101: Turning the Table On Restaurant Dogma

So we decided to try this hashtag lunchbox live stream as a service to the industry that we all love. The hospitality industry and intended it to be something that would be short, sweet, quick punch in your mouth, give you some stuff to go home or go back to the shop with and. Work at some staff centric solutions for some of the operational challenges that the industry is facing today. Or as my friend Chris hall from the Bern chef pro project likes to call it this profession.

He refuses to call it an industry anymore because the industry connotates this kind of huge monolith that sits on our shoulders and squashes us down. And I completely agree that we are. able to chart our path through this wonderful career field. If only we are focused on the values that matter to us and look for an organization whose values match that. So why we decided to do this was because we love the industry. You know, Jim's been posting a series of really engaging posts on LinkedIn around.

This discovery, he made a couple years ago, like, oh geez. Now I'm a consultant. Like after 20, 25 years in the industry and building up this huge amount of experience and, and Now all of a sudden, because of COVID and some other circumstances he's kind of outside looking in and he makes a relevant point is that none of us actually start out to be a consultant. So speaking for myself, I was 35 years in the industry as an executive chef corporate chef. Got in the business.

When I was 15 years old as a dishwasher, I went to work at the restaurant that my father liked to go to the neighborhood big wheel restaurant in Hammond, Indiana. What's up, buddy? Hey. Yeah, just got going. And the entire internet dumped on me. I was like, oh no. So here we are. We're live. all right. so I just was talking to everybody about. why we decided to do this. Yeah.

and my reply to you is like, you know, that's almost like asking for, that's like asking to be like, like rid hard and put up wet by the folks who are still in the industry, like who all of a sudden, because we're. You know, on the line with them or running the floor with them, all of a sudden we become like superfluous. Like we don't necessarily have a a big volume of knowledge and experience with which to be able to assist.

Yeah. And so sometimes it's like being a glutton for punishment has been my experience. but you've had a little bit of different experience. I. . Jim Taylor: Yeah. And, and to your comment about the, the becoming a consultant by accident, it's funny because I'm sure a lot of people who are in, in operations, in restaurants, front of house or back of house, mm-hmm in a lot of ways can relate to the experience I got into restaurant management by accident too. Did you really.

Well, it's kind of that surprise. You're the manager type thing, right? I mean, , I, you know, if you, you don't do anything stupid, you have good relationships with people. You give good service and someone just says, Hey, do you mind lock up tonight? And all of a sudden you're the manager. Right, right, right. It can happen the same way or the, so chef. Or the, the executive chef happens to bail out on a, on a weekend saying, Hey, I got another job say thanks very much.

And all of a sudden they're looking at me going, okay, do you know how to close? I'm like, right. I'll figure it out, man. I think mm-hmm right. Yeah.

I have some ability to be able to do that, whether that means. Figuring it out myself, which is always takes much longer. Granted I get to carry that ability with me moving forward, but mm-hmm, , I've gotten, you know, as I've gotten a little bit older, I did a post yesterday where I said, you know, maybe I'm just getting older, but you know, Order is hell of a lot more sexier than chaos. Whereas I know for a fact that a point in my career chaos was definitely where it was at . Oh yeah.

But as I've gotten a little bit older or what I'd say is more mature, I appreciate being able to be with other people who I can gain knowledge from. In the personal development space, they say very often that, you know, you're the, you are the result of the, of the five people who you are most closely aligned with. Yeah. Because it's just almost impossible not to not to glean stuff from them and want to be like them.

I think that's one of the things that I've really enjoyed about our collaboration. Is that not only did you reconnect me with something. That I played around with not really knowing what, what I was doing much earlier in my career, but you brought about a wisdom and a way of actually bridging the gap in communication to potential clients.

That for me was kind of an eye opener because I think I've spent most of my life you know, shaking a lot of trees and, you know, hitting people over the head with wisdom and, you know, we know how far that goes, but your, your, your way of being with. Clients is something that's very admirable to me. You know, you ask a lot of questions in a lot of ways. It's, you're the perfect coach, right?

Because you ask a lot of questions and you don't necessarily throw your wisdom around or what you think they should be doing. What you're actually assisting them to do is to. Solve their own problems like to, to become their own guru once they understand what it is that you're teaching.

