The 5 Areas of Restaurant Management Mastery

The 5 Areas of Restaurant Management Mastery

Just to give all of my readers, subscribers, and clients out there a little background into my experience in the bar and restaurant business before we get started.

I started out in the nightclub business back in 1994 in Atlanta, GA., in what I like to think of, and refer to as, a “heyday” for the nightclub scene in the ATL, Hotlanta, the largest city in the South, or whatever else you want to call it.

It was the fall of 1994, the middle of October actually, when I answered an ad in the Creative Loafing weekly for a DJ position at a Gentlemen’s Club on the South Side of town. After talking my way into the position, after a week of training, I was on my way to the journey that has brought me to where I am today. One year after starting in the business I began working at a 24 hour nightclub in Midtown Atlanta as a barback and within 2 months was a bartender. I stayed there for 2 years, until after the Olympics in 1996, at which time I decided I wanted to travel the country living in various cities and just all around living life to the fullest.

I first stopped in Biloxi, MS for the summer of ’97, before heading to Oklahoma City, OK., and my first position as a manager at a Gentlemen’s Club.

I celebrated my 25th year in the bar and restaurant business just 2 days before my 50th birthday. You do the math, but I have spent half my life in this business having traveled, lived, and worked from coast to coast and in a wide variety of venues. If it had a bar and served alcohol, I worked in it.

I only bring up a little of my back story so you can see that I not only talk the talk, but I also walk the walk so to speak. Throughout the years I never stopped learning in one way, shape, form, or another, whether it be earning a Certificate in Bar and Beverage Management from Pensacola Junior (at that time) College, studying Management & Marketing at Meridian Community College, becoming TIPS Certified nationwide, Florida Responsible Vendor Certified in Florida, TABC Certified in Texas, or any other learning I have done.

I have found throughout the years during my travels, that the majority of bar and restaurant owners at the time, and even now, have had little to no experience in our business, and it shows with the number of bars and restaurants that close their doors on a yearly basis ( I can tell you it’s in the thousands nationwide). They come from all different backgrounds..doctors, lawyers, businessmen, etc. But they all have one thing in common. They think all you have to do is get a building, get a liquor permit, hire some pretty ladies, and the people will be bum rushing your establishment and you’ll be the next big thing in town.

Maybe you thought owning a bar was all fun and games and it would be your personal playground where you’re the BIG SHOT buying everyone drinks and shots and being the life of the party instead of treating this like what it truly is..a business!!

These owners are smart people with good intentions, well most of the time except for the aforementioned “party owners”, who had a dream of opening a bar and/or restaurant, whether they are experienced or not, they all make the same mistakes: they ask the wrong questions.

What should our theme be? What type of food and beverage will it serve? Who will be our chef? How should we decorate? What kind of beer, wine, and liquor should we carry to WOW our guests?

Yes, these are all important questions, but they are not the questions you should be asking before diving head first into owning a bar or restaurant.

The questions you should be asking are: What systems do we need to put into place? How will we hire,train, and retain our staff? How are we going to manage it? What will our culture be, and what is our mission statement? What is our daily process for recording sales? What is our demographic? Who is our main customer?

As you can see there are a lot of questions that you need to be asking and answering before opening a bar or restaurant. And these are just a few, I could go on and on and on, but I think you get the point. Learn the infrastructure and build your foundation before erecting the walls so to speak. Master the fundamentals as you would with any business first. These questions don’t only need to be asked by anyone wishing to open a bar or restaurant, but also by those owners and managers running existing bars and restaurants, if they truly want to grow and be successful in this business.

After spending the last 25 years traveling the country, working and learning all I can from this business, and having helped hundreds of bars to be more successful by helping them to implement systems into their bars, I decided that I wanted to start my own business helping out the industry that I love so much and have dedicated half of my life to.

I figured that the best way to do that is to start my own Auditing and Consulting Service, and name it Food and Beverage Serve or F&B Serve for short. Why Food and Beverage Serve you might ask? Simple really. I am here to SERVE the Food and Beverage industry by passing on my knowledge and experience to those in this business that truly want and need it so they can grow their bar and restaurant into a long term, thriving business.

