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The Restaurant Roadmap is your guide to building and running a successful restaurant. Each episode explores the full journey of operations—from planning and development to menu design, execution, and growth. Hosts Danny Bendas, Amanda Stokes, and Chef Eric Lauer bring decades of expertise, joined by industry leaders and restaurant professionals who share their insights and stories. Together, they uncover strategies, tools, and lessons that help operators improve performance, strengthen teams, and elevate the guest experience. Whether you’re opening your first location or refining an established brand, The Restaurant Roadmap equips you to navigate every step with confidence.
Danny: Welcome to The Restaurant Roadmap podcast, powered by Synergy Restaurant Consultants, your go-to source for actionable insights and real-world strategies from the industry’s top experts, clients, and special guests. Whether you’re building a new concept or refining an existing one, we’re here to help you create a forward-thinking sustainable brand, elevate guest experience, streamline operations and maximize your bottom line. With decades of hands-on experience, our mission is simple: to deliver practical, proven solutions to the everyday challenges restaurant operators face. Let’s dive in and get to work.
Danny: Hello everybody. Welcome to The Restaurant Roadmap. This is our inaugural edition, many more to come, great insights. And I just want to say that between the three of us that you see on our screen, we have, like, 150 years of restaurant experience, scary as that—we only look like we’re 12 years old; we’ve been in this business for a hell of a long time. I’d like to introduce Amanda Stokes, one of our primary operations training recruiting consultants, along with Eric Lauer, our consulting chef and back-of-house expert. How are you guys doing today?
Amanda: Doing great.
Eric: Doing great, Danny. How about you?
Danny: I’m doing terrific. I love doing this stuff, love helping people. So, the idea of The Restaurant Roadmap is to take real-world experience, not information from a book or a class, and again, as I said, the three of us have over 150 years of hands-on, practical, in-the-trenches experience. And as we do work, we find, more often than not with our clients, one of the biggest challenges they have is people know how to run a shift or maybe know how to jump in and help out a cook or a server, but they don’t know how to lead their team. So, the nuts and bolts of everything that happens in the restaurant industry starts at the store level and general [management 00:02:13] and strong leadership. So, I’m going to ask Amanda to kick us off here, just from her experience, and if you want to talk about where you’ve been over the last 20 years, go ahead, and let’s get started and get to the meat of this. So, go ahead Amanda.
Amanda: Great hand off, Danny. So, I spent the majority of my career with Brinker International. I was a director of operations for many years, and so one of the things that I learned very quickly as a director of operations, not being in the trenches every day, is that you live and die by your GMs. GMs are the critical link in the business. So, in order for the restaurants to be successful, you have to have the right general managers in place. Everything starts with the GM in the restaurant. If you have a great GM, they’re going to hire great assistant managers. Great assistant managers help develop shift leaders. So, it all works hand in hand, Danny.
Danny: Very good. Eric, say hey, tell us about you, and chime in.
Eric: So, similar to Amanda, I’ve spent the majority of my career with corporate restaurants, you know, moving multi-unit leadership, doing a lot of that, some regional type stuff, with a culinary department with a large corporate chain. So, there was definitely a lot of that in my background. And then I echo what Amanda says. If you don’t have the right leaders within the four walls of the building, you could have the best ideas flowing down, and when they hit the breaking point, they’re not going to gain any traction because you don’t have the right leaders. So, you have to have the right leaders implementing the policies and procedures that you want to do, and that’s how you gain traction, and that’s how you get to where you want to be.
Danny: And just to touch on that very quickly—I think Amanda made a great point—you know, I always say it’s up to the GM and any level of manager to work themselves out of a job. I say that oftentimes jokingly, but you know, it gets down to succession planning. How can I make my job easier as a manager? Not that I’m lazy, but how can I empower people around me to get them to be smarter and learn so that eventually they can advance, which is a key part of any succession planning, which I’m sure we’re going to talk about here at some point. So, you know, oftentimes we tell people, lead by example, so I want to touch on that.
And I don’t mean personally leading by example, meaning that I have to be the best broiler cook, the best server, and I basically work a shift being a server, but if I lead by example, people respect me, and I manage out of respect as opposed to intimidation. So, I wanted to get your guys feedback on that and some other comments. So, anybody wants to go first, go ahead.
Amanda: Yeah, I’ll take that. So, I think leading by example is when you set your standard every moment of every shift. So, one of the oldest things we’ve said for years is if you step over a piece of trash and people see that, that then sets your new standard. You know, one of the things I would love to do, [laugh] it sounds so crazy, but I would follow a manager, not into the bathroom, but after they came out, I would go and see what condition did they leave the bathroom in because that tells me a lot about their standards. So, I think it’s one thing to say, “Hey, I walk my talk,” but it’s another thing to just live that mantra and do it every single day because the truth is, people are watching you, and they’re watching what you do more than what you say.
Danny: Yeah, great points. Eric, what do you think?
