Ways To Incentivize Your Staff & Customers (Ep 140)
Jaime Oikle of RunningRestaurants.com & Roger Beaudoin of Restaurant Rockstars jumped on a live session and talked all about ways to incentivize your staff & managers right now to keep & attract team members at your restaurant. You don't want to miss this...
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Ways To Incentivize Your Staff & Customers
I am joined by Roger Beaudoin of RestaurantRockstars.com. Our topic is the five ways to incentivize your staff and customers because it is the number one question that's out there. Roger, before we get started, before we jump in welcome.
Thanks. Great to see you, Jaime, as always. Thanks to the readers for tuning in.
I haven't spoken to Roger for a little bit. It's summertime. We all have been running around crazy and been a little bit busy. Roger, as you may not know, has been my guest many times. Roger’s a long-time operator. Do you want to give them the quick 60 second background, Roge? What do you get?
I started my first restaurant about 26 years ago. When on to start four high volume, highly successful concepts. I’m proud to say that my net profit was double that of the average restaurant. It's all based on systems that I created. I was big on service. I was obsessed with profit and I was a marketing dynamo. I wanted to dominate my competition, so that's exactly what we did. I sold all my restaurants back in 2014 and got out of that business and concentrated on Restaurant Rockstars helping other operators run a more stronger and more profitable business.
I do some coaching and consulting. We have the weekly Restaurant Rockstars Show. You can subscribe for free on our website or on iTunes. Besides the coaching, consulting, and the show, I've got a family. I’m married and have two kids. Oddly enough, I didn't think I'd get back into owning restaurants and before the pandemic hit, I bought another restaurant.
I've gone through what most of the operators and most the audience reading have gone through. We've pivoted probably 5 or 6 different times. We've been able to survive, increase our business, and things are coming back now. Things are very optimistic. That's what's going on. I'm just excited to share my experience and always love talking to you because we get a real dynamic conversation going.
Restaurant Challenges
I've interviewed Roger countless times over the years. I know some of his story, so I'm going to poke and prod him to give you guys a lot of good resources in the trenches and especially through COVID as he said, pivoted a bunch of times to get where he is and learned all those same lessons and so forth. He talked about the show that he has. One of the main reasons we're doing this session is the episode about service and incentives with author, Ken McGarry.
We're going to touch on some similar themes but lasering in on what everybody's number one issue is and that's staff. I go out to restaurants as a customer and I see the signs. I saw the post on Facebook. I see the struggles in restaurants. I was at a place travelling with my daughter. We sit down and I'm seeing people walk into the host stand and wait five minutes even to talk to a host. I know they're eyeballing open tables and I can hear the conversation, “Folks, thanks for coming. Sorry to take a while. It's going to be another twenty minutes.”
The most confusing thing for a customer is to see open tables and to hear it's going to be twenty minutes. I knew the reason was because they were short staffed. This is very common. We've been traveling quite a bit. I'm seeing this. I assume you're seeing a lot of the stuff hearing similar from customers and clients about this issue. Before we get into the topics, any echoed thoughts on what you're seeing?
I’m seeing exactly what you're seeing and I'm hearing that from clients. I'm seeing that on Facebook groups that I belong to different social media platforms. Restaurant owners and managers are struggling with this labor shortage. Business is picking up and unfortunately, they're losing business because they can't serve the customers and the demand that's happening because of the short staffing. The customer and the guest are the most important people we serve, but they don't necessarily understand what's going on. They don't necessarily care what's going on.
Restaurants are losing business because they cannot serve the customers and their demands. The guests are the most important person they serve, but many do not necessarily understand them.
They still have very high expectations. They've come out of the pandemic. They've changed their habits and now they want to get back to dining experiences as they remember them. Family and friends going out. Getting past this thing and now they're getting less than stellar experiences simply because we can't serve them properly. I do believe that the most important thing is communicating with our guests and our customers on a daily basis face to face, signage and everywhere explaining the situation.
There are empty tables that need to be seated but you can't oversee people because then again the service suffers. Lines out the door. Long waits for takeout food. It's a real slippery slope out there but it comes down to communication and letting people know you're doing the absolute best you can. You're not delivering the service that you would expect that customer would come to expect. Please be patient with us as we get through this together. Things will return to normal and we've done a lot of that too.
