunch rush or a dinner rush and you're slammed three tickets deep and you've got to go, let's do it at the end of the shift. As long as it's not going to damage the guest, the employee, or the company.

But the fact the matter is, you can't let it go. We have a responsibility to say, hey, you're doing something well and reinforce it. You're doing something bad and change it. And so, we can't go around and stick our head in, you know, like an ostrich into the ground and ignore everything that was going wrong around us. You got to be a leader in your business. And I know you focus on leadership in a big way. And what I also want people know is over the years, you have owned multiple restaurants. And I always think you're crazy, because, you know, you just have this passion for hospitality you cannot get out of your system. But these things that you're talking about, you live and breathe every time you've owned a restaurant, every time you've managed a restaurant from being, you know, no matter what it is, these are real world things. And I want everybody know that Darren is truly a leadership rockstar in my world because I'm not as good as him when I was an operator. Like, I'm great with checklists and the numbers and so on, but to truly walk the walk when it comes to your employees and team making sure they're on the same page and moving forward. You know, my hat is off to you, man, I've always had utmost respect, but I really love what you bring to the table.

DARREN: Well, I appreciate that. And if you look over my shoulder, you see the bucket of stress balls, which, you know, I've been handing these things out for 15, 20 years...

DSP: Pelting me from 50 yards away.

DARREN: I love throwing them!

But it represents to me 85 percent of the stress that comes into hospitality. And it represents your staff. And if we can't get your staff in a good place, then you're never going to get to anything good. Right. If you don't have the leadership, the systems, and the staff, then you don't get to the really good stuff like the financials and the costing cards and the budgets. So, we have to understand that that's where it starts. And when you can get your staff in a really good place through strong leadership, that's where you start to get good. Think about how many restaurants that we go into, and everybody listening certainly understands this, that you go in and a phone call or an email or a text or something happens that it just drastically changes your day. And you walked in with fantastic intentions to get the new menu done or to work on the Valentine's Day promotion. And at the end of the day, you ran your butt off because you were short staffed, and you weren't set up. So, it has to start with the employees. When you have the right systems, the employee manual, the training, the discipline, the communication, the checklist, the action list all in place. That's just helping you manage your staff. Then you take that good foundation and you turn it over and you focus on your employee morale and not employee morale, says, hey, I kind of like it here and this is working for me and they respect me. I'll do some extra things. And when the employees are in a good place, they're going to go above and beyond. And that above and beyond is what leads you to drive in your sales through connecting with your guests right? If I'm ticked off at my manager or my two other servers called in sick and I know I just got to run my butt off all day, I'm in a crappy mood and that obviously affects every part of what we do. So, the system set you up to have a great staff, to have a great morale, to provide great service.

DSP: Which all drills down to culture, culture, culture, right? You're creating that positive culture.

Now, that culture bleeds into service. In today's day and age, you know, we're living through COVID and there's no, there's no hiding from it, there's no, you know, we've gone through the craziness of the first shutdown and now we're in this second kind of blip of what is going to happen. And, you know, quite honestly, this could be our new reality till next summer. Who the hell knows? And, you know, there are two things that are so important. It's making sure that our guests get exactly what they want and have an incredible experience that they come back every single time. And that's where culture bleeds into service.

Now, talk a little bit about service because your company is Service With Style. You have been mystery shopping, secret shopping, I don't care what you want to call it, restaurants for, gosh, almost 20 years? 20 plus years?

DARREN: Almost 23 years, yeah.

DSP: 23 years. And you started as the guy doing it yourself. And now you have thousands of shoppers all over the world shopping and making sure people are doing what they're supposed to, and I'll give you a chance to talk about what your service is towards the end here, but what does it mean to have systems for service and understanding that you're giving the best service possible? A great guest experience.

DARREN: So, to me, that's one of those extra building blocks, right? When you got the foundation now, you say, what's our marketing plan? What's our financials? And you look at all these categories as projects, well, service has to be one of those. And I find that service, most places feel like it's a given. Well, I've got good people, they must be providing good service. So, it's assumed that they're doing a wonderful job. But the managers are not in front of the conversation, right? Between the server and the guests. They're not listening into all those. They get little tidbits. And when the server comes into the kitchen and they're smiling and laugh, and you assume that they're out doing the same for their guests.

DSP: Right.

