Building The Right Restaurant Leadership Team With Darren Denington (Ep 235)
Restaurants require a well-rounded and high-performing leadership team to ensure it operates flawlessly and effectively. With so many moving parts, owners must learn how to hire the right people who can work together in a fast-paced environment. Jaime Oikle explains how this can be done with Darren Dennington, founder of Service With Style. Together, they discuss the right way to write job descriptions, the difference between leadership and management, and the impact of various leadership styles in a restaurant setting. Darren also shares an overview of the Restaurant Management 201 this March in New York.
Find out more at https://servicewithstyle.com/ & https://restaurantmanagement201.com/
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Building The Right Restaurant Leadership Team With Darren Denington
I'm excited for this episode because joining me is a longtime friend and colleague Darren Denington, Founder of Service With Style. Darren is a longtime industry veteran from owning and operating his restaurants to coaching and consulting restaurants all across the nation and country to running Service With Style, which is a secret shopping service, to speaking at the restaurant food shows nationwide. This guy has seen it all.
Darren, that last bit that I talked about, that's why we are together. You're speaking at the New York Restaurant Show towards the end of March 2025 but also giving an exciting workshop called Restaurant Management 201. I was hoping to tease folks a bit on that and prod you for 20 to 25 minutes of some of your best management and leadership content. How does that sound?
That sounds great, Jaime. It's good to see you. Thanks for having me back.
Talking About Management and Leadership in Restaurants
Darren can talk about any topic in the restaurant industry for 100% sure. In this episode, we are going to stay laser-focused on the topic of management and leadership. How do you start talking to folks about this topic? It can be sensitive. “I know what I'm doing. I've done it this way.” How do you talk about management and leadership with restaurants?
My thought was to challenge your audience to take a look at their leadership team, not the whole restaurant. There are a lot of moving parts but let's step back and see where your leadership team is, whether you're about to open next month or you've been ten years in business. It's always nice to pause and say, “What do I have going on with the leadership team?” What I find is that there are a lot of simple basic steps. You're trying to first define the management team and then add a little bit of clarity to the leaders so that they understand what's going on.
The first part is simple, easy, and basic steps. Most places, quite frankly, jump over them because of the organization chart. “What do I need that for?” It's that first step that is so easy. Grab a yellow pad of paper and mock up an organization chart. Let's say you're running a restaurant with $1.5 million or maybe $2 million a year in sales. Things are going pretty good. You're busy. Take a look at the leadership team that you have for that. Maybe it's 5, 6, or 7 people.
An organization chart is the first basic step that says, “What positions do we need? How do we communicate? What roles do we have?” You put the owner at the top, the general manager, the kitchen manager reports to the GM, and the front-of-the-house manager reports. Both of them have an assistant. There are six people on your leadership team. You've got to start to add a little bit of clarity. You want everybody in the organization to understand who the leaders are, what their roles are, and what they're doing so that they can effectively do their job.
That second step, a lot of times, is jumped over because it's quite basic, which is job descriptions. All I'm talking about is some basic and very easy-to-use job descriptions for your leadership team. Maybe you don't need them for servers, hosts, and line cooks. We're talking about the leadership team. If you've got six positions, you want to decide those titles so that everybody understands what comes with that position.
The industry gets very confused. We give titles to certain people but maybe that position isn't needed. Is it a chef? Is it a kitchen manager? Are you running with supervisors? Are they shift leaders? The titles add that first level of clarity and then the job descriptions add the basics to who they report to and what the fundamentals, characteristics, and skills of their jobs are. If you've got an organization chart and a job description, you're starting to get the right people on the team if you know what you're looking for.
If you have an organization chart and a job description, you can easily get the right people to your team because you know what you are looking for.
If you've been doing this for ten years, take a look at your team to say, “Do I have the right people on the bus? Let's fill that bus.” There's a lot that goes into the recruitment of the people. You have to be hiring right and attracting the right people with some good incentive packages. You also have to look inside your team, the ones who are going to be superstars in a couple of years. You can be developing these people and pulling them in on your leadership team but you identify first who's on the bus. Does that make sense where I'm starting?
The Right Way to Create Job Descriptions
I already wrote down a bunch of things and I could go in a whole bunch of different directions. Let's see where we go next. The right people and seats are one of the most important things you can have. How descriptive should these job descriptions be? How much detail is there? How do you go through it with them? What accountability is there? Are there sign-offs like, “These are the things we envision you're doing. Let's both sign off that you're going to do these things. We'll review it in 3 and 6 months.” What are some of those pieces of a puzzle?
You're starting to add the clarity and what we were talking about getting the right people on the bus. I assume that you have that book behind you. It's from Good to Great. You get the right people.