There's been communications in every takeout order. A little printed card that explained our situation and thanked the guests for their patronage through the pandemic and now that we're emerging. Also asking them for positive reviews and saying, “We are doing the absolute best.” You got to fall on your sword sometimes. If someone has a less than high expectation experience, we've given out our share gift cards.
We've encouraged people to come back. That's all you can do. What you have to do is retain your staff and find new ones. Be relentless in doing so because it's so hyper competitive in every industry. I'm also seeing delivery trucks are late and salespeople for suppliers are loading trucks. It's a crazy situation out there and it's affecting every part of the business.
Retaining Great Staff
It is affecting everyone and if I go back to that example that I told you when you talked about not serving demand. I'd say 20% of the people waited, turned around, and walked out. When I see people walk out of a restaurant because they couldn't get talked to. The most frustrating thing you can imagine. I'm going to pull up this number one. We'll get right into this, keeping your great people who are performing.
I know it's a challenge to find people, but also you don't want to lose people. I'm seeing a $200 bonus if you sign up with us. $500 bonus if you sign up with us. The people that you do have, they're going, “I could grab a quick $500 if I jump ship.” You don't want to lose that. Let's talk about keeping the great people you already have and maybe that also translates into the way you find new people.
I have to start with the government money programs, the restaurant revitalization fund. I'm hearing that they're opening up another round of that based on all the restaurants that applied that didn't get the funds. You need to stay on top of every single program where you can get money that is not a loan. That is a grant that provides you and follows the rules. You can get that forgiven and you don't have to pay it back. You have to pay attention to things like the employee retention tax credit where literally every restaurant qualifies to get a significant amount of money up to $5,000 per employee, which is crazy.
It's available to you. If you haven't heard of this program, if you need to figure out how to take care of it or get this money. It starts with either your CPA or accountant or your payroll provider. They can fill out all the forms for you. Make it simple and easy. It's well worth your time and anything that you have to pay these people because again, we're talking about thousands of dollars available that you can then use as incentives for your people.
Hopefully, by now, you've taken advantage of every program and you get the money. The hourly wages are creeping up. Everywhere you look in any industry, it's hard to compete in a restaurant when jewelry stores, lumber yards, and other businesses are offering up to $20 an hour to start. I'm seeing this everywhere and it's crazy. As Jaime said, you have to head it off in the past and not lose the good people you have because they're the life blood of your business.
You need to find more but first, you have to motivate, inspire and create an environment. A culture where people are happy working for you. Yes, you're going to have to compete with hourly wages. I've had to raise the wages of my key people. We've come up with quarterly incentive programs where they earn it for going above and beyond their basic job description. It can be as simple as a couple of hundred dollars every quarter to each person. I know that sounds like a lot, but it's a lot better than losing these people and losing all the business out the door because you can't serve the people. With no staff, you can't, you'll have to close your restaurant.
Raising Prices
You'll also have to raise prices. A lot of restaurants are hesitant to raise prices, but they're lying about that communication. It's like you can't continue to lose margins in an already low margin business because your costs are rising. Your labor costs are going up. Food costs are going up as well due to supply and demand situations and supply chain issues. We've had so many things to do in the restaurant business, but don't lose heart. You have to take stock every day and keep fighting every single day. Raising prices is important.
I can't emphasize enough, Jaime and to the audience how important it is to maximize the profit on every single sale that is going out the door. Re-evaluating your menu and making sure that everything is contributing a very similar high profit and you're not losing money by selling certain items. When you're short staffed, you might want to pare down your menu and get rid of things that cost you a lot to prepare for the customer that don't generate a large profit.
These are all very important steps that are going to ensure your survival and your long term success. Those are some of the important things that I would do that I have been doing that every restaurant needs to pay attention to. Those small details, pennies equal dollars. It all adds up to your survival and your ultimate success. You've got to take advantage of all the government money. You maximize the profit on every menu item. You get motivated and inspired and make a fun culture where people want to work together and all get through this together.
