Welcome back to our hashtag lunchbox live stream here at turning the table. This is episode three, and we're gonna be discussing the hustle culture. I'm here with good friend, Jim Taylor of benchmark 60 and is always turning the table is sponsored by benchmark 60. So yeah, of course we would have him, right.
morning. How's it going? Well, I guess afternoon, if you're in the east, right,
exactly. Yeah. We cover all time zones here. We do. And so for those of you, this is the first time that you're actually seeing this we broadcast live every Thursday at noon and we're doing it on linked. YouTube and on Facebook. And the whole idea is staff centric, hashtag operating solutions for today's restaurant tours. And we speak to a lot of people in the restaurant industry. Don't
we time. Yeah, everybody. I mean, had a conversation with a guy in a cafeteria the other day had a discussion with a senior living person last week, you know, the hotel part of the industry, you and I were chatting a lot about the hotel side of things the other day mm-hmm you know, mainstream restaurant QSR, full service. I mean, you name it. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's funny cause I'm not gonna do that because I'm gonna get an echo. You know, every, you know, it's so funny. It's no news that everybody's trying to, this is something I found on the web. Holy crap is a food brand. Can I answer your question? Thank you, echo. Yes, it did. holy crap is a food brand. Wow. That's amazing. Just mute him while I'm at it. Little echo down here in the dish pit studios. So it's no news to anybody that they're doing less or doing more with less.
Which kind of backs into our conversation today about the hustle culture. Yeah. And how that's actually killing the restaurant industry right now. Well,
I think it's always been killing the restaurant industry. It's just front and center all of a sudden, right. I was re I don't know. I was, I think I sent you some of the stuff. I was reading some stats the other day from restaurants, Canada, but I'm sure it's the same in the us. We're close to that.
There was an unbelievably low number of restaurants compared to what I assumed that have actually increased people's pay this year, but it was almost 80% of restaurants are actually asking their people to work more hours than they already were. Before I talked to someone yesterday, she told me at 108 hours on her last two week pay period. What I mean that's not sustainable, right?
Crazy. No, no, it's not. And I know that everybody's in this crunch where they can't find good help or so they say they can't find good. . Yeah, I just did a post this morning about, you know, the folks that are complaining that they can't get qualified staff are probably the same people who are still trying to hold onto their wage levels. Mm-hmm from pre pandemic they're resistant to trying to add any benefit packages because they can't accurate calculate the ROI.
Like how the hell is that gonna actually help us in the long run? And someone responded to the post. Yeah. It's, it's weird how people are resistant to trying to do anything to better. The lot of their associates, which to me, just, just shocking mm-hmm and I don't wanna make anybody wrong, but you know, typically those are the operators that nobody wants to work for. So they're actually, they're actually right. You are right on the money. Nobody wants to work for.
If you are not going to do something outside of the box, and we've been exploring all kinds of things that people have been talking about, but in so far as increasing benefit packages without necessarily getting kicked in the bottom line. But why don't you talk for a bit about what your experience of the hustle culture was when you were actively managing meeting?
I was, I think, you know, I was really lucky to work for a really cool, really innovative, really growth focused, you know, front and center in the industry in Western Canada. Well, Canada in general, I was really lucky to work for a great company. But, you know, the interesting thing, looking back now, even some of the things that we did and we, we believed and they still do believe in taking really good care of people.
Good benefits, packaging, you know, good reward and recognition, good compensation, all of that stuff. The people that worked there are some of, you know, they, they get really well taken care of in terms of industry standard, but there was still this like underlying hustle culture that was kind of never spoken about. But if you didn't follow it, it, you just sort. Who weren't successful.
And you know, the thing that I always, and, and I looking back, I was guilty of this too, but the thing that I always think about is we use this term resiliency all the time with our people and said, you know, people who are resilient get promoted and people who are resilient move forward in this organization.
And, you know, I would say not to pick on that organization, but it's about the industry in general, people who are resilient have opportunity and move forward and grow and get promoted and get a raise and all these. What the, what our industry's really saying by that though, you know, looking back now is not who's resilient. It's who doesn't complain, who just their head down works, who just goes in on their day off. Who does their admin at home?
You know, I remember I used to write all of the, the one that sticks out to me or something I was thinking of this morning. I used to write all of my schedules when I was a general manager for December. I would write the whole month's schedule at once. Right. Because I wanted to, my goal was that I wanted to make sure that my team had the ability to plan around the holidays. Right. They either worked new year's or they worked Christmas, or they worked boxing day, or they worked new year's day.