I have it behind me.
It's a great book. When you have the right people, there are steps to building them in a team. First, it starts individually. That job description in my eyes doesn't have to be that in-depth but the conversation with that new manager or that person on your leadership team has to be in-depth. If you have already identified six positions in your leadership team, you've got to go out and make sure that you've agreed upon those positions with the person that's in them so that they understand the bigger picture of what they're accountable for.
They understand you as the owner or the general manager have to get that connection or person so that they're starting to get settled. If you're opening next month or in ten years, you probably have a lot of your managers who need a little bit more training. The first piece. We don't put in-depth manager training programs in a lot of independent restaurants because they're hard to implement.
The owner or the general manager has to focus on getting that new manager orientated for 3 or 6 months and making sure that they learn the basic positions and know how to run the POS. They can jump on the line and they're comfortable behind the bar. They have to allow some time for the managers at whatever level to settle in and know what their role is. The owner or the general manager has to be in development mode. It's a conversation over conversation after months and months of passing information on to these new managers. Whether they're new to your organization or in their role, they have to be acclimated to what your expectations are of them as a manager.
Dichotomy Between Leadership Versus Management
I'm going to ask you a question, which we've touched on before. It's semantics to some extent but some people will get worked up about it. It’s the terms leadership versus management. You have Restaurant Management 201, which is the title of your program, which I love. It's going beyond the basics as if you're in college. This is not the intro. This is the second level. It's terrific content. We have this dichotomy. Leadership versus management mean different things. Darren, how do you make the distinction?
One great thing is you mentioned the workshop that was taking place in New York. My co-presenter Allison has a great take on this but the basic portion is I'm looking at leaders to lead the business, grow the staff, develop them, and try to make them long-term employees that they care about what we're doing. Management comes down to the shifts. We've got to run the day-to-day. We need systems, checklists, and things in place to make sure that we're consistently doing things over and over every single day to make everybody's life easy. Manage the shift and lead the people.
We need systems and checklists to make sure we are consistently doing the right things every single day.
Different Leadership Styles in Restaurants
It is one of those things. You hear this phrase a lot, “Just because you're a manager doesn't mean you're a leader. Just because you're not a manager doesn't mean you can't be a leader,” and so forth. Let's talk about the bigger picture. I want to ask you a question here. Talking about books, I'm reading this book, which is the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson. You can have any opinion you want on Musk. Mine was different before starting this book and I'm about halfway through.
There are a couple of fascinating things in the book that remind me of the restaurant business. It’s the Gordon Ramsay type of people, screaming at your staff to think that that is a method. In Musk’s story, while he’s a genius in many ways, he’s a very tyrannical boss who will scream at people and fire them on a whim. That has worked because he's the richest guy on the planet but there are different ways to lead. I wanted to ask you style-wise thoughts on Gordon Ramsay screaming and Elon Musk yelling at folks versus more of a nurturing approach. Both things can work in a way. What do you think?
I look at the restaurant as having so many moving parts that it's hard to manage with a few people. That's why I look at it as a leadership team. I genuinely think that it's a team sport. You've got six managers trying to run this business for the week and they're all helping in different ways. I've always been a believer in building it so that it works for everybody. I want them to enjoy their job and feel good about it. I want them to feel that they're part of a leadership team that covers their back and tries to grow the restaurant so that it works for everybody involved.
I look at these 6 managers or 6 leaders on your team as a division of responsibility so that we're all on the same page working towards the greater goal. If I look at the owner or the general manager, their goal should be developing this leadership team because it takes time. When I look at the leaders or managers running the day-to-day business, they should first be working on systems and staff.
When you have the right leaders who are working together as this great team and they're communicating well, then you take some simple and easy-to-use restaurant systems that you certainly help provide to all your audience and implement these things so that the days become a little bit easier. If you can get the staff to buy in, that's the key.
The daily managers have to get the buy-in of the staff. It's got to be a relaxed work environment and enjoyable. It's got to work for everybody involved. When you have the leadership, systems, and staff, then this leadership team starts to identify the priorities and every single restaurant has different priorities. If the six leaders are saying, “What do we need to work on?” “I think we've got some big core problems with our menu. Maybe we could take the next three months and make that all of our priorities.”
When they can work on that together, that's when you can knock out projects. It's hard to implement a training system but when six people work at it for a couple of months, you get a pretty good training system. The one piece that I suggest for this leadership team as a starting point is a responsibilities list. There's probably a list of 35 or 40 small little areas inside your restaurant that your leaders divide and conquer so you know who deals with the uniforms and Pepsi and who handles your marketing flyers. It adds that clarity.
It is hard to implement a training system. But when six people work at it for a couple months, you get a pretty good one in place.
