This Restaurant Owner Transformed His Life with Restaurant Systems    

Hey there restaurant pros, it’s David Scott Peters and welcome to episode 48 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 achieving prosperity, freedom for your restaurant and the financial freedom you deserve. To achieve prosperity, you have to follow a very specific formula made-up of leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Today’s topic centers around the story of 1 restaurant owner who changed his life for the better through learning to tie all of his systems together, but more importantly, that by adding management, he was able to get his life back and still make the money he deserved. Now I want to tell you about our guest today, Matt Jacobs, owner of Ben Franklin’s Taproom Grill in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Matt, his dad, and brothers opened a convenience store about six years ago with a small amount of food. But due to the state of Pennsylvania changing some of the laws, it resulted in a lot of competition that was created almost overnight. So they decided to go full service restaurant, go for the business side being the restaurant instead of convenience. After spending about two, three years mudding through not knowing what to do, Matt started on a path to make real change in his business, to take control. Listen in as he shares with us the incredible changes he made and how he got his life back. But first, a word from our sponsor. This episode is being brought to you by Repeat Returns. If you’re a restaurant owner of a medium to high volume independent restaurant, multi-unit or franchise operator, and you’re looking for a proven and realistic solution to attract, grow and retain customers, then you need to visit Repeat Returns. Repeat Returns is a modern marketing platform created by a restaurant owner for restaurant owners. It studies each customer’s habits and patterns, predicts the most profitable outcome for your restaurant every single day, and deploys the marketing to make that happen. You’ll never lift a finger. To see if Repeat Returns is right for you, visit repeatreturns.com forward slash DSP. Matt, I’m so excited to have you and I really appreciate you joining me today.
I’m happy to be here.
Excellent. Well, you are really somebody who’s kicked some *** in my program you have made huge change you had systems we’ll talk about that and you had to tie things together and really make huge change and I joked with you as you went through the program that you didn’t want to follow the program you did lots of extra stuff you went ahead so do me a favor before we get started tell people about your restaurant a little bit about your partnership with family and kind of paint a picture.
Yeah so We opened our restaurant, so I’m partners with my dad and then I have two brothers involved. And we opened approximately six years ago. We actually started out as more of a convenience store, six-pack shop with a small food menu. And I’m in Pennsylvania. They changed some of the state laws and it created a lot more competition for us. So we decided to go full-fledged restaurant. And with that, we had no idea what we were getting into as far as running a full restaurant. And so after about two to three years of muddling through the mud, we decided to start actually looking into research on how to actually run a restaurant correctly. And that leads us to where we are today, about a year later after starting that process.
So talk a little bit about what some of your challenges were as you started that process. Like what was it you were looking to fix? What was keeping you up at night?
So our biggest problem is we were there every day. We were working every day. I have a full-time job as a physical therapist on top of the restaurant. My dad runs a heating and air conditioning business on top of the restaurant. So we were looking for more of a freedom from the restaurant so that we can still continue to have lives outside of our multiple jobs we have going on. So that’s what started the search and that’s what allowed us to get to where we are today.
So talk a little bit about you’re in the process. You added certain things from R365 and other programs. Talk about that progression of you’re on a journey to try and create the life you want, not just a business that makes money, but really have some time for yourself and for your young family. What was that process? How did you flow through adding systems to your business before we started to work together?
So in December, January, so late 2020, early 2021, I found a website called restaurantowner.com, found some systems on there, started implementing some of them, but it was kind of sporadic. I didn’t have the main gear to get all the systems turning at once. With restaurantowner.com, I heard of Restaurant 365 for accounting and software purposes. So I started that process, building out the Restaurant 365 system back in February through April 2021. And then with that, along the way, I ended up started listening to a couple different podcasts. I heard Matt Plapp’s podcast. He’s our marketing guy. And then Eric Cacciatore’s podcast. And I kept hearing your name pop up. David Scott Peters, you got to talk to him. And when we finally signed up with Matt Plapp’s marketing team, he actually sent us your book as a free signup gift for signing up for his program. And when I read it, I read it cover to cover in about a day and a half because I knew I was missing something. Our lives were getting a little bit easier, a little bit easier. But it wasn’t quite there yet to where I feel like we could say, hey, we finally made it. So I read the book cover to cover. I fell in love with it. And then I signed up with you guys. And I think it was September 2021. So. So.