DARREN: So, there's a lot of things that we just assume and that's not what I like to do. I like to talk about it. The first thing that we do is every single week during our manager meeting it's on the agenda. Let's talk about service and whether it's two minutes or 20 minutes that we talk about a service plan because it's just not being focused on enough and telling our staff to smile or making sure that we greet the guests right away, of course, very important, but it's not everything. So, our secret shopping service, I find, is the kick starter for that manager meeting. And when I walk in, say, once a month with a secret shopping report and I plop it down in the middle of a manager meeting, we're now forced to talk about service. And we go through and we highlight the great points. And we highlight some opportunities and we maybe highlight some policies that we need to look at. So, it forces us to talk about the service. Then we start to implement it into our daily routines, every single shift meeting we're going to talk about a key point of service. Then we're gonna get down to following our staff and watching them and talking to them. But then there's also specific things that you have to set up that you know what type of service you want to give, right? Is it casual? Is it professional? Is it friendly? Is it cozy? You've got to define that, so your staff understands what they're trying to do. And there's a few extra things you have to set up as policies or one time, right? How fast you want the guests greeted. What are your ticket times? So, there's a few things that you set up as policies. There's conversations regularly and there's leadership follow up.

DSP: So, it really starts with not only training, like you and I talk about this all the time because we travel go to go to restaurants together, bars together all the time and quite honestly, if there's going to be a shitty experience, it's probably involving me at some point in time. Meaning, we just get some of the worst luck there is. But sometimes we also, you know, pull great service out of people and we shouldn't have to do so. And there's little mistakes out there that truly you've gone, and I've seen you do full trainings for restaurants on service, and it's not the hi, my name is David, that corporate bullshit. It's the, it's you really preach creating a relationship. Hey, where did you get that hat? Oh, that's my favorite team too. Hey, is it hot out there today? Where you guys coming from? And creating a bond and before you leave the table, oh, by the way, my name's David, I'll be your server. I'm here to help get anything you need. And you are a rockstar server at one point in time with sales that were all over, you know, through the roof. And I remember you talk about a story where your manager said, well, Darren, teach people how you sell more specials and you go through step-by-step, and she's like, no! Right? And so, service is natural to you and not too many people hospitality is natural. We can train steps of service, yes? Our certain way we want to table greeted and what to do, yes?

DARREN: Mmhmm. Absolutely.

DSP: We can train people cleanliness and the way to set up a table to make sure it's the same every single time, right?

DARREN: Absolutely.

DSP: We can train how we want to manage to check and what food should look and how quickly should get there, when the check back is, yes? We can do all those things, yes?

DARREN: Yes.

DSP: But if I don't pay attention to it what happens?

DARREN: They just fade away and they're never focused on and they just never occur. So, they may be important to a couple of people, but the other percentage just never was made aware of it. So, it's not a focus.

DSP: So, the phrase, that which we measure improves, that I use for financials, for getting financial results. It's no different for service, is it?

DARREN: No, not at all.

DSP: So, you need, go ahead, please.

DARREN: That service is, it's all about the connection, right? We're trying to make memorable experiences and the connection to the guest, depending on what type of service you're providing, is a little bit different. So, we have to adjust to different styles. But when you go to a table, there's a purpose. You're not just walking by to interrupt their dinner. There's a purpose to it. And early on, you set up that dining experience to run smoothly later. Early on it's your goal to pass on information, to welcome them, to make them feel comfortable. And then you become the middleman between you and between the guests and the kitchen. Now you're collecting information. And typically, if you think about it after the entrees come down, now what's your role, right? There eating, usually they're quiet. That you step back, and you get into silent service where you're just being attentive and you're refilling. You're not interrupting.

So, you have to be able to read your guest and I find that it's through observations and questions. If you observe the table for five or 10 seconds before you approach the table, usually you can put them into probably one of four or five categories, right? Are they a business meeting or are they some ladies going out for a drink and want to just goof around and have some fun? Are they a couple that's quiet, maybe on their first date? And if you understand why they're there, then you can adapt your service. And if you start off with a couple simple questions, what brings you in tonight? How is your day? And then you're collecting information, so you customize. Now, my absolute favorite thing is 15 seconds goes a long way. And what I try to teach is the first 15 seconds that you're at the table. Now, this isn't appropriate when you just got quadruple sat or you're five deep at the bar, but it is appropriate most of the time. And when you get up there, it's nothing to do about the restaurant. It's not the specials. It's not the menu. It's personal questions. And if I ask you about your logo or that's a wonderful purse or what you did today, with one simple goal, the only thing I'm trying to do is to get you to smile. OK. Simple interaction. As soon as I break that smile, now I shattered this brick wall between the server and the guest and now you trust me. As far as the server guest relationship is going, you now trust that I'm going to execute a really good meal. And it's so critical for how they purchase from you on your suggestive selling or how they look at you and the 15 seconds it really does go a long way.