Eric: I think what you talked about a bit in this introduction to this little segment was spot on. A lot of young leaders come in and they think, I have to be the best line cook, or I have to be the best server, or I have to be the best host, in order to show that I’m an effective leader, but you get bogged down in that. And they tie themselves to a position, and what ends up happening is you lose sight of the big picture of what’s going on in your restaurant during that time frame. So, I’ve worked with many leaders who were recently promoted, and they really lock into what they were previous to becoming a leader. So, if it was a back-of-the-house person who was promoted, then they become—they go back and they worked a fryer, or they worked a broiler, like you said, and then they’re only impacting that station. They don’t know what’s going on at the front door, they don’t know what’s going on with food running, they don’t know what’s going on with guest service and guest experience, so they’re missing out on everything.
So, for me, the most effective leaders know how to jump in and bail somebody out real quick. You jump back there for a couple minutes. Maybe you drop some tenders in a fryer. Maybe you pull up a basket of fries and season them, whatever the case may be is, but don’t tie yourself into a position. You have to get in, get out, and make yourself back to the restaurant so you can see the big picture of what’s going on.
Danny: Yeah, constantly doing laps, right? You call them laps. Some people call them figure eights, whatever it is, just always having control and leading and orchestrating, you know, not doing. Like I always tell people, you know, if you’re chained to the broiler, you might be doing a great job on the broiler, but the rest of the restaurant is in flames around you because you can’t get around. And you know, the other thing—and I understand costs and labor, and you know, I’d love to get your input on this, too, you guys—is, you know, there are a lot of brands that require the manager to work a certain amount of time, you know, at a station. And I guess, you know, cut labor, that’s great, but again, you’re not leading, you’re not teaching, you’re not, you know, building culture, you’re not correcting. So, sometimes that can be a problem. So, what do you guys think about that?
Amanda: I mean, for me, you pay now or you pay later, but you are always going to pay. So, if your choice is to, you know, pay now, where you know your manager is working a shift, they’re in the trenches, you know, they only have a—like to Eric’s point—they have their blinders on, and they’re dropping things in a fire. They’re not leading and coaching their team, they’re not engaging with guests, they’re not hosting the party. So, you know, I think it’s a very short-sighted decision to do that, and unfortunately, even in 2025, a lot of brands still think that way. And personally, if I was young in my career and I had this idea of being a restaurant manager, I personally wouldn’t want to be stuck behind a fryer, you know, two hours a day.
Danny: Right. Yeah, great point. Eric?
Eric: I agree with that a hundred percent. And I’ve always said, staff for the business that you want, you know? Because if you staff for the business that you have, you’re never going to be able to grow that sales number. And I’ll give you a great example. This past weekend, I was in a very small rural area in the Pacific Northwest, and the town that I was in had a festival. It was a Huckleberry festival.
So, very small town, a lot of people coming into town to have a good time in the town. And you looked around, and there’s not many restaurants, so the first restaurant I went into, it was packed. It was on a wait. You couldn’t get a table, right? And I looked around, you know, you had a manager, you had two managers on the floor, you had five servers, you had multiple people cooking—I’m assuming; I wasn’t in the kitchen—you had a busser.
So, they were packed, right, so I couldn’t get a table there. And I walked down the street a little bit longer, and I walked into this place, and they had a manager on, a bartender, a cook—because it was an open kitchen—and a server. That’s it. Four people in the entire restaurant. And only one table was sat in the restaurant, and only four people were sitting at the bar. So, what Amanda said, you pay now or you pay later. So, the first restaurant in this experience was paying now. Guess when that next restaurant was paying? Paying later, when they weren’t able to make their bills and they didn’t have the sales to really boost their business.
Danny: Yeah. It’s kind of what we call managing yourself to the bottom, right, so one little [unintelligible 00:10:28] at a time. And you know, Amanda, I know you talk a lot about Texas Roadhouse, and the CEO wrote a book. And you know, they don’t worry about labor in their restaurants; they worry about building sales, right? I thought it’d be cool if you touched on that real quick.
Amanda: Yeah. I think, you know, they have one of the coolest philosophies, and it was from the very beginning of that brand. It was how he visualized delivering consistent, high quality hospitality, and he always wanted to treat his team members well at the same time. So, creating the best job for them by always having the right amount of people on. So, it is not unusual to walk into any Texas Roadhouse and see three hosts standing at the host stand at all times.
It is just—and look at them on the [Get 00:11:18] chart. At any given time, any year, year after year after year, when you look at that Get chart, they’re always in the top-right quadrant. And it’s not an accident. It’s by design. And I believe that Texas Roadhouse will continue to lead the charge in casual dining if they continue to lead their brand that way.
Danny: Yeah. Nothing worse than walking into a restaurant and there’s nobody there to greet you. It’s like somebody rings your doorbell and you don’t answer your door. I mean, we’re trying to welcome people, you know, into our homes, and you know, we’ve done a lot of work where you walk in and because they’re training labor or whatever, you know, literally, there’s no one there. So, your first immediate action or reaction is a negative one, and that just sets the tone for the rest of your experience, which is really sad and it’s too bad.