Quarterly Incentives
The part about the government money is important because if you have a little bit more cushion from that money, you can feel more comfortable increasing your wages and competing against some of the other opportunities that folks have where traditionally restaurants are run much tighter. You talked about that. Take advantage of that. There's a lot of, in essence, free money out there and hopefully, they do replenish that because I know the demand and supply was over stripped. You talked about quarterly incentives. You throw it in an example, but let's talk about bullets that people are hitting like what key metrics are you using. Let's get into that just a little bit.
Every restaurant has a different situation based on volume and sales each week. You have to do what you can afford to do, but you can't short shrift it and skimp on it either. Again, as Jaime said, there are hiring bonuses and people will jump ship. The last thing you want is a surprise where someone comes to you and says, “I'm sorry. I can't turn down a thousand dollar signing bonus to go over to this company.” It's tragic that this is happening. I'll give you a metric in a moment, but I want to also emphasize that unfortunately, this is not a sustainable situation where you can't continually raise wages by a few dollars per employee every week and give them incentives. Unless, you've got that cushion that Jaime talked about from getting the free money.
Once that money is gone, now you've raised the bar on the wages you need to pay. You can't suddenly go to your people and say, “The pandemics over. Labor shortage is over and now I got to cut you $3 an hour and no more incentive bonuses.” Once you put something in place, you have to be able to live with it long term. The only key to that sustainability is maximizing profits on every sale and then being a relentless marketer and figuring out ways to fill your seats to maximize your takeout to have multiple profit centers in your restaurant.
You have to dial every piece of your operation to be a cash machine and generate money because it's the only way that you can afford to keep up with rising prices. A particular metric for staff in general that we've done is quarterly bonuses and this is staggered. It's very interesting, but people seem to respond to it in our operation. We've given them a $200 bonus each person in the first quarter meaning three months from now, if you do a great job, show initiative and be a part of the team. Not just an average employee that shows up late to earn your bonus.
You have to dial every piece of your operation to generate more money. It is the only way you can afford to keep up with the rising prices.
I go back to that job description. It all started with that pre-pandemic. Everyone needs a very detailed job description for every position in your restaurant. You sit down with people and you go down line by line. You have a little place where they can initial on the side. You keep a copy of this and you say, “These are the basic expectations of your job. These are the responsibilities.” If they agree, “I agree. This is what I'm held accountable for,” then they put an initial on it. Everybody signs the sheet and then you keep that.
When performance varies or it deviates from what your expectations are, if they're not quite meeting expectations. That's when you have to sit them down in private and say, “Your job description said this. We all agreed. Is there a problem why you can't meet that expectation?” You put the ball in their court and you ask them how they would solve the problem to get their performance back to what expectations are. If they were unrealistic expectations, then you can say, “We tried it. It didn't work. Let's alter this a little bit. Now, we're going to re agree that we're going to shoot for this benchmark.” It starts with a job description.
I would pay bonuses for those people that go above and beyond. Show a little initiative and show that you're not leaving early. You're the first person to punch out and get out of there. You don't do your side work. You don't clean the kitchen. You got to incentivize people for the actual performance, but we did $200 in the first quarter. We did $100 the next quarter, then $200 dollars a quarter again and then $100. Over the course of the year, you're paying out. $600 per employee. Again, we have a cushion and we're able to do that.
That's just one example. It doesn't have to be that amount. You have to figure out what works for your operation and what's going to hit home with your staff and how you're going to keep them motivated. It's all in how you lead as well. If you lead by example and if you treat people with respect and you build a culture of teamwork. They're more likely to stay as opposed to the managers that bark orders at people. They delegate. “You go do this and you go do that,” but you're not in the trenches with them empowering them and showing them what the performance looks like and then giving them regular feedback. Not just the cash incentives but positive feedback saying, “Great job. I love that you did it that way. Thanks so much for working for us.”
It's the constant praise and people feel like they're valued. That is as important as the money is because they might go somewhere else and you hate where they're going. Even if they're getting a signing bonus or a little bit more an hour. In a couple of weeks or even a week, they'll just leave that place. You have to make sure that you treat them well and incentivize them.
