What We Can Learn About Business From Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
This past year, I started watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and found myself hooked on the show before I knew it.
At first it was just nice background TV, and it was funny watching Gordon become frustrated with the various owners who couldn’t grasp the fundamental basics of the restaurant business (like cleaning up and not microwaving salads, lol seriously).
After a couple of seasons of the show, I realised that what I really liked was the underlying business lessons I was picking up from the show.
Gordon, quite understandably, knows his sh*t and is an expert leader and businessman.
After watching all of the Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell episodes, I feel like I could start my own small restaurant and I’ve picked up a lot (though Gordon will probably still tell me my food is sh*t).
So here are the business lessons I’d like to share with you that I’ve learnt from Kitchen Nightmares.
1. Strive for excellence
The number one problem in almost every episode of Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell, is that the business owners accept mediocrity.
As a perfectionist, this understandably irritates the crap out of Gordon.
The reason Gordon clashes so hard with the struggling restaurant oweners, is because he has to break each owner out of their mediocrity mindset.
He needs to make them realise that to save their restaurant, they need to strive for excellence.
Ego, personal opinion, everything else has to be left at the door.
And so does the disgusting microwaved food.
2. Focus on doing one thing well
The second thing Gordon does, in I think every single episode, is create a new, simple menu.
In several episodes, he literally throws the menu in the bin. In a couple of other funny episodes he won’t read the menu until the staff clean the dirt and cobwebs off. Lol.
The two most common problems holding back the restaurant owners from serving good food are their quality control and the size of the menu.
The size of the menu is usually the problem, and the owner resolutely refusing to empower the chef to change it.
These small restaurants can’t serve menus with 50+ items, a small kitchen staff and still maintain quality.
So they end up buying in loads of food, freezing it, cooking it poorly, then wondering why the customers aren’t coming back.
Gordon advocates that they serve a small menu, with locally sourced produce and to make sure they nail this menu.
The restaurants need to focus on doing one thing well.
One of the first things he asks the owners is — “What sort of restaurant is this?”.
I.e, what sort of food do you serve? He does this to ascertain whether or not the restaurant is focusing on serving one type of food well, or whether they don’t have a proper identity and are serving lots of different foods poorly.
For example, in one episode he visited a Danish restaurant that wasn’t actually serving any Danish food (with a Cuban chef), much to his bewilderment.
3. Take accountability for your actions
As the business owner, the buck stops with you.
Ultimately it’s your business and it is your responsibility to shoulder the burden and stress, not your employees.
It’s your job to delegate effectively to staff and empower them do their jobs, but also to stay on top of things and take accountability for the end result.
In several episodes, there is an issue with accountability, insubordination and incompetent staff.
In one particular episode that I remember clearly, the chef had no experience, was openly insubordinate, violent and in some instances using drugs whilst working at the restaurant.
This ultimately was the restaurant owners failing, because she was in denial about the quality of her food and competency of her staff, refusing to take action on either.
This chef had been at the restaurant for a prolonged period of time and the food had been sub standard for some time.
Gordon makes it clear that is her accountability to deal with this. She is the owner and she can’t pass the buck to her staff.
If the staff are not qualified or capable of doing the job, she needs to replace them so that the business can function effectively.
Otherwise, she not only jeopardises the business, but the jobs of everyone there, and more importantly, the safety of her customers who are at risk of food poisoning.
4. Value your staff
In one particularly interesting episode of Hotel Hell, Gordon visits a failing hotel where the owners have a big problem with valuing their staff (and basic common courtesy).
There is a big divide between the owners and staff, with the owners treating the staff like absolute crap, even to the point where one of the owners takes a percentage of the tips the servers receive, when he helps them with their work (including an elderly lady’s tips).
This ultimately translates to the poor performance of the hotel and the staff.
If you treat your staff like crap, you won’t get the best out of them.
Nobody likes arrogance.
Gordon teaches the owners that they need to stop being so arrogant and start valuing the people who keep their business afloat, treating them like human beings.
In one particular scene, one of the owners begins barking at the staff like he’s the warden at a prison camp, to Gordon’s shock and dismay. Anyone remember Ari’s rampage?
Would you want to give someone your best if you knew they didn’t care about you, and you were just an expendable employee to them?
The lesson here is value your staff, treat them like you would any other human. With respect, empathy and understanding.
5. Don’t lie to your customers
It’s bad enough lying to Gordon about the practices of your restaurant, after he’s taken the time and spent the money to come and basically make your restaurant a success for you, as long as you’re not stupid enough to disregard the changes he makes.
But it’s another thing to lie to your customers.
In several episodes we see the owners lying to their customers about the quality and content of their food.
Usually, the owners lie about whether food is fresh or frozen, passing off cheap frozen food as fresh high quality food.
If there’s one thing people hate, it’s being lied to and having their intelligence insulted. Amusingly, most of these customers are well aware the food is frozen when Gordon asks them outright.
In one particular instance, Gordon receives the truth from a particularly brave waitress which angers the lying owner. Don’t lie!
6. Maintain standards across the board
One of the first things Gordon does when he suspects a chef is no good is check his walk in fridge/freezer.
“You can always tell a chef by his walk in” — Gordon is fond of saying.
And of course he is right. In every instance when he visits the walk ins of the unfortunate chefs, they are in complete disarray.
Dirty, disorganised, cooked meat next to raw meat.
In several instances Gordon actually shuts down the restaurant during service because the restaurant poses a health risk to customers.
In one particularly horrifying case of neglect, an ambulance is called after a customer consumes a rotten lobster and takes a turn for the worse.
The lesson here is, the little things matter.
Gordon tries to drill into the owners that they need to maintain standards from the little things up to the big things.
Caring about the little things translates to caring about the big things.
Every dish needs to be served perfectly as if it is the first of the night. If you let one crap dish go out, the standards begin to go out the window.
7. Lead by example
Gordon is a classic example of leadership from the front. He’s a natural leader.
He leads by doing, by maintaining a high personal standard that he expects others to match and follow.
He teaches the restaurant owners that they need to do the same and lead by example.
That if they are lazy and don’t care, their staff will follow suit. If the owners are arrogant and don’t take responsibility for anything, why would the staff care?
A good example of a leadership failure on the shows is the case of the ‘two spoiled sisters’ on Hotel Hell.
Gordon revamps the menu at this restaurant, then removes the young owners, empowering the dedicated general manager to turn the restaurant around.
Gordon realises the hotel already has a strong leader being hamstrung by the owners, so just empowers her to do her job properly and works to make the owners realise this is the best course of action.
In summary, we can learn a lot from both Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell about business. There are probably numerous other lessons you can pick up from the show.
Not only can we learn a lot from the show, these lessons are delivered with a large slice of humour and entertainment factor too!
Thanks for reading!
You might also find these stories useful:
Why WordPress Is The BEST Platform To Build Your Business or Startup Website On
30 Days Of Medium
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 340,876+ people.
Subscribe to receive our top stories here.