You know, like we tried to get that stuff out. But looking back at the resilience thing, well, I took one whole weekend cuz I didn't have time to do it within my work hours. I took one of my whole weekends with a couple of bottles of wine and sat there and wrote schedules for like 12 hours straight. and, you know, looking back at it now, I'm like, okay, so this was good for the, the team probably, but I burnt myself out in one of the busiest times of the year, you know, trying to do that stuff.
So I think it's just, you know, this resiliency concept in our industry, we need to find a way to reframe that because people are just. Condition then it's, you know, you and I have talked about this badge of honor thing, put your head down and go, and it's just not sustainable.
Yeah. I'm glad you bring up the badge of honor thing because it's this it's this veneration of, of not, not just hard work, but really abusing yourself in order to support whatever version of you. You want to promote to your employers or to your friends or whatever. And I have to think that looking back at my career, that I was my own worst enemy, you know, I was the one that was actually promoting the hustle culture and this idea that, you know, you're gonna go in there and you're gonna.
You're gonna do the best thing. And then using that to train, shame and condition, everybody around me, mm-hmm and very often it's not anything that you say, but it's just like, if there's a tight relationship, you know, a lot of emotional capital that's been put into that piggy bank between you and your staff, as soon as they start shift, see you shift, then all of a sudden they all kind of fall back because they're all taking their emotional cues from us as, as supervisors and leaders.
Mm-hmm , which is what. Consider to be one like job one for us is to get rid of that whole hustle culture. Like if we're planned properly and what I mean planned properly, we're also planning for things to go sideways. You know, that the shipments are coming late or that we're getting MIS picks on our orders or what, whatever that is. We plan that into our day of action so that there's no stress. so that there's no hustle.
Like one of my favorite examples is the health inspector is at the back door. So everybody starts scrambling. Like everybody's got prearranged orders of what they're gonna do, do, do, do do, but it's this mad scramble to, to have everything in perfect condition for when the health inspector comes in. When in fact that should be your operating standard anyway. Yeah. So that there is no hustle and if it's not coming from us, then no one else is gonna, no one else is gonna do that for us.
So you know, we've got a couple people from all over the world watching us today. We've got Stanley from Tanzania Africa. We've got John stable for, from the UK who says he is loving. So John , which is awesome because As this reach widens, you know, again, one of these things about our lunchbox live stream is to get a couple actionable items from our discussion so that folks can turn around, go back into their operation and start affecting change right away.
Mm-hmm because culture happens from the ground up. It's all elbow to elbow. It's nothing that comes out of a box or a, or a, or some corporate boardroom or the HR department. You know, I don't wanna make anybody mad at the, in the HR sector. We know it's about compliance and how important that is. And yet if culture's not happening at the ground level, it's just gonna get watered down.
So culturally speaking, then we're gonna have to be the ones that breaks the back of this hustle culture and venerating, abusive working conditions and hours. Whether that means, you know, going to a four day work week, which a lot of operations. Or playing around with, or considering, you know, looking at your, at your P and L, is there a day where you can close and then get everybody off at the same day?
I always thought that was brilliant that you could put your entire crew off the same two days so that you have this consistency all the way through. I'm not advocating that people close for two days, but it may make sense in part of the season or part of the year. I, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I know in Europe, August is typically a month where everybody takes off everybody except for people working in restaurants and hotels. yeah.
Yeah. And, and, you know, I feel like we need to sort of clarify something around this hustle culture thing. Hustle is important and hustle is mm-hmm. awesome. And hustle is fun and hustle. When it's needed. It's really, I mean, ultimately one of the most important, I think skills you can have mm-hmm if you look at any other industry, right?
I mean, everything from when you're in a, if someone's an accountant to, someone's a pilot to someone, you know, there's hustle time and it's like, it's go time, you know, professional sports, the playoffs, all those things. There's time where, when you gotta hustle. Yeah. You know, I, I grew up in, in Calgary, Alberta. In Western Canada where the Calgary Stampe is mm-hmm and it's 10 days. And it's insane. It's this giant rodeo and beer gardens everywhere.
And, you know, hundreds of thousands of people come to the city and it's go time. It's like 10 days straight of nonstop, especially if you work in a restaurant it's hustle time, but it doesn't have to be, you know, 108 hours on your paycheck in the middle of August when you shouldn't necessarily have to do. And, you know, I think we were a few of us on the team were talking the other day about the difference between hard work and having to work too hard.
yeah, absolutely. That goes up with some of my earlier influences. There was a guy by the name ed ESE, who was the meanest front of the house manager I have ever met in my life. And when I met him, he was in his seventies and, and still work in the floor and he would constantly pound it into my head. You know, lamb, you gotta plan your work and work your. Got plan, your work and work plan.