So you really went on the right path. I mean, Jim and Joe at restaurant.com, top-notch guys, great site, huge amounts of information that often I joke with them every now and then when I talk with them about how they have so much information that the challenge is, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you may not find it, but it’s all there. And I always talk to people and say, you’re kind of silly not to belong to restauranthunter.com. And Jim’s been doing this probably about five years longer than I have. And I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years. So great site. Then you find your way to R365. And the software is nothing wrong with jumping into software, but it’s not a magic pill. You know, it takes work to set up. And it’s just a kind of a a tool, but if you don’t know what numbers you need to grab or you’re not putting the right numbers in, it doesn’t always give you what you need. Marketing is always a great thing because we always want to increase sales, but the key is can we make the amount of money we deserve on those sales coming in? So it’s really interesting to see your progression. It was a path to success. You know, we talk about in our group much about the fixed mindset versus growth mindset. fixed mindset people say there’s a problem in front of me. This is the card’s been dealt with. You know, heck, it was the government’s fault. It was my vendor’s fault, my employees, my customers. Whereas somebody with a growth mindset has the same challenges, but man, I can out learn it. I can out think it. I can out spend it. I can out like you will find a way to make it work. And that’s what I loved about working with you is there was never, there’s a never this is as good as it gets kind of attitude. There’s always like there’s another way. So I appreciate when you grabbed the book and said I read it to cover to cover in a day and a half or whatever, because that is really the program. It’s the step by step. So what was the difference between reading the book and saying, you know, I need to sign up with David and work with his program and what we’re doing?
The book was good. I just wanted the guidance to just get me there. I mean, I was already working on restructuring our business for eight months at this point and I was just overwhelmed with how much work actually needed done and I needed the structure to tell me you need to do this now and then you need to do this next and then just continually to move on. The book gets you going that way but I just said you know what I’m going all in I believe that he can help me do this and that’s what made me want to sign up and then also after I met with you in the introductory call you know you spoke about an implementer and needing an implementer and I thought that was a great idea to have one so that also helped me persuade me to sign up for the class because it helped me learn to delegate to other people.
So let’s talk about that process because that’s big because I joke about it. I suck. I create work. I mean, the fact of the matter is you already created a bunch of work. You already started the motion, maybe not necessarily getting the benefits of all the work that was going in, but you were primarily the guy doing everything. Is that correct? That’s a fair statement.
Correct.
So now you’re working a full-time job as a physical therapist. You’re coming and running your family business and it’s a full-time job and taking things over as far as trying to restructure the business to operate more like a business. You know, as you tell your story, as you go from packaged good to full service restaurant, I mean, that’s kind of a strange, if you will, path for most people. You know, they think restaurant going into it and you kind of guided your way in, which meant more headaches came, more challenges, more systems, more everything. So now you decide to come with me because you read the book and you said, okay, I’m going to paraphrase here. You tell me if I’m right or wrong. It’s you knew you could do this on your own, but you technically buy speed and it’s that accountability part that kind of makes the journey go a little faster. Would that be accurate?
Correct. Yes.
So now talk about, in our discovery call, I tell people, I said, you’ve got to have an implementer, somebody who gets **** done. that you cannot as an owner do all the work. Was I right about that? Not just that you need an implementer, but that it can be too overwhelming as a restaurant owner when your job is to work on budgets, marketing, leading the team, developing your managers, holding them accountable, moving forward. Am I incorrect to say that you don’t need to do all the little systems, you need to make sure they’re getting done?
Yeah, that’s correct. So Brandon was our implementer. He’s our general manager. And I had to start passing it off to him. And once I got through that initial hurdle of trusting him to get it done, it became easier and easier to do. And he stepped up. He’s an awesome person, awesome manager. And yeah, you definitely need that extra person to help you because it could very easily get very overwhelming to do it on your own. and then you end up actually probably hurting yourself more because you don’t delegate and it limits you on what you can actually get done to continue to grow in your restaurant.
