A Restaurant Growth Strategy That Works

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 the 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 123, our guest is Mark McChaffrey. Mark is the owner of multiple restaurant concepts across Houston and South Texas. After spending 16 years in the corporate restaurant world, Mark took the leap and opened the Backyard Grill in 2001. Since then, he’s expanded the Backyard Grill twice, started his own line of hot sauces, and has opened and sold several other restaurants along the way. In 2018, Mark launched his next concept, Creek and most recently added Aero Crafters in Victoria to his portfolio just two years ago. Mark credits his success to focusing on quality products, top-notch service, and building strong community connections. He’s deeply involved in his community, sitting on several non-profit boards and leading by example when it comes to giving back. In this episode, Mark shares his journey from corporate life to becoming a multi-unit restaurant owner, his insights on community-driven success, and the lessons he learned along the way. Let’s get started, but first, a word from our sponsor. We all know managing costs is one of the most important parts of running a profitable restaurant, especially now. But between fluctuating vendor prices, waste, labor, and the never-ending list of tasks that demand your attention on a daily basis, it can be challenging for even the most experienced of us to manage costs well. That’s where MarginEdge comes in. MarginEdge is a complete restaurant management software that automatically uses data from your POS and invoices to show you food and labor costs in real time. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Margin Edge gives you tools to make decisions in the moment, like a daily P&L, price alerts on key ingredients, and real-time plate costs, all without ever having to touch a spreadsheet. Take control of your costs, work more efficiently, and be more profitable. Go to www..marginedge.com forward slash DSP to learn more and schedule your demo today. Mark, I want to thank you so much for doing this with me today. You bet.
My pleasure.
So for those who don’t know you, are a storied restaurateur. And I think just before we got on here, you talked about that you’re approaching 40 years in the business. Like you are a seasoned pro. You’re not a rookie to this business. And you know, that’s kind of the story behind meeting and at one point in time we can talk about it where during COVID you reached out to me and said, hey, I want your help. And I’m like, you don’t need my help. Like you’re one of the brightest restaurant minds I know. But it’s really interesting as we go into it why an outside person can actually bring value to somebody who knows what they’re doing when it comes to your team. So tell people a little bit about your background because what I love most is You’re one of the strongest hospitality people I know as well. And a lot of that was your training at a concept called Houston’s back in the 90s was like the number one first bistro out there doing 2 to $3 million a store when burgers were $8, right? Drinks, you could get a drink at Happy are for $2. So I want people to put that in perspective. That’s like a $5 million restaurant today when a burger’s $18. But you learned so much, you cut your teeth in this business and then made your way as an independent operator a number of years ago and you have multiple locations now. Can you tell people a little bit about your background?
Yeah, when I got out of college, I went to Texas A&M. My first job out of college was with Houston’s, which I still, most, a lot of the systems I have in my business right now either came from Houston’s or came from you. And the Houston’s was an incredible, process. I mean, it was a 26 week manager training program. So for half a year, you worked a full week at every position, dishwasher for a week, grill for a week, salad for a week. I mean, it was a great training program. You learned A lot. One thing it did not teach you was how to be a restaurant owner. It taught you how to be a restaurant manager. And so when I left Houston’s, I went to a local chain here in Houston. I was a district manager for five years, and then I was director of operations for that company. We had 25, 26 locations. So I was in charge of mostly all of them. And so that’s kind of where I started learning a little bit more of the business side, not just running shifts, but running the business. And I left there and went and opened my first restaurant, The Backyard Grill. which is actually where I am today. I’m not ever here a lot, but I am doing this from Houston today. I opened Backyard Grill in 2001. I opened seven weeks before 9-11. You know, back then I was coming in and putting an apron on and working, like not just working shifts. I was working kitchen shifts. I was the fry guy on Tuesdays or salad on Thursdays. I mean, that’s just how we did it. back then, but that was that was a terrible year. It was a rough year. I think I made $1000 that year. That was my income, and so. as years went on, I mean, I’ve opened pizza places. I had three of them at one point. We ran concessions at the University of Houston. I’ve run two different golf courses. I opened Creekwood Grill 7 years ago with my partner Brian. And that one’s killing it right now, doing very well. And then two years ago, when I moved to Victoria and I bought the bar down there, AeroCrafters. So between the three concepts, they’re all kind of a little different, but they all run on the same systems. from training, from the backend stuff and everything we do there.