Your culture is going to be the dominant factor in retaining. If they love you, they're not going to move for $100 or $200 if you've set up the structure for their long-term success. Before we move to the next bullet, you talked about that long term mentality. I do want that to resonate with folks. We are in such a different economic model through COVID. I used the phrase before COVID. It was a very easy time. It was easy to make money and the people were flowing then the worst thing we've ever seen. Now we're coming out of it.
Keeping Customers Loyal
Hopefully, you took that time to get systematized for profits. Now, all of a sudden, customers are again at your door. The lines out the door and having trouble serving them all. It's like, are you maximizing every opportunity? That's not our purpose. We can’t get into all that but make sure you have that mindset. Roger and I and other’s content gets into that. Roger has courses that get into that and I'll have them reference that at some point. That is a big focus in addition to getting people. Let me jump and we'll talk about number two, create a way to keep loyal customers coming back and finding new staff. I think you came across an idea. What do you want to share here?
This goes back two decades that I've continued to use year after year and this is obviously pre-pandemic stuff. The concept of trade isn't always thought of by operators. What I mean by trade is you trade gift cards or value in your restaurant in exchange for services. The concept began with that. I would go to all of my suppliers. Your food and beverage suppliers aren't going to work on these types unless they're independent companies. I'm talking about anything like trash removal or plowing or flowers arrangements or linen services, if it's a small independent company.
People I found love to go into a restaurant with their wife or their partner or their family or whatever it is and just be able to walk in and order things without having to pay for them. The benefit to you is pennies on the dollar versus paying them cash for their services. When you trade, it's literally the cost to your food and beverage which could be $0.30 or $0.35 or $0.40 as opposed to paying the dollar. I saw an interesting restaurant chain that is coming up with incentives for its customers and its guests by offering gift cards for referrals of family or friends or people they know to work in the restaurant.
This restaurant is offering $200 gift cards to the restaurant to its customers if they recommend someone that applies for a job and then stays for 90 days. At the end of that 90 day period, you've got a gift card with $200 on it. It's simple. They have posters and table tents all over the restaurant. They're announcing it on their social media platforms. I've never done it personally, but it's a great idea that I would implement in the future. I just thought it was a unique and cool idea.
Rewards Program
It expands exponentially the number of people that will promote what you're doing. “I had a great dinner at Jim's Steakhouse. They had a little tabletop and it talked about looking for staff, a $200 bonus. Sue, I know you were looking for some extra shifts.” That thing. It exponentially gets the word out there. That is a great way to find people, people who like your restaurant, and know people who are good. They bring them to a restaurant. Very good. I love that. Let's go, you touched on this and this was a cornerstone of your operations in Maine. That was very successful. Make it fun. Keep it fun. Hopefully, a lot of operators do follow this, but if you were to give the overview of your mentality on this what would you say?
We touched on the company culture thing a moment ago. Our company culture was a mission statement. It was all about creating a team and respectful environment based on hospitality, which is the foundation of this business, hospitality, family, and fun. It was all about hospitality. We wanted to deliver amazing dining experiences to each and every guest whether they were takeout customers, delivery customers, or sit down in the restaurant customers. Everyone needed to get that hospitality. We trained our staff every single day in what that meant. The true meaning of the word. It drives this business.
Family is where your customers or your guests are. I love using the word guests. Not everyone uses that term. My favorite term for customers is guests because they truly are guests as if they were dining in your own home, but where the guests feel like family and the staff feel like family. If you treat everyone with that respect and appreciation where everyone feels like they're part of your family. That is such a huge marketing boost. Hospitality, family, and then the fun part.
You want the staff to be having so much fun that it rubs off on the customers where they see that your operation is a well dialed machine. Everyone gets along together. Everything's humming. Customers can see a restaurant that's dialed versus one where everyone's running around and it's just chaos. It's very obvious to everyone. That's harder to achieve with the labor shortage, but you have to create that culture where it's also fun because if it's not fun people don't want to be there. They're going to jump ship for greener pastures or what looks like fun somewhere else.
Create a fun workplace culture. If people do not want to be there, they will jump ship for greener pastures and look for fun somewhere else.