DSP: I love it. I've seen you talk about it forever. I've seen you train it. I've seen it in action. What I love is the simplicity of understanding you've got to put these things in place. But here's the deal, Darren, when I'm in, I used to hear this all time, when I'm in the restaurant as an owner, as a general manager, I don't see any of these problems. We see these Yelp reviews. These are bullshit. These people aren't our customers. There's no way that's what's going on. Now, I always talk about where there's smoke, there's fire. And odds are it's the one employee that they didn't decide to get rid of that is destroying their business, one guest at a time. But putting that aside, sometimes employees act differently when I'm not there. And this is why it's important to have somebody like you in a secret shopping service. So, do me a favor. Tell people about what you do, because it's really, I always put my name on you. Whenever anybody joins my membership, my Restaurant, Prosperity Coaching, we have a relationship where we give my members a bonus and it's powerful because I think everybody should have a secret shopping service, but they're not all created equal. You've put things together that ensure that not only when I have a pre-shift, we've got a great training tool, we've got the ability to cut off the fact that bad Yelp reviews are going to happen all the time, because when we see the problem, we can fix it. But you also put it in a way that helps them understand their steps to service. What they need to work on to be to create a great hospitality experience. Talk a little bit about how a manager would use your report, but how it's put together and what your company does, please.

DARREN: Back, way, way, way back where I started it was I was going on a couple night vacation with my wife and running a hotel, food and beverage department and turned to one of my friends and said, would you mind going in and sitting at the bar just to let me know how she was doing? I had an employee that I wasn't comfortable with and wanted to get a little bit more information. And I remember getting back and he called me on the phone and told me all about it. I said, any chance you can just type that in a paragraph? That would be really powerful information. Couple of weeks later, I asked him to go in and have breakfast and I thought, well, let's create a real detailed report. So, it came from the operator's eyes, right? It came from information that I can't get myself and I needed an outside source to provide that.

So, we created Service With Style and our philosophy has always been detailed reports by quality shoppers. That the details in the reports are what allow you to zero down to that exact problem, right? And the quality shoppers was the only way that we were going to get really good information. We've got 33,000 shoppers across the country. And just like you have dynamite training systems and what we're talking about, that's what we've put into secret shopping so that the person going in is well-trained and they understand what to look for. But they are going in with the perspective of the guest to collect information that owners and managers assume that they know, but genuinely, it really does open their eyes to a lot of things that are going on.

And what we found is that when they sit in a manager meeting and review the reports, that the steps that come out of it are fantastic. One of my favorite steps is, OK, yeah, John's been fantastic, but maybe we should sit down with him and review this. And we tell John the three things that he did that are just fantastic and we love it. And then maybe you weren't aware of these policies and here's a few things we never want to see again. And it becomes a follow-up training. So, training programs, a lot of time, ends after seven days or maybe two months, depending on what type of system you have. But this is your follow up, your accountability. And what I love about it is we don't come in every day, right? I love the once-a-month program. That's what I shop my restaurants and I find that the staff has a heightened sense of awareness of somebody's checking on me. I better keep doing it. And it just brings back so many things that they weren't aware of. So, it becomes a great training tool and I'd love to get that information and solve those problems before the Yelp reviews come out.

DSP: Without going too deep give us two, three key indicators that when you send a shopper in that are important to a restaurant operator, because remember, I want everybody to understand, you're looking at, Darren is a true restaurant pro. When I talk about, hey, restaurant pros, this guy is a pro. Worked his way up from, like me, dishwasher all the way through, and probably has worked more positions than me because he's actually a frickin chef, oh, God bless. Anyway, with that said, what does that mean? What are some of those key indicators as an operator that you put into these reports, that you know that are important and honed in over 23 years of shopping thousands upon thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of shops at this point in time? What are some of those key indicators without going to deep, but not every single section, but maybe a few.

