Restaurant Owner Success Depends on This

Hey there restaurant pros, it’s David Scott Peters and welcome to episode 25 of the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I’ve been coaching restaurant owners since 2003 and the Restaurant Prosperity Formula is based on what the most successful restaurant owners I’ve worked with do on a daily basis to achieve their success. The basic premise of the formula centers around prosperity, freedom from your restaurant and the financial freedom you deserve. To achieve prosperity, you have to follow a very simple formula made-up of leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Today’s topic centers around what I see as entrepreneur’s Achilles heel, holding oneself accountable.

I’m about to share with you what I’m seeing as a game changer with my members. And truth be told, it wasn’t even my idea. So if you’re struggling holding yourself accountable to what needs to be done in your business on a daily basis, then you’ll want to listen to this episode. Let’s get started. I want to talk to you about the Achilles heel for most entrepreneurs. In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say almost 99 out of 100 restaurant owners suffer from this. The challenge of holding oneself accountable. To hold yourself accountable. Does it make sense? What does that mean? Well, think about it this way. You held yourself accountable and you were really good at it when you had a dream to open your restaurant. You had this dream in your mind.

You put everything together, from uniforms and music to flatware to what’s on the walls and the types of tables you have, whether you have linens or paper. The menu, how you took just items from scratch, put love into them to create these incredible dishes, to communicate with your team what your vision is and training them. Your new customers sharing with your vision and getting them to buy into your new concept. And having the opportunity to pull this all together to create memories for people on a daily basis, it’s just powerful. It’s so freaking amazing. Put you on Cloud9. You were able to hold yourself accountable from getting architectural plans to finding location to doing all the things I just went through.

You know what it takes to be successful. You’re capable of it. You’ve done it. The challenge is when your day becomes the same every single day. Because once the development of your concept, your restaurant is done, the truth is success in the restaurant business is executing that the same way every single day, the same exact way. But as entrepreneurs, we’re not built that way. That’s why we have managers in our building to make sure things get done the same way every single day. So what do you do? What do the most successful restaurant owners I know and have worked with, what do they do? Well, let’s focus on that and we’ll get back to holding yourself accountable. So I’ve got something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula.

Heck, you’re listening to the Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast. You might have read my book, Restaurant Prosperity Formula, found on Amazon or any other bookseller. You may have listened to my YouTube videos or watched them. You may have seen me speak at a trade show or maybe at a training for one that I’ve put on. Maybe you’ve read an article I’ve put out there. The truth is, the Restaurant Prosperity Formula, I’ve been promoting it for at least the last two years pretty solid because it was one of those things that At my old company, I had a mastermind group of 20 of the most successful restaurant owners, 22 of them, we’d meet on a quarterly basis with each other.

And the most amazing people in the world, they would say, hey, you’re an idiot, but then take the shirt off their back and help their fellow member. See, the most powerful thing isn’t what I teach. It’s what you all share with each other because you still walk the circle. I’m the systems guy. I’m the numbers guy. Heck, I’m going to help you change your life. But the truth of the matter is, you’re the one who has to do the work. And so you’ve got to have the right mindset. right? You’ve got to have a growth mindset. You’ve listened to me talk about this. A growth mindset says, hey, here’s a challenge. Nothing’s going to stop me. I can outlearn anything. I can outwork anything. I can get through this challenge.

Whereas too many restaurant owners have that fixed mindset that says, oh my gosh, there’s an obstacle. Woe is me. Let me just fail. Let me just stop. Let me not take action. Let me just let it crush me. But that’s not you. So the truth matter is you are more similar to the successful restaurant owners I’ve worked with in the past and the ones I work with today. I’ve been coaching independent restaurants since 2003. I’ve seen a lot and I’ve learned a lot every single day along the way that you have taught me. And that’s where the restaurant prosperity formula came from. Restaurant prosperity is freedom from your restaurant and the financial freedom you deserve.

And I will tell you over the years, I’ve been doing this since 2003, I’d focus on prime costs, right? Numbers, numbers, numbers, systems, numbers, numbers, numbers, profitability, profitability, oh yeah, and managers, and then you. And as I put this book out, as 16 years of experience coaching independent restaurants at the time before the book came out, was really hashed together, I realized the major change that I needed to make as a coach. It’s not about me. It’s not about my systems. It’s not about my training. It’s about you. It’s about getting you restaurant prosperity, freedom from your restaurant and the financial freedom you deserve. See, they flipped.