But there there's so much of this. I have tons of experience. 10, 20, 30 years of experience, really knowledgeable, very smart. But the approach sometimes, or with the trap that they, I find they get stuck in. And I got stuck in this at the beginning of my consulting career. You know, we try to use that term loosely cuz our industry hates it. They just go, here's what I've done in the past. So here's what you should do.

And you know, a lot of operators, I think don't, they don't take well to that because this is my baby. This is my business. This is what, I'm my dream. This is what I'm trying to build. And don't tell me how to. So, you know, we've been really lucky.

I think that just that approach around helping operators understand the information that's right in front of them and what it can help them do with their business is, you know, that's why it's more about asking those questions and, and really just helping guide them to, to the answer. So I, I think Chris who we spent a lot of time.

Actually was joking with me the other day about how he, one of the things that he, he, I guess, gets a kick out of when I've said it is that I don't even know the color of the walls of most of the restaurants that we worked with. Right. Because, you know, we've never even stepped foot on them and we don't need to, because it's all about information. It doesn't mean that we have to go there and run the place for them.

Because they think that who they have right now is comfortable and, and, and that they don't necessarily need to worry about them. And why do you think that retention is actually kind of the gateway to not only creating a culture that's that everybody wants to work in, but also becomes a point of attraction to, you know, people who are looking for a great job.

They had a very good retention strategies, but we still turned over the hourly staff at like a 60% clip every year. So to me, it's, you know, if a restaurant needs to hire 10 people you know, it's hard to find 10 people that wanna come to work right now, right. That wanna work in our industry. That it's hard to find people that wanna work in restaurants, but it's that number might be less than 10. If they didn't lose two or three people every month. Mm-hmm . right.

And, and I think that the industry's changing in the way that people are looking at how to, how to take care of their people, how to protect their people, how to, how to make the experience better. You know, and there's a couple examples that I, I use a lot. And one of them is a company that added cleaning and laundry service.

You know, you and I have talked about this one, quite a mm-hmm quite a few times they added cleaning and laundry service at your house for every employee in the whole company, whether you're the. First day dishwasher or you're the vice president of operations. I was talking to your friend Jensen Cummings the other day. Well,

Yeah. So that hurt them, that hurt the business. And so that company has now decided to add pet insurance for every employee. I mean, that's just game changer.

Mm-hmm . And so she actually not only picked her own health over that, that cat, but also her happiness, because in the end, you know, he's like, well, if you're gonna put that much. Importance on a cat and not on me. So it was kind of like a weird exchange. And in the end it worked out for the best.

But I, I think the sneaky thing is there's a hell of a lot more people who are having to make these critical decisions than we give them credit, or we give ourselves credit for, for actually understanding. And I know Jenssen's been doing a great post around, you know, just asking the question, Hey, what benefits does your employer provide? And he's created this huge document.

And some of the, I was just taking a look at it right before we got on, because there are some that are absolutely critical to the operation. And then there are some that are just kind of nice to have mm-hmm and the question is, I think a lot of people during this. This constriction of the labor pool started throwing dollars around and saying, oh, well, it's, it's gotta be the wage. It's gotta be the wage.

So let's, let's pay more, let's pay more, let's pay more and still forgot about you know, mental health and, and physical health, wellbeing programs and things of that sort. And we had a conversation earlier this week when I mentioned to you like people in the United States do not understand what a load, an emotional load it is to have to worry about he. In this in the United States. And I happen to be married to a Canadian and spend time in Canada.

And you are from that wonderful country where you don't ever sweat that because, you know, you're just gonna go to the emergence. It's all gonna be taken care of. And I say to Americans, like, At some point, our industry has to stand for that and actually advocate for that as opposed to some organizations or or lobbyists constantly being in Congress saying, you know, we gotta keep the wage low. We gotta keep the benefits low or else it's gonna be an industry killer.

As far as I know, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, a lot of these countries have vibrant restaurant scenes mm-hmm and nobody seems to be hurting

Right. You know, I think the, the fun part of some of the work that we get to do with restaurant groups is, is helping them understand the, both short and long-term benefits of just taking better care of their people. Right. Whether that's a wage, whether that's a benefit, whether that's pet insurance, whether that's, you know, whatever that might be. Right. And sometimes it's amazing that our industry's notorious for just kind of always doing things the same. Right.

It's just the, one of our sort of taglines that we talk about a lot is, you know, try to get rid of the end. This is the end of we've always done it this way. Right. Right. And, and I think, like you just said, there's a lot of that that comes up. It's like, well, this person wants to, is gonna quit and go work down the street. Well, let's just pay them a dollar more an hour. Right. And that just doesn't work anymore. Right.