DARREN: Well, and that's what it's built on is sections and questions, right? So, well, we're going have a service section and we want to know exactly what was said and how friendly they were and how quick they were. And then we get into the food quality of how quick it came and the temperature and the presentation. And we're gonna look at the cleanliness, we're going to check the bathrooms and the floors and the window ledges and the hostess to see if we were greeted right away. We're gonna look at the managers to see how many table visits they did and were they interacting with the staff. We can sit at the bar and see if all the drinks are being properly accounted for. Now, we do customize every single report so that they're completely pertinent to the operation that we're going in. But now what we also have is a current climate section for, are they properly wearing their masks? Are they sanitizing? Are they properly cleaning? So, we've got about 15 or 20 questions based on COVID-19 to follow up, right? Every restaurant in America, and in the country, is putting in new practices. And it's great to say you got to wear your mask or no handshakes or hugs between our staff. But are they really doing it? So that's incredibly important information right now that we're providing.

DSP: There's the new thing for us. Things that I fought as an operator and told people like, hey, we don't need these third-party apps they're too expensive and then COVID hit and you've got to have third-party apps and we got to figure out how to make it work. That matters. I mean, you cover that, too, because I give you an experience just literally this last week and my son is a Marine, came home for the weekend. We you know, we said we're gonna order out and I try and support local restaurants. I'm a high-risk person, had a heart attack years ago, so I'm not going into restaurants, but I'm still supporting my independents. And we got a DoorDasher to come and one of the major pieces of the meal was missing. Called the DoorDasher, hey, they didn't have it, right? They checked it off and I came, wasn't my fault. Call the restaurant, restaurant is like, ah, is that what the Dasher said, it's sitting right here. Well, is there any way I can get it? Well, she did a wonderful job. Manager gave me a gift, got my address and name, and gave me a gift card on the way. Said, make sure I go to DoorDash and got that taken off my bill and got the credit. But can I get the frickin pizza that I wanted? That was a part of this. Sure, we'll have it out there. Got a new Dasher, came up, it was meatballs. It was another something that was on the frickin order and I'm sitting there going, well is that DoorDash or is that the restaurant. Well it still reflects the restaurant. And so that guest experience, that's going to sit with me. Am I going to go to that restaurant with a DoorDash again? You're shopping those things, too, right? Isn't that important? Whether my restaurant is open and, oh, well, I'm not open, my dining room's not open, I don't need a Darren service right now. Bullshit. Right? I mean, you're still selling things and there's a guest experience every time they pick up the phone, whether it's a third-party app yourself, right? You're doing that too, right?

DARREN: Yeah, takeout, curbside, delivery. We've all pivoted and tried to figure out new models. And I was working, just yesterday, talked with a restaurant that we shop and do some coaching and training with. He has 13 locations and now I believe it was 56 percent of his business is takeout and curbside.

DSP: Yeah.

DARREN: To where they never did that before. So, we've started shopping and what he told me is that somehow we're 56 percent, but we have not figured out this business model yet. And that's where the information is coming because they're just putting it up in a takeout bag and assuming that everything's perfect from there. But now you get home and you get that appetizer that you're looking for and you ask for extra sauce and you're like, ah, are you kidding me? It's not here. And that can completely ruin the experience and you have absolutely no idea about it.

So, when you're pivoting and opening up these new revenue centers and trying to keep your business alive, the guest experience is still critical. And I guess everything that I go to is the customer has to trust you. And how you earn that trust right now is much different than how it was previous. Obviously, the most important things that we're seeing, and feeling are it's the cleanliness, safety and sanitation right now, right? When we walk into a restaurant, that's what we're looking for. But a lot of us are not walking into restaurants, but we're still ordering out. So, our experience has completely changed. So, don't just take it that we assume everything's fine because you have no way to capture my feedback after you dropped off the food at the door. If I'm still sitting in your table, I can ask for that extra sauce. And a lot of people just say, oh, it's not worth it. It's going to be another 40 minutes before I get the extra sauce. So, they write it off but when they go to order in three or four days that's on their mind.

DSP: And worst case, they're also hitting Yelp. They're hitting TripAdvisor. They're hitting Twitter and Facebook. I mean, they're sharing. And so, it's really important, that what you measure improves. It's an incredible system to put in place. How often should I get shopped? I know you've got people do weekly, twice a month, once a month. Where do I start? Like, and is this expensive?

