The most interesting people and businesses in the world are different in some way. They do things that other people don't do. There is something about them or what they do that is different and people are drawn to them. They did not take the conventional route that grade school, high school and college encouraged them to take. They blazed new paths where there was no path. Even though their product may be very similar or even exactly the same as others, they do things different and that is why customers love them. They take their followers to new places - places they have never been before. This creates excitement, buzz and loyalty. Once again, Zappos is a great example of this. The guy who started Zappos decided to sell shoes online just like thousands of other companies - but knew he needed to lead his customers to a new place. A place they have never been - either online or in a real shoe store. He did this by blazing a brand new path. A path that's impossible to even picture until someone else creates it.
Zappos is an extreme example I guess - because offering free overnight shipping (both ways) would be tough to pull off for any business - but it doesn’t have to be that extreme or that different. There are many great examples in our list of customers. Restaurants that sell pizza and BBQ for instance. Restaurants that are becoming institutions like Joe's Real BBQ in Gilbert AZ or Pi Pizzeria in St. Louis. Thousands of places sell pizza and BBQ, but these businesses are leading their customers somewhere new. They are doing what they as creative, unique individuals are passionate about and creating a place people want to be often. They also likely ignore what their competition is doing - in fact I bet in their mind they don't even have any competition. Even though they sell BBQ - no one can copy them. No one can do what they do. No one can take people to the same place - even if they sell a similar product at a lower price. People will pay more for Joe's BBQ and go way out of their way to get it. Someone could likely work really hard to make the exact same BBQ, but could never pull off the delivery and the experience like Joe.
So maybe you don't even need to invent something new - or be the pioneers in your industry. You just need to deliver your product or service to people in a way they've never been offered it before. Take them somewhere new, someplace they want to return to again and again.
Earlier this year Wil and I met for a few days down near Pawleys Island SC for a little brainstorming and some relaxing over a round of golf. The brainstorming was fun and easy. We agree on nearly everything - so it was a lot of yes, sounds cool, let's do it.
The golf - well - it was not so easy. It was textbook amateur golf. We teamed up with a couple members at one of the eleven thousand gorgeous golf courses down there and set out to smash the course record. Instead of that - we emptied brand new sleeves of $5 titleists into lakes, sand traps and back yards. Most tee shots ended with a "You think that's OB?". The other 3 would confidently say..."Yes, hit another".
Unbeknownst to Wil, I took this highlight of him on a par 3 so short you could have thrown it in birdie range. The best part of the clip (other than the maintenance guy keeping his leaf blower on, stopping b/w shots and restarting right before Wil hits his 2nd) is the guy in our group at the end saying "Not bad at all...right straight at it".
Penny Karas left a career in policy-related communications work in D.C. to start Hello Cupcake. She opened her first store in 2008, and is getting ready to open a second location soon, as well as launch a national shipping platform. Penny keeps things simple, leverages really cool design to enhance her brand, and refuses to sacrifice the quality of her ingredients. Her passion for her business is contagious - you start whiffing cupcakes when you're speaking with her over the phone! She's learned a ton in just a few years, and we're stoked to be able to share some of her philosophies and advice.
Don’t Wing It – It took me a few more years to develop the concept, develop the recipes, and get it off the ground…my actual storefront. I did catering out of my home for a while as I was perfecting the recipes and building out the store, and then we opened our store in August of 2008.
Live Your Own Philosophy – It really is a part of my philosophy that, as a business owner, you really have to live your own philosophy in your business.
Never Cut Corners – Even when I was baking out of my home kitchen, I never cut corners. I did it in small batches. It was all done from scratch. And that continues to be an important element of the business. We haven’t gone to any sort of mixes, even though our suppliers are constantly pushing us to buy their mixes. We do everything from scratch. We juice our own lemons, we crack our own eggs – we don’t even use liquid eggs. So it really does have a home baked feel about it.
Make Your Space Part Of Your Brand – Another important thing is that the shop has a very high design concept. And this concept of this brand experience, where you’re in a space where the space itself is part of the brand – that’s really important to me as well. So that’s one of the things we planned for the brand from the very beginning.
Use Business Planning Software…And Friends – I used business planning software to do it. I had never done that before, so I highly recommend getting a good business planning software. It guides you through the process, and you basically just plug things in, which is really nice. I counted on a couple of successful business-owner friends to review it for me, and to tell me where bank would call me on things.
Don’t Take "No" For An Answer – I went to the bank, and I knocked on their door, and I didn’t stop knocking, and I wouldn’t take no for an answer (laughs). I stuck my business plan in front of them, and they were like, “Oh no, no, no, no, no. This is ridiculous. Cupcakes? No.” And I was like, “Yes! Trust me (laughs).” So that’s basically what it was. I was very persistent. And every time they asked me for some other piece of information that was a pain in the ass for me to get, and to put together, I would do it. And I would put it in front of them, and I finally convinced them that this was something that they could support.
Double Your Budget & Your Time Frame To Get Started – I get people asking me all of the time, “Oh, I want to open my own bakery or my own cupcake store. What do I have to do?” I tell people not to be afraid of those numbers, because they seem really big when you’re just opening your first business. But you start to realize that you can handle it in pretty short order. I also tell them to double their imagined budget and their imagined time line for their business (laughs).
Marry Your Location With Your Brand – We are in the city. We’re located across the street from a very busy metro station. It’s key in a number of ways. It’s key because it’s just a great location – there’s lots of people walking around. And it’s also key because it meshes very well with our brand. We’re a very upscale, urban brand, appealing to young professionals, and that’s the part of town that we’re in. We’re right in between the neighborhoods where people live, and the neighborhoods where people work. We’re right at this very busy metro stop. There are lots of other small, independent businesses around us. It’s not an area of town that has become national chainified, like other parts of town. So I think it’s been really key for us, in both those ways.
Emad Yakoub owns Glowbal Restaurant Group in Vancouver, BC. After many years as an executive chef at some of Canada's most famous five star restaurants, Emad has owned successful restaurants in Toronto and Vancouver for over fifteen years. He started Glowbal in 2002, and the group now owns six highly popular, successful restaurants in Vancouver. You'll learn so much incredible wisdom from talking to Emad for thirty minutes, that you'll want to spend a whole day with him. Here are a few of the pearls he shared with us...
Make People Happy, And The Numbers Will Take Care Of Themselves – (Emad is speaking here about opening his first restaurant) We were very happy, because we had money in our pocket. We didn’t care too much to run the numbers, on whether we were running 28% food costs, and stuff like that. We just focused on making people happy, and the money will come after that. And that had a big impact on my philosophy in the restaurant business. As much as we know the numbers, we don’t take shortcuts when it comes to our customers. The customer will always get high quality items, for a very good price.
Save On Labor So You Can Have Great Prices – I will guarantee in our city, that if the restaurant next door has the same steak on the menu, it’s going to be a little bit more than me. Because we’ve found how to save money other ways than saving it on the plate, like saving it on the labor that’s going to serve the plate. To give you an example…I’m going to get back to Schedulefly. Because with Schedulefly, the managers can – in an instant – contact 100 waiters, and tell them something based on how the tables are turning. So we could ask them to come in a half an hour later. Well, that half an hour that’s saved – the customer doesn’t see it because there’s nobody in the restaurant. So it helps us control our labor costs.
Use Technology To Communicate Info Quickly To Your Staff – We also communicate promotions through Schedulefly. So when the waiters come in, they know that today we just got a sixty pound halibut, and we’ve like to move it through lunch. So the waiter goes onto the floor not guessing what they have to sell, because we’ve already told him what we have to move. So it keeps us in touch with every individual. The manager gets so busy with so many things to have time to tell everybody.