I realized today that if I can get you the ability to leave your restaurant, to have time with your friends and family, to be able to have a life, then you are making the money you deserve. And the way to get there is to follow the restaurant prosperity formula. Again, proven, time tested, owner after owner after owner. Those successful, those who work with me that are successful, understand the formula starts with leadership. You must be the leader your restaurant needs. Now we’re not all born leaders. That’s the truth of the matter. And that’s one of the reasons why systems are so powerful. They make up for our weaknesses.

You might be that numbers person, the accountant type that’s impatient and runs things by the numbers and wants people to have common sense. But don’t talk about what? Service and cleanliness and training and all the things necessary. You might be that social worker, that the giver I call them. that is so enthralled with giving your guests the best experience. It’s all about your guests, external and internal. Taking care of people, like to be the center of attention, creating memories, training, doing all the things that make a great guest experience, but forgetting about the numbers and systems and budgets.

And the truth is, when we put systems in place, they make up for the weaknesses for both these types of leaders, making sure that They can learn the skill sets to become the captain, the leader the restaurant needs, who looks at numbers and training, who looks at systems and holds people accountable and gives people great memories, all the things we want. So systems are extremely important. So as we’re a leader, we become the leader we need, we have a plus symbol, then we have a division symbol, and above and below are what we need starts off with systems. Systems are critical. There’s a system, a process, a way to doing anything and everything in your business your way. Now I get it.

As an entrepreneur, you don’t want to sit in front of a computer and type up your systems. Well, then the next time you train somebody how to do something, make sure they document it step by step by step by step. Then they go type it up in a word processing program and bring you the paper and you can redline the **** out of it. but you don’t have to do it. Or grab this darn thing, call the cell phone out of your back pocket, a $1,400 to $2,000 4K video camera. Have them record you doing it, have them document it, bring it to you. Now we have a video and documentation. See, we can make it easier, but you have to have a system, your system, your process, your way. That’s why the chains kick our ***.

There is only one way to do things in their businesses, their way. How about your way? Then we have a plus symbol, and next to that is training. The most successful restaurant owners I’ve ever worked with, to this day, all understand they don’t know what they don’t know. They’re not so smart that I don’t need to learn anything more. I know everything. And you know, they’re the ones that usually battle me on Facebook. Oh, you don’t understand. Oh, we’re different. No, you don’t understand. I learn every single day from you all. But the truth of the matter is, These owners, successful restaurant owners, don’t know what they don’t know, so they go out and get it. Maybe I’ll see you here.

I’m actually recording this in my hotel room right now in Miami Beach, Florida, because I’m about to speak at CaterSource. Just 2 weeks ago, trade shows started going up again. Maybe it was 3 weeks ago. I spoke at nightclub and bar to a huge room of almost 300 people one day and 200 the next. These are the people that I connect with because these are the people that understand they must get out of their business and learn. Go to trade shows, watch YouTube videos, read books, read the trade magazines, reach out to other people who know what they’ve done, be successful, model what they’ve done, learn from their mistakes.

But see, the most successful restaurant owners I’ve worked with not only understand they don’t know what they don’t know and they learn it, they go out and capture the data, what they’ve realized is If their managers don’t know how to do it, who cares? They become their savior. They become the best superhero in their restaurant that there could be. Because if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself. Becoming a prisoner because you’re the only one who knows how to do it. That’s got to change. So you train your management team. Now, underneath that division symbol with those with systems and training, right, systems plus training on the top below is accountability. And I want to talk about this in two different lights.

First, in the way it is for my book and for what I deem the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. Accountability. It does not matter if you have systems. It doesn’t matter if you have training. If you’re not willing to hold your management team accountable to those systems, who cares? Do you understand? Who cares? It will go away. Systems will go away just like that. You must hold people accountable to your systems. Now I change that word accountability to answerability. If I teach you what your job is, how to do it, how well it should be done, more importantly by when, and you demonstrate back that you got it, then you know your obligation, your J-O-B.

