One mantra of many successful people is: “Don’t be afraid to fail.” It is a common message that I am sure resonates with multitudes of operators throughout this industry.
I recently spoke with Nation’s Restaurant News Golden Chain winner Steele Platt, the chairman of Yard House Restaurants, for a profile that appears on page 46 of this issue. He began his foodservice career in Denver in the mid-1980s, running through three separate concepts and a bout of personal bankruptcy in the early ’90s before starting Yard House in 1996.
Platt credits the lessons of his early career with helping him focus and concentrate on one concept, growing it slowly and surely. He dove headfirst into running restaurants right out of hospitality school, and he paid the price with some. But today he runs a 32-unit casual-dining chain and has plans to add eight stores next year. His early ventures really should not be considered failures at all, given the fact that they helped lay a foundation for his success with Yard House.
This industry is full of stories like that — operators who jumped into the restaurant business with both feet, got knocked to the ground and bounced right back up. At the same time, we’ve seen plenty of chains that rolled out ambitious menu initiatives only to see their hopes for a new grilled-chicken item or a fresh take on burgers deflated by lukewarm customer response. Remember, it took KFC more than a decade to get back in the grilled-chicken game after a tough go in the early ’90s.
I recently became a father for the first time, and the notion of failure is a constant in my new lifestyle. Failure to put a diaper on correctly, failure to get enough sleep, failure to install the car seat correctly the first five times I try. It is a humbling experience.
And I watch my son try and fail constantly. He attempts to roll over many times a day, tries to keep his pacifier in is mouth for more than three seconds and tries to push himself up on his legs when I hold his arms. Most of these efforts end up in vain, but he never remembers these mistakes. The next day, he just keeps trying and trying and trying.
It is a wonderful gift that infants have, that ability to forget about how badly it all went before. They just keep plowing ahead, falls and bumps and bruises be damned.
I have to believe that many people in our industry retained at least some of that ability. They keep on trucking, willing concepts into existence despite plenty of obstacles and memories of past stumbles crowding their minds.
It is that ability to forget mistakes and jump right back on the horse that is essential to growth in any industry, especially in foodservice. Imagine how much smaller our corner of business would be if every operator with a black mark on the résumé gave up and became a schoolteacher or an accountant or a stockbroker. The world would be a much hungrier place.
Contact Mike Dempsey at michael.dempsey@penton.com.