The Little Stuff Is Actually Pretty Big – We have a financial meeting with our managers every month, and we go through all the little details, like how much paper has been used. I mean, we’re a small company, but we still run it like a Fortune 500. So how can we save on things like…when do you light the candle on the table? Do you light it at 5:00 in the summer time, or light it at 7:00 when the daylight is gone? Well that two hour difference will save you $400 or $500 per month in fuel.
Lead By Example – “Oh, I don’t know how you get your staff to be that good, or that smiley, or that perfect.” Well, it all starts from the top. If the managers have the same excitement and the same passion that I have, it will flow to the supervisor. And if the supervisor has the same passion and excitement, it’s going to flow to the senior waiter. And the senior waiters give it to the waiters. We think it starts from the top. We’re a very vocal group. Off the cuff. We love having fun at work. At the end of the day, I tell my staff, “Just have fun first.” Fun will make everything else great. If you’re having fun at work, and you’re looking after the customer with the same philosophy, the customer is going to feel it.
Wish For Your Teammate’s Success. Even If It Means Losing Them – I just lost one of my best executive chefs in the company, because he decided to open a food cart on the street. He realized that it’s not about your ego, it’s about the business sense. And he’s trying to do the same sort of steps that we did. So he decided he wanted to start his business by opening a gourmet food cart – and organic food cart – on the streets, selling organic sandwiches. He might go in and fish his own salmon. It’s very interesting, and I was very happy for him, because it showed that what we tried to do…we want everybody to be successful. And I really would not be upset if he left me to open across the street, and become my competition, because it would make me stronger.
Go Above And Beyond For Your Partners – If your partners know that you are very fair with them – and more than fair – they’re going to respect you, and they’re going to be giving more to you than you’re giving to them. My partners know that sometimes when a month is not doing very well, that I sacrifice some of my percentage for that month. And they know that I don’t have to, because there’s lots of fat months to cover it, but at the end of the day I’m making very good money, and it’s not about the extra $5,000 or $10,000. It’s about everybody making good money around me. And that makes your partners very, very loyal to you.
Want To Grow? Learn To Let Go – It’s made me change as a person. In the old days, I needed to control everything. Everything had to be in front of my plate. Everything I had to put my finger on. And then I realized, “O.k., that’s great, but I can only do three or four restaurants. I can’t do more. Physically I can’t be in but so many locations at the same time.” So it taught me how to be a lot more open in terms of giving. I give my partners lots of leeway to run things. And when they call me sometime and ask for my opinion, I say, “This is your department. I trust you.” By letting go like this, it gives me more time to grow as a person. And if I’m growing as a person, everybody around me is going to grow with me.
Check Your Ego At The Door – I always say, “Let’s take the egos out of it. It’s a business. At the end of the day, it a business.” When I interview people, I tell them, “Let’s say I was going to build you a restaurant. It’s going to be forty seats. And you are going to be cooking for superstars, princesses, and kings. And your name is going to be one of the best chefs in the city. With forty seats, you’ll be working six, seven days a week because you’ll be the only one that can do it. Or, we could open a fish and chips stand, and the line will be around the block seven days a week, and you won’t have to be there much. Which restaurant are you going to own?” And it’s funny how the people who pick the first one…we don’t hire them. They took the business sense out of it. We’re in the business to make money. It’s not about egos. There are restaurants that get “Best Restaurant of the Year” in their city, and they end up closing. And the only reason…the only reason this is happening is because the chef and the owner took out of it, the business sense. They only did it to get the award. They wanted to be named the best restaurant in the city. Or the top chef in the city. Not the busiest restaurant in the city. And if they took their ego out…At the end of the day, it has to be a business decision. Decisions need to be made with emotions taken out of them. We do things based on what the customer wants to eat, not what our egos tell us to do.
We're excited to make restaurant employee scheduling & communication easy for the newest oyster bar in St. Louis. A big welcome goes to Rachel and the team, and good luck with your first year. Let us know if we can do anything for you.
Looks like y'all have a fun place down there. We'd love to kick back and try a few of your beers one day. Have fun, and let us know if we can do anything for you.
A big welcome to Joe and the fun crew at Famous Joe's Pizzeria in Madison, AL. We're excited to help make your restaurant employee scheduling easy, simple, and fun.
Joe's has been getting great reviews on Urbanspoon, and my mouth is starting to water while writing this, as I think about knocking out a few slices of their pies.
We're excited to serve Pia and the team at Il Lupino in Honolulu, HI. Il Lupino is the perfect place to experience the wonderful flavors of Italy while you're taking it easy in Honolulu.
Kevin Doherty was a Chicago fireman when he helped start Emmit's Irish Pub & Eatery in 1996. And he's still a fireman today. Meanwhile, he and his partner, Ron Halvorsen (retired Chicago fireman), have turned Emmit's into a popular and successful neighborhood pub. Popular enough that movie and television bar scenes are routinely shot there (Uncle Buck, Only the Lonely, Blink, Backdraft, two episodes of the Untouchables, Oceans Eleven, Oceans Twelve, and many more). The coolest part about Kevin's story was hearing him talk about keeping things simple, having a clear focus on how important his staff is, and not being afraid to work really, really hard.
You Don’t Have To have Experience – We were both Chicago firemen when we got started. I still am. So we went into it with very little experience. The only experience Ronnie had in a restaurant was being a waiter at IHOP when he was in high school. I was a sales rep at the time, and worked with the Chicago fire department. When we initially opened, the cash registers weren’t even hooked up yet. So it was trial by fire. We were both willing to jump in without a net, and work real hard. And that’s pretty much it. And we learned as we went. And then just through determination and hard work, and making mistakes, and learning from a lot of mistakes that we made, we just keep the plates spinning and keep moving forward. And fortunately we’ve been fairly successful. The recession has hurt us a little bit, but we operate lean enough where we’re able to manage.
KYFS (Keep Your Fundamentals Simple) – Our fundamentals were real simple: Be a neighborhood pub in an area that’s quickly becoming a neighborhood, and treat people like you want to be treated. It wasn’t much of a neighborhood when we got started, but we knew it had potential. It’s real close to downtown, and not too many places downtown would buy a regular a drink. So we try to maintain that level of service to the people in the neighborhood that come in. We try to instill in the staff to know what they drink, to know their names, to welcome them when they walk in the door, and just don’t take any of that for granted.
Trust In And Empower Your Staff – We hired a staff that took ownership. We told them to run it as if it’s your own. We monitor obviously everything pretty closely, but we give them the freedom to operate as if it was their own. It’s a very non-corporate type of atmosphere. And because of that, we’ve got staff that’s been here since we opened. We’ve got waitresses that have been here twelve years.
Use Your Marketing Budget On Comps – We haven’t ever spent a lot of money in marketing. I always thought that instead of marketing to the unknown, we’d spend that money and market it to the people that were coming in. And how we do that is, we comp a lot of drinks for people. If they have a certain amount, of if there’s a celebration, we comp it, and we make sure it’s on their tab so they can see that they’re being comped. I don’t know where you grew up, but did you ever go into a neighborhood bar after a softball game, and after three of four beers, the neighborhood bar would buy you one? Well it seems like a lot of establishments, especially downtown, got away from that. So we try to incorporate that into our philosophy.