DARREN: Typically, I say start with a couple extras, right? You want to find exactly what's going on early on and trying to make the corrections and then it becomes a monitoring program. So, let's say a regular restaurant, maybe doing a couple of million dollars in sales and you're open for lunch and dinner and you've got a bar. I'd say two or three shops up front to get it going and then you go to a once a month and you rotate your areas. So, we do a lunch in March and then we do a dinner in April and then we visit the bar in May and rotate around that. And we can do specific ones, if you want Cindy observed who's bartending on Wednesday night, of course, we can come in and take care of those things. But for the cost, it's fairly reasonable, at least, I think. You're looking around a 75-dollar type of for a full service restaurant, all our pricings online, but it's fairly reasonable and very powerful.

DSP: Well, I think it's cheap, to be honest with you. To get that feedback, because it can cost you thousands upon thousands of dollars of people not coming in because you put out a shitty experience. I mean, it's just that's the reality of it. And there's nothing better than sitting in a server meeting, a pre-shift, and going, hey, here's what we're doing right, here's what we're doing wrong and having our managers know. There's nothing better than your employees and your managers never knowing that day. Today could be the day that a secret shopper or a mystery shopper walks in my door, but I'll never know, so we better stay at or top of our game and creating that culture that's stay on your toes. You never know. It's kind of like the old days when we worried about, you know, reviewers coming from a newspaper. Now we don't worry about it, everybody's a reviewer and you've got to be on your toes.

Hey, man, how would they, how would they learn more about your service? How would they contact you if they said, hey, man, I need Darren? I need Service With Style to start shopping our restaurants. How would they do that?

DARREN: Well, we made it very easy on our website, servicewithstyle.com. And if you go servicewithstyle.com/dsp, there's a nice little discount in there for David Scott Peters' friends. And it's fairly simple and it takes you literally five minutes online to start the program. Once you sign up then we give you a call and go through the customizing, right? Who do you want to see the reports? What kind of questions? What rotation? So you go online, you sign up and servicewithstyle.com/dsp, and if you want to schedule a demo through our website, we have a new 10 Steps to Great Service manual that you get once you sign up for a demo.

DSP: That's fantastic! Man, that's an awesome offer. So, servicewithstyle.com/dsp for David Scott Peters. Go out there. He's put a generous offer out there. I'm not going to share it with you because maybe it'll change. Maybe it'll get better. Maybe it'll get worse. Who knows? No, it's really pretty generous if you get on a routine, a routine basis on a monthly basis, how it can help curb the pain if you think financially, oh, my gosh 75 dollars. But I'll tell you right now, I think it's cheap. You and I have talked for years I think you should up it. Because the quality of your reports are better than anybody else. The training of your shoppers is better than anybody else. And I can tell you why. Because I've gone through the training, because I've done, my wife and I have been shoppers for you for a couple times for resorts and things like that. And I can tell you that, that it's thorough. It's awesome.

Darren, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I hope we're going to do it again. I'm sure we are. We've kind of, we've kind of danced this dance over the years. Is there anything else you want to share with people before we go?

DARREN: I just want to say thank you to you. It's a pleasure talking with you and obviously it's, we speak the same language back and forth. And what you've been doing to help restaurants is fantastic. You've got the new book out there, you got new video programs out there, and you're making a major impact in restaurants. And I would just say that if there's any one piece to leave everybody with today is set up a manager meeting. I just find that everything flows through that, that you have one person who leads the meeting with an agenda the same time every single week. You finish that meeting with an action list. I break every single meeting into four categories, its operations, financial, marketing and staff. And as long as you're talking about those four, that's the foundation of a great restaurant.

DSP: Awesome stuff, brother! Thanks so much for being on the podcast. I look forward to talking again real soon.

DARREN: Thanks for having me and congratulations to your son on getting engaged.

DSP: Thanks, man!

Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant. Before you go, I want to give you these three thoughts. One, by combining leadership and taking action with systems and training being checked by accountability, you are on your way to creating prosperity for you and your restaurant. Two, I have something I need from you. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you happen to listen to podcasts. By leaving us a review other restaurant pros seeking out this information are able to find it. I read the reviews and hearing how this information has benefited you does wonders for me. And three, if you find any of the discussions helpful, share them! The more restaurant pros who have access to them, the better we become as an industry. For more restaurant resources or to get in contact with me, connect with me at DavidScottPeters.com. Be passionate about what you're doing. Be persistent. But more importantly, become better and help everyone around you become better. And your restaurant is going to kick some ass.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Restaurant Prosperity Formula. If you want to learn more restaurant solutions like these and how to get your managers to do the work, sign up for my free four-part video learning series where I go into all this and more depth. The link is in the description below. Also, be sure to subscribe to this channel to get my weekly tips and check out these two videos to learn more restaurant solutions.