And that’s an interesting point, because at some point in time, you had a contract with a golf course as well as we were working together. And again, you talked about the different concepts you worked in. I want people listening to us to truly understand that when we talk about systems just in the framework of There’s a system, a process, a way to doing anything and everything. It has nothing to do with whether you’re quick serve or full serve. It has nothing to do with if you’re fine dining or you’re a dive bar. It has nothing to do with any of that. That’s the envelope. The food, the service with the look. But the systems part, they’re the same. You virtually have three different concepts right now and You operate on the same damn systems that if any one of your team had to go from one restaurant to another, they may not know where the salt is, but they know what needs to be done is for nightly numbers. They know the checklist. They know. Is that too much of A stretch or is it really that simple?
No, it really is that simple. I mean, menus are different, locations of items are different, but our system of service is the same. Our backend office stuff is all the same at all three locations. from our daily labor sales sheet to our prime report to our inventories, inventory sheet, all of it. I mean, like, you’re right, you could pretty much take, if I pulled a manager from one location, they would be ready in three days, four days, if they moved to a different location. What’s funny about that is that when we first opened, we didn’t have any systems, none. I mean, we had, you know, we had order guides and you and I talk all the time about rookie restaurateurs who come in and they’re taking printer paper off of the expo printer and they’re making their order off of it. And it’s like, you just shake your head and like, how do you operate like that? I’ve told you stories all the time about like my banker friends always tell me that the restaurant business is the a hard business and has the highest percentage of fail rate of any other industry. And I was like, yeah, ’cause you guys keep loaning money to people who have never worked in a restaurant, but they just have a good balance sheet. They just have a big checkbook and they have money. So yeah, sure, loan them a million bucks and let them go open a restaurant. And a year later they close and they wonder why. It’s like, ’cause you don’t know what you’re doing. And I said the same thing even when I opened Backyard in 2001. In 2001, I had already been in the food business 16 years. And yet when I opened on day one, we closed that night and I was like, what do we do now? Like, what’s the next step? There was a lot of stuff that we weren’t doing. I mean, we were just running shifts. We weren’t running a business. And there is a big difference in that. I mean, you hear people say all the time, work on your business, not in your business. And what I did the first four years at Backyard, we weren’t making money. We were barely getting by. I think I said this to you before that, I had this guy come in one time because my wife was ready to just throw the restaurant away and we had to do something. And so we brought this guy in and he interviewed everybody on my staff and and went through all our books and said, at the time, Backyard was doing about 1.4 million a year. And he said, I can come in here and fix this. You give me $20,000 and I’ll come fix this restaurant for you. And my wife was like, let me sign. Let’s do it. I’m ready to get this restaurant going. And I went home and went to bed that night and I woke up the next morning and I was like, no, I know how to do this. I just need to get off my *** and do it, which is like probably the biggest message to anybody in the restaurant business is that if you if you have a list of systems and you follow procedures like and train your people to do it, not not just people, but you got to have good people. And that’s a whole nother conversation we can have. But you know, I decided that morning that day that I was going to come in and changed my whole procedure on how I ran my business. Stop being a manager and start being an owner. You know, start coming in and doing the right things. And that’s when I really started looking into all the outside resources because even like you just said, I’ve been in the business 40 years. I still wake up every day and try to find, all right, what can I learn today? What do I not know? And that list will never end. It will. It won’t end. You have to continue to learn, especially now with things changing so fast. I’ve had managers here before. I’ve gone through peaks and valleys at Backyard where I had great managers, and I’ve had some really bad ones. And man, I tell you what, you can do great things with great people. I mean, it’s the number one asset in your whole business is your staff. You get a good staff, the people that really are dedicated to your business, you can do great things. But it’s at times it can be a struggle to get there because you got to make sure you’re hiring right. You got to make sure you’re leading them right, treating them right. But once you get there and I’m probably there in two locations and I’m still working at that at the Victoria location.