Want A Partner? Find The Ying To Your Yang – You’ve gotta be opposites. It’s almost like a marriage. I think opposites attract. Because partnerships are extremely tough. And first and foremost, there’s got to be an unbelievable trust between the two partners. The other thing is, there’s certain aspects that some are going to be better at than others. Ronnie is kind of a character larger than life, and he’s very social. Myself, I’m more the bookkeeper. I’m social enough, but I don’t need to be up and meetin’ and greetin’. I’d rather come in in the morning, get the books done, get the orders in, and then get out of here by six o’clock. Ronnie is the opposite. Ronnie will be sitting up at the corner of the bar, and greeting people as they come in the door. And if there’s a celebration, he’ll be buying a round of shots. And he’s pretty much the face of the place, and I’m kind of the guy behind the scenes. And that’s worked out.
Your Staff Will Let You Know Who Needs To Go – You don’t know in the hiring process. You do the best you can, and you really have to have somebody work a few months to see how they’re gonna work out. And I’m not here as often as a lot of the other staff, so I think everything is hunky dory, and then the staff starts – no one wants to rat anybody out – but the staff starts policing. I’ll get little tidbits here and there, and that will turn a light on. And then I’ll inquire with some other people, and they’ll say, “Yeah, you know what? It’s just not working out.”
The Staff Makes All Of The Difference – Yeah, that’s the bottom line. I’m not behind the bar and I’m not serving the dishes. I’m just doing the books and placing the orders. So that’s what’s gonna make you or break you, is the staff.
Be Ready To Be At Your Restaurant. Constantly. – I think the number one reason restaurants fail is the owners not being willing to put in what it takes. The hard work. It takes long hours and complete dedication. In the initial start-up stages, that’s what it requires. You almost have to be there all of the time. Because if you don’t have your finger on the pulse…no one’s gonna operate your business – I don’t care who they are – they same way you are. When you walk in the door, you’re gonna see different things that they don’t see. Whether it’s a light that’s burnt out. Whether it’s a napkin on the floor. Whether it’s that a chair is not aligned properly. When it’s your own business, you just pick up on that. And no one else is going to. I don’t care how good your manager is.
Got A Family? Think Before You Leap – If somebody asked me about starting a restaurant, I would first would find out what their family life is like. If they’re married. If they’re dating. If they plan on getting married shortly. And make sure your significant other is fully on board. I know I was dating when we opened this place. And for a while there, I wasn’t married. I don’t think I would have been able to do it if I was married, because it consumes all of your time. So I was fortunate.
The Careful Balancing Act Of Pricing – You have t watch your prices all of the time, because our prices are constantly changing. And they’re all going up. Whether it be the taxes or the price of liquor. So, yeah, it’s a balancing act. And I don’t want to raise the prices more than I have to, because that can shun people away. And yet I don’t want to put specials out there. A lot of places are doing these specials all of the time, and I don’t know if that necessarily works. I don’t want the customers to get so used to these low cost specials that when they get charged a regular price, they feel like they’re getting short changed.
Buy Your Building – So we’re looking to expand. And again, it’s all about the real estate. I’ve had other firemen that say, “I’m thinking about opening up a bar.” And I always tell everybody, “If you can’t afford to buy the real estate, or the property, along with the build out and opening your business, I don’t think it’s worth it.” There’s some good restaurants, and famous restaurants, in Chicago that are closing and looking for new locations. And I talked to one of their financial guys, and he said, “You know, back fifteen years ago, when we negotiated the lease, we negotiated a great lease. However, fifteen years later, our lease is up, and now the landlord is really whacking us.” So I look at it from the standpoint of a real estate investment. I know that’s crazy now, because real estate’s in the tank. But I look at the property first, and then the business second. That’s what we did here. And that’s what we’re gonna do over there.
Kevin, we're stoked that you and Ronnie are opening a second location, and we can't wait to have the chance to hang out with you two one day.
Sure, a computer is powerful and can be programmed to take in information and make decisions and offer back a solution. Sometimes though, people don't want the computer to "be smart" and make "suggestions" and decisions for them. While that can help when it works, it can be a real pain in the rear when it does not.
Let me give you an example. My cousin's wife was telling me about her days of working at a well known retail store while in college. She was forced to check her work schedule in the store - forbidden to call about it. She had to drive in and check it on the computer in the office. While that sounds terrible, that's not the worse part. What was worse was that the work schedule for the store was automatically generated by a computer program. It integrated with back-office systems and took in all kinds of inputs (sales numbers, availability etc.) and spit out what it thought was the ideal schedule for the store. The problem was it was never ideal. It always a mess. Every week - after the entire staff complained (when they got to the shop), it had to be changed by a manager. Hmm, I wonder if it was because it was scheduling people? Imagine the time wasted cleaning up what the computer thought was ideal. I think if the computer had been scheduling robots in an assembly line, maybe it would have worked better. People (with ever changing lives and circumstances) are tough to schedule if you simply tell the computer to do it. Good schedules that make a business hum require a healthy dose of human logic.
So back to the point of this post. Sometimes, the less the computer (or the app) does - the more valuable it becomes. That's assuming it does add some real value or make life easier in some way. An example of this would be tadalist.com. It makes my life easier - but not by asking me to enter my todo's and then suggesting things it thinks I need to do or thinks I might like to do or when I should do them. It simply keeps a list of things I've told it I need to do and I can check them off after I do them. That's it. Amazing how valuable that is! It could definitely be more complicated if it wanted to be, but it's not. It could integrate with some other system and pull in my work schedule or meetings I need to attend or other things that I need to do - but it doesn't. Just because it can, doesn't mean it should. And because it does not, it always works and I can always count on it. It never gets in the way or fails to remind me exactly what I told it I need to do.
Just because an app can be complicated and just because a computer can make all kinds of decisions and suggestions - it doesn’t mean it should.
We are thrilled to be serving Matt Godard and his team at Cafe Kubal to the Schedulefly family - helping them better organize all the details that go into scheduling and communicating with a team of people with lives inside and outside of work.
The passion they have for creating a coffee culture in their community is amazing. It is awesome to see people pour themselves into their product and their business - distancing themselves from the competition and creating happy loyal customers. Check out their website to see what I mean.
Oh and here is a great video about the "cupping" events they host, similar to a wine tasting...
Welcome Matt and team! We wish you continued success.
Joe Johnston has been building highly successful restaurants for over twenty years. After co-founding and later selling a chain of coffee shops in Arizona called Coffee Plantation, Joe has helped build three institutions in Gilbert, Arizona: Joe's Real BBQ, Liberty Market, and Joe's Farm Grill. Joe and his partners build institutions - restaurants that stand on their own, and that will be around for many, many years to come.
Joe is smart as heck, has a proven track record of significant success, and has figured out how to mitigate most of the risks that come along with opening restaurants. We're very excited to have had the chance to pick his brain. A few of his pearls of wisdom are below...
Learn From Others – One of the things that we always try to do in all of the concepts that I’ve done since, including this one, is to do a lot of research. Go and visit some of the best people who are doing something, and see if you can get a half hour’s time out of them. Observe their businesses. Write down what you like, and what you don’t like. Even go to some bad places. Almost every bad place has some good things about it, and you can also learn some things not to do.
Be Known For Something – I think sometimes with the broadline restaurants, it’s hard for people to put a finger on why they’re special, or what they’re known for.
KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) – I like the simplicity of both operations. Barbecue is relatively straightforward and understandable. And coffee is straightforward and understandable. So you have the coffee roaster for coffee. And you have the smoker for barbecue. And if you can really understand your process, and keep controls over the factors in that one process, then that’s good.
