Three Reasons Restaurants Fail- You might be making these mistakes
Understanding common industry mistakes
Enormous pressure is on local eateries. The pressure and stress are completely foreign to many with no prior experience, and to those with experience, the battle is still uphill. We expect to run an ethical business, that consistently turns a profit.
Although, when changes happen, and revenue suffers, many don’t understand where to turn.
Running a profitable business is only half of the equation. The other half is innovation and expansion. Hiring a team with half or none of your restaurant’s goals in mind will set you up to fail.
We can break it down into 3 categories of common mistakes.
1. You have a rogue chef
Any chef worth his salt will tell you “A good dishwasher is the backbone of the restaurant.” The chef would be the brain.
He should be in control of the back of house, from cleaning to cooking,.
You want your chef to have full creative control, the ability to hire, fire, defend, and promote. That doesn’t give them an excuse to be lazy, unclean, uneducated, intoxicated, or taking the kitchen away from the restaurant.
The first few on that list are obvious. The last three take the nuance of a seasoned restauranteur to understand.
Intoxicated chefs
The restaurant industry has a high rate of drug and alcohol abuse. While many “soft” drugs like alcohol, nicotine, and marijuana are treated as the norm, your management should never be messed-up on the job.
Running a kitchen, directing a service, and balancing the budget all take clear-headed effort. Creativity does not go hand in hand with drug use.
Willful Ignorance
By the time someone becomes a sous chef, it’s expected they understand food science, flavor pairing, nomenclature, and how to build a recipe.
Many have never heard, or don’t understand, what this means.
- Food science is the technique of cooking that produces a certain finished product. The temperature, time cooking, method of cooking, chemical reactions of ingredients, all fall under the sort of “food science” a chef should understand. Concepts like reverse sear, sous vide, and combination cooking should at least be in the vernacular of a potential hire.
- Flavor pairing is the term to describe combining different ingredients to achieve the desired flavor. This guide should be broken, but the food needs to taste good, in your mind as the employer.
- Almost any chef can speak enough “Frenglish” to impress a date. Knowing cuts of meat, the name of different techniques, and the categories of allergens and their subsets are imperative to being a successful chef. A chef who thinks Hollandaise is cheese, may not be the best choice of manager.
- Everyone has made an award-winning dish at some point in their life. That doesn’t mean they do it every time. A chef who keeps recipes will never be out of ideas. One who knows how to write them can cook to bring you to fame.
Unfortunately, this needed to be said. While I am nowhere near a competent enough chef to win a Michelin star, being able to admit what I don’t know puts me miles above other chefs. Many cooks have worked for executive chefs who couldn’t tell the difference between parsley and cilantro.
There’s a lot more than you think there are. Prepare some in-depth scenarios, and have potential hires plan a menu to show continuity of thought. Even better to have them cook it.
Chefs with more direction than drive
The sad reality of being a chef is the amount of work required throughout your career. Eighty-hour weeks are commonplace, and chairs are not.
Hire someone who fits the goals of your restaurant. They should always be on the lookout for local produce, better prices, good line chefs, and opportunities to learn. Keeping the menu down to earth for the establishment is important as well.
Make sure they can do the work over a couple of days before rejecting other candidates. If they can, pay them well.
2. Front of house oversights
Front of house employees is the face of the restaurant. Dealing with ornery customers can bring down anyone’s mood, but good servers know how to do the work and handle the pressure.
While the job seems quite simple, the stress of customer service, combined with a lack of training, can make it hell on earth.
Good pay, good treatment, and good training are the minimum a front of house team needs to be successful.
Knowing the menu
It’s the job of the servers and bartenders to market food and turn tables. Having staff that knows the menu and ingredients inside and out will do wonders for customer service experience, and retaining customers.
It can also help prevent oversights that result in a guest’s allergic reaction. Back of house management should take the time to stress how important knowing the allergens on the menu is.
Keeping employees
Working around life’s obstacles is important to keeping good employees. You should never ask anyone you employ to work through an injury, trauma, or tragedy. Defending your employees from customer harassment is recommended as well.
Paying servers a living wage attracts good employees. Adding a gratuity or raising the starting wage will attract real customer service talent.
That being said, those who mistreat others should be reprimanded or terminated. There should be no reason to need to say this, but fire people immediately who steal from you or others.
3. Loss, and unnecessary expense
On shows like “Kitchen Nightmares” you see it all the time; owners robbing themselves of their future.
The most common mistakes I see restaurant owners make are;
- Taking profits outside of budgeted salary
- Putting off repairs
- Remodeling the dining room to fix image issues
- Marketing too much
- Buying expensive processed foods
While taking profits may seem normal, the best investment you can make is into your team, and your equipment. The dining room may need a remodel, but new tables, chairs, and decor may work if it isn’t in the budget. Restaurants are expected to operate at a loss when they first open, and it won’t be the last time they do.
Cut unnecessary expenses on personal items.
Along with that, a remodel of the dining room, or kitchen, won’t fix bad food or service.
I know a restaurant that serves “fine dining” on folding chairs, and they are plenty busy. Marketing won’t fix an image issue either, seeing ads for your restaurant may bring new customers in, but so would good food.
Food and location are the keys to success. It’s expensive to move, so it’s good to choose somewhere central to residential and business areas. The food is equally as important. Processed foods may cost more, but it doesn’t mean they’re better for business. Working from scratch builds the skills of your team, and allows customers to have the freshest experience possible.
Myriads of factors go into success in the restaurant industry, but having a general understanding of how the food industry should work, puts you miles ahead of the competition.
Trial and failure will teach you the rest.