And it’s a cycle. I mean, you know, one of the some of the takeaways I hope people are listening is understand that you started just kind of where they were, even with all your years of experience and all your great background. I mean, hell, being a district manager, you’re firing off and managing people and looking at numbers and you’re doing all these things, yet you open up your own darn place and the next thing you know, it’s kind of like what I tell people who’ve never had a baby. And then you’re about to have your first. I said, wait till you bring the baby home. And then you go, oh, ****. That’s kind of like opening a restaurant, right? You and I, with our experience, I always talk about, like, I thought I was God’s gift to restaurant management. I think you may put yourself at that same level, like there was nothing I couldn’t fix. But the moment you become a restaurant owner, you’re like the black hole of death because everything’s on your shoulders. The power bill, the rent, you know, all the other utilities, the employees, the federal laws you have to follow, the procurement of product, the production of it, the hospitality, the training, like marketing, and all of a sudden it’s like, holy **** yet what are we doing? We’re running a restaurant like we’re the best manager. So before we go further, what was the switch for you that said, so you brought in this consultant, he took a look at what you said, but Even though you knew, why was this the moment that you switched your mindset? I need to become the fricking owner of this restaurant, not my best manager. What made that switch actually happen? Was it the threat of $20,000 going, I know how to do this or was there some other shift?
I think you’re exactly right. I mean, the fact that I was going to, We was looking at a situation of paying a guy $20,000 to come in and tell me stuff that I already knew. I just wasn’t doing them. And that’s the kind of thing where I came in and started researching out there and trying to find different avenues and different conferences to go to and different things to learn. And it wasn’t that much longer after that that I ran into you. I had already gone through another guy from marketing, but I needed someone for operations and systems and the stuff that you brought to our table. And I don’t even know how long ago that was. It was probably 15 years ago.
Probably so.
Maybe, I don’t know. It was a long time ago. I mean, we’ve had backyard 24 years now. So it may be about then when I met you, I think in Austin, went to a two day or three day conference and you just threw a whole bunch of **** at us. And I was like, dude, we are not doing any of this. I mean, like, We didn’t do a labor report. We didn’t do that. And so it was mind-blowing, to tell the truth, to come back and try to get all those systems put into place. But then it was helpful. But yeah, I think that’s probably the thing that got me was just the fact that I know what I’m doing. I just wasn’t doing it. I mean, you get so caught up into coming to work and get caught into doing something an employee should be doing. And so you’re acting like them or even acting like a manager, but it’s a different mindset to actually be the owner and the things that you should be working on.
Well, as a seasoned pro, you can’t get any more seasoned pro than opening up a restaurant literally around the time of 9-11 because the economy took a crap, food went through the roof, labor was tough to find. It was just one of the toughest times. And then the same restaurant, now you go through, it’s COVID. And during COVID, right about the end of it, I think of the official shutdowns of everything is kind of when you resurfaced. You gave me a call and said, David, I want to work together again. And I remember literally we’re on a zoom and I’m looking at you going, you don’t need me. Like you’re got all the systems and so on. Talk about why you reached out at that time. Because Right before that, you had your restaurant pretty much on autopilot. You were truly being a restaurant owner and not having to manage or do tasks.
