Create Predictable Restaurant Profits with this Coaching Framework

If working harder fixed restaurant problems you’d already be rich and retired. The problem is effort usually isn’t the issue. It’s a lack of structure. The good news is the structure is well within your reach. Let’s walk through the coaching framework I use to help restaurant owners create predictable profit and real freedom without living at the restaurant.

The lie restaurant owners believe

There’s a lie baked into restaurant culture, and it sounds like this:

“I should be able to figure it out myself.”

Restaurant owners tell themselves the restaurant industry is common sense. You should be able to figure out food cost. You should be able to figure out labor. You should be able to train managers and hold them accountable. It’s easy, right? Just put in a system, whatever that means.

But that belief keeps you guessing and reacting.

Here’s how it plays out: you guess at a solution then you implement it. When it doesn’t work, which is almost always when you’re doing it alone, you try again. You fail. You try again. You fail.

Every failure has a cost: time and money. Your time and your money.

The Restaurant Prosperity Formula

Profitable restaurants follow a formula. I’ve been teaching it since 2003 and it works because it’s built on fundamentals, not luck.

The Restaurant Prosperity Formula is:

• Leadership
• Systems
• Training
• Accountability
• Taking action

Let me break it down the way I teach it.

Leadership comes first

Leadership is becoming the leader your restaurant needs.

I’ll be blunt: the number one reason most restaurants fail is lack of leadership. It’s not food cost. It’s not labor. It’s not location. It’s leadership.

If you don’t lead, someone else will or nobody will and chaos wins.

Systems make success repeatable

There’s a system, a process, a way of doing anything and everything in your restaurant. Your way.

Common sense doesn’t run restaurants because there is no such thing as common sense. What feels obvious to you is not obvious to your team.

When you build systems, you create something that’s trainable, teachable and measurable. It becomes the standard your managers can follow and the tool you can use to hold people accountable.

Most importantly, systems help your people get the results your restaurant needs without you having to be the answer to everything.

Training turns systems into results

Without training, who cares about systems?

You can have the best process in the world but if nobody knows it, uses it or understands why it matters, it’s worthless.

This is where most restaurant owners get stuck because you have to admit something that’s uncomfortable:

I don’t know what I don’t know.

That’s not a weakness. That’s reality. The path forward is to go find the answers then teach them to your managers.

Because if you’re the only one who knows how things work, you’re a prisoner to your business.

Accountability is where most restaurants break down

It doesn’t matter what kind of leader you are. It doesn’t matter what kind of systems you have. It doesn’t matter what training you put in place.

If you’re not willing to hold people accountable to those systems, nothing happens.

Accountability means your managers are answerable for the results of their choices. You taught them their job. You taught them how to do it. They decide whether they do the job. Then they’re answerable for the outcome.

Did they do it or did they not?

This is critical. Without accountability, you don’t have a business. You have a hope and a prayer.

Taking action is the separator

My father used to say, “Ideas are cheap. The people who put them into action are priceless.”

It doesn’t matter what you learn if you don’t implement it. It doesn’t matter what you implement if you don’t make sure people are doing it.

This is where restaurant owners either change everything or stay stuck.

Why coaching makes the formula work

This is the part most restaurant owners miss: coaching creates accountability outside of your head.

Once you have systems, training and standards, coaching becomes the tool that keeps it alive. You’re teaching people what their job is, how to do it, how well it should be done and by when.

You’re also getting people on board with your why: why you’re making changes, how those changes affect the guest, your team, and you and your family.

That’s leadership.

Coaching also challenges blind spots and forces execution. When you have a system and something isn’t working, you don’t just treat the symptom. You find the real problem, then you fix the problem with the right system.

That’s power.

Because then your managers bring you solutions and data instead of drama, and you’re not the only person who has to answer everything.

Freedom is the byproduct

I talk a lot about restaurant prosperity: profit, stability and the financial freedom you deserve.

But freedom isn’t the goal.

Freedom is the byproduct of you becoming the leader your restaurant needs, putting systems in place, learning what you don’t know and teaching others, holding people accountable and taking action.

And here’s the final shift I want you to take with you:

Asking for help isn’t weakness. It’s how professionals win. 

This is the exact coaching framework I've been teaching restaurant owners since 2003 to create predictable restaurant profits.

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