And some people are just chiming in with some of the things that they've seen that are, have been working in their operations. You know, hustle is great, Jim, except if you're a customer, right. If I don't want my service staff to be so hustled that I can't get my next drink. Right. Right. So there's this idea of.
What benchmark 60 has gotten so good at at being able to accurately forecast and then actively manage workloads, which is completely different than just going in and saying, okay, your labor percentage was two points high yesterday. What are you gonna do to recapture that today?
Yeah. Yeah. That workload piece is. It's been a, a game changer for lots of places because you're, you know, not only, like you said, is it a labor a tool for, you know, management, labor costs.
But if you look at that concept over an extended period of time, If you, if you go back to a time in, when you worked in restaurants, where there was just, you know, maybe, maybe you were short staffed or maybe it was a really exceptionally busy summer, or there was a bunch of events going on or, you know, whatever, there could be a million different factors, but go back to one of those times in your career in operations, when everybody had to just really grind for an extended period of time.
Oh yeah. What happened? People quit right. There's a threshold. Right? Right. And that, that workload concept of measuring that in a restaurant allows you to get ahead of that and say, okay, I know that if, if we pass this certain level, everyone's gonna hate it. Right. And what happens then people quit. So, you know, there's direct connection between how hard the team has to work and
turnover. Mm. This this badge of honor thing too. And speaking again of my own experience what it allowed me to do was to engage in some really poor behavior, insofar as my own health and wellness. You know, if you think of it as a totem pole and putting everyone up above me, then that meant that I was constantly in service to everyone else, except for.
Yeah. And when it came time for me to, for lack of a better word, take some time and refill my cup, you know, I was pretty well broken by that point and no good to anyone. And then I would have to go back and basically recommit to all my fellow managers and associates, you know, and say, Hey, I, I, I realize I haven't been here fully for you. And I'm really sorry about that. You know, can you accept my apology? And this is what I'm committed to moving forward.
I've always been incredibly transparent about what's happened in my professional and personal life, because if I want somebody to be vulnerable and transparent to me, then there's, there's no way that I can advocate for that. If I'm not gonna do it first now need to practice a little discernment because not everybody needs to know what I do in my personal time, but I'm pretty sure that, you know, we're all gonna come up against the same factors if we're in this business.
Mm-hmm so I like to also. Remind people that if you're in this business, you are by defacto, a sensitive soul, or have a sensitive spirit because you get something emotionally from being in service to somebody else, which is an honorable thing, which is a sacred thing. Very true. But it's a completely different thing when you advocate your own. You know, you either tie that to your self worth or you put yourself at the bottom of the totem pole. You just got back.
I mean, not just got back because you're still not sweating, but you took time out of your busy day to do what? A 45 minute thing
this morning. Yeah. Still a little red in the face.
Well, why do you, why do you think that that's important for you to get done? First thing in the, in the day consist.
Well, for me, it's just as much mental as it is physical, for sure. I mean, it puts you in the right space.
Yeah. Because there's this energy that gets built up in our bodies being under this stress. And really, there's only a couple of different ways to expel that energy. And one of the most powerful ways that I've seen is, you know, by exercising for sure. Yeah. Because there's just nothing better than sweating in that particular. Yeah.
In a positive way, right?
Yeah. Right. And so to anybody who says to you, well, listen, man, I don't have a choice. I got a hustle. Like sometimes it just pisses me off to see some of these posts by people who are claiming now on LinkedIn of, you know, now we have influencers on LinkedIn that are trying to like use the algorithm as they would for TikTok or, or. Or, or Instagram, but they're advocating this hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle thing.
Mm. Like it, like, it's great you to go out there and hustle like, yes, you gotta pull up your bootstraps. Yes. You're responsible for your own success, but how are we gonna break people out of this hustle culture within the industry that basically negates self and puts everyone else above us?
So here's one of the things that I think is interesting, and this is aligned with what you're saying right now. If you look at what's going on in, in multiple other industries, outside of restaurants and, and multiple governments, actually there's starting to be these limitations placed on what happens in the workplace, right? Ontario, a province in Canada, for those that aren't in Canada. Has now implemented a, a law that your employer cannot call you outside of office hours. It's illegal.
Okay. So that's a protecting of employee workload, right? You get the, the four day work week, things that are happening, you get even something as simple as, you know, people went crazy a few years ago when Facebook said where, whatever you want to work, wear a hoodie. I don't care.
