“Customer Success in restaurants continues to evolve and fragment.”
A panel of restaurant leaders says the business is fragmenting. Nothing is. The two Guests they describe are the oldest distinction in the business — one is buying dinner, the other is buying food — and the choice between them...
The Restaurant That Never Needed Forgiving
Cheesecake Factory posted 15.2% comps with 9.5% traffic on 2.4% pricing while the rest of the industry runs turnarounds. The difference is what the relationship is made of.
Now Is The Time To Rethink Culinary Schools
Culinary education has a design problem, not a content problem — and I know because I held all three chairs: student, instructor, and the one they handed the restaurant and told to fix.
I Sent My Clients To Olo To Build Their Own Door: Now Olo Runs A Door That Competes With It
I’ve recommended Olo’s ordering stack to clients for twenty years. Now Olo runs its own door, the Olo App, and it competes with the ones I sent them to build.
How I Plan an Open
I don't sign a lease until the model says the occupancy cost fits. Here's the math I run before any open, and why the lease waits for it.
Why I Don’t Sell Restaurant Turnarounds
A turnaround is the bill for a read nobody ran. What’s worth paying for is the capability to run that read yourself, every shift, so the bill never piles up.
Are You Growing? Why Operators Need A Restaurant Business Coach
Is your restaurant growing, and is it the right growth? Most operators have nobody to ask them. Why a business coach is the partner who teaches you to read it.
Your Server Is Where Hospitality Is Turned Into A Relationship
Your server is where hospitality is turned into a relationship. The Guest's relationship is with your house through your server, and when the server leaves, the house keeps the Guest only if it built the hospitality she was turning into...
What I Have To Undo Before I Can Fix Anything
When I am called into a restaurant that has spent years fixing leaks, the first work is not fixing anything. It is undoing the fixes, because every one of them was a workaround.
Forms, Templates & Other Nonsense
Why restaurant vendors sells templates and forms, why a stack averaged across a thousand restaurants fits none of them, why the first month of improvement was your attention and not the program, and why every form has to be re-read...