Yeah, we had gone through some points. I mean, I think the thing that really, even though we were putting systems in place and I’m going to back up way before COVID, You know we were doing OK. It was it was making money by the implementation of all the systems, but we really put backyard on the map was one of the hurricanes that came into Houston and we were no power for six days and we made a decision right then that we were going to help the community. So and we were cooking in the parking lot every week. I mean every day and just feeding people and. And it really, when you look back at the history of Backyard, that’s what really put Backyard on the map. And we went to a whole nother level because of our commitment to the community. We started getting involved in all the local charities and then it just kept getting better and better and better. And yeah, and sooner or later it got to a point where Backyard was pretty much running because we had systems in place without me having to do them. The managers would do them. I honestly at that point was coming in, maybe at like 10 or 11 every morning and I would just kind of say hi to the staff. I’d go talk to the lunch regulars. I’d wait till the happy hour regulars came in, talk to them and then I’d go home. My kids were involved in baseball. I wasn’t closing. I wasn’t opening. Even my joke even last night, I don’t even have a key to backyard. I haven’t had a key for years. I don’t even know where one is or if you know if I do, but things were going good and so But then there was a time, like what you just mentioned, where I came back in, I’d opened some other restaurants, and so I wasn’t here all the time. And then I came back in and kind of started really looking around and realizing that, hey, things aren’t as good as I thought they were. There’s a lot of systems not being in place. And I kept asking all my management team, like, hey, what about this? And they go, oh, we don’t do that anymore. Oh, we don’t do that anymore. And I just started kind of spiraling thinking, oh, I need help. I need someone to talk to. And even though I had used your system in the past, we kind of stopped using you because I learned what I needed from you. And I just got to a point to where that system I didn’t need. And I reached back out to you because I was like, I need to talk to someone. I need some guidance and a friend who knows my background, knows what I’ve been through before that can kind of help me back down this path. I think a lot of people, even when they call you now, it’s kind of funny because they’ll call you and you’re probably talking about budgets or spreadsheets and doing that. I think you and I, in how many years we’ve been back together now, this time five years, I think we’ve had one or two calls like that. Most of the time when we call, we’re calling and we’re just talking the business and we’re talking to people and just more or less just talking about what’s going on. Because once I got back with you, And we started putting all that stuff back into place. And it even took it to a whole nother level, as far as my expectations for my team and even doing more things. And I kind of got them all back on path. And so now the two are right there. But even today, like I come in and it’s 30 minutes before this conversation and I kind of walk around and systems are great. Financials are great, prime cost is great, but there’s a lot of other things too that the restaurant, sense of urgency, sense we start with sense of urgency, sense of ownership, eye through detail. And I start walking around even the restaurant today and I start going, what’s this? What’s this? What’s this? Because I don’t come in this one anymore. And next thing I know, I got a whole team walking around following me, doing a little task of stuff that maybe I see because I own it or because I have a better eye through detail. But I don’t know if that’s even a trainable thing. So the one thing I’ve learned is that I don’t think as an owner, you can ever be totally absent from your restaurant. There’s always going to be pieces of you that need to make that visit, that need to come in and kind of put your eye on things. And I’m ready to right now after this morning, I’m ready to redecorate backyard and change color patterns and just give it a fresh look. It’s just kind of funny, the things that you learn over all these years and that you have to stay in your business.
So you reach out, we get back together, and I shared earlier on that I literally looked, you go, you don’t want to give me money. I mean, I don’t know anybody in this world that would, in the right mind would go, hey, I want to give you money. And the other person goes, no, you don’t want to give me your money. But that’s, I’m not lying about that, am I? I’m like, you don’t need me.
No, you did.
So talk about the value of the not being alone part, because you are now a part of my Mastery Plus group, which is the top level of what we get together 3 * a year in Vegas. It is the most amazing community of restaurant owners who have growth mindsets, who give a **** that want to do better, that will openly share and give you anything from a marketing idea to a piece of equipment to advice going, you’re an idiot, yet take the shirt off their back and say, here’s how you do it and even get on an airplane. plane and go visit each other to help with it. Like it’s magical. So you said, part of it was as an independent operator, as a restaurant owner, we don’t have a corporate office. We don’t have somebody to talk to. You also, I think, would agree that you have entrepreneurial friends, heck, your wife owns a steel company, that you could talk business all day long. And the moment you tell somebody who’s not in the restaurant business one of your challenges, and they say, oh, it’s easy, just do this. And you’re like, You don’t understand. When you’re in a room full of restaurant owners, they freaking understand. They’ve walked in your shoes. Talk about that sense of community and why that is so powerful.