So anyway, so moving on, I want to talk about expectations. I think the average employee just wants to know, what is my job, what are my tools, how am I being compensated, and how am I being treated? And so, setting clear expectations, and I want to talk about that because it’s critical to training, turnover, you know, a happy crew, building your culture, and stuff like that. So, what do you guys think? How do we help people get there?
Eric: Our industry is called the hospitality industry, right? We have to first take care of the people that are taking care of our guests. So, there’s an old adage. It says, “The guest experience can never surpass the team member experience.” So, if you don’t take those steps that you just talked about, the training, you know, give them all of the ideas that they need to do their job one hundred percent correctly, and they have the confidence to do that job effectively, then you are letting the guests down and you’re letting your team down.
So, Amanda talked about Texas Roadhouse being the number one place for guests. It’s also the number one place for employees because they get it. They don’t go into shifts understaffed and hoping that they don’t get busy. They go into shifts staffed up, ready to roll, wanting to rock it out because busy is not an excuse, right? You can’t go at the end of the day and go, “Oh, we were too busy.”
What does too busy mean, right? That’s why we open the doors, so we can be busy, so we can make money. We’re not doing this just for fun; we’re doing it for a profit. We love to do this, we have passion for taking care of people and the hospitality surrounding it, but at the end of day, there’s got to be a reward for it, and we have to place that same thought process on our team members, and that’s how they become better people and better team members and better support for our guests. Without that, what are we doing?
Danny: Great points, Eric. Really good. Amanda?
Amanda: Yeah, so you know, I agree with everything Eric said. And I think, you know, one of the—take you back to around 2010, I had the pleasure of meeting a leader, his name is Tony Bridwell, he’s still a leader in the industry, he’s an executive coach, he’s written many books, and he introduced something to our teams called the culture of accountability. And when you think about culture and accountability, it’s the perfect marriage because people want to know what is expected of them, and they want the tools and the knowledge to be able to deliver on that consistently. So, you know, we always talk about culture, and I think it’s an overused word and an under-leveraged tool in the tool belt. So, when you think about culture, it drives everything, it dictates everything. You can’t buy it, you can’t—you know, it’s the secret sauce in any organization, the glue in any organization, it’s like, it’s the blood.
And so, the way to get there—and something I heard many years ago was, you know, we asked ourselves, well, how do you change a culture? You change a culture one person at a time. You change your culture by living the things that you say you’re going to do and doing those things you say you’re going to do. So, I think all of the things that keep a restaurant functioning, that make restaurants and people successful, is the culture. People don’t quit brands; they quit people. And they quit people because there’s no culture.
Danny: And you know, that starts from the top down. And you know, we just had a conversation with a client, you know, over 90 restaurants, and you know, how does, you know, the founder or the corporate or the president build that culture from store to store to store? So, it has to start at the top and just work its way down and infiltrate and infiltrate, and you have to just keep telling people and helping people and making sure they understand what the ultimate goals are for the brand, you know? And you know, I met a guy at a restaurant show a long, long time ago, president of the National Restaurant Association, he basically said, you know, “If you take care of your guests, you don’t have to worry about how much money is in your cash register.” And that always stuck with me because that’s culture, that’s a brand that’s taking care of not only your guests, but also your employees. And everything you guys are saying, it just all filters down, which is really, it’s really how you do it, you know? So, you take care of your guests, the money will be there.
Amanda: Can I chime in on one point is, you know, one of the best leaders that I ever had the pleasure of working with was Norman Brinker. And so, I was a young GM in my career, and so I remember that he would—this is true—he would stand in the parking lot and ask guests how their experience was. And so, you know, that shows you the culture in the brand, that he’s that concerned about how the guest experience was. And another thing in terms of culture is he would want to talk to—the first person he talked to when he walked through in the restaurant was the dishwasher. He made that dishwasher feel like they were the most important person in the business. And it was, you know, here’s the founder of Brinker International taking the time. And so, you said from the top, the culture starts. He lived that.
Danny: Yep. And you know that works until everybody started to know who he was because, “Norm, get out of here. We got it, all right?” [laugh] so yeah. So, the point you make is a great one, which leads right into the next question is, you know, if we can create the expectation and hold people accountable, coach, mentor, constantly train, the other big thing is, how do we recognize great behavior and how do we correct not so great behavior?
So recognition, I think people, you know, love it, they embrace it. And I think especially the younger generations, they look for it because—not that they, you know, they have to have a pat on the back, but I think, you know, “Hey, great job,” or, “Hey, you could maybe work on this a little bit,” is really important. So, I wanted to, you know, have a conversation about that. So, anybody wants to go first, go ahead.
Eric: I’ll jump in. So, I think back to early in my career, and people talked about the Oreo method. You know, when you have feedback for someone, tell them something they did well, and then sandwich something that they need to work on, and then finish it with something they did well. I never really liked that because what happens is people lose track of what you’re really trying to say. So, in my opinion, and I think it bores out over time, is be direct with your feedback.
