How to Stay Relevant
February 26, 2018
Restaurants, like sharks, need to be constantly moving forward to survive. Constantly pushing the envelope in discovering ways to make food, service, operations and overall product better, or guests and staff lose interest, and restaurants die.
One of the biggest examples of restaurant stagnancy from my experience is the ho-hum “status quo” excuse.
What do we mean by status quo? For example, the salad dressing at (fill in the blank Grill), an old family recipe, doesn’t quite live up to today’s standards for one reason or another, and even after numerous complaints, never gets addressed or evolved or changed, because, “Hey, it’s always been that way.”
As consumers, it’s in our nature to focus on the negatives. It’s the little things that stick out in our minds the most – not the great things that happened during our dining experience, but all the things that went wrong, or were swept under the rug, so to speak.
Restaurant owners and managers must constantly be asking themselves tough fundamental questions like:
How can we be doing this better? Where can we be more efficient? Can we make and sell a better product? Be cleaner? Develop a new improved system? Are we creating the best presentation? How’s the verbal delivery? Is there a new sales approach? Do we need new staff?
Absolutely, every aspect of your restaurant, from back of the house to front of the house and beyond, should be examined and questioned all the time.
This type of thinking and solutions driven management style is how you push the envelope, how you raise the bar, and how your restaurant will thrive.
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So now take a moment to reflect on areas that are not meeting you or your guests expectations, and what areas need to change to keep your restaurant’s heart beating.