Yeah, you are right. Like even all my buddies who are CEOs of companies, if I have a conversation with them about the restaurant business, they don’t even try to give me answers because they’re lost. They have no clue what I’m talking about. And that’s what the best thing about being in the mastery group is 1, not only those trips to Vegas where we can actually see each other in person and hang out and it’s great conversations and you bring in good speakers. And every time I go back, I go back with 10 to 15 pages of notes of things that I need to get done. Sometimes it’s not even over something that you talked about, but you spring an idea in my head and I start writing them down. I constantly, every time I’m with you, I constantly carry these little yellow pads because I’m just writing things down on things I need to do and things I need to make better. But the best part about it all is that group, those are all my friends. Yeah. Even though we have the Zoom calls and we get on and we have conversations once a month, but we’re texting each other, throughout the weeks and just checking on each other. And if I have an issue with one thing, we’re sending messages to each other and it’s good to have like that little group and say, hey, I’m stumped. I’m stumped. I can’t fix this problem. You put it out there and say, hey, guys, what would you do? Give me some ideas. And then immediately everyone starts pouncing and giving you some suggestions. And like, that was the one thing that I didn’t have before. And it was the one reason why I really did go back to you was so I could get that feeling of community and that ability to have an opportunity to get some information from some people in the business. I mean, I look at, you say how long I’ve been in the business, but then I look at some of the younger, I say kids, but they’re not kids, like the Avery’s and the Jonathan’s and they come to the meetings and they make me feel so stupid. because they’re coming with all these ideas and all these things that they’re doing outside of the restaurant. I’m like going, how do they have time to do this? But it’s amazing how you still learn so much every time you get on a call or every time you get, you know, we’re in Vegas. It’s endless. I think, I don’t think it’ll ever end. You know, the amount of information that you continue to learn and improve your restaurant.
Well, there’s the point of As a top operator, you always have to be learning. You have to learn and then you got to share it with your management team because if you’re the only one who knows, then you’re a prisoner because you’re the only one who knows how to do it. You’re the only one who will do it. So it’s a two-way St. But with that said, when we talk about the Mastery Plus group in itself, yeah, I’ll speak or I’ll bring in a speaker and we learn. But the truth of the matter is, often the best ideas have come from each other. They’ve come from other restaurant operators who are in the room. And I look back at all the years that I’ve done mastermind groups like this. I’ve learned so much. Like you can’t help but learn from each other. And it is powerful that I’m in the room. I’m not the expert anymore. It is the power of the room that’s the expert. And it is amazing to see And I often tell you guys how fortunate I am you pay me to be a part of your group because that’s really what it becomes. Let me shift gears a little bit. You have notoriously been coming to my now two-day seminar with team members. You still walk away with notes, which sometimes blows my mind. Why is coming to my two-day seminar with your team so important when We got to admit, we know damn near the same stuff at this point in time. There’s not a whole lot. In fact, there are things that you do that I still learn all the time because I don’t have the pedigree you have as far as experience. However, in the same respect, you’re bringing a team twice a year, damn near twice a year to my two day seminar. Why do you do that?
Well, it’s kind of funny. I look at it back as I compare it to my kids baseball team. I coached my kid in baseball for 10 years, 12 years. Me and my friend, we both coached our sons. And what’s funny about that is that when we used to coach them, we would never coach our children because they didn’t listen to us. We coached each other’s kids. And that’s exactly kind of the same reason why I like bringing managers to your two-day seminar, because I like sitting next to them and you’re talking and then you’ll get on a subject and all of a sudden they’ll look, they’ll just look at me and go, yeah, okay, I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it. I think it’s one of those things where it’s good for them to hear it from someone different to know like, hey, it’s not just me blowing smoke up your *** that this has to be done. we have to count me counts every day before we open to see what’s missing from the day before. It’s not just me being ****. That’s what the best operators in the country do. That’s what they’re hearing at the two day seminar. And so it’s important. And they come back. You know, I had one manager go to the meeting, I think, two years ago. And when he came back, he pretty much looked at me and said, yeah, I can’t do this. This is too much. I think, and so we had to let him go. And so as sad as that was, it was actually a blessing because it was enabled us to move on and not, waste any more time with this manager that just couldn’t catch the systems, couldn’t get on it. But it’s just so, much information, and it’s always amazing for me to go back there too and see people that I don’t know. ask certain questions as if they’ve been running restaurants for five or 10 years and they finally catch up to you and they go to your meeting and the questions they ask, they are like baby steps walking. Whereas we’re like almost, I’m almost in the walker on the other end. You know, they’re just, it’s like where I was back in 2002 or 2003, you know, and that was without computers or really with social media and all this stuff that you could do to really help learn. And there’s just so much. There’s just so much information and so much to do. It’s mind blowing. When you talk about like recipe costing cards. I mean, recipe costing cards, doing that is you’ve got to lock yourself in a room for weeks. And if you think you can do it faster, good luck. But to really do it right, I mean, it’s insane. I mean, it took us months. at some of our locations to get those done right, trying to figure out, hey, what does a teaspoon of garlic powder cost? Things like that. And so, I mean, there’s programs out there that can help. But back when we first started all that, there weren’t. That was a long time ago. And so to go to your meeting and walk out at that point thinking as much that needs to be done, it can be mind blowing. And I think that’s also why it’s also good to get with a group and get some help, have someone else help you do it.