Freedom Comes From Interdependence – I think that sometimes there is the idea that the American dream is independence, and you’re the self-made man, and you can do it alone, and a good entrepreneur has the whole package. Well, the fact is that generally nobody has the whole package. I think from a biblical perspective, that certainly is the case. There’s the idea of the different gifts working together to accomplish something. And I just decided, “You know what, from now on out, I’m only going to do what I’m good at. And I’m not going to get involved in those things, like management and all of that other stuff that caused my undoing, in terms of lack of fulfillment and happiness with The Coffee Plantation.” So I just decided that, from now on out, I’m going to take care of ideas, and concepts, and getting them rolling. But I’m going to make sure that I don’t do anything without a partner, or partners, that cover the operating side, and have the same vision and passion, but the complimentary gifts. So for me personally, interdependence, rather than independence, has been incredibly freeing. And it’s been freeing for my partners, because they work in the area of their giftedness, which they naturally enjoy. So it works well together.
Partnerships Are Like Marriages – The main things is that you just have to make sure that your partners are – almost as in a marital situation – on the same page. What’s fundamentally important at the end of the day, for all of the people, needs to be the same. You have to have the same view of people. Of how people are to be treated – both brigade members and customers. How important is money? Do you do things for money, or do you do things not for money? Why are you doing what you are doing, and what’s gonna drive the business?
Restaurants Don’t Have To Be Risky – Restaurants are traditionally thought of as risky ventures. I don’t necessarily consider them risky at all, if you do them correctly. But I have to get to that point where I feel it’s not that risky.
Take Time To Perfect Your First Creation – What I call it is the “first creation.” The creation in your mind. On paper. Sketches. Lookbook. Business plan. That first creation is so important, but so many people short change it. Because, it’s totally true that the first creation is always better than the second creation. The second creation, which is actually doing it physically – building the building, the equipment, the menu, etc. – and actually making stuff, is never better than the first. So if you haven’t spent the time in the first creation, richly enjoying it, and embellishing it, and building layers and layer and layers of reasons why people will want to come, and the story, and all that sort of thing, then the second creation is just gonna be the same thing. It’s gonna be half-cocked. And why bother? There’s only a couple of reasons why people might want to come. And you’re gonna take shortcuts. You’re gonna open discombobulated. Why?
Solid Business Plans Can Be The Difference Between Success & Failure – For us to get the original location, we didn’t have to go into any debt for it. But to actually convince the landlord – on his brand new, multi-million dollar project with a fairly high-profile developer – that we should get the prime space? You know, Tim was in publishing, and I was an engineer. To give us the prime space when they wanted a national tenant in there? We had to have a really good business plan. And they had to believe in us to give us that space, instead of a space that we might have died in. So I really think for somebody that is going to have to seek out financing, through bank financing, or SBA, or relatives, or friends, or private replacement, or whatever, the big deal is that you need to have a really solid business plan, and you need to have done that first creation well. That’s how you can demonstrate to people, whether they be bankers or relatives or whoever, that you have put in the time and effort and thought, to develop a concept, and a menu, and a floor plan that makes sense. And that it’s low risk on their part as well. A lot of people I talk to just kind of shoot from the hip, and that is not going to work.
It’s Easier To Build Your Plan In Parts – With the young people that I mentor, I always have them go through that first creation. And get them to do the business plan. So it doesn’t freak them out, I don’t lay out the whole thing at once. Every two weeks, I say, “O.k., now you’re gonna write this section.” So I kind of lead them down the pathway bit by bit, so they don’t become frightened. The whole task can seem overwhelming. But if you break it up into pieces, it’s certainly doable.
Have Passion For Food – If you have a passion for food, then certain things flow from that simple concept. If you have a passion for food, you are not gonna buy a bunch of prepared foods. And if you have a passion for food, you’re gonna use professional preparation. And training. And it’s gonna be a clean place. And you’re gonna be looking for great flavor profiles. You’re not going to rest on your laurels. And you’re not going to become passionless about food, and start making boring, chain-style food.
Serve From The Heart – That’s really important. You’re not serving for money. You’re not serving for personal glory. And you’re not serving for all of these other reasons. You genuinely enjoy serving people, and that again drives good decision making at the ownership level. And at the brigade level. Given any decision making, you ask, “Is this serving us? Or is this serving from the heart?”
Hire People Who Are Passionate About Food & People – In hiring at the espresso bar at Liberty Market, I’ve had to not hire some really, really, incredibly gifted baristas. They met criteria one, which is that they were crazy about coffee. Crazy passionate about coffee. But they were not that passionate about people. And I just can’t have that. I can’t have someone who’s passionate about an inanimate object, but not passionate about the people they’re serving, and trying to make sure that they enjoy the product that they’re making.
Jim Parker co-owns Red Hat On The River in Irvington, NY with his wife, Mary Beth. Jim left a very successful, twenty year career in the movie and film production business in 2003, to start a small bistro in Irvington. On a whim.
Seven years later, Jim and Mary Beth are at their restaurant seven days per week, and they make the hard work and passion they pour into it look easy to the many guests they serve every day. Red Hat has established itself as an institution, so much so that people have been known to take the 30-minute train ride from Manhattan to dine there. The Clintons have even visited...twice. Jim told us that when he started, he knew nothing about restaurants, and he learned as he went. It's pretty clear that he has learned quite a bit about what it takes to succeed in the restaurant business...
Put On A Nightly Production – I feel like every night, the curtain goes up here. It’s very theatrical. And we do believe in creating an atmosphere in our fine dining restaurant for every single person that comes in here. This is their leisure time, and they’ve chosen to spend it here, and I take it really, really seriously. Obviously, without good food, you’re done. But we worry about our customers’ good time. It’s all about the sound, the imagery, the hospitality, and the charm of our whole staff. So if I had to put it in a couple of words, I would say that, besides the obvious – the food – it’s all about the casting and the script.
Make Every Customer’s Experience Perfect – I have a little bit of a different bent on things, because I didn’t grow up in the restaurant business. I had been a customer all of my life. So I’m flattered by the fact that people take the time to come down to where we are, spend the money they spend, and choose to spend their money with us rather than somewhere else. And how many times can people go out a week? I don’t know. Maybe it’s once every two weeks. But whatever it is, it’s very flattering that people choose to come here. And we’re very careful with our staff, to make sure they understand that. A lot of the folks are young that work in the restaurant business, and sometimes when they are moving at breakneck speed, they don’t realize that when two people want to go out for dinner, and maybe leave their kids at home for the evening, it can be quite costly. Babysitters. Gasoline. Dinner. So every step of the way, we want that experience to be perfect.
Let Your Staff Self-Police – I kind of have a self-policing group here. And if someone’s a little bit on the edge, they don’t let ‘em into the family. They take their job very seriously, and they want people of their own ilk serving along with them. So we’ve been very successful in that respect.
You’ll Sweat. Just Don’t Let ‘Em See It – It’s funny because people that don’t know the background will come in and think it looks pretty easy. And I don’t ever want the public to see me sweat, but I’ll tell you something, I sweated for several years.
Have You Worked With Your Potential Partner In The Heat Of Battle? – My original partner was somebody I knew as a family friend. I had known him for twenty years. But I did not know him in the heat of battle at all. All of the sudden, I knew him in a different way. And that’s the difference. So I would never go into something like that again, unless it was someone I had worked with in this business.