You know, our, our industry, and this is where I I'm, you know, sometimes on a bit of an island, but you know, people like you and, and a few others are, are definitely helping to rally the troops on this is that the same type of stuff is possible in our industry. We just, our industry just seems to just be stuck and not be able to wrap our heads around it. And it still, this. 108 hours on my paycheck every two weeks.
It's still this, you know, I don't want to close an extra day because you've gotta grind. And it's a, and it's a penny industry and it's margins are tight and you know, those types of things, but it it's possible. With and, you know, while still doing some of these other things that the rest of the world has figured out how to do. Correct.
I woke up this morning to some very interesting messages on in, in my, in my DM, from somebody who was quite passionate about the fact that everything that we're trying to accomplish at be benchmark 60 is a total fantasy we're on our own. It's never gonna happen. Call me every name in the book. Right? Where do you get off? You're an idiot. Like really?
It was, it was actually interesting and it actually reminded me that, you know, it's that much more important than I think we even realize, right. Especially in restaurants,
I couldn't agree more. You know, to a certain extent there are operators who are always gonna be ahead of the wave. You know, they're gonna be so far out in, in front. Because they recognize a good strategy or a good idea worth implementing, or at least playing around with mm-hmm and there are gonna be those that are gonna come kicking and screaming to the table.
The unfortunate thing is those that are kicking and screaming may not necessarily have a table to be brought to because their operations may be closed by then. I mean, it is just so tight out there and I am empathetic in understanding of the weight of responsibility that some GMs, DMS chefs, managers have. Absolutely. I mean, it is absolutely fucking crushing yet. If we don't make some small strides. Towards protecting our associate's emotional and physical safety, physical safety.
I think for the most part we got right. We've got OSHA in the United States. And to your point about these laws that are being implemented about eight months ago, I talked to an Australian chef who works in Germany, who told me it is illegal for him to contact an associate out of work hours. Yep. Can't call him on a day. Can't call 'em in . Nope. And I'm thinking to myself.
Okay. So that changes the dynamic a lot because here in the United States, we have this implication that you are always available. Right? And it's a different thing. If you're on a call list and you have to call in and, you know, to see if you're gonna shift, but you know, here's a LinkedIn user who said part of my interview process asks candidate what they do daily to keep them of sound mind, and body and escape. Escape reality.
Cool. that might lead to a couple other things but my expectation is they'd be a hundred percent mentally healthy and physically outside of work, and then be able to give the job a hundred percent inside the walls, which is kind of like, you know, a new way of thinking in that we're not just hiring a pair of hands we're actually, or, you know, a position on a schedule, even though that's the way you might organize your schedule, which makes sense a bunch of different reasons. So we celebr.
This, the LinkedIn user for their capacity to actually think outside the box. And there is nothing saying that an operator can't say to a staff, okay, we're implementing a new policy. We will never call you on your day off. Or we won't, or we won't call you after hours. Mm-hmm . Now you might have a call, you know, scheduled check-in. But there's nothing saying that things that are happening in other countries, can't be applied to our, to our current operations here in the United States.
And by the way Canada Calgary, Calgary, just got named one of the top 10 places to live in the world. So it did. Yep. Had some places had a couple places in Canada's on the pitch and doing well up
there. Yeah. And you know, that, that concept around, you know, this LinkedIn user with this question around, what are you doing to mm-hmm, keep yourself protected and keep yourself motivated, keep yourself healthy. And you know, those things, I mean, props to that operator for actually doing that. Yep. I think that, you know what, I would encourage every employer, whether they're in restaurants or not. But every employer to think about is how powerful would it be?
If you could say to your people, listen, I expect that you work hard when you come to work. Mm-hmm right. That's there's that one side, right? This is your job. You've gotta work hard. Mm-hmm but we're gonna implement something to protect you from having to work too hard. Correct? We're gonna do things for you to not just say here's an extra dollar. Thanks for working your butt off. Not just, here's an extra day off. Thanks for working so hard.
We're gonna actually do something proactively as a business in terms of, and use data as, as we've discussed a lot in the past to do that so that we don't even have to have the conversation about burnout. Because we already know we're protecting how hard the team has to work. Right. I mean, think about that from a, from an employee standpoint, you're talking to your friends about, and they're telling you how exhausted they are and burnt out there.
And I go, well, my employer actually has a system and a strategy that they use to protect us from burnout. Right. It's totally different. Right. Let's flip that.
Yeah. That, that gets back to like, okay. Now all of a sudden that shifts the perspective on the. because listen, if you're getting, if you're getting treated really well at work, chances are you're gonna talk about it, right? just because what you hear from everybody else is such a horror show and you just, you shake your head. But pretty soon that operation now becomes that becomes a point of attraction for staff who, who wanna work hard. Who wanna do the things that they love?