The owners have to work on the definition and the clarity of the leadership team and develop them. The managers start to work on the operations and the staff, and then they come back together and say, “Let's identify 3 priorities or 3 big projects that by January next year, we could knock out. Let's do a marketing chart, marketing program, and a new financial system.” Six people together can tackle those. The problem is that so many other pieces come into the day distracting us. We never get those good things.
I suggest starting at the beginning. Maybe you jump over a few of those steps quickly and get your management team back on course. Take a look at where your leadership team is and see what they need. There are some real key questions that you need to ask as you're doing this. “Do I have the right people? Are they properly trained? Do I need to work on some leadership team building?” Maybe individually they are superstars but together, they need to come together as a group. You've got to identify a lot of steps.
The Power of Situational Leadership
It's a juggling match and there's no easy answer for some of those pieces. I wrote down the word coach when you said it a little while ago. Do you use any metaphors? I know you're a big sports family. You got the hockey stuff in the background. You’re a big hockey fan. It is a metaphor that is used quite often in corporations like coach, pep rallies, leadership, big game, new year, big opportunity. Do you ever go in that direction in terms of when you're giving speeches and in coach mode?
I like to stick to the details that help. Metaphors can make your point. I’m a big sports fan. I'm certainly a big hockey fan. That's where the team side of it comes from. I find that you can easily identify additional people on this leadership team to help you get through all the days. Metaphors, I look at it a little bit more as situations. Situational leadership is what I love to see. Situations come up all the time in the restaurants. You got 20 tables in the last 10 minutes and you've only got 3 servers on the floor. You can have a fire in the kitchen. You can have all kinds of situations.
For the most part, restaurants run fairly well. People understand how to do this and you've got some good people but situations arise where that's when you need the leaders. I find that when leaders show their team what they can do as a leader and they try to earn the respect and the team looks at them as knowledgeable and people that I like to work with, then when the bus comes in and you get slammed and everybody turns to you for guidance, nice and calmly, you lead them through the next 30 minutes.
Everything goes smoothly as opposed to not having that leadership structure and those leadership characteristics, when you get super busy and overwhelmed, you deal with it yourself as a server. You don't reach out for any help and that's leading to additional problems. Leaders have to set themselves up as people that they want to turn to in times of need. Situational leadership is I how put it.
Leaders have to set themselves up as people they want to turn to in times of need.
How To Make Daily Meetings Effective
I know you're a proponent of doing daily meetings and so forth. How else have you been successful in doing daily meetings and kicking them off? Is it keeping them short? How do you get folks engaged in that ongoing learning process?
The daily meetings are a communication tool. There's so much information to pass on to different people. If you're running this $1.5 million restaurant, you probably have 40 and 50 employees. There are a lot of changes and information to make sure everybody has. Let me back it up a step and say that the most critical meeting is with the leadership team. That's a weekly meeting that I like to utilize for a lot of different reasons.
First, it's to pass on simple information and solve problems as a team. As the owner or the general manager, I also like to use that as a development tool. I take some time during meetings. Maybe we break away from the topic. I throw in a metaphor or a story. I tell a little bit of history to bring everybody up to speed all together. The center of everything is the weekly manager meeting.
Owners and general managers should be taking that very seriously because that's where you can build some camaraderie between your managers. You can work through some personal challenges and get strong as a leadership team from there. Yes, you need a couple of tools to pass on the information to the team. My favorite is the shift meetings. We huddle up so that we communicate. We get ready for the shift and try to make sure everyone's in a great mood. If they're done right, they can be very productive.
It's one of those tools that genuinely helps but part of those systems that I had already mentioned, communication systems are right on the top of the list for me, which are manager meetings and a couple of good ways to consistently communicate all the small things to your staff. The bigger things go one-on-one meetings. There are a lot of individual meetings in the restaurants.
The Power of Public Recognition
Let's hit on 1 or 2 more things before we wrap up. One thing I want to ping you on is the power of public recognition. You touched on it, doing one-on-ones but there's so much power in public recognition. It could be simple as an Employee of the Month plaque or quotes in the back room, or as part of your daily or monthly meetings. You call people out for things that they did well. Have you seen folks do this well? How do you encourage folks to give that public recognition? When you get it in front of all your peers, it makes you feel like a million bucks.
You probably have this book on your shelf too, The One Minute Manager. It's the one-minute appraisal, the one-minute reprimand. If you see a problem with an employee, address it and handle it right there nice and simple. Use it as training and try to move on. The positive reinforcement in front of a crowd. You want to criticize in a corner and praise in public. I find that there's not enough praise in restaurants.