People want to know what they’re doing wrong, they want to know what they’re doing well, right, so be direct with your feedback and make sure you’re coaching in private and praising in public. Those are the keys. Don’t beat around the bush, don’t try to make somebody feel good when you really need to correct a behavior because what’s going to happen is they hear, I’m doing well at this, I’m doing well at this, but they don’t hear the fact that they need to work on this other aspect of it. And then, as a leader, you’ll be frustrated later on when you say, “Hey, I talked to you about this four times already,” but they didn’t hear it because you were sandwiching it in between things they were doing well, right? So, be direct, give them the feedback they need to be successful, and then hold them accountable to that feedback.
And what I always like to do at the end of a coaching conversation is I like to respond with, “Hey, tell me what you heard from me today.” That way, when we leave the conversation, we’re both on the same page. I understand that they understood me, and we can both move forward from that spot, not moving backwards.
Danny: Yeah. Yeah, and saying, “Hey, how can I help you get better,” or, “How can I help you overcome this challenge to make you a better person?” Then they know you care, right? So Amanda, what do you think?
Amanda: Yeah, I love everything Eric said. So, I’m a big fan also of the tell me what you heard for many reasons because a lot of times, somebody walks away hearing a completely different piece of feedback. And I think it brings clarity to the conversation, and so when you part from the conversation, you know, there’s no gray area. So, I love that.
I’m a big fan of focused recognition. My least favorite type of recognition in a restaurant, I call it the cheerleader style. So, the manager who walks around going, “Great job everyone, great job everyone.” And, like, people are like, “Well, you know, what did I do?” So, focused recognition would sound like, “Hey, great job getting all that food out of the window. What a great push, team. We’re not going to have any cold food issues tonight.”
I think it’s being really specific about the feedback, and then there’s value in that. I like what Eric said about public recognition. I think having a great program to publicly recognize people goes a long way. And I learned this early in my career. We had these recognition cards, and I gave one out as a very new GM. I met up with the person I had given this piece of recognition, they said they had never received anything. Fifteen years later, this cook told me that he brought it home to his family, they framed it, it was one of his proudest moments. And when I realized the impact that I had on somebody that they went home, they framed this card, you know, they talked about it with everyone in their family, it really touched me. And I didn’t realize that I had that much power to make somebody feel that special.
Danny: That’s an amazing story. Yeah, and you know, it’s amazing what you remember as you go through life, when you go through your career. So, you know, you mentioned Norman Brinker. I had an experience, I think it was like 1975, my first [unintelligible 00:22:10] job, at the original Houlihan’s Old Place in Kansas City. And I think we had maybe 20 Houlihan’s around that time.
And you know, I was working, and one day, Joe Gilbert, who was one of the founders of the company, walked into the kitchen. He walked up to the dishwasher—and he knew of most people by name, which was sort of amazing to me in and of itself—and he walked up to the dishwasher and he said, “You know, I really appreciate everything you’re doing for us. Here’s two tickets to the next Kansas City Chiefs on us. I hope you have a great time.” Right?
Now, you know, I’ve had a lot of experiences in my life, but I still, to this day, remember watching that happen. And you know, how do you think that dishwasher felt, and how much harder he worked and how much more appreciative he felt, you know, after that happened, right? And it’s just… I was totally blown away, and that sort of set the stage for me for a lot of thinking in terms of leadership and, you know, taking care of your people, it’s critical. So, let me ask, how do you build trust with your team, if you’re a manager? Trust is critical. Without it, people aren’t going to respect you. So, how do you build trust with your team?
Eric: You know, being human, right? So, we all make mistakes. Admit when you make a mistake. Go to them, hey, say, “I’m sorry. I messed that one up. That one’s on me. You know, let’s work through this. You know, you tell me what you saw, and we’ll put that behind us. We’ll learn from it, and we’ll make sure we don’t do it again in the future.”
Also getting people involved in the decisions that affect them most, right? That’s a big thing. If you go to a line cook and you say, “Hey, we’re changing the way we drop chicken tenders,” and you just tell them how to do it, but you don’t involve them in this situation, what’s his buy-in going to be on that? How is he going to feel, right? He drops a million chicken tenders a week. You drop maybe four or five, and you’re telling him how to do his job.
So always, for me, it’s always getting those folks that are impacted by the decisions the most, getting them involved. That builds that sense of trust, and they understand, hey, I’m part of this team too. I have my say. I can tell, you know, my manager, my leader, what I need and what makes sense to me, and they’ll listen to me. So, I think that’s a huge thing.
But again, that admitting when you’re wrong, I think a lot of leaders have a problem with that, and they won’t admit when they made a mistake, and it makes it very difficult because your team knows when you made a mistake. They understand it more than you’ll ever know, and if you hide behind I’m the manager and I’m always right mentality, then you’re going to lose team members real quick, and you’re going to be stuck doing their job, and that’s not something you want to do.
Amanda: Yeah and just—yeah, I mean, great job with that, Eric. I trust that you covered that. Trust doesn’t come from your title; it comes from your track record. And you build that every day, or you destroy it every day by your actions. And so, you know, I think some of the best leaders are people that, you know, they live what they say every day.