Make it fun. Keep it fun. The way to do that also is to reinforce the culture through rewards programs. We're talking about staff rewards. We had both staff rewards and customer rewards because we wanted to encourage loyalty for our customers or our guests to keep coming in. We certainly wanted to build that foundation where the staff felt like, “This is such a fun place to work. By the way, they give us these great incentives and they recognize people all the time for doing a great job.”
I've beaten this to death. Our program was called difference dollars. We rewarded people every single week for making a difference. That meant going above and beyond the basics. If they saw something that either impacted a guest experience in a positive way or they helped out another team member or staff person because that person needed help and they jumped in. No one asked them what to do. They just recognize it on their own. They knew it was the right thing to do. Again, that culture. The rising tide theory lifts all boats.
If that's the culture you create then think of the experience as you're delivering to the customer. Anyway, that was the program. We recognize two people every single week and we call their program different dollars. I gather the whole team together. I know I've mentioned this numerous times, but for new readers we gather the whole team together in the kitchen two different nights, Fridays and Saturdays when the majority of staff were working. Maybe I recognized that person and caught them doing something amazing.
Maybe another team member said, “Roger, by the way, did you hear about what Sally did this week?” It didn't matter where the idea or the recognition came from but we would recognize people. I would literally gather the whole team together before the doors open for business and I would thank that person for doing what they did. I would explain exactly what the difference is that person made to the operation, to the customer or guest or to the staff person. I gave them $20 and a can of Red Bull. I said, “Keep it up.” We love this.
If that didn't just build morale, every single week, people couldn't wait to see who was going to get recognized. People started going above and beyond trying to win. We made it fair. Multiple people got recognized more than once but not within a couple of weeks time. We wanted everyone to have a chance to participate. Pretty soon, the bad apples, the C-players or the people that just showed up for the paycheck got voted off the island. It built that culture where everyone was a well-oiled machine. Everyone liked and enjoyed working together.
I recommend you come up with a loyalty or a reward program of your own. Come up with a catchy name. Announce how it's going to work. At the end of the week, when we gave this stuff away, I would then type the whole difference up in and frame it in the back kitchen, the employee area, the employee bathroom, and the hallway. Literally every part of the back of the house was filled with these differences. Whenever a new employee was hired, they couldn't miss walking down the hall and reading what Sally did, John did, and what Bill did. It automatically sent a message. “These are the expectations to work here. This is what people do. By the way, we're rewarded for that performance.”
All that impacted our customer and our guest experience like you wouldn't believe. Come up with a catchy name. Come up with gift cards to Starbucks or movie theaters or small cash rewards. It doesn't matter. That builds that culture. There are prizes that you can also get from your suppliers. I've talked about that endlessly as well.
Roger has shared that story with me a few times in our sessions, but every time I hear it I go, “Why the heck doesn't every restaurant do exactly that?” I wrote down some bullets here that I like. You used the keywords family, guest, respect, and appreciation. What I like about it is the unplanned nature of catching them doing something right.
It's not something that you do. “If you do these five things right, you'll get rewarded.” No. It’s like let me catch you doing something that goes above and beyond and I'm going to recognize you for that. Also, the fact that it's public recognition. That idea of celebrating in a group. Public recognition and criticize in private. You wouldn't want to bring everyone in the kitchen and criticize someone and call them out. That would be horrible. Horrifying for them.
You want to recognize them in public and criticize them in private. That's excellent. You talk about framing them and putting them in the kitchen. Now, you're walking down this wall. Everybody's done great things. It does have expectations. Everything you said can be implemented by every type of restaurant regardless of your concept. It is a great way to build culture. That in and of itself just running through that in your head and your operation is very helpful.
Restaurant Managers
You talked about working as a team and having each other's back. Customer standpoint or customer hat, when the servers walk with their head down, pass my table. Not my job. Not my problem. I'm not going to help. That is horrible as a customer to feel. The only person who can look, then I got to do this. Where’s my guy? Where's my girl because no one else will help me in the whole darn place? You don't want to have that in your environment. You want everybody working together. Roger, let's keep moving. Managers grow your brand and your business. Managers are a big piece and more responsibility. They're probably feeling distress. The strain as well. What do you think is a good tip for these folks?