Without further ado, I am going to share with you the 5 areas you need to master in order to put the fundamentals in place so you can systemize, operate, and grow your bar and restaurant into the mega-successful bar you’ve always dreamed of.

So here we go…

THE 5 AREAS YOU NEED TO MASTER IN ORDER TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL BAR AND RESTAURANT

1. LEADERSHIP – This is one of the most unclear and ambiguous words in the whole English language. I don’t mean definition wise, I’m talking about execution wise. How do you lead? That is the question. If I were to give you only one answer it would be to have a positive enthusiasm about you every day when you walk through those doors. Leaders are supposed to lead by example and the example you want to portray is that of positivity and enthusiasm. It seems that everyone’s favorite pastime nowadays is to bitch and complain about everything and everyone, so if you can come in each and every day and lead with positive enthusiasm you can deliver powerful and positive results for not just you but for your staff and company as well. In this industry your guests expect you to overflow with positivity no matter what. That’s where F&B Serve can come in to help by relieving some of the pains you may have that are draining your positivity. Contact us for a FREE CONSULTATION TODAY
2. FINANCES – If you don’t know anything about finances, I suggest you hire someone who does. Don’t think that this is something you can skip over and put on the back burner. Not if you want to be successful you can’t. Hire an accountant or manager who is good with numbers. You’re not going to need a high dollar Wall Street financial advisor, but you do need someone who can figure out and record the daily sales, your weekly prime cost numbers, and your monthly profit/loss or P&L statement. Those are just a few of the basics that you need to understand, track, and analyze if you want to grow and be a successful bar and restaurant owner.
3. HIRING, TRAINING, CULTURE – You may be thinking that’s 3 things right there, and you’d be right NORMALLY, but for today’s discussion they all 3 fall under the STAFF section, which you need to master (or hire F&B SERVE to do these for you). You don’t want to just be in the position where you have to hire everyone who walks in the door because you need bodies, you want to hire someone who is good and preferably with some experience. And when you find those good employees you can’t simply just hire them and release them on your guests without proper training hoping they will know how to do things correctly, the way you want them done. You have to create a culture at work that holds everyone accountable for their actions, and that also rewards those staff members who have gone above and beyond their regular duties, so they feel important and recognized for their extra efforts. Nobody wants a culture of participation trophies where everyone is rewarded the same whether they’ve done something extraordinary or not. Retaining the right employees is an important skill you need to have as a successful bar and restaurant manager.
4. COST CONTROLS AND INVENTORY – If you haven’t done so yet, you need to put an inventory management or auditing system in place. Do you know what the #1 biggest loss of money in the bar and restaurant industry is? That’s right, it’s cost controls and inventory, but the good thing is that this can be easily fixed within a week. F&B SERVE can come in and save you money almost instantly, and that should give you reason enough to be optimistic about what I can do for you. When you get that extra influx of cash in your pockets and you see your cost percentage numbers coming down, it gives you hope that your situation can be turned around. That’s why these are the most important areas to control. Once these systems are in place, it’s time to move on to the other areas.

MARKETING – This has got to be the Holy Grail that most owners and managers are searching for the most: How to attract a non-stop flow of crazed guests who are willing to trample over the week to get to their favorite seat at the bar. And yes, you do need someone who has a knack for it and can execute the plan they put into place. And again, F&B Serve can help you set up and implement your marketing and promotion plans. You have to be careful and make sure that your kitchen is fully staffed and ready so as to not become overwhelmed with too many tickets at once, thus causing service to suffer because of long ticket times. Yes, you can believe that good marketing and promotions will bring them in the doors, but then you need to make sure that the other 4 areas are firing on all cylinders or else all that $$$ you make and success you have can fly right back out the door!!

I know this may seem a little overwhelming and all, but don’t fret, all you need to do is find just one thing that needs improving and focus on that. If you try to focus on too many things at one time you’ll actually lose focus and not fix anything at all. Lucky for you, you can contact F&B Serve to take care of all of these and more. Be sure to ask about your FREE CONSULTATION.

That does it for today’s blog. I hope you found it to be quite informative and interesting. Remember to follow F&B Serve on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to my blog to stay up to date with the latest stories, fads, news, and more.