So, you know, take a COO doing a restaurant visit when they walk in, if you know. All of a sudden the crap hits the fan, and they jump in and help that shift, well, they have built trust with that team. That team says, oh my gosh, like, the COO was in here, and he was helping us get these tables reset. And, man, I really trust this brand. So, I think it’s just, you know, it happens, shift by shift. Either you’re building trust, or you’re destroying trust.
Danny: Yeah, and I think, you know, just to add to that, and you guys know me, you’re probably tired of hearing it, but I have a million stories that sort of emphasize the point. You know, but I think it’s also, if you say you’re going to do something, you do it, and if you commit to it, you make sure you get it done, and that gets down to, people will respect you. So, my first chef job many, many years ago, when I took over the flagship restaurant of a company that I worked for, it was a little intimidating. I was 21 years old, so I had a crew meeting, and the first thing I said was—because I wanted to make some changes—I said, “Look, tell me everything that you’re having challenges with, and I’m going to do everything that I can to correct those, but in the meantime, there are a few things that I need for you to do for me.” And after I heard everything, you know, we didn’t have enough towels to clean the kitchen, you know, I got a six burner range, but only two of the burners work, you know, I mean, just crazy stuff like that.
So, I went to the GM, and I got a commitment to get all of these things done. So, I was able to build trust and respect with the team, and then from then, we could work in partnership to get a whole bunch of really good stuff done. And you know, it ended up being my most favorite restaurant experience to this day, you know, over 50 years ago in this business. So, I think really, do what you say you’re going to do. Don’t be [unintelligible 00:27:10] people, stay committed to your team, and everything seems to work out. So, let me ask, in this generation, Gen Z, Millennials. You know, we have our challenges. So, how do you guys lead them? What kind of thoughts do you have in that regard?
Eric: I’ve actually hired and worked with many Millennials, and, you know, they get a bad rap. Everybody puts them down and says, “Oh, they don’t work hard, they don’t do this, they don’t do that,” but the fact of the matter is they learn differently, and they need that type of coach to help them to get to where they want to be. They don’t want to fail. They’re like all of us in that respect, right? They get up, they go to work, and they want to have a great deal of success, as much as anybody else, you know?
And Gen Z is the same way. We got to take their learning appetite and meet them where they are. If you don’t meet these folks where they are—and that goes across all generations, not just these recent two—but if you don’t meet people where they are, they’re never going to meet your expectation, right? We talked about accountability earlier, and that’s how you gain accountability, is you give them the information they need, you give them the thought processes and the beliefs behind it, and let them run with it, right? They’re very creative, they’re very intuitive, they know how to do things. We just get in their way because they do things maybe a little slightly different than we did, and then we get scared that it’s not going to get to the same result. You know, there’s a lot of ways to get from A to B. Let’s not focus on the exact route. Let’s focus on the result and making sure that our guests leave our restaurants happy and satisfied and wanting to come back.
Danny: Yeah. Amanda, do you think—I mean, I think in our experience and in a lot of the reading I’ve done, they like to be engaged, maybe more so than a lot of other generations. They want to be a part of the decision-making, have a say. Do you find that to be true as well?
Amanda: I do. I think when you involve people, you create that buy-in. So, if I give you the what where, you know, hey, we’re going to have this contest and we’re going to sell as many margaritas as possible, but if I let you come up with the how, you own that how. How are you going to do it? Well, I’m going to suggestively sell them to every table.
I think it’s critical that they have a say in how things are happening in the restaurant because, you know, they’re different in many ways, but they’re also similar in many ways. You know, right now, we potentially have four generations under one restaurant roof. So, I’m going to go back to something Eric said. It’s, you know, asking the right questions. How do they want to be managed? How did they like to be engaged? And I think it starts with, you know, asking the right questions more than separating them based on generation.
Danny: Yeah. And, you know, it drives me crazy that we group people into these boxes, you know, like Gen Z, Millennials. You know, like, everything, everybody is an individual. They’re all different. You have to learn about the individual as the individual, not as the group, and just treat each one separately based on who they are, what they like, what they dislike, what are their goals.
You know, maybe somebody wants to be a dishwasher their entire life, they’re not interested in succession planning. So, dealing with everybody as an individual, you know, not as a group, I think, makes your life a whole lot easier, right? So, you’re not putting everybody into this cute little box that really doesn’t work at the end of the day. So, how do we handle difficult team members? Because, you know, one difficult team member is like a rotten apple in a barrel. You know, it can ruin the entire team, or you end up managing your way down to that individual. So, how do you deal with difficult team members?
Amanda: You know, we talked earlier about, you know, giving feedback. So giving, you know, giving praise. I think it’s really critical that you give timely feedback when performance isn’t met. I think it’s important because, you know, one person who’s not delivering on the expectation, you know, has the power to, you know, change the entire dynamic of the team and have others become disengaged because it’s very frustrating. “Hey, Bobby, you know, he never runs food. How come you’re always on me about running food?” Just as an example.
