Why Waiting To Build Systems Is Keeping Your Restaurant Stuck

Hey there, restaurant pros. It’s David Scott Peters, and welcome to the Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast. For over 2 decades, I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurateurs I coached, and it’s now the foundation of what I teach restaurant owners like you so you can achieve success. What do I mean by success? Success is a restaurant owner who dictates the terms of their life and their bank account instead of their restaurants dictating those things for them. Success is a restaurant owner who has freedom from the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I do know the way to achieving it is using the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula. Leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts, and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their definition of success. In this episode, number 149, we’re tackling why to build systems is keeping you stuck. Let’s get started.

There’s a lie restaurant pros tell themselves all the time. I’ll implement systems when things slow down. And it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? It sounds responsible. It sounds like you’re being practical. But it’s a trap. Because things don’t slow down. They do not slow down. Not the way you hope they will. Not long enough to matter. Not in a way that suddenly hands you time, clarity, and energy to fix the business. Instead, what happens is this. You stay stuck in the cycle. You stay reacting. You stay putting out fires. You stay working harder and harder in the chaos while telling yourself that one day you’ll finally have the breathing room to build the restaurant the right way. That day never comes. And that’s what I want to dig into today. I want to talk about why waiting is costing you more than you realize. Why the chaos in your restaurant is not the excuse to delay systems, but the evidence you need them and where to start so this doesn’t feel like one One more giant project dumped on your back. Because here’s the good news. You don’t need to fix everything at once. You do not need to disappear for a week and create some massive operations binder. And you sure as hell don’t need perfect conditions. You need a place to begin. Think about it this way. We tell ourselves, I’ll get to it later, for all different reasons. Right? Maybe in your brain, you’re thinking, I’m going into season. That’s my favorite. I’m going into season. What does that mean? It’s just more customers. It’s more of the same. Because when things slow down in the off season, do you really feel like, oh, I’ve got all this extra time? It takes the same amount of energy to run the restaurant. And if you’re not running it the way it should be and it relies on you, your life is no different in season versus out of season. What you’re really telling yourself is when you say I’ll do it later, it’s really a code word for never. It’s just hope. As entrepreneurs, we love the hope of the future. That there’ll be this day that I can fix this. There’ll be this day that I have time. There’ll be this day that I have freedom. There’ll be this day that I can start the work, but I’m going to do that later, which is really never. Because why? When does it let up? So let’s be brutally honest. Most restaurant pros avoid, don’t avoid systems because they don’t believe in them. They avoid systems because systems feel like extra work. And to be fair, in the beginning they are. You don’t have to stop and think. You don’t have to write things down. You don’t have to clarify standards. You don’t have to hold people accountable to the process. That’s the true part. But here’s the first principle’s truth. Every restaurant is already running on systems. The only question is whether those systems are intentional or accidental. Let me say that again. You already have systems. They’re just bad ones. If your closing shift ends differently depending on who’s in charge, that’s a system. If invoices get entered late or not at all, that’s a system. If your prep list lives in somebody’s head and disappears every time that person calls out, That’s a system. If you’re the one everybody texts because nobody knows what to do without you, that’s a system. It’s a broken one. So when restaurant pros say, I don’t have systems, what they really mean is I haven’t documented and trained the standards I want. That’s different. And that shift matters because it means you’re not starting from zero. You’re replacing chaos with clarity. That’s the game. Now here’s the brutal irony. The very chaos making you feel too busy to build systems exists because you don’t have them. That’s the loop. You’re busy because your team needs you for everything. Your team needs you for everything because expectations aren’t clear. Expectations aren’t clear because the standards aren’t documented. The standards aren’t documented because you keep saying you’ll do it later. So your team keeps needing you for everything. Round and round you go. It’s like trying to bail water out of a boat without patching the hole. You can work harder. You can move faster. You can get really, really, really good at surviving. But you’re still sinking. You know, think about it this way. It’s kind of like, your business, you see the fires around you and you grab the fire hose. You have the right tool. You go to open up the hose, but it’s not connected to the water. You have this idea, this solution, this system, but it’s broken. It’s kind of like trying to train a new employee on a busy Friday night and hope that they can do what they’ve learned by memory. because there’s no written standard. So when they hit the floor independently, the line independently, they make mistakes like there’s no tomorrow because you’re hoping they could retain it. Yeah, you showed them a system, if you will. But because it wasn’t documented, because it wasn’t trained, because there were no tests, because there was nobody to hold them accountable, because of all the things, that hose was not connected to the water. It’s the same thing. And here’s what makes this even more dangerous. Survival modes, starts to feel normal. That’s where restaurants pros get in trouble. They start wearing chaos like a badge of honor. They start confusing motion with progress. They start thinking, well, this is just the business. No, it’s not. Stress may be common in the industry, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. Confusion may be normal in a lot of restaurants, but that doesn’t make it necessary. And being indispensable might feed your ego a little. But it will starve your business. Because if the restaurant only works when you’re in the middle of everything, then you don’t own a business. You own a job with overhead. That’s the truth. Now I want to make this practical. Why do people wait? Usually for one of four reasons. The first is overload. They genuinely feel buried. They can’t imagine adding one more thing to the list. The second is perfectionism. They think if they’re going to build systems, they need to do it all. I mean, do all of them at once and flawlessly. The third is lack of clarity. They know they need systems, but they don’t know which one to start with. And the fourth is fear. Because the moment you create standards, now people can be measured against them. And that means You may have to confront underperformance. You may have to lead differently. You may have to stop accepting good enough. That’s uncomfortable. But let me save you some pain. The cost of waiting is bigger than the pain of starting. Every week you delay systems, you pay for it. You pay in comped meals because standards are inconsistent. You pay in labor dollars because people aren’t productive. You pay in food costs because ordering and prep are sloppy. You pay in guest experience because service depends on who showed up. You pay in your quality of life because the business keeps reaching into your pocket for more time, more energy, and more attention. And the worst part? Most restaurant pros don’t even calculate the cost. They just feel it. They feel tired. They feel trapped. They feel resentful. They feel like no matter how hard they work, they can’t get ahead. That’s the tax of operating without systems. The emotional side of this business, when you miss things. when you don’t have systems and you miss the family dinner, you miss your grandmother’s 80th birthday, you miss your anniversary, you miss your kids’ first T-ball game. These are all things you can’t get back. You tell your family, your friends, I’m going to be there for you, I swear. And we tell ourselves, we’re working this hard for our family. And I’ll tell you, I think that’s a cop-out. Yes, of course, we’re trying to do this for our family, to build A life that was supposed to give us more freedom, more economic security, more money, right?