So what were some of your first changes you made? Like again, I want to make sure everybody understands you were already on a systems journey. Like it wasn’t you were coming from zero and going to 60 overnight. You already started down the path, but What were some of those first things that you worked on and said, man, this is… this is what’s necessary. Because again, I joked earlier, you kind of veered outside the program and said, I need to get these other things done. And I was a little concerned because it was taking on more work. What were some of those things?
Some of the things we started with, I know, I don’t know why I started, I started with a prime vendor first. So I got, I signed up with US Foods to be our prime vendor instead of going through four or five different vendors. We ended up going through US Foods and Curtsy. And then after that, I got that done. we started an inventory process. So shelf to sheet inventory. I went through our entire restaurant, changing all the shelves around, organizing everything, labeling everything. And this way the shelves were organized so we can then do an accurate weekly food inventory and also liquor and beverage as well. So that was the next step in the process along with creating Restaurant 365 so we could do the weekly inventory for the software side of things. After that is whenever we had no managers, so I had to take Brandon, who was our kitchen manager at the time, but he didn’t have the title. He was our guy who created our specials, basically. He ran the, we were doing some catering at the time as well, so he ran that, but I asked him, hey, do you want to be the general manager? I knew we needed to restructure our management team. So he said, sure, I’ll do it. He signed up to be general manager. And then we promoted Steve to be our kitchen manager. And then we hired out for our front of house manager because nobody wanted to step up for that position.
Let me ask you a question on the management side real fast. Sorry to interrupt you. But you went from zero managers. You were doing everything. And now you went to a full management team. Did that affect your costs negatively?
No.
I mean, your labor cost damn near stayed the same, didn’t it? I mean, you basically took all this extra money for online employees and moved it right into managers who could control costs and use your systems. That’s kind of the point I want to bring in is like, I didn’t want to brush that aside. Yeah, we had no managers and then we decided to bring him in. Then we added another. Like you just added three, four people to your management team from zero. And you’re making the same or better money by having managers in place. That’s a reasonable statement, yes.
Correct, yeah.
Okay. Sorry, hopefully you’ll be able to get back on your path, but I just did not want to let that go.
Yeah, it did not affect our prime costs. We restructured how we ran the business and reallocated labor so that we weren’t adding a ton of labor to our expenses, yes.
So what was that next piece? So you’ve got your managers in. What was maybe one more thing that you went and implemented right away?
We started working on menuing a little bit, but I didn’t understand that fully. I’ve never done a menu design. We started that more so week one when I started with you guys. So up until that point, I can’t remember everything. We did so many changes over the last year and a half. To think of it off the top of my head right now, it’s all mind boggling.
Those are all significant things to put in place because again, in the program, we don’t get into shelf cheat inventory. We don’t get into recipe cards. We don’t get into menu engineering. We don’t get into All those things that are so important, we do when we get to the budget process for many. But like you said, we started out in week one because you were already excited about systems you had been implementing and you already had software in place. We just needed to use it. So now what were some of your unexpected changes? Like you got benefit of a full management team in place. What did that mean to you?
That was huge. So the management team was probably the biggest unexpected change. especially the Implementer Act portion of that. Brandon stepped up huge. He already knew a lot about our restaurants, but the more we went through your course and your training program, it made him such an even better manager because he understood the numbers more. He understood what needed to get done. And that alone took off so much work off my shoulders because he was able to then do it and step up to the challenge and he took it over. Now he does all of it. He’s, pardon my French, he’s **** ***. You know, he knows how to do it now, but I might not have been able to show him the way to do it like the class did.
So now, What about the benefits of the group coaching calls? So you as an owner, what was the benefit to you and what was the benefit to him as your implementer and now who became your general manager? Was that something unexpected, that group camaraderie and how we help each other?
Yeah, that was nice too. It’s nice to bounce ideas off of each other. It’s nice to know that other people are going through the same situation you are as far as difficulties in your restaurant or positives in your restaurant. And it was just nice to know you had that group to fall back on with any concerns or questions or opinions you might want from them in regards to your restaurant, how you should move forward on different aspects. And it was really, really helpful. That was that was also another powerful part of the class.
