Chris Schneider Of The Bar Business Coach: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Restaurateur

An Interview With Martita Mestey

You have to delegate — Bars and restaurants are complex businesses that require skill, time, and effort to be successful. The problem is that there is no way a single person can do it alone. Many owners are used to doing everything themselves, largely because in the start-up phase, while they are opening their establishment, they do have to be on hand every hour of every day to make sure that everything is set up and running properly. But as time goes on, it becomes important to realize what can be delegated to prevent burnout.

As a part of our series about “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Restaurateur”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Chris Schneider.

Chris Schneider is an industry veteran with over two decades of experience in the hospitality sector. Chris has owned, operated, and managed multiple businesses, with a primary focus on the neighborhood bar segment. As the founder of The Bar Business Coach, Chris is committed to modernizing the approach of bar owners towards their businesses.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know’ you a bit. Can you share with our readers a story about what inspired you to become a restaurateur?

I grew up in the hospitality industry. When I was about eight years old, my parents purchased their first bar and restaurant, and I quickly went from spending my time after school playing outside to spending my time folding napkins and polishing wine glasses. In many ways, their restaurant and bar became my third place. It was where I spent hours after school, on weekends, and during the summer hanging out and being convinced to do work for servers, who were just as persuasive as Tom Sawyer, while they got work done.

Once I was 14, and legally able to get paid, it became my first job. That restaurant closed while I was in high school, but its influence on me never disappeared. I continued working in the industry, and when it came time for college, I decided to study further the one thing I knew best, restaurants and bars. During college at Purdue University, I was able to round out my personal experience and the mental notes I had from watching my parents, with the theoretical and academic side of the business. As I was nearing graduation, I had one thing on my mind, owning my own establishment.

I took a management job for a large chain right out of college but found the right bar and purchased it nine months later. I didn’t have a specific moment that lead me to owning a bar, but everything I did up until that point made owning a bar the natural outcome of my life experience up to that point.

Do you have a specific type of food that you focus on? What was it that first drew you to cooking that type of food? Can you share a story about that with us?

I am far from a chef, while I had grown up in a fine dining restaurant and knew food well, I am not someone who even begins to understand the complexities of food chemistry and creating complex flavor profiles that stretch the pallet. What I did know is how to make great, honest, approachable food that appealed to a wide range of people.

My bars focused on traditional Midwest bar food. Think of fried cheese cubes, nachos, potato skins, burgers, and chicken sandwiches. While none of that was fancy we always tried to be a level above what someone would expect from a neighborhood bar. For example, we didn’t buy pre-breaded frozen food, we breaded everything in-house to order.

We were never about fancy food, but always about honest, simple food that connected to people and made them feel at home.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you became a restaurateur? What was the lesson or takeaway you took out of that story?

As a prior bar owner, I have to say that my funniest stories while hilarious, are not the most appropriate to share. Without getting into any details, let’s just say if you can think of a situation you have seen in a movie where something crazy happens in a bar, I have probably seen it in real life (except Roadhouse-style fights).

There is one more appropriate story that I will share. I got a call from the bar one morning that the urinal in the men’s restroom was backed up and not working. This wasn’t a huge surprise, because a few times year someone would get drunk and try to flush something that they shouldn’t. Lucky for us, we had a regular that came in every day who worked as a plumber for a hospital down the street. So, we decided when he came in, we would have him take a look.

I showed up a few hours later, to find him, a few of his friends, and my GM all huddled around this urinal trying to get something out of it. They had no clue what it was, but it was clear that it was something very hard. After an hour or so of trying to dislodge this object, they finally got it out. Turns out it was top dentures. Someone had probably vomited in the urinal, and accidentally puked out then flushed their teeth. Not something you run into every day.

The lesson I learned was that in any hospitality business, but especially a bar, anything can and will happen. There is no way that you can anticipate or prevent every issue. You have to be able to see the humor in situations and move on.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? How did you overcome this obstacle?

The biggest struggle for me, and for many people when they enter the business, was getting systems in place. When I bought my first bar, I worked 80+ hours per week for months, getting to know the team and guests, understanding and improving the business, generating systems to increase efficiency, etc.

Gradually, after a few years, I was able to put the proper management in place, have systems that ensured a great guest and team experience, and step back a bit myself. It’s not a singular sprint that causes issues for owners in the first few months or years, it is understanding that you have to run the marathon. Waking up every day with the goal of improving your business, and having the time and fortitude to get it done.

Restaurants and bars frequently require very active management at the start. A lot of people get into the industry with the idea that they can be a semi-absentee owner, without realizing that most of the semi-absentee owners spent years getting to that point.

In your experience, what is the key to creating a dish that customers are crazy about?

It is knowing your market. Whether you are talking about food at a burger joint or fine dining establishment, or cocktails at a dive bar or cocktail lounge, the key to creating a dish your customers are crazy about is knowing what you are and who your customers are.

Nothing is more jarring when you go out to eat than a restaurant or bar where the food is not what you expected from the concept or your guests. You will never impress people selling high-end small plates out of a dive bar or chicken fingers in a high-end restaurant. Your menu needs to match what you are.

The other key to creating a dish that customers rave about is going a half-step, but not more, past guest expectations. More than that will seem misaligned with their expectations, but a half step makes you stand out. Customers will go crazy about it.