And you know, that example around adding cleaning and laundry service for every employee, it was $30 a week per employee. That's less than a dollar an hour for a full-time. To have someone show up at their house and clean their house and do their laundry for them. So that, that would positively impact their work life balance and improve probably their experience at work. Mm-hmm , they're in a clean shirt every day, instead of, you know, the dirty one.

But yeah, it's retention is the new cool as has. It's kind of taken on a bit of a life of its own for us, but it's really, you know, about, we just gotta find ways to just improve the overall employee experience top to bottom in, in

I mean, it took me a while to get to it, but you know, a healthy half day workshop around, you know, this is day two orientation, and this is what we expect, and these are our values and really goes a long way. So it doesn't always have to be I mean, there's a cost to everything, but it's not. It's not as simple as throwing a wage around.

And I tell you why I happen to live in Asheville, North Carolina, which is considered one of the best especially this year, one of the best restaurant towns in the nation. I there's four James Beard award winners. One of the restaurants was named best restaurant in the country and cooks and dishwashers and servers consistently jump ship for 25 cent. it's like, that's how competitive, because the living wage to live and work in Asheville is somewhere around.

Don't quote me on this, because you can actually go to MIT, MIT living wage calculator, which is a real eye opener and pick your city, your county, your town, and actually look at what your living wage actually calculates out to be. But, you know, it was somewhere around $27 an hour as a living wage to live and work in Asheville. That's why people jump for 25 cents because they're, they can't afford to live here. So they're constantly forced out into the suburbs, which adds stress.

You know, they've done construction on every road, leading into Asheville for the last year and a half, and it's gonna continue for another year because now all of a sudden their bedroom communities to Asheville, which is crazy. Mm-hmm . But. It just seems to me that, like you said, there's, there's got to be a better way to do this. There's got to, I firmly believe it. And I think that's why we're here.

And one of the other reasons why we're actually doing this hashtag lunchbox live stream is something that I got from Jensen. When I was interviewing him for podcast. When he said every hospitality company, every consultant, every restaurant, every hotel. Has to be both a hospitality comp company and a media company, because if you don't own the narrative, someone else is gonna own the narrative for you.

Mm-hmm . And so we are here to dispel this entire myth about consultants, coaches, whatever the hell you want to call it, what you need to know is we're actually here to serve you whether or not you choose to that's completely up to you. We honor that. But one of Jim's core approaches, which I've taken on. To me, it seems so counterintuitive.

It was like, I'm not gonna tell you how to run your business, you know, your business better than I I'm just showing you what the data reveals so that you can understand almost immediately, once you see the interpretation of the data, what there is to do. Yeah. There's

And, you know, some of our core measurements around how to measure productivity in a restaurant environment and how to measure employee workload. Mm-hmm , you know, we were showing them what that looks like strictly from a, a generic perspective. And one of the examples we were talking about was what customer spend does to profitability and how often the management team actually has no control over what that, you know, impact might be.

And anyway, the, the COO of the company, he actually asked me to hold on a second. He muted himself. And I'd see him grab his phone and he, he makes a phone call and he comes back off mute. And I said, what did you just, what did you just do? And he said, oh, I just phoned our marketing team and told him to cancel w night because it's affecting our customer spend. And it was, I, we were like, no, no, no, hold it. You know, we're not even there yet. We're not at that point. Right.

But you know, really quickly things kind of can jump off the page.

We talked about building trust quickly with a, with someone you're working with.

You've been kind of amazed at just how many operators actually see an opportunity like that and realize, no, this is, I don't want it to just, you know, pay that out as dividends. I wanna actually reinvest that back into my organization. Yeah.

You know, there's, they're really looking at ways to you know, reinvent how, how hospitality people are, are looked. Right. I think that there's, and this is, you know, kind of a, a, a lofty goal, but, you know, you, you think back to a few years ago, when, you know, the whole Silicon valley, Facebook, all that kind of stuff, it was like, you get to wear a hoodie to work and there's no dress code and come and goes, you please.

And, you know, I think that the, the hospitality industry is the next industry that needs to embrace that type of stuff, whatever that really, whatever it looks like. And, you know, we don't have the answer to that yet, but, you know, really going after it in a unique.

And you wanna, you wanna introduce yourself, Jim?