So talk to me a little bit about what does life look like now? Again, I don’t want to make people think that we changed your life as far as financially. For all intents and purposes, your prime cost stayed about the same. The difference being is you added a full management team, which meant you trimmed other fat from the prime cost, from food cost to labor cost dollars, and were able to funnel those into management. But having a full management team in place now, Going from working your full time job and full time every day in the restaurant, what is life like for you now?
A lot better. So I am able to have time with my family. I’m able to relax more. I don’t have to go in every single day like I used to. If I wanted to, I could take a couple days off without having to worry about it. as much as I did prior because I know Brandon Steve or Ricky Joe is running the place right. I’m spending a lot less time in the business. I’m now working on the business to grow it. So those are all ways that it has helped me. I’d say the biggest improvement is I have time to to grow it like I want to instead of working in it, working on the shifts, working as an expo or a dishwasher filling in or even floating as a manager. I have time to work on the marketing aspect, the Facebook, Instagram, that sort of thing. So it helps. I’m one of those people that can’t just take time off. I have to continue to work and grow. So I reallocated the time for growth more than working in the business.
It’s much better. Instead of working a $15 an hour job to save $15 an hour, you’re working strategically on your business and growing it, especially in a time where we’ve got the costs that are going out of control. We’ve got labor costs that’s gone up. We’ve got the great resignation. You’re in a small town, but none of these things have affected you to a point where You’re frozen or blaming anybody. You are still growing. You are still operating and you have a life. I think that’s pretty amazing. And that goes to, is a testament to the leader you’ve become for your business. You already were driven, but you had, it’s almost as if all you needed was being pointed in the right direction and a little nudge.
Yes, exactly. And it not only affected my time, but also Brandon, our general manager, he was working 60, 65 hours a week for us. He was doing that for two years just to help us get along. And now he’s down to 45 hours a week and he couldn’t be happier either. And that’s what really makes me happy is it not only benefited our lives, but it also benefited our employees’ lives.
That’s fantastic. Let me ask you this. Is there anything that you could tell somebody who’s looking at the program right now, what would you tell them and say, don’t do it, run like hell or you’re in? What would you tell somebody who’s looking at the program right now?
I would say you’d be crazy not to sign up, but you have to be willing to do the work because it’s only worth as much as what you’re willing to put into it. That’s what I would tell them.
Yeah, it is. I suck. I create work. I mean, there’s no doubt, no matter how paced the program is, there’s a lot. And that change in company culture can very difficult. And this is again why I’m so thrilled to have you on today is that culture change in your business never had a negative effect. You always presented it in a way that you got buy-in from your team as well as family, which We didn’t really talk about, let me just touch on that real quick. How did that help your relationship with your dad and your brothers in the business making these kinds of changes? Because it’s a big deal.
Oh, it’s significantly better. We would always get in arguments just because we’re burnt out and working too much. And now it’s the exact opposite. You can hang out without having to worry about talking about work. You can enjoy your family again, especially because it’s a family business. Anybody listening to this who has a family business knows exactly what I’m talking about, where you always getting arguments if you’re overworked, you know, who disagrees with who on this. But this class gave us structure that we were all going to follow. So there wasn’t as many arguments as what there could have been if I was just making them up out of thin air. But now we’re a family again. You know, we’re hanging out. We’re not talking about work while we’re hanging out. It’s much better.
That is awesome. That is good to hear. And you’ve got a little one at home, so you need to be home and grow with that family. Is there anything else you want to share with people? A quote, an idea, anything before we go.
Just keep pushing on. I mean, if you’re listening to this, you’ll get through it. Restaurant businesses are some of the toughest businesses to work in, but if you Continue to put the systems in place. It’ll all fall into a giant puzzle that’s already put together. It’s just putting one piece in at a time. That’s my information for anybody listening.
Stay the course, man. Stay the course. Matt, I’m so thankful again for you taking the time to share your story with everybody today. I look forward to continue to working with you and go out there and continue to kick some *** my friend.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
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 ***.