Personally, what is the ‘perfect meal for you’?

As much as I love extravagant food, I think the perfect meal is a simple one shared with friends. Nothing makes food taste better than fellowship and good conversation. Usually in those situations, I prepare simple, shareable, snackable small plate-type items. Things that you can munch on for hours while discussing life.

A perfect meal is one with hospitality and friendship, not dependent on where you are or what you are eating.

Where does your inspiration for creating come from? Is there something that you turn to for a daily creativity boost?

You need time to think every day. In today’s world, we are all super busy. We run around from this activity to that activity. For owners of restaurants and bars, this is even more true. There is always some crisis that needs your attention right this second. In all that hustle and bustle, there isn’t time to be creative.

The most creative ideas come from periods of thought and reflection. I make it a goal every day to set aside 15–30 minutes to sit in quiet reflection: no music, no podcasts, no distractions, nothing except my thoughts. This is when I get my best ideas and inspiration. It gives my brain time to work through complex issues, draw connections between seemingly conflicting data points, and solidify actions I can take to improve my business or personal life.

Creativity is nothing more than unlocking the power of your imagination to come up with new ways of doing things. Unless you give your imagination time to work and process, you cannot get the most from your creativity.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? What impact do you think this will have?

I have been out of ownership for a few years. Now I focus on helping other bars and restaurants understand and analyze their financials to make strategic decisions, write books, and host a podcast.

Currently, I am wrapping up a book on menu planning, costing, and analysis, which will be an easy reference for restaurateurs to help guide them through creating a menu to wow guests while ensuring they have the margins they need to succeed.

What advice would you give to other restaurateurs to thrive and avoid burnout?

Learn how to delegate. There’s way too much going on in most bars and restaurants for one person to be able to do it on their own, without overworking themselves. The rule I try to follow, but am not always successful with, is that if someone else can do the work at 80% of the quality that I could, I delegate it.

The other way to avoid burnout is to disconnect. I never worked on Sundays. That was the day I set aside for myself, and to not focus on or even think about work. I also took one to two weeks a year where I would travel somewhere, usually somewhere remote, in nature, without the distractions of modern life, and disconnect. And I mean actually disconnect. The only person I would give a way to get ahold of me was my GM, and I wouldn’t check emails, social media, or anything over that week. That time to recharge, think, and center myself, didn’t just make my mental health much better, but it allowed me to come up with some of the best ideas I’ve had.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started as a Restaurateur” and why?

1. You have to delegate — Bars and restaurants are complex businesses that require skill, time, and effort to be successful. The problem is that there is no way a single person can do it alone. Many owners are used to doing everything themselves, largely because in the start-up phase, while they are opening their establishment, they do have to be on hand every hour of every day to make sure that everything is set up and running properly. But as time goes on, it becomes important to realize what can be delegated to prevent burnout.
2. Your best ideas will come from your team — Bar and restaurant owners don’t know everything, and in fact, most of us know less than we think about our own businesses. We may know the finances backward and forward, understand our training programs, and know what our guests like from our survey data, but we are not the ones directly interacting with the guests daily. It’s the servers and bartenders who know the guest experience best, and where it could be improved. It’s the line cooks in the kitchen who understand why order get backed up. Your team is the best source of information to improve your business.
3. Numbers matter — You can have the best food and service in the world, but none of that matters unless you make money. No business can survive forever at a deficit. Making money is how an owner makes their own life work, but it is also what allows you to take better care of your team. You need to understand your financial data, track KPIs, and work every day with your team to improve that data just a little bit.
4. Be active in your community — Hospitality at its root is about taking care of people. Welcoming them. Providing for them. It is almost impossible to be in the hospitality industry and not get joy from serving others and giving them experiences that they will remember for years to come. Part of that is building community, connecting people, and helping improve the area that you are in. You cannot separate the concept of hospitality from community, and the best way to get repeat guests is to build community and give back to those who support your business.
5. Do the weird thing — Too often people have ideas that they are afraid to execute. Whether it is posting videos and increasing your social media presence, trying new types of food or cocktails on your menu, or just putting in place new training systems. We all worry about what others will think of us, and how they will judge us. But unless you try, you will never know. If you have a crazy idea, try it. See what happens. Then collect data and evaluate how it worked. It may work great or not at all, but unless you try you can never learn and you can never achieve your greatest potential.

What’s the one dish people have to try if they visit your establishment?

Not being in the business anymore, I can’t say anything for my own establishment. However, I will say that if you are ever in a bar in Indiana, you have to try a fired pork tenderloin sandwich. It’s the one item that almost every bar in the state has, and that we Hoosiers love to argue over whose is better. My personal favorite, is actually not from a bar, but a gas station/restaurant, GnawMart in Gnaw Bone Indiana.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

If there was one movement that I could inspire it would be to have better sharing of knowledge in the hospitality industry. There is a lot of gatekeeping of the “industry secrets”. When we don’t take the time to help and educate others in our industry, we hold everyone back.

Hospitality is fundamentally about making our guests’ lives better, providing people with a third place for people to gather and communicate, and building stronger communities. If we share more information and help each other, we can change every community on the planet for the better. We can lift up those around us and make a genuine positive impact on the world.

Thank you so much for these insights. This was very inspirational!