I mean, just you open the restaurant because you thought you’d have control of your life. Instead, you’re missing all these things. Things as simple as your significant other saying, hey, I promise you we’re going out to dinner with our friends. You actually set it up. You’ve got it that you’re out of the restaurant. You go out to dinner with your friends, your significant other, you’re sitting there. You place your order, you’re laughing, you’re having a cocktail, having a good time thinking, I am present, I am here. And then your phone vibrates. You look down, it’s the restaurant. And you say, I’m only going to be a minute. I got to run outside and take care of this. You go outside and call the restaurant and you work through some crisis. 30, 45 minutes later, you walk back in the restaurant Everybody else has eaten their meal. And yours is there, ice cold. You’ve done it again. You promised you’d be present, and you weren’t. You allowed the restaurant to pull you away because you, you are the only one that can fix any problem. Nobody thinks on their own. There’s no system, no process, no way to follow. You’re the system. That emotional side, the guilt, Then all of a sudden, the overwhelm that you feel as you let your friends and family down yet again. But you tell yourself, the restaurant needed me. So what do you do? You start smaller than your brain wants to. That’s the move, man. Your brain wants to turn building systems into a giant mountain. Don’t let it. Because when the mountain feels too big, you stall. When you stall, nothing changes. When nothing changes, chaos wins. So let’s strip this down. If I were coaching a restaurant pro like you, who was underwater and needed traction fast, I would have them start in three places. Not 30, just three. Number one, start with checklists. Checklists are one of the most powerful tools in restaurant operations because they reduce dependency on memory, emotion, and personality. A checklist says, this is what done looks like. That’s it. No debate, no guessing. No, I thought somebody else did it. No, that’s just how I do it. A checklist creates consistency. And consistency is where freedom starts. Think about your shifts, open, mid, close. How many conversations are you having every week that could be eliminated by 1 documented checklist? Did we stock that station? Was the bathroom checked? Did the server-side work get done? Did the closing manager verify the deposits? Was the line cleaned properly? Did someone pull tomorrow’s prep? And the list goes on. You keep asking the same questions because standards live in your mouth instead of your on paper. That’s exhausting.

