Table of Contents

The Demand

This week, you schedule a visit to a restaurant decidedly better than yours — for yourself and for your cast — because you cannot coach a level of hospitality you have never experienced yourself. If you stop growing, your cast stops being developed, and your team will never outperform your own commitment to getting better.

The Work

  1. Identify a restaurant in your market or a market you compete in that is decidedly better than yours. Not a peer. Better.
  2. Schedule a visit for yourself this month, as a Guest, with the specific purpose of experiencing what beating you feels like from inside the room.
  3. Schedule at least one cast member or leader to do the same — as a development investment, not a reward.
  4. Schedule a cast member who has never sat in your own restaurant as a Guest to do exactly that this week. They should experience the Guest Experience from the seat, not just from behind the line or the host stand.
  5. After each visit, debrief specifically: what did they notice that they cannot see from their normal vantage point, and what is one thing to bring back into your building.

This month, you and at least one cast member sit as a Guest in a better restaurant, and one cast member sits as a Guest in your own, before you ask either of them to deliver a Guest Experience they have never personally experienced.