And then you make a decision, do your job or don’t do your job, and you’re ultimately answerable for the resulting consequences. So it’s not a big ugly, I’m going to hold you accountable, it’s answerable. But notice there’s systems and training. And then the accountability piece can be inserted once they demonstrate they got it. Now after this part of the formula, there’s another plus symbol and it’s called taking action. We’re going to get back to accountability about you in just one second. Plus taking action. This is critical. Taking action is extremely important. I believe it so much that my company name is Take Action Enterprises, LLC. I’ve got a bracelet, a ring. I’ve got a car license plate. It says, take action.

My father had a phrase that said, ideas are cheap. It’s the people who put them to action that are priceless. See, without action, there’s nothing. Think about when you started your business. You had an idea. Maybe you were out drinking with a friend and wrote it on a cocktail napkin and it’s still framed in your office. You made that idea a reality. You had to take action. From selecting a location to architect plans to designing a kitchen to designing a menu to designing uniforms to designing the inside to creating an experience for your guests and your employees and getting everyone to buy into it and just the magic of being able to what? Make sure that people can have an incredible experience to create a memory.

And that’s extremely fun. So you know how to take action. And now I want to take you back to, because that’s the magic sauce, doesn’t matter what you learn, doesn’t matter what you do if you don’t take action. Well, now we add, go back to that accountability piece, and that’s the entrepreneurial Achilles heel. See, you are capable of taking action and holding yourself accountable. You opened your restaurant, maybe opened multiple locations, maybe different concepts. maybe multiple businesses. You’re an entrepreneur, you know what it takes to be successful, and it starts with taking action. I’m not worried about you. What I am worried about you is when the day-to-day becomes mundane and the same every single day.

the truth is running a restaurant successfully means executing the same thing the same way every single day, the same way every single day. And that’s where entrepreneurs, we start to get bored. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, marketing idea, new menu, right? Anything that can take you away from doing the same thing every single day the same exact way. But that’s the truth of success in the restaurant business, creating the consistent, a consistent experience for your guests. So I would say that’s why we need managers in our building in the 1st place. But what about you? What about you and accountability? What happens? What do you need to be accountable to hold yourself accountable? And I know that’s tough.

See, I was an athlete in high school and in college. In fact, I was a scholarshipped D1 rower, sat on my *** and went backwards on the Muddy Charles. I did not achieve to the level that I wanted to. I fell way short. Now, I did row with five people that went on to become Olympians, but that was my dream too. And I can tell you that when I had a coach who told me what to do every single day, my body was very different. I was a good 20, 30, maybe even 40 pounds lighter at one point in time. condition, 9% body fat. I was a tuned athlete. Now the truth is I know what to do today and I’ve started rowing again.

In fact, here at CaterSource, I’m in Miami Beach, Florida and I reached out to the Miami Beach Rowing Club and I was able to go out on a single today. And the truth is they had a coach and the coach came up, talked a little bit about my fundamentals and I haven’t had a coach in rowing in 34 years. And truth is, I loved it because I had feedback. I had that touch. truth is, when we don’t have that anymore, we end up like me, 30, 40 pounds heavier than I was in my collegiate days. And it took me years to get myself back out on the water and rowing on a consistent basis. I had to find that passion again. So how quickly it can go away.

So the fact of the matter is what you need as an entrepreneur, if you don’t have a coach and you’re holding yourself accountable, you need four very specific things in place to hold yourself accountable. The #1 is a budget. Without a budget, how do you know where your numbers should be? Are we grabbing false numbers from restaurant trade publications or because we saw somebody on TV say the markup for food is 3 times markup? It’s all ********. It’s all wrong.

Until we create your budget for your business and we know whether your debt service is too high, your occupancy is too high, or heck, you just survived COVID and you’ve got to dig yourself out of a hole, it’s going to change where your prime costs are going to be, where your labor costs, your food costs, where you need to be for your restaurant to be successful. So that brings in the second piece is creating your plan for success. and that system’s implementation. As you build that budget, we might decide that in month one, we’re going to go from a 38% food cost and we’re going to stay there in month one, but we’re going to train the key item tracker and waste tracker.

Key item tracker prevents theft on 5 to 15 items counted on a shift by shift basis. Waste tracker, we’re tracking waste. ******* mistakes that we don’t make them the same. tomorrow and the next day and the next day. We see it today, we fix it today. And then a system I teach called the Restaurant Checkbook Guardian that tells you how much money you can spend by category, bottle beer, draft beer, wine, liquor, food, that we can give up ordering without giving up our checkbook, ultimately holding people accountable to our budget. And that can drop your food costs two to three points within 30 to 60 days. So in 30 days, we’re going to hold our managers accountable. No, we’re going to teach them in the first 30 days.