Managers have very demanding jobs in restaurants and their job description is a full plate. There are average managers and there are stellar exemplary managers. The difference comes down to two different words empowerment versus delegation. I love the word empowerment because the difference is any manager any ordinary person can delegate and tell somebody what to do. “You go do that.” “This needs to be done.” “It's your job.” “Go do it.” That's delegation.
Empowerment is developing your people. Leading by example. Explaining the importance of doing something. Demonstrating perhaps how things should be done and giving them a reason why it's going to impact the restaurant as a whole and explain to them what a difference that will make. That's empowerment. I also like the word intrapreneur. You and I have talked about this numerous times. Everyone knows what an entrepreneur is. Someone who takes a risk to start a business with the hopes of making a profit. A very simple definition.
An intrapreneur is someone who treats their job as if it was their business, they owned it and their success or failure depended on how they performed that job. Very few people are intrapreneurs and it's innate in many cases. People are either born with it or they don't have it, but it can be trained. It can be inspired. I had many managers over the years that we just introduced this concept. There were expectations and then there were bonusable levels for achieving certain successes above and beyond the job descriptions. It starts again with the job description where these are the basics of your job and this is how you earn your salary.
These are A, B, C, and D and perhaps E of bonus activities. Whether you do something that builds the business. If you're a chef or a kitchen manager, do you come up with cash cows that are pure profits and make the restaurant money? Are you incentivized for keeping your food costs consistent and within what I call the sweet spot? Are you in charge of managing a staff? Are your labor costs in line consistently in that sweet spot?
You incentivize people for hitting these benchmarks and staying there. Even improving upon those benchmarks. That's important. Maybe it's ordering efficiency. If you're a kitchen manager or a chef, low waste spoilage. No theft. All these things make the business more successful. If you are in front of the house manager, can you increase the takeout business? Can you create a catering operation? Can you develop private parties and events at non-busy times when the restaurant isn't full? Do you have a separate banquet with a facility? This person is dialing for dollars and getting business coming in the door.
We used to give people percentage incentives for hitting those goals and it's well worth your while. If you can track and there's the key word, it must be trackable because in order to give an incentive or a bonus, you need to have an idea of what that return on investment was. If it costs you anything to implement the program and then what the prophet was above and beyond that, then giving somebody a percentage of that profit. It keeps them motivated to keep the wheels turning of success and progress.
All those things are cool. Creating a loyalty program is another idea. You can come up with all sorts of ideas. My bar manager literally built our mug club from scratch. It went from 50 mugs year one. When I sold my flagship restaurant, he had built it to over 1,200 mugs. Each of which was a membership that paid so much cash every single year to belong. My bar manager got a percentage of every mug that he sold and it was well worth our while.
Not every operation can do this, but 1,200 mugs that pay you $50 a piece. You're looking at like $60,000 in extra cash that a restaurant can use, whether it's $5,000 or $10,000 or $50,000. It doesn't matter. If you can bring in that extra money, profit centers and create a merchandising program. I'm a big advocate of building a brand. Not just running a restaurant. We talk about multiple profit centers. Can you come up with logo merchandise where people pay you to advertise your business? Whether it's wearable clothing with your logo on it or packaged foods to go with that keep your brand top of mind with the customer when they take home your delicious food. It reminds them they want to come back into your restaurant.
People literally pay you to advertise your product. You can't have too many profit centers. Do you have extra space in your restaurant to bring in video games, pinball machines, and those candy crane games? All the stuff that kids love because parents love to have a night out where the kids aren't at the table bugging them. It's like the kids eat and then they're occupied. You'd be surprised at how much money you can rake in.
You don't have the maintenance hassles of owning the equipment because there's companies across the country that literally bring these games and cranes to you with a change machine. They maintain it. They come in once a week and take the cash out of it. They give you 50% of the take and all you need to do is provide them the space if you have the space. These are just some simple ideas of additional profit centers. Talk about private parties and events. I can go on forever talking about this, but incentivize your people to come up with these ideas.