So in a more traditional way, I’d ask somebody, hey, what were your financial changes? What were those things that were coming? That really wasn’t the biggest impact. You had a positive impact on your prime costs and you did make more money as a result of getting back together. But really I want to focus on is what were some of the unexpected shifts for you? Because again, you’re different in the sense that most people I talk to started from ground zero. As you said, they come into a seminar or come into the coaching program and they’re kind of lost and what do I do? And we see these huge transformations in their lives. For you, again, seasoned operator, you needed a kick in the pants. You needed support to know that you weren’t alone. You just needed to be somebody to soundboard am I thinking properly and you were going to get this **** done anyway. So what were some of the unexpected shifts of coming back and working with me again or being in Mastery Plus or going to the seminar? Like what haven’t we talked about?
You know, that’s a good question. I’m not really sure as far as the unexpected shifts. You know, I just know that the The thing that I like the most about it is just the fact that I know being part of the group and being with you, it holds me accountable to do my job and makes me stand up and not just go, hey, I don’t need to do this. It’s like having a teacher. It’s like having a coach. And that’s ultimately my favorite thing. I mean, every time I schedule a call with you, then I know like, okay, I need to make sure I get my **** done before I make my call and be on top of it, as far as staying on top of my budgets or, doing anything I need to do to be prepared. But without you and without the group, I don’t think I would be in the same place. I honestly don’t. I think I would be okay, but I don’t want to be just okay. And that was the difference. The restaurant probably would have been fine if I would have never come back to your group. But knowing now that I’m in the group is made, I mean, like what we’ve done to Creekwood, since bringing Brian and letting him come to the meetings and then bringing Fred and letting him come to the meetings, it is just, it’s amazing. And people ask me all the time and say, well, you know, you’re living in Victoria. I’m living 2 hours from my first two restaurants now. Are they, how are they doing? I was like, they’re doing great. I mean, it’s just amazing. And you look at a situation like even with Backyard, Backyard, the area here, most of the people who used to live where, around Backyard have all moved further west. You know, this used to be the outskirts of Houston. Now I’m like in Houston. It’s, you know, everyone’s moving and the dynamics are changing with the community. And so that can always be a struggle. It’s aging. I mean, we used to get 2,000, 3,000 kids a month. And now we’re getting 600 to 700 because there are no small children as many as there used to be around here. And so with that, you have to stay on top of it. I mean, things are always changing. Whereas Creekwood’s getting, everyone’s out there, everyone’s the kids. And so you have to change your whole mindset. Backyard used to be all kid friendly, still is kid friendly, but then we shifted more to a bar. And so Like I said, it’s never resting on your laurels. You constantly have to be looking at, okay, what’s happening to the crowd? What’s happening to the community? And how do I need to change to make the restaurants better? But again, as far as unexpected shifts, I don’t know if there actually has been really one. I just know that being part of that group keeps me on my path. I don’t want to show up to Vegas being the guy in last place kind of thing. It keeps me on my game.
There is that accountability part as entrepreneurs who holds us accountable. So the group, myself, you know, you’ve got to answer to people. You don’t want to show up in a meeting and go, I didn’t do anything the last three, four months. You know, yeah, I just kind of skimmed. So that’s positive. The other part is You talked about being two hours away from your first two restaurants. How important those two key people are in your life as far as in each restaurant where there are restaurateurs who are like you back when you opened. I have to be in the building. I have to do. And there’s in their brains is like there’s no clear path to this ******** expression that you got to work on your business, not in it. Oh, that’s, you know, everybody says that. But the reality is when you get your systems in place and you train somebody and hold them accountable, give them the training that’s necessary, give them the support. You really don’t have to be there every single day. You can pop in and take a look and keep your standards high. You can pop in, take a look, see what was missed. But you’re not required to take a deposit to the bank. You’re not required to do a recipe costing card. You’re not required to make sure somebody showed up on time. Somebody else is doing that. How long did it take you to get to a point where you had two key people that it was like, this is good.