Hire Integrity & Charm Over Experience – I won’t just find people to fill a role, just because they can perform some of the duties. It’s more than that. When people walk in here looking to work with us, I worry more about their personality, and their integrity, and their charm. And I don’t really care of they can do the job or not. At least not initially. I have to make sure that whoever every single customer deals with – whether it be a bus boy, a floor runner, the food runner, a host…it doesn’t matter – has to be engaging, and has to care about that person being in our space.
Preparation Is Critical – I anticipate and live the experience before it happens. And I just don’t meet people that think that way. It’s a little bit like I can’t sleep at night, and it’s a little bit annoying. Because you never rest. So I envy all of those that don’t think that way, but I do think it’s the key to being successful in some respects. So sharing that perspective with the people I’ve worked with for a long becomes helpful, because preparation becomes a way of operating.
Customer Experience Is An Art, Not A Science – In a lot of ways, what we do is very personal. I don’t treat the restaurant as, we have X amount of seats, and we have X amount of people coming in, and one way or the other, we’re gonna figure out where to put ‘em. It’s all about being hospitable, and making it work for our customers. It’s like being able to go, “O.K., we see how many reservations are coming in. We know we have these groups coming in. We also know a bunch of the different folks, and they’re kind of anxious about where they sit, or what they drink, or what they eat.” And then we figure out how we can move people around, so we can figure out how these people can be happy here, and these people can be happy there.
It Doesn’t Have To Be Complicated – When you go into a restaurant and you’re ignored, it’s so obvious to me why they’re not doing well. As a customer, when you are ignored, you start to wonder what else they are ignoring. If you’re going to ignore the guests, you’re probably going to ignore all of these other things. It doesn’t matter if you have a trendy looking place, or a cool looking bar, or the greatest chef in the world. You have to engage the people that come into your place, day after night after day after night. And remember who they are, and why you’re here.
Staff Will Do As You Do – I think people have tendency to emulate people that are in charge, or that are successful, or that they respect. I certainly did as I grew up.
Make Charitable Contributions Simple For Yourself – Years ago, everybody and their mother came to me looking for a charitable donation for some fundraiser. And I was like, “This is bullshit. I can’t believe this!” I’m looking at it thinking, If I give to this one, and not that one, I’ll offend that one. And how much do we give? I didn’t know what to do. But I decided to just give everybody within a fifty mile radius $50 when they made a request. People would say, “Well, we want dinner for four.” Or, “We need an ad for $250.” I’d say, “We don’t do that.” So instead of discriminating, I just decided to give the same amount to everybody. We give a lot away every year. But it’s real simple to figure out, and I just look at it as part of the advertising budget.
Fight For Advertising Prominence – I’m relentless about it. I drive these people nuts up here. I want somebody to open a newspaper, and their eyes are going to go right to that third page, and that’s all I’m concerned with. And they have to promise me that, and then I’ll advertise with them.
For about 10 years I was a software developer for various consulting companies in NC. I worked on some really cool projects and helped build some neat things during that time and learned a lot during the process. I think it is pretty common for a developer to take the path I've taken - build software from scratch over and over (as a consultant) for other people until you eventually come up with a product idea of your own. We (the developers) design and create databases and then build a web application to put data in and take data out. We build it, deliver it and then do it again. It is all the same basically - just different kinds of data and different needs on the front end. Like any other trade, over time you come up with techniques and patterns and reusable modules that make getting something to a customer (or to market) faster and better. You get better and more valuable and eventually you've learned enough to create something for yourself.
I did this and created Schedulefly and today I reflected on some things that prompted this post. I write some sort of code almost every day - have been for 12 years. Back when someone paid me to write the code (before Schedulefly) - I spent a lot of time on things that might not have really mattered. Well, they mattered and they were part of the deliverable and were satisfying someone's requirements but they rarely had a direct effect on bringing that person more business or more value. I mean things detailed software documentation and diagrams, in-line documentation for future developers who were likely going to re-write what I did anyway (because the budget was there) and endless developer meetings about things that mostly did not matter. Don't even get me started on a few government consulting projects I worked on that (in hindsight) seemed more like pointless budget wasting projects. We would be asked to create something kind of useless just because the money was there and it put consulting butts in seats. But hey, the budget ended up exhausted and next year's meaningless projects were looking good!
So back to my point. Today I am the one and only software developer at Schedulefly and a part owner of the business. 99.99% of the time I write code that means something to our customers. I am not writing code to satisfy a requirement that doesn't matter. I don't have time too. I have no "requirements" except to try and make customers happy. Literally - the lines of code that come off my fingers can mean immediate value to our customers and possibly even more revenue for us. Not because we charge them for the code I write - but because I am making a valuable product even more valuable. It is a fantastically enjoyable job to have! I can grab the laptop, write some code (or remove some code), deploy it to our site overnight and immediately increase our chances of converting a trial customer to a paying customer or making an existing customer even happier and even more likely to renew. That's just awesome. Nothing is more rewarding than making something better or adding something for a customer overnight and have them thank you the next day. I know that, when we do this, they will tell someone else about us.
Amazing that as a consultant with a huge budget and all the tools I needed and team of people helping me - my work never really mattered much to the customer's customer or to someone's bottom line. A few times I think it did - but not many. Now, with no money to spend (and no meetings to have to go to) I am moving mountains and creating value all the time. I am working on stuff that matters and putting it the hands of people who need it and it's fun.
So no matter how big the business is you work for, figure out what matters to the people who pay for the product or service and see if you can somehow work on that. Try to help them directly. Filter everything else that's in the way. Try it and the customer's reaction will likely make your work more rewarding.
You've probably seen Scott Liebfried on TV by now. A well renowned chef, Leibfried can presently be seen on the hit television show “Hell’s Kitchen” as a sous chef for the FOX Network, and has appeared several times on The Food Network’s series, “Party Starters” and the “Challenge” series. He evaluates and consults with Gordon Ramsay on all of the restaurants on the hit series “Kitchen Nightmares.
Oh, and he also just recently helped open Arch Rock Fish, a highly regarded and very popular restaurant in Santa Barbara, CA. He co-owns Arch Rock with Jeremiah Higgins, who we also interviewed for the book, as well as soccer star Cobi Jones. Scott has been working in the restaurant business since he was a teenager. He has incredibly valuable wisdom and insight in to what it takes to be successful in his business. A few of his thoughts are below...
Don’t Accept Conventional Wisdom – When I was growing up, restaurants and hospitality were just never looked at as a career path that would take you anywhere at all, except to just give you a job. And I never believed that, because I always thought it was fascinating. I was always exposed to a different part of the business that the average person didn’t really know much about. And what I saw was opportunities to meet people. To travel. To try different things. To explore other countries and other cultures. And all from a food point of view. And to me, that was just very, very fascinating, and where I wanted to focus most of my energy.
The Ingredients For Successful Partnerships – Honesty and Hard work. I am a workaholic! And it is difficult to find that quality in co workers and partners. I’ll go days and days without doing anything except working. I don’t think everybody has that quality. And when you find people that do have that quality, and share it, it ends up being a respectful relationship. And at that point, you have to look around and say, “These are the people that I think I would be able to work extremely hard with, and get along with, because they understand that part of it.” And it’s not a one-sided relationship, where one person is responsible for everything. Its two people working for one common goal. And if they both understand that, and they both know that there’s hard work ahead of them, and it’s going to be difficult, then that’s where I think you have to look at each other, and say, “You know, we should really think about working together, because we both have that understanding.”