So, I think it’s really critical that we address, you know, those team members in a timely fashion, and hopefully we can coach them to be better. But at the end of the day, we can’t coach somebody who’s not motivated to change, so we don’t wait too long to make that decision. I’ve said this a hundred times in my career: the only thing I’ve ever regretted about parting ways with a difficult team member or manager is not having done it sooner.
Danny: Yeah, especially if you’ve given them the tools, you’ve given them the training, you’ve given them the expectation, and they just don’t conform. Eric, do you find that the team sort of helps weed people like that out as well?
Eric: Absolutely. And I love that we’re touching on this subject because more often than not, when you look at these types of conversations, people are always pie in the sky, and they’re talking about the great, the success, what works, what doesn’t work, blah, blah, blah, but there’s going to be this point in your career where you’re going to be faced with this difficult team member that’s standing right in front of you, and how do you handle that? And how do you make them either a part of your team moving forward, or B part of your guests moving forward, right? So, for me, I’ve always found that directness is the best way.
And Amanda said it perfectly. It’s got to be timely, right? You can’t go to Tommy and say, “Hey, last Tuesday, you were making chicken tenders and you forgot to toss them in the sauce, and I had to come back and re-toss them three times during the shift.” But if you tell him that, you know, three, four days later, he doesn’t remember doing that, so it’s got to be direct, in the moment, you know, very appropriate feedback given to them when they need it the most. And that way, you can control how you’re teaching them, how you’re coaching them, and they either figure it out and become part of your team, or they don’t, and then, just like you said, your team will help you get to the proper levels of teams.
So, if someone’s not performing and they’re next to somebody else—and Amanda brought it up, right? Bobby’s not running food, but I am—servers are the same way. You know, if they are working the dining room and they’re constantly pre-bussing somebody else’s table or refilling somebody else’s teas and waters, that takes away from their guest service, and they’re going to let you know, “Hey, you know Bobby’s not pulling his weight. How come he’s still part of our team?” And you have to be able to go for your other team members and have their back with these disruptive team members as well.
Amanda: Recently, we’ve been in a lot of restaurants where, you know, we could be going to the restaurant for an operations assessment, things aren’t going well, and you know, we generally talk to every team member. And we’ve heard more recently than ever that there’s team members that are frustrated with other team members, but the owners are afraid to let them go because it’s so hard to hire. And I’ve heard that over and over again. And it’s the scariest thing because I think to myself, you’re just poisoning the entire apple cart instead of weeding out the apple. And you know, it’s a dangerous position and mindset to be in that I need to keep this person because I don’t know if I’m going to get another person. I wish owners would think differently. By weeding them out, they might get more of the right people. By not weeding them out, they’re going to get more of those people.
Danny: Yeah. And one of these days, we’ll talk about hiring and all that kind of stuff, but that’s where I think, constantly interviewing, you know, constantly looking at your team, and you know, having a bench ready to go because then you don’t feel like you’re behind the power curve to get stuff like that done, right? So.
Amanda: Absolutely.
Danny: One thing to get ready for a shift every day that you think a manager should do to set themselves up for success as a leader? What do you guys think that is?
Eric: That’s a great question. There’s a number of things you can do. I think a lot of it, the day of the shift is probably already too late, right? So, you have to look at historical guidance as far as sales, what’s going to happen that day? You have to schedule correctly, right? You have to order the proper amount of food. You have to have the right people on shift to make sure that you’re going through this shift correctly.
So, once you get all of that part of it down pat, then you go into the shift the day of the shift, right, greet all your team as they arrive. If you have one big in-time for all of your servers, you do a great pre-shift meeting to ensure everybody is on the same page. If everybody has sporadic in-times because you’re watching your labor, then you want to greet each individual when they come in, have that same type of pre-shift meeting, just in a one-on-one forum, right? Then you want to move through the kitchen and make sure all of those folks understand what’s going on that day, right? Because you may have a large catering order, you may have, you know, a large party coming in at a specific time during the rush and you want to make sure the cooks understand what’s happening. You know, constant communication really helps guide their day, and it helps you out. So, those are some of the things that I think you really need to take into effect—or put into effect, so you can make sure you have one of the best shifts you can.
Amanda: So, I’ll touch on the one thing Eric didn’t say. He left me one thing, and that’s doing a very thorough line check. So, I’ve said it. I know Danny’s probably tired of hearing me say it. It was something that I practiced every day in a past life. The line check has to get done by somebody who works in the restaurant or the guests are going to do it for you.
And it’s really embarrassing to be told, “Hey, this soup is cold,” or, “These mashed potatoes are just lukewarm,” because we failed to do our job. We owe it to our guests to serve the freshest, hottest—or coldest—food possible, and you can only do that by doing a thorough line check.