We work hard. There's a lot to do every day. Simple little things that go wrong can change the attitude of the shift. Saying some thank yous and “I appreciate you” individually goes a long way. Pull out some great things that you saw yesterday or maybe they were highlighted in a secret shopping report. “Let's see how the shopper was treated.” You can read right from the report and give some good praise in front of the entire team. It makes people feel wanted and needed.
Saying thank you to someone goes a long way.
Going back to spinning things the opposite way, I'm reading this book with Musk and he destroys people much like Ramsay does on TV. Sometimes people can take it and they understand where it's coming from. Sometimes they leave two weeks later. People oftentimes don't want to be treated like that, especially in front of other people. It's embarrassing so be careful with where you critique people. It is dangerous. You can never go wrong praising people in public.
Make Everyone in Your Team Feel Involved
Last thing - What about any tips or open-ended thoughts on how to get the best out of your people or staff?
Make them feel that they're part of it and we're focusing on the management team. If they want to be included and identified as part of this team, then early on, they should be part of the brainstorming. They should be involved in some of the problems they're trying to fix. For example, if the owner comes in and says, “Everyone, here's our next priority. We're redoing the menu,” as opposed to talking with them and seeing what they see as challenges and making that decision together. “If genuinely felt like I was included in the conversation about where we're going with our next menu, then I take ownership of it. I'm proud of it. I want to work a little bit harder.”
Include the staff. The management is easy to include but there are a lot of ways to do that with all your employees. When you take them outside of their normal job and have them do some extra projects, they're learning and growing. You're watching them develop. Maybe in two years, that hostess will be your front-of-the-house manager because he or she was included in so many things over the last six months and they want to grow with you.
Overview Of Darren’s Restaurant Management 201
Thank you for that point. If you ever bring out a whiteboard and ask people, “What are some good ideas for the menu,” you start writing down their ideas, they do feel part of that process versus the other side, “These are the six things I want on the menu. Go get it done.” It doesn't engender the same feeling. As we close, Darren, give me an overview of Restaurant Management 201. What's going on in New York? When is the show? What does it look like?
It's the New York Restaurant Show. I go to a lot of shows. I find them incredibly informative and very helpful. You find a few new products, make some new connections, and get some great ideas. New York has always been one of those fantastic shows. It's March 23rd, 24th, and 25th, 2025 in New York at the Javits Center, outside of Times Square. This show has grown. I heard that they're almost double the exhibitor space from 2024 and 2024 was packed. It's got tons of things going on.
There are over 40 hours of free educational sessions on the show floor. They do a phenomenal job at all the culinary demonstrations. Going to the show, I always have 2 or 3 things on my mind. I want to source a new oven and take a look at new fryers or new flooring. It gives a phenomenal way to do that all together and look at competitors. Maybe you're looking at 3 or 4 ovens in the same place.
New York's a great city. It's a perfect show to travel. There's a Rangers and Islanders game the day before. Hamilton is playing the night before so there are tons of things to do. One of my presentations on the show floor is 10 Steps to Great Service. I’m excited about the workshop that we have called Restaurant Management 201. It's held on the second and third day of the show. That's March 24th and 25th, 2025. You pick either one.
It's a three-and-a-half-hour workshop. Jaime, we got a ton of content. It's myself and Allison. We've been working for two years on this. We continue to put in more details. It's for the management team, exactly what we were talking about. This is an opportunity for a great step forward for 3, 4, or 5-year managers to come to New York, see the show, catch a great workshop, and come out of the workshop with some real direction and good priorities. I’m super excited about the show.
Check that out, folks. Darren Denington with Service With Style. You can check him out at the New York Restaurant Show from March 23rd to 25th, 2025. You can register for his workshop on your website, I believe, Darren. RestaurantManagement201.com.
Is that correct?
That is. I also have a promotional code for a free ticket to the New York show. If you sign up for Restaurant Management 201, I've got a code to discount the $55 show pass. You will pay for the workshop and the promo code once you're on the registration. It is RM201 for Restaurant Management 201. RM201 gets you a free ticket when you come into the workshop.
The New York Restaurant Show itself is at NewYorkRestaurantShow.com. That's easy to find. Service With Style is at ServiceWithStyle.com. One more of course is RunningRestaurants.com. Check us out for more restaurant marketing, service operations, tech tips, and more. We appreciate it. Feel free to subscribe. Please review and rate us. Let us know what you think and share it. That's the most important one. We appreciate all that. Thank you so much, Darren, for spending some time with us. I appreciate it.
Thanks, Jaime. I hope to see you in New York.
Important Links
- Service With Style
- Restaurant Management 201
- Good to Great
- Elon Musk
- The One Minute Manager
- NewYorkRestaurantShow.com