Bar Rescue has become an integral part of my morning routine with the Quinoa in the past several weeks since he’s been born.
Bar Rescue. I kind of laugh right now realizing how much time I’ve spent half-watching/listening to this show. Maybe Quinoa has been absorbing some of the lessons.
At first, it started as this random, mindless thing that was (very un-seriously) randomly on one day when I was feeding our newborn — that I kept on watching day after day after day. I don’t watch it on weekends. Now having seen at least 20 episodes to date, there’s definitely a formula and pattern — and I’ve extracted the takeaways for you here. These takeaways are actually applicable to the world of entrepreneurship and startup, too.
8 Lessons I’ve Learned from Bar Rescue:
- Leadership is Key: There’s got to be a clear leader. A leader worthy of following. In the vice business of bars and alcohol, the leader cannot be drunk. The leader has to be an effective manager — or the leader has to give the proper authority to another manager to run the day to day operations of the business. This is probably the most important piece that Jon Taffer (the star of the show) will work on fixing in every episode — and everything else is details. No leadership, no business worth saving (or having).
- Consistency in Vision: Have a clear vision that is consistent throughout the business — from everything in the product served, the brand, and the service.
- Know and Serve the Market: Know your market — who is the ultimate customer you are serving and what do THEY like, want, and enjoy. Serve the market.
- Have Clear Processes and Clear Bottlenecks: Enable the business to thrive. Anywhere your employees are getting stuck, focus on creating or enabling a solution to remove that bottleneck. Investment in creating a great work environment that enables employees to thrive is important — skimp here, and the business suffers.
- Don’t Cut Corners: Literally, do NOT cut corners in the quality of the product and service or it will bite you in the ass. It’s the leader’s responsibility always — to ensure that the quality bar is known and met EVERY SINGLE DAY. Clean work areas. Proper procedures are known and followed. Safety of customers and employees is tablestakes.
- Team Over Me: If anyone on the team is not willing to be part of the team, cut them as soon as possible. One person can pull the effectiveness of an entire team down. Hell no. It’s the leader’s responsibility (or the manager’s) to ensure the team is made up of team players.
- Customer Service FTW: The leader is there to ensure the employees are happy, safe, and thriving. The employees (and leader) focus on happy customers and clients.
- Repeat, Consistency: Have a vision. Be consistent in all matters of execution from hiring, to the product and service.
And looking at it — yea, these are lessons that also are core to running any business well.
There you have it. Bar Rescue.
— Arry