Planning & Contingency – I think a lot of restaurants fail due to poor planning and a bit of the unknown. Once you start construction you do not know what you will find behind walls. Equipment can be delayed by weeks or months. Permits take time to get issued and inspections can lead to more unknowing. I think people view opening a business easy and glamorous. It’s very hard work, and your commitment needs to be 100% of every minute of every day. A lot of times they’re underfunded going into it, and then half way through they don’t have any money to complete any of their construction, or train any of their staff prior to opening. There’s a lot of little things that come into play. But I think if we were to sum it up in one thought, planning and contingency is very important.
Try To Fill A Void, Not Be Cool – I think if you want to cutting edge, and hip, and cool, you’re walking a very thin line, because that calls for reinvention every few years. Hopefully it’s only every few years. I look at guys like The Palm Steakhouse, and Morton’s, and The McCormick & Schmick’s. Some of the chains have done very well based on having an idea that they’ve stuck with, and by creating something that fills a void in the marketplace. Come up with something that everybody can understand…maybe not the next biggest thing, but just something that’s very good. Something that’s very casual. And something that people can feel comfortable with, at a price point that is perceived as a value, then I think you’re less likely to have to reinvent yourself.
Be Reliable – Look at places like Frank & Musso’s up in L.A. That’s the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. They’re still doing the same thing they were doing when they opened up their doors forty-five, fifty years ago. It’s ridiculous. And people still love it for what it is, because they can rely on it. They can count on it.
Look Hard For The Right Teammates – You have to search, and search, and search, and search. And you have to talk to a lot of people before you find the one or two that were meant to be. There’s this misperception of our business. There’s a lot of entitlement. And a lot of people don’t understand the hard work that goes into it. And the people that truly are passionate about it – you’ll eventually find yourself surrounded by those people. You just have to be patient. You just have to keep looking ahead. Because, eventually, you will find each other.
Be Transparent With Your Staff – I’m very open with the close members of the staff on this project. I tell them how much the debt is. I tell them exactly what we need to do in order to pay the debt off, be very successful, make more money individually, and be a popular restaurant that everybody in town loves. I don’t try to keep anything from them, because I want them to understand exactly what they’re up against, and I want them to work hard for their own success as well. And I think that’s part of the internal motivation for them. I think they really appreciate that honesty and that openness, and that they’re gonna continue to learn.
Be A Part Of Your Community – So our marketing really came down to, “What is the best way to get a footing into a community, and be a part of a community?” And the only answer to that question was to do what the community does. We hosted a block party as part of our pre-opening. It was a smash! Some of the future events that we have planned are based on the community. They’re not wine dinners and they’re not these stuffy things. It’s kids. It’s family. It’s community. It’s just fun stuff.
Partner With A Charity – We thought it would be a nice idea to pair up with a charity in town, because what other way to seem like you’re part of a community, than to be a part of a local charity. The Police Athletic League was the first one that came to my mind, only because I was very familiar with them. My father served as a police officer, and I was very familiar with the organization. So the members of the PAL got very excited, and we said, “Let’s do some promotional stuff. Let’s do some things to bring in some money to you guys.” And they talk great about us. And we’re on the forefront of our minds, and they’re on the forefront of our minds. And it was really one of the smarter things that we did. And they’re all great people.
Welcome to Zac, Kendra, and the fun crew at The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz, CA! They're the only folks making ice cream in Santa Cruz completely from scratch, and they use local and sustainably grown ingredients. We're stoked to help make their lives easier.
Look at this lineup: today's flavors are Rum Raisin, Bitter Caramel, Rocky Road, Parsnip Nutmeg, Meadowsweet, Pomegranate Lime Sorbet, Black Tea Orange, Vanilla Bean, and Dark Chocolate Sorbet. What can we say? If you live in or around Santa Cruz, count yourself lucky. We're jealous.
Welcome to Stephanie and the team at Bettie's Cakes in Saratoga springs, NY.
This is our first shot at making scheduling easy for a double decker bus. That's right. In addition to their cafe, Bettie's has a mobile double decker cupcake stand, nicknamed "Dee-Dee."
And like other 4-wheeled operations, you can follow them on Twitter to find out where the bus will be next...
We're happy that another cool, fun, unique place is part of the family!
Welcome to Carla and the team down at The Local Three Kitchen & Bar, which recently opened in Atlanta! Any place that believes things like "People Matter Most," "Local Is Priority," and "Pretense Stinks" is a place we'd love to visit.
We're so excited at Schedulefly that cool, fun, unique places like The Local Three choose Schedulefly to make their restaurant scheduling and communication easy, simple, and fun.
Keith Paul and his wife, Heather, opened their first restaurant in 2000. Now they own A Good Egg Dining Group, which has six restaurants and a catering business. We had a hard time narrowing down Keith's interview to the points below. There is so much wisdom in his philosophies of focusing on his staff's happiness, and on what's inside each restaurant's four walls. If you don't pay attention to this advice, you're just plain missing out...
It Doesn’t Have To Be Rocket Science (Keith and Heather went into the business with this philosophy. Needless to say, it has worked) – Let’s make sure that everybody that works for us is completely happy. We’ll do what we can for them. We’re going to take a vested interest in their personal life, their family life. And we’re not going to spend a bunch of money on traditional advertising. We’re not going to buy newspaper and radio and TV ads. We’re gonna just concentrate on what’s going on inside the four walls. And never, ever…if times are slow, we’ll never even think about skimping on quality of food, of silverware, of glassware…anything. So we’ve always stuck to those values and principles.
You Don’t Know It All – We encourage everybody to be themselves. Even the servers – we want their individual personalities to come out. Anybody that wants to speak up…we just promote that creativity. We want to hear ideas from dishwashers, from servers, chefs, cooks, managers, partners. We want to hear it all. Because we don’t know everything. So we want them to speak up. If they tell us they all need to come in fifteen minutes early to get their shift duties done, and their opening duties done, and that it will help the guest experience, then they’ve got our support, and so that whole thing just comes together. And then we’ll pick up those ideas and incorporate them throughout our group. And that’s just coming from…you know, we started out as a one unit, independent restaurant. And even if we had fifty restaurants, we’re going to stick to…we don’t want that corporate feeling.
Foster Your Staff Members’ Growth – As far as career opportunities, we do our best to promote from within. And that goes back to just listening to our employees. We try to be in the stores as much as we can, and we want them to tell us what they want to do with their lives. We want them to tell us that, yeah, they’re in school now, and they’re degree is in education. However, when they graduate they’d love to move from Cheever’s over to Red Prime Steakhouse and learn more about wine, and possibly take their Sommelier test. If someone comes to us and wants to travel, and go to seminars, and do all of these things, we encourage that. We want people to explain why they want to do it, and what’s in it for them, what’s in it for us. We know all of these things, but we want to make sure they know it, and can see the educational advantages. And if so, we’re definitely going to pay for it.
Be Careful Spending Money On Advertising – When we were starting out with Cheever’s and Iron Starr, we didn’t have the money to do any advertising. So that’s about 50 % of the reason that we didn’t do it. The other half of that is…I learned from being on the distribution side that’s it’s almost impossible to advertise or promote for one unit, or even two units. I didn’t believe in spending money on TV, radio, or newspaper that would reach people that were fifty miles away from me. I’m actually paying for that, but those people aren’t going to come visit my restaurant. I knew that the core customers were within a five to ten mile radius, max. So I wasn’t going to do that traditional stuff.
Look For Good People Over Experienced Ones – Well, I think it all starts with the interview process. There’s that hospitality gene that you really can’t train. It’s either you have it or you don’t. But, being a good person…that’s really what we look for. Just being a good person. We don’t necessarily look for people with tons of restaurant experience. We think if they’re a good person and they’re great at what they do…if they’re the best lawn mower in the country, then they’re going to be good at whatever they do. So we get them in our group, and we can work with them, and kind of find their place.