Then in period 2, we go from that 38% food cost to what, 35. And then we re-engineer a menu and so on. We create the plan and when those changes are going to happen. And that’s extremely important because now I’ve got a plan to follow, not just, boy, we need to change. Boy, I need to change. Without a plan, how the hell do you know where you’re going? Number 3, you’ve got to have training for your managers. Remember the Restaurant Prosperity Formula, learning? Well, that learning is for you and then you train your managers. Training on your system, your process, your way, getting things done to your step-by-step way. And that’s a game changer. And #4, you need to put systems in place to hold your managers accountable.

Now that could be as simple as checklists and making sure that checklists are being done on a day-to-day basis and not holding the line employees accountable, but the managers accountable. Willing to write them up. Yes, I am, because I’m going to get rid of that AM PM blues ******** when you walk in the morning and go, oh, they didn’t do this and they didn’t do that and they didn’t do this and you’re ****** *** and behind. I don’t want that to happen for you. So we put together these checklists, we hold our managers accountable to these checklists, and things start to change. The beginning of training, it’s that your standards are met and the guest has the same guest experience every single time.

Well, then we have systems for budgeting, we have systems for purchasing, we have systems for scheduling, we have systems for everything that you do in your business. And by having those systems in place and checking in on those systems, you can hold your managers accountable. But this last one, That 4th one, systems to hold your management team accountable, is where most restaurant owners fall down. If I were to go, gosh, 8 out of 10 restaurant owners that are on the verge of being the most successful they could possibly be, most are leaders. Most have systems at some level know they need to learn and put more in place so they learn. They take action. Without a doubt, they take action.

The problem is they go back to their restaurants and people say, no, we’re different. No, And you go, oh, I tried to get my managers to do it, which I don’t understand. You sign the front of the check, they sign the back of the check. So the weakness falls right into accountability. And that bleeds into self-accountability as well. So I want to share with you A few weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas. It was the very first trade show since the pandemic hit. And it was just magic, nightclub and bar show. And I love that show to begin with. But I’m going to tell you, it was really magical. You could tell people were so excited to be out of the restaurants, their bars, their nightclubs. They were in to learn.

And I did a three hour speech on budgeting, creating, putting the right systems in place, all the things we’re kind of talking about. But the truth of the matter is, As I go through that, I knew I was overwhelming people. I want to give you everything. I want to give you the kitchen sink. I want to give you everything. Heck, if you read my book, Restaurant Prosperity Formula, What Successful Restaurateurs Do, you’re going to find that it can be overwhelming. It’s not a textbook, but it is a roadmap to your success. What’s the difference between reading that book and actually taking action and putting those systems in place? Well, ultimately it’s self-accountability.

And so I can tell you, when we were at nightclub and bar, We had a hospitality suite and we had members there, past members, current members. I had other speakers and some potential people who wanted to get to know me and my team and other restaurant owners. We had a great time. Well, such a great time that I might have hurt myself a little bit that at night two in Las Vegas, 30, but we thought we’d have another small get together in the suite and only one member was able to make it. They were out to dinner, they were going to clubs, they were doing things. And Brian and I sat there and we talked probably for a couple hours. And he talked about the things he loved about the coaching program. He talked about the things he loved about me.

and his daughter, who’s his implementer, and how his life has been changing. It was truly a heartwarming moment for me because I know what I’ve put together is making a change in somebody’s life. And I got to have a two-hour one-on-one conversation with him. One of the things he said at the end, he’s like, David, you know what I’d like you to do on the group coaching calls? I’m like, Brian, no. He says, I want you to add a piece in there to hold us accountable. I want you to get us and say, what are you going to do before the next call? And I understood that because in my elite group, my mastermind group, we would kind of do that, but it would be for on a quarterly basis. Now I am restarting.

In fact, November, my mastery plus group, mastermind group is starting. And we’ve already almost half full because of the members that are moving up into that area. And these are, again, just like my past members, they fit in the restaurant prosperity formula. Magical people. But the truth is, he reminded me of what we would do in a quarterly meeting, but that’s a lot of time in between. And so he said, hey, you need to help hold us more accountable, especially in front of our peers. there’s nothing better than peer accountability other than a coach, me holding you personally accountable. But that’s one-on-one. You can come up with excuses why you didn’t do something.