Roger, I got to tell every restaurant for the next four years, no cranes because if my kid goes in and there's a crane. I'm out $5 instantaneously. Until she gets a little older and gives up on the crane dream. That's what they do. “Can I have a dog?” “Do you have any quarters?” It's brutal. “Because the crane never gives any prizes.” It is a good profit, but I wrote down something that is 1,000% true. We have an article and I swear to God it's got to be at least 10 to 15 years old on our site and I could find it somewhere. It talks about a waitress somewhere in Minnesota. I don't know. This was years ago.
The number is still a giant number. Talk about a waitress maximizing her opportunities to make over $90,000 a year as a server. That's great money and certainly was many years ago. What she did and it talks about is she thought about it as her business. This guy, this restaurant owner is giving me a business inside his business. There's no risk for you. They've taken all the liability and all the infrastructure. They're doing all the stuff and you just show up. They've provided you with a business.
If you have that mindset walked in and these guys are taking care of all the other headaches. All I got to do is do this, build a clientele, upsell and I can make a whole bunch of money. That works for the servers. It works for your managers. You can incentivize your kitchen staff as well. Our fifth point will be short because we're already hit on these points. If they operate with a mindset of I'm a little small business inside of this business where the owner is taking the bigger risks.
Maximizing Resources
You can make yourself a lot of money. In the meantime, make your business a lot of money and be very valuable. That mindset of an intrapreneur is 100% applicable in any environment. Maybe I hit this and if there's something because we talked about all these efficiencies that save money for the company that could benefit. Is there something else you want to specifically touch on here that we didn't already?
I’m glad that you brought that up. We already talked about the importance of incentivizing your staff, the teamwork, and the respect thing and all that. The importance of dialing in your menu so that every single thing that goes out the door maximizes your profit, but thank you. Your point brings up the fact that you can have an order taker on the phone or on the floor serving the customer and giving them an ordinary experience or you can have people so well trained that they know their menus inside and out. They know your restaurant concept and all the hooks we talk about inside and out.
They have that personality. They can literally light up a room and make suggestions that we know that the customer will enjoy and appreciate. That's a salesperson. Not an order taker. If every dollar counts, why would you allow order takers on the phone or on the floor without training them to make suggestions every single table every time to every customer in the door? Make suggestions.
If you're proud of what you're selling, then you should not be hesitant to train your staff to make these suggestions and recommend things. Things that complement what they're already ordering. Things that you recognize because they've got a family and the kids would like it. You have to come up with all these things or suggestions and regularly train your staff to make suggestions while they're delivering amazing dining experiences. That is a critical thing. I'm glad that you brought that up. Maximizing every dollar and every sale as well as the profit you're making on every sale makes so much sense.
Our goal was to be on for about 30 to 40 minutes. We're pretty much there. Let's leave them with that mentality of maximizing each opportunity and that wraps up where we are. You have a restaurant that has gone through a whole shitload of horrible stuff in months. Things are coming back online, especially where I am. I've been traveling. Restaurants are busy again. Yes, COVID is still concerned. I wish we closed the door and locked that thing down. I know the variants are sneaking back in but hopefully, we solve this.
Sales Stars
It seems like from the customer side, we're going to keep progressing, regardless. With that in mind, how do you maximize every opportunity? How do you have all the structures in place? In closing, Roger, let them know about a couple of the programs you have that do that the sales stars. It was perfect what you just talked about like teaching your folks how to not miss an opportunity. It's such an important thing like.
Put the customer hat back on. Again, you can go to the same restaurant and your bill can be $40 or $100 based on what the server does. It's a bottle of wine and Roger talks about this and got a great example. As a customer, sometimes I'm sitting there going, “I would like another beer but they blew the timing.” They come around and I forget about it or sometimes you're in the mood for dessert and they just blow the timing and you don't get it.
Another beer for me. Another one for the wife and the desert. That's more than $20. That was early on. If the kids are tagging along for dinner too, other opportunities there. They got to have two more desserts. It's like, “All those missed opportunities.” Tell folks what you think about how you have the programs that help with that stuff. What do you get?