So your first move is simple. Create one checklist for one shift. Create one checklist for one shift, not five, one. Maybe it’s the closing manager checklist. Maybe it’s the kitchen opening checklist. Maybe it’s the host stand side work checklist. It doesn’t matter. Pick the one that will reduce the most daily friction. Write it, train it, use it tonight. That’s not a tiny step. That is a lever. Because once one checklist works, the next one is easier. Now your team understands the concept. Now you have a format. Now you start building a culture where standards are visible, teachable, and repeatable. That’s when the restaurant starts to shift. See, I look at it this way. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know that I talk about checklists being the keystone to all systems. That if I can’t get a manager to follow a checklist, what makes you think they’re going to wake up Sunday excited about taking inventory accurately, on time, and care? If you can’t get them to make sure the little things are done. Forget about the big things. It ain’t gonna happen. But better yet, how would you like to shut down all of the, every time a manager walks into a shift? What? They didn’t do this and they didn’t do this and they didn’t do that the shift before, especially in the morning. Who closed last night? They didn’t do this. They didn’t do this. They didn’t do this. And now I look for 6, 7, 8, 9. I’m ****** ***. And guess what? I have to close the restaurant before I can open it, which means I’m behind. And now I don’t trust the other managers. I start having front of house, back house, AM, PM ******** kind of power struggles because nobody’s on the same page. Instead, if I have a checklist, And the manager ensures the checklists are followed. We create a culture of closed open. Every shift is 100% ready for the next shift that when I walk in, when I walk into the building for my shift, whether it’s an AM or PM, it’s ready to go. The restaurant’s ready to go. Now the whole team is calmer. I’m calmer. I can do my job. I can focus on the guests. I can focus on my employees. I can do my job by creating a culture of closed open, I gained freedom because everyone knows what needs to be done by when and what success looks like. Now let’s move on to the 2nd place to start. Number 2, pick one number and track it weekly. This is where restaurant pros tend to blow it. They wait until the end of the month to look at financials, then act shocked when the numbers are ugly. But the P&L is an autopsy. It tells you what died. It does not help you save the patient in real time. If you want control, you need weekly tracking.

And no, I’m not saying that you need to build some giant finance department tomorrow. I’m saying pick one number and track it every week. Food cost, labor cost, prime cost. Start with the number that hurts the most. If food cost is out of control, start there. If labor cost is chewing up all your time and money, start there. The point is not sophistication. The point is rhythm. When you create a cadence where the business starts talking to you before the month is over, that’s awesome. Because one number tracked weekly forces awareness. Awareness leads to action. Action leads to control. Let’s say you start with labor cost. Now every week you compare actual labor costs to your target. Now you ask, why did we miss it? Why did we miss the target? Now you look at your schedule for efficiencies. Now you question whether volume matched staffing. Now managers know somebody is watching. That one number changes behavior. Same thing with food cost. If you start reviewing usage, waste, over-portioning, theft, transfers, comps by shifts, no sale reports, key items, now you stop treating food costs like weather. Because food cost is not weather. It is behavior. And behavior can be trained. That’s the power of 1 number. One number consistently reviewed does more for a restaurant than 10 random ideas discussed once a month. See, we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got that one number. Why? Because what tracking does is brings awareness. I like it kind of like driving at night. If you’re driving your car at night, would you have headlights on or off? You’d have them on. So tracking that one number, eventually tracking more, is like driving with your headlights on instead of waiting for the crash and reading the accident report. We don’t want to be blind. We want to see where we’re going. We want to see what’s happening. Because when I see that an animal jumps in the road, I can hit the brakes. I can turn to the left. I can turn to the right. I can react. See, monthly P&Ls, they’re hindsight. But weekly tracking helps you steer in real time. Now let’s hit the 3rd place to start. Number 3, have one real conversation with your management team. Not a crisis conversation, not a correction in the middle of a disaster, not a drive-by complaint. A real conversation. One where you sit down and say, here’s what we’re building. Here’s what I expect. Here’s what has to change. And here’s what your role is in making this restaurant run right. That conversation matters because systems don’t live on paper. They live through people. You can write the best checklist in the world, but if your managers don’t inspect what they expect, it dies. You can define the right numbers to track, but if your managers don’t own the habit behind the numbers, nothing changes. So somewhere along the way, you have to plant a flag. You have to declare that the restaurant is moving from reactive to proactive, from tribal knowledge to documented standard, from personality-driven management to systems-driven leadership. And that takes a conversation. That conversation should answer a few things. What does great look like here? What standards are non-negotiable? What does each manager own? How will accountability work? How do we communicate when things go off track? Most teams are not underperforming because they’re evil. They’re underperforming because the expectations are fuzzy. Fuzzy expectations create frustrated leaders. Clear expectations create accountable teams.