Be Second To Your Staff’s Family – Our deal is, we want you to work five days a week, fifty hours a week. Sometimes sixty hours during holidays and busy times. But that’s your average. And on your day off, we don’t want you coming around. Right when we hire somebody, we tell them, “You’re family comes first, and we’d love to be second.”
Number Two Won’t Balance A Failing Number One – I’ve seen restaurants go out of business because a one-unit guy opens up another one, and then all of the sudden, instead of one losing money, now you have two losing money. So he goes an opens up another one, and the third one supports the other two, and all of the sudden you go out of business. I’ve seen that a lot.
Being Top Heavy Is O.K. If You’ve Got Great People – I’m often criticized by everybody around here about how we spend so much money on salaries, and how we have too many people.” But those feelings go away after I explain to them that a lot of people that we have are specialized at what they do, so it’s taken a lot of workload off of what we’re all doing. They’re great at their particular profession, so it’s really an advantage to the entire group for us to have these people on staff. I don’t mind…we’re probably a little top heavy, and that’s probably just how it will always be.
Turnover Is A Killer – I think turnover is just a killer. I hate it more than anything. And I’ve seen it with one of our restaurants. About a year ago we started having…we get reports every week about prime cost, and the way the performance of the restaurant is going. And I would always get a comment in thereof, “We’re still training. We’re training this person. The front of the house is training this person.” And that’s not an excuse of why the labor cost is high. It’s the direct result of too much turnover. So now we’ve stopped the turnover, and there’s three or four extra points on the bottom line because of that.
You Better Do Your Homework Before You Get Started – I think the number one reason so many new restaurant owners fail is from not doing their homework. And not doing their homework causes these other components to arise. Meaning, they don’t have enough cash, because they think they’re going to make money right off the bat. Or they don’t have the extra pieces. Like lease negotiation. We didn’t know a thing about that when we were getting into it. And that’s huge. If you don’t have the right lease going in, and you have an air conditioner that goes down in your first month, then that’s $8,000 - $10,000 dollars you’re out of money. So there are just so many things, and it all really goes back to not doing your homework. Not reading personal stories like you’re putting into this book. Or just keeping up with trends, and eating out. There’s so many restaurateurs and chefs around the country that don’t eat at the competition. I just don’t get that. At all. I don’t understand it one bit. It’s all homework.
A big ole Schedulefly welcome to Gary and the crew at Hurricane Grill in Hartsdale, NY. We're happy to have a chance to make your restaurant employee scheduling and communication a whole heck of a lot easier. Have fun, and let us know if you ever need anything.
Sky Hi Bar & Grill has the best bar food in Columbia, MO. It's known for the specialty brick oven pizzas, amazing sandwiches and a large list of appetizers all made from fresh ingredients.
We welcome Jim and his awesome crew to Schedulefly. We're excited to make your restaurant scheduling & communication a whole heck of a lot easier. Y'all have fun, and let us know if we can do anything for you.
Richard Taubin owns Friends Coastal Restaurant in Madisonville, LA. Friends has seen an increase in sales, or the same sales, almost every month since it opened in 2006. Richard came from the IT world, and had no restaurant experience. He and his former partner split ways recently, but Richard has a new partner, and Friends is trucking right along and doing great business. Richard has learned a lifetime of valuable lessons over the last four years. Here are a few...
Be Wary Of Starting Leveraged – We started out leveraged, which is not something I would necessarily recommend to anybody. We had some other investors that were ready to back us up, but we started out leveraged. It makes you really conscious of exactly where your costs are, and your spending. If you don’t absolutely need something, you don’t buy it. It’s not something I will do again. It leaves you vulnerable to not having the cash flow to get through some swings. We had some cash in the bank, but not enough to carry ourselves for a few months. In fact, if you start a restaurant, you should be able to carry yourself for a year, to go through your exposure and stuff like that.
Take Care Of Your Staff, And They’ll Help You Succeed – We’ve maintained a good number of people that were here when we got started. We have an open-door policy, and we want to have a very good relationship with our staff. We genuinely care about them, and we try to have very open communication. Sometimes somebody might have lost a loved one, or maybe they run into financial problems. We’re very open about trying to help people out when we can, and at least at giving them an ear. And that’s really worked well for us.
A Good CPA Is As Important As Good Food – I highly, highly recommend hiring a CPA, especially one who is close to the restaurant industry. Without breaching confidentiality, they can talk to you about what other restaurants do to combat certain cost structures that you have. Our CPA has been very instrumental in helping us cut costs, and in telling us what percentages should be. He recommends the financial applications that we should use, and helps us with reading P&L’s, and how to make adjustments. And that’s really helped us out quite a bit. When you can work with a CPA on a daily basis, and have them help assure that budgets are aligned and cost controls are adhered to, it’s just as important as to me as the food you put on the plate. Without controlling those costs, you don’t make money. If you’re in it just to make a paycheck, just do it on your own. Otherwise, I highly recommend you hire a CPA and make that a big part of your restaurant. Just as much as you would design a recipe for your food, you need to design a recipe for how you’re going to track and adjust for financial costs and profits.
Negotiate Win-Win Deals With Your Vendors – We’ve also learned to lean on our purveyors and vendors, to do things like give us menus if we give them a little advertising. And that really cuts back costs. Once we realized they were willing to do that, and we had the volume to support it, we actually saved quite a bit of money on menus and specialty menus. When we have big events they’ll do a lot of signage, and have specials on eggs, and beer, and alcohol, and things like that. When we do non-profit things, they’re able to reduce the price even more. These kinds of things can really help you in the beginning, because you don’t have to do everything yourself. If you can’t afford to do your own menu, or don’t know how to put one together, or you don’t know how to put a flyer or a banner together, it’s going to cost you a lot of money to have somebody else to do it, or a lot of time out of running the operations of the business for you to do it. So if you can lean on your vendors to do those kinds of things, it’s going to save you a lot of time, and it doesn’t cost you anything.
Technology Will Help You Tighten Things Up - We’re bringing in technologies like Schedulefly, and Freshbooks, and Google email with calendaring. We’re bringing in a lot of very inexpensive, but powerful, tools to help us keep all of our information together in a central location, and keep it secured. And it’s really, really helped out our operations.
Game Plan Like You Would In Football – I played football, so I see it like a football team. You have a coach, which is the owners. You have assistant coaches, which are the managers. And you have the players, which is your staff. And you sell them on the plays that you’re gonna run to win the game. Our plan is laid out, and we show them how we want it to be executed. And then we refine it, and make adjustments, as the plan is being executed.
Hitting Food & Labor Cost Targets Is An Art, Not A Science – The driving force behind hitting those targets is to try to have the ownership stay really close with the managers, and make sure those things are being looked after every minute of every hour. We have a couple of different tools that we use to look at where we are at any given time during the day, as far as percentage of labor. And based on what those percentages are, and based on other factors such as weather, and other events going on around the community, we can make adjustments. Ultimately, it’s been a very artful thing to try to do. You never know when you’re just gonna get pops of people. It’s better to have more staff than you need, than less staff than you need, because you don’t want to have a poor customer experience.
Be Consistent & They Will Come – I think we’ve gotten to a point where, when people come here, they know what to expect. And what we expect is great food and great service. The location is there, and the place is beautiful. So I think it’s about executing those things. And I think because we have executed those things properly, we’ve built a relationship with our customers where they bring in their friends, and their family members, and it just grows from there. I think we’ve grown a customer base that counts on Friends as a consistent place to go.