You know, this other thing about badge of honor, there came a point in my career where I felt like I had been tricked. I had been bamboozled. I had been no, this should be good. I had been taken advantage of because of the passion that I had. Right. Some operator looked at me and said, man, he really he's really passionate about what he. I'm gonna use that.
I'm gonna ride that like a rented mule until he can no longer pull that plow and did that time and time and time again until I started to create healthy boundaries for myself and be able to say no, there's some really great, funny Facebook rails and talks about where they're playing a part of an employer and an employee about getting asked to do extra stuff. And some of 'em are funny, but some of 'em are like pretty PO. like where you kind of look at that and go, why do I always say yes?
Why can't I say no? Yeah. Like, what am I afraid of losing? If I say, no, I'm not gonna go to this non-mandatory company outing that they're not paying for. They're not paying us. Right. We're gonna do a picnic or whatever, which is great for team building. But again, I always made sure that meetings were scheduled. People got paid for 'em mm-hmm regardless of whether they had to come in from the outside or, you know, it's on shift.
These are just small accommodations acknowledging the fact that they're human beings that we're dealing with. And one of the things I posted about this week is there's a, there's a circular economy and marketplace called resource network that is here in Asheville, Austin, Texas, about five other cities, where you as a vendor or as a restaurant tour, can. Start a marketplace and get, and sell your product.
So now you have this other potential client base and you get paid in resource dollars, which are secured by their own cryptocurrency called source. But then you can also turn around and use those crypto, that those resource dollars as benefits to your associates because they can book massages, hyperbaric chamber sessions, yoga there's, even companies on there. There's one here in Asheville that. Some awesome organic, raw food delivery.
You know, it's just like a Bo basket of, you know, vegetables and meat and all that kind of stuff. Associates can use all of that and it hasn't cost you a dime, but it gives your associate an ability to now here's all these resources that you have an ability to have access to that didn't exist before. Yeah. And you have a brand new potential market. So there are definitely ways to.
To rattle the cage of those of us who wanna still hustle and remind ourselves, remind each of us that, you know, it's important to take time. It's important to continue to sharpen the spear as well as softening your heart. Because if we're sensitive people, why the hell do we want to close our hearts to either customers. Or to our fellow associates. Yeah.
Yeah. And, and I think, you know, you were saying earlier about making sure that people whoever's, you know, taking the time out of their data, listen to us rant about this stuff. Mm-hmm, make sure they've got a couple of things to take away. And, you know, the hustle side of things is still ultimately gonna help, you know, determine success or not. Right. Sure. But it's about. Thinking about it differently hustle when we need to, not all the time.
And, and, you know, to your comment a second ago around this, you know, feeling like you have to show up to that unpaid staff meeting or whatever it was the crazy thing about, you know, thinking back over the last few years and how our industry's changed so much, there's always been this retention issue in, in restaurants. It was just masked by worker. So don't come to the step meeting. I don't care. There's someone we'll get rid of you and there's someone that will replace you tomorrow.
And now ain't
happening. I know, I know Jim. That's about all we have time for today. We wanna really appreciate Stanley and And John Stableford and a few other viewers for putting in their comments really appreciated. It certainly helps guide our dialogue on the show. Absolutely. Because we're doing this as a service, you know, it's taking time out of our day. We're we're happy to do it.
Not only because we get to be with one another and, and talks some mad shit, but also to be in the inquiry of what it would look like to co-create a restaurant industry that. Would be proud to work in. So I'm down. And I guess I would answer and for those of you who are watching this on replay, please add your comments below because we're gonna ask, are you with us? Who's with me. Right. Tim Taylor, who
was with me. Let's make some moves.
Thanks, Adam. Yeah, my pleasure. It's that's it for this week on turning the table and we'll see you next Thursday on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, please. Thanks for joining us on this episode of turning the table with me, Adam Lamb and Jim Taylor.
This episode was sponsored by benchmark 60 we're on a mission to change the food and beverage industry by focusing on staff, mental health and wellbeing by forecasting and actively managing workload productivity over 200 restaurants and food and beverage operat. Have discovered for themselves how to increase staff retention and become a preferred employer in their market by using our proprietary system.
If you'd like to have an operational culture that everybody wants to work for, then check out benchmark 60 on the [email protected]. Thanks for taking the time to be with us and the courage to try new things for the restaurant. Profession's oldest problem. Turning the table is a production of realignment media.