Danny: Yeah. And being a back-of-house guy, you know, when I used to have to work the dining room, which I will freely admit, I never liked because, you know, you always revert to where you’re most comfortable, right, but if I had to work the dining room, you know, as a multi-unit manager, the first thing I did before I went on the floor was did a line check because I didn’t want to get yelled at because the soup was cold, [laugh] right? I wanted to go there and be positive. So, my one big thing, and I say this a lot—and, you know, Amanda, that whole thing about line checks was really profound, and we should, you know, I never get tired of hearing it—but you know, there’s an old saying, at least for me in this business, and I’m going to change the words because I don’t want to use it profanity while we’re doing our podcast, if you start in the weeds, you end in the weeds, right? So, the whole morning is dedicated to being ready, so you’re not in the weeds at 11 or anytime throughout the day. It makes your shift run so much better.
And you know, my last corporate job, when I was sort of in charge of operations, I basically sent an edict to everybody at the corporate office that said that they could not call the restaurants before one o’clock in the afternoon because the GM is getting a call from the marketing account department, the accounting department, everybody. They can’t run their business because they’re constantly interrupted by people from the corporate office. And you know, you got to be ready to go at 11, including line checks, but everything else in place ready to go. And so again, then you’re not in the weeds before you even have a chance to get [unintelligible 00:39:34], right? Really, really critical.
Eric: Danny, let me jump in real quick because you said something that caught my mind. So, I love how you said, “Do not call the restaurants prior to 1 p.m.” That is one of the most frustrating things as an operations leader inside the four walls, right? You roll in, you’re ready to rock and roll, and then you get a call, right? It’s somebody in a corporate office. “Hey, I need you to go and look on the roof and check this out for me, and blah, blah, blah.” Man, I got six cooks coming in, I got five servers, and you want me to go on the roof and, you know, check to see if the filters in place? That really is detrimental to the guest experience, and it forces your leaders to do stuff that is outside of their comfort zone at a wrong time as well. So, those types of people in the corporate office who put those curbs and guidelines in place, you know, wait till after lunch, that is really appreciated by the restaurant leaders as well.
Danny: Because it kind of screws up your whole timeline. You walk in with a plan, and then before you know it, your plan has gone to hell, and then your restaurant opens and you’re not ready. You didn’t do a line check, your crew’s not ready, or you’re short of position that you have to fill, and then you’re upset, everybody’s upset, and nothing good happens, right? So, the only other thing I’d like to add real quick is I think it really is critical for a manager to exude the correct level of energy, you know? And we talk about this, we kind of joke about it, you know?
If the manager walks in, they’re kind of tired, and they’re just kind of moving around, we kind of use the Eeyore comparison, right? The whole crew is kind of working around, you know, just kind of walking around. You walk in, you got a lot of energy, you’re talking, you’re joking around, you’re having fun, you get the energy going, everybody else’s energy is going to raise up, and I think that really helps get you ready to go, you know, first thing in the morning as well. So, I have another question I want to ask is, how would you define the difference between a manager and a leader? And I’m going to ask Amanda to go first because then she has nothing to say because Eric always covers everything.
Eric: [laugh].
Amanda: So, a manager focuses on checklists and leaders focus on people. It’s just that simple, you know? If you are not a people-centric person, you are not a leader. We are in the people business; we just happen to serve food.
Danny: Throw down on the mic on that one. There you go, Eric. Top that one [laugh].
Eric: I can’t top it, but what I’ve always said to young leaders who I’m helping to develop is, you manage products, you lead people. So, you do have to manage your inventory, you have to manage your ordering, you have to manage your scheduling. But when you’re on your shift, you lead your people. You make sure—like you said—work at a pace that is what you want them to work at, and you’ll see what leadership really means to your people.
Danny: Yeah. You know, we did a project many, many years ago, Dean—who is my business partner, by the way—for a steakhouse brand, and they were so clipboard-focused that all they did all day was walk around with a clipboard, checking boxes. And if you added up the amount of time it took to complete every form that they had to complete in their shift, it came out to more hours than the actual time the person was on the shift. And so, we went through a strategic planning session with them, and just started questioning, you know, why are we doing this? What should we be doing?
And, you know, you get rid of the clipboards, and you just start talking to people and talking to your guests, and everything gets a whole lot better. Not that checklists aren’t important, but you can just overwhelm everybody with, you know, every ten seconds you run into a clipboard somewhere in the restaurant, it drives you crazy after a while. And you’re not an effective leader, as Amanda said. You’re not dealing with people, you’re dealing with a checklist, and you’re not human anymore. And like we always say, you know, you kind of lose sight of why you’re in the restaurant business because you’re more concerned about checking boxes than you are taking care of guests and taking care of your employees, right? So really, really good points. And you can throw the mic down again, Amanda. That was very profound. So, how do you maintain high standards without everybody thinking you’re a jerk?
Amanda: All right, so I don’t—in fear of Eric stealing my thunder again, I think you explain the whys, right? So, people need to know why you’re doing this specific thing. So, you know, you want your standards to be high at all times, but it’s explaining why we do it this way. It can’t be, “Well, we’ve always done it this way.” We, you know, make sure we season our burgers from coast to coast because they taste really great, and we’re known for our burgers, and I don’t want to disappoint anybody who comes in for a burger. So, when I tell you to make sure you’re hitting that seasoning coast to coast on the burger, there’s a reason behind it.