Oh, wow. I would say probably, I mean, a backyard before it really started till I got to that point. Oh, years, years. You know, because it is all about finding the right person. You know, I had years ago, I had a guy before Fred running backyard and I mean, he was a great guy, but he didn’t want to hold the staff accountable for their jobs. He was, I’m not saying he’s afraid of discipline, but he was afraid to discipline. So the staff was running crazy. Financials were off and I was digging myself in a giant, giant hole financially. And you know, when he left and we started changing things around and saw that, like you said, it’s a pitfall. it’s good, it’s bad, it’s good, it’s bad. And then finally, once Fred got in here and started really getting some of the systems really tuned in, it started picking up. But it’s all about people. I mean, really, in finding the right people that listen, the joke around here is like, what’s the number one task you have each day? And the answer is whatever Mark tells you to do. Like if Mark says something to do it, that task gets moved up to the top of the list. And then you can go back to doing whatever task list you made. But you’d be surprised on how many times it took a while to teach that to people, because that’s what I want to see done when I walk in. But you’re right. Like you don’t have to be in it nowadays. Like you can jump on a computer and see sales and labor and all the financials you can see. I can log in and look at the prime report that’s completed every Monday. Nowadays with social media and all the platforms, you can easily tell how well you’re doing in service because there’s 50,000 avenues out there for people to go to make good or bad comments on you. So you’ll get a gist really, really quick if your service is going downhill because the people will tell you. And nowadays they will tell you while they’re sitting at the table, still eating. without even asking for a manager. They all go online and tell you. So, there’s multiple avenues and ways to tell you how your business is running without you actually having to be there. But like I said before, you still need to come in and pop in and, do a little walkthrough, do a little, inspection and see how everything’s running and see it for yourself and Always try to find ways to make it better. That’s the key thing. You can’t rest on your laurels. You have to continue to improve, whether it’s a design change or change the menu. I mean, at Backyards, we’ve been here 24 years. I probably reprint menus about every 18 months. You always yell at me because I have too many items on the menu here. And so the rule now is you delete 5, you add 2. Delete 5, add 2. In 80 years, I’ll get the menu down to 60 items.
Let me ask you a question. What is life like for you today? From where you started coming back into the restaurants and imposing your will again and getting the systems back in place, What’s life like you for today? And I know personally that it’s not as smooth as you’d like because your wife talked you into buying a third restaurant just a couple years ago and it needed major change. So what’s life like?
Yeah, it’s a little different, you know, like, and it’s funny because when we first moved or even before we moved, my wife was saying, hey, you should open a little burger, you know, beer joint down in Victoria. No, shoot, that’s too much work. I’m in my 50s. I’m on the downward slide. I’m not really working right now. And then all of a sudden, one came for sale. It was a burger beer joint. And I thought, oh, how easy is this? It’s already there. It’s got a staff. It’s got a menu, the building, the decor. I just got to walk in and throw some systems at it. And now two years looking back, when people ask me that, I was like, no, I should have opened my own, honestly. I said, because the one thing, the biggest issue on that is just the change in culture. Like it is very difficult to walk in as an outsider. And I was even from the town. I just moved there. And so here I’m the outsider coming in and trying to convince this entire staff on, hey, we need to do this, we need to do that. And then constantly listening to, well, that’s not how we do things around here. Like, well, that’s how we’re doing it now. So if I had an opportunity to do it, build it from scratch, I could have developed that culture from day one and implemented it. And so that’s, I mean, then they’re getting it, but it’s not as fast as I would like it.
And that’s even true for the people who are embracing systems starting to work with us because they created a culture and now we’re saying, hey, we need to do a system process way. We need to raise the bar and you’re going to get pushback. And I think people have to understand that you’re the owner. If this is what you want done, then you’ve got to train your people. You’ve got to give them the support, but you have to hold them accountable and go, nobody and no longer am I allowed one, two, three employees hold my business back. If you don’t want to be here, you know, we’re going to try and keep you. But if you don’t want to be here, there’s the door. We are not going to stop you because the new person who walks in doesn’t go. That’s not Mark. That’s not how we used to do it here. They just go, okay, yeah, thanks for the opportunity. This is what we do. Okay. And so it is harder to change a company culture, whether you own the place or not, but especially if you came in after and you know, you came in behind somebody else who created a disaster, should I say you walked into a disaster?