But when you say what you’re going to do in front of your peers, that’s solid. So a few calls ago, we started implementing something that I believe is a real game changer. And it wasn’t mine. It was Brian’s. All I did was come up with two questions that we now finish our call with. Imagine looking on a Zoom screen just full of restaurant owners and implementers. They’re managers who get **** done to help them implement the systems because as owners, we’re not the ones to do. Our role is to lead. But here are the two questions. The first question is, what is the one thing you’re going to accomplish by our next call? Now, these are weekly group coaching calls. What’s the one thing you’re going to accomplish by our next call.

So you’re now stating in front of your peers what you’re going to do. Now, it doesn’t matter if it’s a personal goal, doesn’t matter if it’s a business goal, it’s implementing A system. It’s a thing that you’re going to accomplish. Now, I follow it up with one very specific question that adds on to it. What, if anything, is standing in your way? I want you to tell me the excuse why you’re not going to get something done in front of everybody else because we now remove that excuse. You can’t use that excuse. See, you said either nothing’s going to stand in my way or this is the potential and now you’re aware of it, can’t stand in your way. Now I’m going to tell you why we teach systems and we help each other and we do all these things.

And I as a coach, kind of like my coach when I was rowing, told me what to do, exactly how to do it, held me accountable to it. And that’s what I do with my members. There’s nothing more powerful than that self-accountability. And that self-accountability is much easier to do when you’ve done it in front of your peers. So whether it’s you with your management team, your spouse, your business partners, You need to be looking at yourself on a week-to-week basis and say, what am I going, what’s the one thing I’m going to accomplish this week and what’s standing in my way? What, if anything, is standing in my way to achieve that? Now I get it. You got a list of 10, 20, 30 things. You want to get them all done. But pick that one thing.

By gosh, that one thing. Because often we focus too much on the things that we don’t get done. In fact, I’m about to have dinner with two of my members, a husband, wife, Jonathan and Brianna tonight here in Miami Beach. I’m excited about it. I really, really love having one-on-ones with people, spending that very, I don’t know, intimate time. There’s nothing but just us talking about your business, your life, your kids, maybe even a little about me. It’s really about you, but Hey, you ask me questions, I answer. Maybe you learn from my experiences. Really magical. But I can tell you one of the biggest things that I love doing with this couple is reminding them what they’ve done extremely well, that they are the ****.

Meaning, They are so successful and they came from nothing and they keep accomplishing more and more and more. But every time we get on a coaching call, one-on-one call, they talk about what didn’t happen. And I’m going to tell you, like other restaurant owners, as successful as they are, their Achilles heel is the accountability piece. And some of it is the self-accountability to get things done, holding managers accountable to get things done. So by adding this little self-accountability exercise, every restaurant owner, every restaurant owner or manager for that matter, you can have exactly what you want. You can have the restaurant of your dreams.

You can achieve restaurant prosperity, freedom of your restaurant and the financial freedom you deserve. But you can’t do it if you don’t follow the formula. And a big missing piece for too many is accountability. And while I focus a lot on holding your managers accountable, you need to look inward. How can you hold yourself accountable? Whether it’s joining, say my group coaching program or another coach’s program. Or it’s taking charge of your own life and making sure you get those major things done. It starts by asking yourself, what’s the one thing you’re going to do? What’s the one thing you’re going to accomplish? by this time next week. And what, if anything, is standing in your way?

If you want to take your business to the next level, follow the restaurant prosperity formula, make accountability a priority, but more importantly, holding yourself accountable is critical to your success. 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 three, 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 ***.

If you’re tired of not being able to leave your restaurant because no one else knows how to run it, I want to make sure it doesn’t have to be that way. You can leave your restaurant. It is possible to build a team of people who know how you want the restaurant to run. With these trained and responsible people in place, you can give yourself time away. What would you do if you had time away from your restaurant? Would you sleep better? Would your relationships improve? Would you feel more relaxed? These are all things you deserve to experience as a business owner. It’s why we own our own businesses.

If you would like to learn how to own a restaurant that doesn’t depend on you to be successful, click the link in the description to watch a free training course that teaches you exactly what you have to do. Also, be sure to subscribe to get my weekly tips and watch these two videos to get more information and guidance for running a successful restaurant.