I think if every time you try to elevate somebody’s performance by explaining the whys behind why we do something, even when you know you’ve said it 6348 times—it could be a little frustrating—but people need to know the direct impact that their behavior has on either, you know, guests, profits, team members, you know, the impact by not having that standard where it needs to be.
Danny: Eric, talk that one.
Eric: It’s going to be tough. So, I think back to—I’m a sports fan, a big Yankee fan, so I think back to Joe DiMaggio, right? So, Joe DiMaggio made every play full out, a hundred percent, all the time. And there was a reporter who asked him at the end of it, “Well, why do you do that? Why do you go all out all the time?” And he said, “Because there may be somebody in the stands that has never seen me play before, and they may never see me play again, so I want to make sure I give them my best one hundred percent of the time.”
So, that’s the kind of thing that I take into leadership and lead my team in that way. So, I give them my a hundred percent all the time, so then they can see it. I’m leading by example. And then I’ve had team members ask me, “Hey, man, do you ever slow down?” “No, I can’t because if I slow down, the guests might not have the best experience.” Right? So, we lead by example.
And just like Amanda said, you know, you give them the whys behind it, and they really… if you trust your team, and you show them that trust, they’ll step up to the plate for you, I promise you. They want to do a good job. Nobody wakes up in the morning and goes, “Hey, I’m going to go to work today and just… I’m going to do a crappy job. And you know what? I’m going to undercook every burger, and I’m going to forget to bring ranch to every table.” Right? Nobody says that. So.
Danny: Yeah, I’m going to do everything I can to try to get fired today, right [laugh]?
Amanda: Eric, I’ve had nightmares. Like, you know, when I was running restaurants, I would go, oh my gosh. Table three had asked me for a ranch, and I never brought it. And I would wake up in the middle of the night going, how did that even happen? You just triggered a bad memory, PTSD.
Danny: So, you run to the refrigerator or grabbed a ranch bottle [unintelligible 00:46:51], right [laugh]. Yeah, and I think, you know, I really, truly believe that people want to do a good job, they want to work in a nice environment, they want to take care of people, and it’s really up to us to create that environment to allow them to excel. And if you allow them to excel, you know, they will, you know, for the most part. Now, obviously there are other problem apples, which we’ve talked about. So anyway, you know, we haven’t even hardly touched on leadership, and we’re going to save the rest for our next session. So, I would like to thank Eric and Amanda. Thank you guys. It’s been a fun almost an hour. Any final parting words before we close out. And we’re going to do this again. Leadership, part two. So, any final thoughts real quick, you guys?
Amanda: Yeah, I think, just to touch back on something you started out saying, you know, leaders should always be working themselves out of a job. You know, I think the most successful brands, the most successful restaurants, you know, always have a leadership bench when they’re ready to promote somebody. The only way that you do that is you’re constantly training, and you are training people for the job that they’re going to have in a year or in two years. You know, it’s not promoting the shiniest penny or because you have, you know, somebody who’s a great cook, they’re going to be a great kitchen manager; it’s being really intentional about your succession plan, and then once you have people sitting on that bench, that readiness bench, so to speak, that you’re constantly engaging them.
Danny: Yeah, that’s great. The old saying I always use: if you’re not talking, you’re not training, right? So, Eric?
Eric: Everybody in our industry today is at a point where it’s very difficult to find workers, team members, employees, right? So, what’s the easiest way to keep an employee? It’s to have great leadership in the building. So, if you’re not working with your leaders and training your leaders on how to be better leaders, you’re going to be training new team members constantly and consistently because those poor leaders are going to be turning your team members over. You have to train your people, you have to have great, efficient leaders in your buildings to represent your brand and what you want to accomplish on a daily basis.
Danny: That is really great information. So again, want to thank Amanda and Eric. It’s been a lot of fun. We’re going to do another version, or phase two. Maybe a three, probably, because we got a lot to talk about with leadership. It’s the nuts and bolts of everything else that has to happen.
So, love to get your feedback. Email us at info@therestaurantroadmap.com. Check out our website, synergyconsultants.com. We are great at helping people with leadership skills, coaching, training, and anything else you may possibly need to make your restaurant be a continued success. I want to thank you all for watching, and you all have a great rest of your day. Take care.
Amanda: Bye, everyone.
Eric: Bye, everyone.
Danny: Thanks for tuning in. We hope today’s episode gave you valuable insights you can put into action. If you have questions, want more info on today’s topic, or need support with your restaurant-specific challenges, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out anytime at info@therestaurantroadmap.com, and visit synergyrestaurantconsultants.com to explore our services, sign up for our newsletter, and catch up on past episodes. Don’t forget to follow and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook so you never miss what’s next. Do you have feedback or a topic you’d like us to cover? Contact us. We’re here to help make the world a better place to eat.