I mean, I remember even when I was looking at buying it and I was calling you going, Dave, how we talk about all these restaurants that they don’t do this and they don’t do this. And I go, this is it. This is exactly that restaurant, the one that has zero systems, no training manual, no order guide, no financial responsibility at all, losing a ton of money. it’s just crazy. it’s the conversation I have with my managers now. Every time, if I’m in there and I feel like I’m working a little harder than I should, and I’m maybe doing tasks that I shouldn’t, I pull the managers together and I say, guys, don’t forget, let me tell you a little secret. I don’t want to work here. I just want to own it. I just want to do my owner stuff. I don’t want to do your manager stuff. And so let’s get moving, pick up the pace.
Yeah. Do me a favor. We’ve covered a lot. And I want people to understand that you came through the coaching program when you came back, the RTI program before you got to Mastery Plus. So you’ve seen it from start to finish and advanced. What would you tell somebody who’s been circling for years or just discovered what we do here at my company? What would you tell somebody thinking about? Should I take the leap? Should I even join this thing?
I think no question. I mean, absolutely no question. Yeah, you should jump in. You know, ’cause even in our discussions that we’ve had today, I mean, even after 40 years of being in the business, I still, I still show up to every meeting in your group as a student, not as a mentor, not as a leader. I mean, I feel like I’m a student and my ears are open, my pens fully ink, my papers clean. I’m ready to write **** down that I learn and I learn stuff every single time. You know, it’s I think it’s probably the most important thing, to be a part of a group. And I mean, the way to improve your business is to learn and make it better. and that’s the one thing that your seminars do. I mean, it’s just mind-blowing. I think over the years I’ve taken maybe, I think we’ve sent like 8 or 10 managers and they’ll tell you right now when they come back, you know, that it’s just It’s it helped them so much because one again, they got to hear they got to hear it from someone else. But 2, there’s things that they even hear there that they come back and they implemented that maybe we haven’t even implemented yet. And so it’s a great experience. It’s well worth the visit. Definitely.
Awesome. I appreciate you doing this with me. Was there anything before we go, something we didn’t talk about you really wanted to share, a favorite book or quote, something you want to leave people with?
I will tell you the probably the most important thing that even with learning the systems and all that is trying to get some type of time management system put into your your program. I did a time management book a long, time ago, 25 years ago. And I still to this point, kind of run that program to try to stay on pace as far as don’t just show up every day and just work the day and then come home, or don’t make a task list. And then at the end of the day, write down what you did do which it wasn’t on your task list, just so you make it feel important, but that whole process of being organized. There is a recent book I read called Eat the Frog that was, it’s a quick, easy read and it was really good. And it more or less teaches you how to get organized. Because like I said, even though you have systems in place, if you don’t come to work every day or not come to work every day, but if you If you don’t have, if you’re not organized on what needs to be done, then it’s going to be a struggle. So that would be my biggest lesson to young restaurateurs as far as, somehow stay on path and get organized with how you spend your day. It may be two hours a day, but make sure those two hours a day are really, you know, you commit to staying on schedule and get your **** done.
Amen. Well said, my friend. Mark, I want to thank you for doing this with me. Hopefully we’ll do it again soon, but I know I’m going to see you on a coaching call, a one-on-one or in Vegas sooner than later.
I’ll see you in May. My son’s actually coming to the meeting in May. So he’s excited.
Awesome. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate you.
Thank you, Dave.
Ready to take the next step towards achieving restaurant prosperity, freedom for the daily grind, and the financial success you deserve? Book a discovery call with Ryan James to learn about our group coaching program. Ryan will guide you through how our program can transform your restaurant and help you achieve the prosperity and freedom you’ve been striving for. Click the link in the description below or visit dsp.coach/talk-to-Ryan to schedule your call now. Hey, that was an awesome episode. I want to thank you for taking the time 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 ***.