It all began with a program you mentioned called Sales Stars, which essentially does that exact thing. It trains the entire staff on the true meaning of hospitality, what customers are guests are looking for, and then knowing your menus and your concepts so well that you can make suggestions at every table every time. It talks about the moment of truth where a sale is either captured at that precise moment where the customer is ready, willing, and able to buy it or as you mentioned, “The server is not around. I would have had another beer. Another glass of wine,” but no. The opportunity is lost.
Think about every table every time, every single shift, how many of these opportunities are lost every single day that you're operating, times exponentially, as you mentioned earlier, the number of staff you have serving customers. If you've got ten orders to take on the floor and they're missing all these opportunities. You're losing thousands of dollars in sales every single week because these people aren't trained to sell, make suggestions, and deliver extraordinary experiences.
I'd like to end that by saying it's not just about the servers and the bartenders or if you have a quick serve operation, the people over the counter. It's every single front of house person that could potentially interact with customers should be trained so well that they can make a suggestion and make a sale. When I created the Sales Stars program in my restaurant. It wasn't just the service that the bartenders were selling. It was the house that was making suggestions. It was the busers that didn't just clear tables.
They were literally backing up the front of the house team. They could go to the point of sale system. They could order another glass of wine or another beer. They could notice that a customer's glass was empty and ask them, “Did you enjoy that glass of wine? Can I bring you another?” The busers were trained to do this. Think of how powerful that is when your entire front of house team knows their menu so well and they have a skill set where it's a soft sell. It's a suggestion. It's a better service. It's not order taking that loses your restaurant money. That's what Sales Stars is all about.
I have a perfect example, too. We sat down at a restaurant. My wife had a good special there the last time and she goes to the host, “Any specials today?” Sure enough, the hosts have no training, “I don't know. Maybe. Let me find out.” Can we cross that chasm a little bit and make sure they know? She would have brought instead of buying the $12 thing. Maybe she gets the $20 item. Having them armed with that ammunition is vital.
Episode Wrap-up
Roger's website is RestaurantRockstars.com. You can find all his stuff, the show, a big back load of episodes there, the content sales stars and as well as the academy and so forth. Our website RunningRestaurants.com is also available for you there. We have a great membership special now on the site so take a look at that. We've got over 1,200 articles of content across all spectrums of restaurant operations, marketing service, people, and all that tech stuff. You can imagine all that sitting there 24/7, 365 for you to get into. If you haven't been on the site, please do that. Roger, do you have any closing or parting thoughts?
I want to just re-inspire everyone that is in this business. You got into this business for a reason. Hopefully, it was driven by passion because this is a vision, a business of passion. We should be passionate about delivering our best service and our best guest experiences every single day. We should be passionate about talking to our customers and thanking them for their business and explaining the challenges that we're going through.
Coming up with these incentive programs that reward them for their business, but it's all about the worst seems to be over. If you've made it this far, if your restaurant has not closed, if you pivoted 100 times like we have and you're still going. Dig a little deeper. It's almost over. Get through this. Get creative. Brainstorm with your team and your staff and keep everybody inspired to do their best for the customer. The customer will reward you with that business if they feel that they're special. It's about incentives, but it's also about pats on the back and praises for recognizing people for doing a great job.
The customer will reward you if you make them feel special.
Very good. I do like that. Definitely say thank you. It's not said enough and you can over say thank you enough. I like the phrase dig deeper because when you're short staffed and everybody's working harder. The boss calls you in, “Can you come in one more time?” You're digging deeper. I love the brainstorm with your staff. Don't forget, these people are super resourceful. Whether what they know about something new on Instagram or TikTok.
They're going to see this other, let's say you have twenty people in your restaurant. There's twenty people's brains that you can use in your business for ideas, saving money, and resources. Make sure you take advantage of all the people in your operation in all those spectrums. We chat about incentives. We crossed a lot of other little nuggets along the way. I appreciate you being with us here. Once again, Jaime Oikle from RunningRestaurants.com along with Roger Beaudon from RestaurantRocksstars.com. Thanks, Roge.
Thank you, everyone. It's great to see you, Jaime. Thanks for having me on the show.
I appreciate it.
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