Partnerships Are Like Marriages – Before you enter a partnership, you need to very clearly lay out those boundaries, and lay out those compensation structures, and lay out what the duties and responsibilities are, and keep great communication going, and deal with issues on a professional level. And always, always, always put the business as number one. If you can do those things, you have a recipe for a very successful partnership. We all hope that when you go into a partnership that it’s going to be great. But it’s like a marriage. You have to work on it. You can’t just let things happen. You have to essentially be on the same page. You have to really think out the partnership as much as you do the plan for the business. Because the issues and problems that arise from a bad partnership can cause the business to fail, and the friendship as well.
The Little Things Are Huge – The hospitality industry has a lot to do with perception. Little things mean a lot. How you maintain your facilities. Your bathrooms. Your baseboards. Your floors. Your walls. These things have nothing to do with the plate on the table. But they have everything to do with people’s perception of your place, and how it’s taken care of. You can say that about any business. But when you’re working around food and perishables, keeping a cleanly place is something that needs to be taken to the nth degree. Pay attention to the little things, because in the overall scheme of things, they are very large things.
The Labb serves up the largest and tastiest sandwiches you'll find anywhere in north Texas. And we're excited to help make restaurant scheduling and communication easy and fun for James and the fun crew there.
We love the Our Team page on their site. It's great to see fun places that are proud of their staff, and promote them as a huge part of the customer experience. As we're learning from interviewing owners for our book, successful restaurants genuinely care about their staff.
Welcome to Mat and the crew at the Coral Gables, FL Hooters! The 15th Hooters around the country to join the Schedulefly family. Y'all have fun. We're happy to make your lives a little bit easier.
Welcome to Jonathan and the crew at the Gaithersburg, MD location of 16 Handles. We look forward to making your staff scheduling & communication simple and fun - just like your frozen yogurt concept!
"Eat. Drink. Ride. Climb." That's the motto at Boulders On Broadway in Tempe, AZ. Rather than tying to summarize their fun story, and do it injustice, we're posting it here. It's the kind of story that makes us all smile, and Boulders On Broadway is the kind of place where we'd love to kick back,enjoy a few cold beers and a pizza, and tell lies about our day of mountain biking.
Their Story...
"It’s crazy but I used to be a pizza cook at this location when it was part of a different chain. I remember the fun we had and the great friends I made. We would go rock climbing all day and come in dead tired to work in the evenings. A lot has changed in the last ten years, but not my love of cooking pizza, spending time with pals, or rock climbing. I hope to serve up some great food for all of our guests and provide a place to come hang out and relax. If you have a chance to look around, check out the many pictures of travel and adventure sports. These are just a few of our great passions here. I have tried to include some of the unique foods that my wife and I have encountered in our travels. Have a cold beer and enjoy a great pizza pie!
Boulders is all about the food, craft beer, bike riding, rock climbing and adventure! With 30 draft handles and 70 plus bottles of craft beer. Bring a friend and check out our selection. Park your ride inside (your bicycle that is) grab a seat at the bar top or take a seat on the patio."
Welcome to Jennie and the fun crew at The Coffee Pot Bakery & Cafe in Bozeman, MT. We're stoked to have the chance to make restaurant scheduling easy and fun for you.
The Coffee Pot has pies, soups, salads, and espresso, as well as some beautiful - and functional - hand thrown pottery. If you're ever in or around Bozeman, you don't want to miss stopping in.
Welcome to Josh and the team at 208 South Lamar in Oxford, MS. We look forward to making life easier for the entire crew down there, and we hope you enjoy using a simple way for your restaurant team to schedule, communicate, and get organized.
You only hear good things about Oxford, and here's one more reason to visit.
We're stoked to serve Justin and the crew at FUEL, which is the restaurant and bar at Grand Prix New York. This cool looking place is 120,000 square feet of racing, gaming, and award-winning dining.
A big welcome to Robert and the team at Palihouse in West Hollywood, CA. This cool place is a boutique urban lodge offering 36 studio, one and two-bedroom guest suites and loft-style residences, a roof deck for private entertaining and The Hall, which includes a courtyard brasserie, private dining room, espresso bar tabac, raw bar and intimate lobby lounge. You can't help but want to go spend a weekend there when you see the pics on their web site. Leave it to the folks in L.A. to set the trends.
Some companies are fortunate to be located in wonderful places where customers are happy and glad to be there. Other companies are fortunate to sell products that truly make people happy. Every once in awhile you run across a company that has both. One of our customers does. Today they shot their logo over to be added to their site. Just looking at it makes me happy. Check it out. If you were in their shop - you'd have no reason to be anything but happy. You would be in Hawaii. Buying cookies.
We're stoked to welcome Washington's First Certified Organic Vegetarian Café and Restaurant, Chacon Canyon Cafe.
Chaco Canyon Cafe is a vibrant, ecologically sound slice of heaven in Seattle's University District. They are Certified Organic and are 90-97% organic throughout the entire year - proudly one of the few restaurants in the nation that can make this claim.
Anise and the team now have an easy way for their restaurant to schedule, communicate, and stay organized. We're happy to serve you.
If you hit Rickshaw Dumpling's web site, you won't soon forget it. You'll be immediately drawn into reading what they believe in. And you'll want to learn more. Guaranteed. I'm not sure when I last had a craving for dumplings. Until now. This site makes...your...mouth...water.
It's clear that owners Kenny and David are passionate about their business, and I would bet that passion is highly contagious to both customers and team members. We love serving passionate people who build fun businesses full of happy staff and happy customers. So we're stoked that this awesome crew chose Schedulefly to make staff scheduling and communication easy and fun.
Welcome to the family guys and gals. We look forward to serving you!
The most interesting people and businesses in the world are different in some way. They do things that other people don't do. There is something about them or what they do that is different and people are drawn to them. They did not take the conventional route that grade school, high school and college encouraged them to take. They blazed new paths where there was no path. Even though their product may be very similar or even exactly the same as others, they do things different and that is why customers love them. They take their followers to new places - places they have never been before. This creates excitement, buzz and loyalty. Once again, Zappos is a great example of this. The guy who started Zappos decided to sell shoes online just like thousands of other companies - but knew he needed to lead his customers to a new place. A place they have never been - either online or in a real shoe store. He did this by blazing a brand new path. A path that's impossible to even picture until someone else creates it. 
Penny Karas left a career in policy-related communications work in D.C. to start 
Emad Yakoub owns 
We're excited to make 
We're stoked to welcome James and the team at 
Welcome to James and the 
We are thrilled to be serving Matt Godard and 
Joe Johnston has been building highly successful restaurants for over twenty years. After co-founding and later selling a chain of coffee shops in Arizona called Coffee Plantation, Joe has helped build three institutions in Gilbert, Arizona: 
Jim Parker co-owns 
Welcome to Zac, Kendra, and the fun crew at 
Welcome to Stephanie and the team at 
Welcome to Carla and the team down at 
Welcome to David and the crew from 
Welcome to Mat and the crew at the Coral Gables, FL Hooters! The 15th Hooters around the country to join the Schedulefly family. Y'all have fun. We're happy to make your lives a little bit easier. 
"Eat. Drink. Ride. Climb." That's the motto at 
Welcome to Jennie and the fun crew at 
A big welcome to Robert and the team at 
We're stoked to welcome Washington's First Certified Organic Vegetarian Café and Restaurant, 
If you hit 
