In 2010, 9,450 restaurants across the United States closed — more than 90 percent of them independent operators, according to The NPD Group. In 2011 an estimated 8,500 more shuttered their doors.
And 2012 may be even more challenging for our industry — a year of “faster, harder, smarter, more.” So what’s your plan? And does your team know how to execute it? Here are 26 fundamentals to help you keep your head in the game.
A: Action is great, unless it’s the wrong action. So start here with some advice from former Apple Inc. chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki: Always be selling, not strategizing about selling. Train your customer-facing team to be service-oriented salespeople, not “order takers.”
B: Best beats first. Master and then excel at executing the fundamentals. Do the common things uncommonly well.
C: Consistency is the backbone of great customer service and value. Habitual consistency is the keystone of foodservice operators that succeed in good times and bad.
D: DIRFT means Do It Right the First Time. Practice with the team, but never on the customer. Assess all processes with this question: What could go wrong? Then have an advance plan to minimize mistakes.
E: Everything you don’t sell has a triple cost. You pay to buy it, store it and throw it away. A dollar on the shelf that you don’t need is a dollar wasted. But remember…
F: Food cost is secondary to menu merchandising. If nobody buys your food or beverage, what difference does cost make? (See “A” above.)
G: Government and business do not go well together. Play by the rules. Don’t do anything that gets the local, state or federal government further involved in your restaurant.
H: Hiring the right people will not ensure a manager’s success, but hiring the wrong people will ensure the manager’s failure. Why? See the next letter.
I: “If your average server waits on 30 people a night and works six nights a week, he or she will be impacting 180 of your customers each week,” said restaurateur Rich Melman. “If you don’t have the right people in the right place, you’re making a big mistake.”
J: Jump start every shift with clear, shared goals and an energetic, focused pre-shift meeting.
K: Keep cool, but do not freeze (a.k.a. The Hellmann’s Principle — from the side of a mayonnaise jar).
L: Learning is to the team what service is to the customer. Give it in abundance. Like rowing upstream, not to advance in learning is to drop back.
M: Manage in good times as if you were operating in bad times, because eventually, bad times will come.
N: Never lower your standards just so a mediocre applicant can raise theirs.
O: Over-teach. Managers and employees tend to under-learn and over-forget.
P: Procrastination is the devil’s chloroform. If the task is small, do it now. If it’s big, do a part of it now and a part of it tomorrow and another part the next day.
Q: Quality is a bedrock fundamental of successful operators. Customers will forgive us for a higher price, but never for lower quality.
R: Results, not effort, call for reward. Get 1 percent better every day, and where will you be 100 days from now?
S: Statistic that matters: There are currently 10 million people working in America’s restaurants — seven times more than the entire U.S. Armed Forces. Outside of the government, we are the nation’s largest employer.
T: Turnover reduction must be a primary goal for 2012. Shoot for 3 percent less turnover each month, or 36 percent by year’s end.
U: Understand how other industries excel at service, selling, recruiting and training. Study retail, manufacturing and Internet companies. The best practices in foodservice are not that great.
V: Value is determined by the guest. It combines quality, price, service, cleanliness and, sometimes, speed. It’s made up of a thousand little things we do day in and day out that the customer may not even notice … until we don’t do them. Get the basics down pat.
W: “Winning is not a ‘sometime’ thing. You don’t win once in a while. You don’t do things right once in a while. You do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.” — Vince Lombardi
X: X-rays reveal what’s below the surface. Take a good look at the underlying systems and processes that support your operation. Improve one each week. Don’t wake up a year from now to find yourself 52 potential improvements behind.
Y: Yoda said it best: “Do or do not. There is no ‘try.’”
Z: Zealot is defined in the dictionary as “a fanatical partisan.” Create the kind of experiences that transform casual customers into brand apostles for your business. There’s an epidemic of sameness in foodservice today that presents real opportunity for operators focused on passion, purpose and performance — one customer, one transaction at a time. The little things are really the big things.
Jim Sullivan’s newest book, “Fundamentals,” is available at Amazon.com. Get his training catalog videos and mobile apps at Sullivison.com, or visit his resource site at www.nrn.com/sullivision.