Now, let me be clear. Having this conversation does not magically fix everything. But it changes the air. Your team feels the difference between a restaurant that is drifting and a restaurant that is being led. And a lot of restaurant pros underestimate that. When your team sees you start documenting standards, reviewing numbers, and having real leadership conversations, they realize this is not another motivational speech. This is a shift. That matters. See, your managers are going to rise to your expectations. Another way to put it is your employees will reach as low as you set the bar. So when you keep answering every question, when you’ve turned your managers into managers by title, but really messengers of bad news because they wait for you to make the decision, for you to do critical thinking, to do the work. Nothing happens. But when I’m clear with my management team, when I tell them what I expect from them, when I teach them the system, the process, the way I expect, when I make sure I know they know their job, how to do it, how well it should be done, more importantly by when. I Get a rhythm of accountability and checking that they’re doing it routinely. All of a sudden things change. Do you know what else it does? It flushes out your saboteurs. You know, the managers say, oh, I’m excited about the change. Yes, I back it all. But every time you create a deadline, every time you train them, they still don’t do the work. How quickly you’re going to be able to flush out the people that are holding your business back because you’re going to need to. This is huge. Now I want to zoom out. Because these three starting points, checklist, one, one key number, one real management conversation, they may seem simple. And they are simple. But simple is not the same as easy. And simple is not the same as small. These are foundational moves. Because systems compound. That’s what people miss. One checklist. makes the next checklist easier. One number makes the next number easier. One management conversation makes the next leadership move easier. Before long, you’re not just plugging in holes. You’re building infrastructure. And that’s when your restaurant starts to give you something back. That would be your life. You sleep a little better. You stop answering. the same stupid questions over and over. You catch some problems sooner. Managers begin to step up. Training gets easier. Accountability stops feeling personal because the standard is documented.

That’s what systems do. They reduce drama and increase clarity. And by the way, this is why systems are not separate from leadership. Systems are leadership. A leader who says everybody should just know is not leading. A leader who defines, documents, trains, and follows up? That’s leadership. A leader who hopes people do it right is gambling. A leader who creates standards and verifies them is building a business. That’s the difference. Now I want to talk to the restaurant pro listening right now who feels behind. Maybe you’re hearing this and thinking, great, David, you’re right, but I’m already drowning. I get it. I understand. But here’s the move. Stop trying to solve drowning by waiting for dry land. That’s not how it works. You build while wet. You lead while tired. You start things imperfectly. Because action creates clarity, not the other way around. A lot of people think clarity comes first. No, action comes first. You write the first checklist badly, then improve it. You track the first number imperfectly, then tighten it up. You have the first management conversation awkwardly, then get better at it. That’s how this works. Progress is messy in the beginning. Good, let it be messy. Messy systems beat no systems. And once those systems are in place, now you can refine. You can train better. Now you can build deeper. But you cannot improve what does not exist. So you can try and push really hard, get through the difficult time, hope motivation keeps you going. The whole idea is done is better than perfect. So let’s just start. And that’s not a cliche. Done is better than perfect. Meaning start the one thing. See it all the way through. Don’t overwhelm yourself and take on seven different projects at once and not finish one of them. Because when you start all those seven things and nothing gets done and you’re still buried and you think I can’t handle another thing, it’s like getting a kick in the teeth. You don’t need another kick in the teeth. What you need is some success. So start the one thing. See the one thing through. Know it’s not going to be perfect. Know that it’s going to be messy. But we can make it better. And again, one win leads to another action. Another action leads to another win. And so on and so on and so on. Until we finally reach a point where we do have freedom from our restaurant. So let’s land this. If you’ve been telling yourself you’ll build systems when things slow down, I need you to stop believing your own story. Things are not going to magically calm down. And even if they did, your habits would still be the problem. Because the issue is not just time. It’s avoidance. It’s overwhelm. It’s lack of a starting point. It’s waiting for certainty you do not need. The way out is to start. Start with one checklist, start with one number, start with one leadership conversation, then repeat. That’s how restaurant prosperity is built. Not a giant heroic overhauls. It’s steady, boring, disciplined execution. That’s the stuff that changes everything. Not sexy, not flashy, not effective as hell. And I’d kind of back up on that. It probably is effective as hell. Because that consistent work does make change. And if you want your restaurant to run without you, without you being the glue that holds every broken piece together, this is the path. Systems, training, accountability, and action. That’s the formula.

So here’s my challenge for you. Before the day is over, choose one of those three places and make a move. Write the checklist, pick the number, schedule the meeting. No more later. Later is where good intentions go to die. Do it now, while it’s inconvenient. Do it now, while it’s messy. Do it now, because your future freedom is built by standards you create today. And if you want help figuring out what to fix first, go to DavidScottPeters.com. and book a discovery call. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t knowing you need systems, it’s knowing which system to tackle first. That’s what we’ll sort out together. Because once you get a clear picture of what you need to move on first, everything gets easier.

Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time to take action on building a better, more prosperous restaurant. Before you go, I want to give you these three thoughts. One, by combining leadership and taking action with systems and training, being checked by accountability, you are on your way to creating prosperity for you and your restaurant. Two, I have something I need from you. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you happen to listen to podcasts. By leaving us a review, other restaurant pros seeking out this information are able to find it. I read the reviews, and hearing how this information has benefited you does wonders for me. And 3, if you find any of the discussions helpful, share them. The more restaurant pros who have access to them, the better we become as an industry. For more restaurant resources or to get in contact with me, connect with me at DavidScottPeters.com. Be passionate about what you’re doing. Be persistent, but more importantly, become better and help everyone around you become better. And your restaurant is going to kick some ***.