61 - Restaurant Rescue - How to turn around a failing restaurant

This is a self first aid program for Restaurant Owners to help you build the restaurant that you always wanted and that you can be proud of.

We are focusing on small iterative steps that are low or no cost for Restaurants 

How do you know if you need to do a Restaurant Rescue?

1. Are you happy coming to work each day?
2. Are you proud of the restaurant?
3. Are you spending enough time with your family?
4. Are you taking holidays?
5. Are you making enough money for the hours you work?
6. Is this the Restaurant that you thought you would run when you started the Restaurant?

If are working 60 -70 hours a week and not loving every minute of it, then you need to think about Restaurant Rescue.

Once you've made that decision, you need to write down the kind of Restaurant you want to run.

• How many hours do you want to work?
• How much money do you want to make?
• What kind of reputation do you want to have?

This is your Restaurant Gap Analysis.  What is happening now and what do you want it to be.  This is the first step to start on your Restaurant Rescue.

Start writing down all of the problems that you have.  

• Food, money, front of house, stock control, customer service, cash flow, customer numbers, repeat customers.

Talk to your customers and your staff and get some honest criticism and feedback.

The next thing to do is to look at the appearance of your Restaurant.  Are you attracting walk - ins.  Honestly, how does the Restaurant look?  What is the interior like?

Start to look at the Culture of the Restaurant.  What is the vision of the restaurant, what are the values and how does your team know what those values are?  How do you turn around the culture of your team?

Look at the team.  How do you hiring and firing processes work?  How does someone know if they have had a good day or not in your Restaurant?