5 Key Lessons Owning a Restaurant Taught Me About Business
Number four applies to life too
People will tell you that a restaurant is one of the hardest businesses to run, and honestly, they might be right.
At times, I look at other businesses with envy due to their simplicity. You mean they don’t have to calculate food wastage?
But the benefit of a restaurant’s complexity is that you learn many lessons.
And one thing is for sure: you learn how to manage your costs — the most valuable skill for any business owner to learn.
Below are 5 key lessons owning a restaurant taught me about business.
1. Your team is everything
It is impossible for the owner of a restaurant to be performing every duty at the same time.
At one point, you will have to rely on your team.
Your team becomes everything right from the start. Any weakness becomes very obvious, very quickly, too.
“A players hire A players. But B players hire C players, and C players hire D players. It doesn’t take long to get to F players.” — Steve Jobs
You have to hire fast, and fire fast. It is hard to find A players, and when you accidentally hire a B or C player, their weakness spreads.
Putting a C player next to a B turns the B into a C, too.
Putting a B next to an A makes the A feel unappreciated.
Pick your team wisely. Train them well. And move on if they are not the right fit.
2. Numbers don’t lie
At the end of the day, the success of a business comes down to its costs and its revenues.
In a restaurant, the numbers do not lie.
If your food costs are too high, it really comes down to a few things. Listen to those numbers, and you will figure out what the problem is.
If your revenue is too low, it can really only be a result of a couple of factors.
Continuously ask yourself:
How can I lower my costs?
How can I raise my revenue?
Everything else fits within those 2 questions.
3. Problems are opportunities
There is no way your business will ever have no problems. The good news is, problems are opportunities.
When a problem pops up, it is simply showing you how you can improve your business.
For example, a 1-star review, if genuine, can be an immense aid. At first, it’ll feel like a stab in the heart. But once you realize they just pointed out an area to improve, you become thankful.
Jeff Bezos once talked about how he would get excited when a problem would arise at Amazon. He knew that if they fixed it, they would be better than the day before.
If Bezos can smile at a problem, so can you.
The same approach works for problems in your life too.
4. You can’t let mistakes set you back
When you are running a restaurant, there are mistakes all over the place, every single day.
A drink was made wrong
Someone’s food took 4 minutes too long
The server forgot a small step in the service
It always happens.
But life is movement. You have to learn to roll with the mistakes. If you don’t, it’ll affect your performance for the rest of the day.
And when your performance is affected, so is everyone’s.
Take note of the mistake, figure out how to prevent it moving forward, and move on.
5. Systems are necessary
Nobody will care about your business more than you do. If you believe they will, you will only be left disappointed.
You might be able to think of solutions on the fly. And you might want to take the 3-minute break you have to clean a window instead of eating.
But that doesn’t mean everyone else is on the same page.
Systems are necessary because it is the best way to ensure things are getting done the way you want them to get done.
Do you have a best employee? One you wish you had 10 of?
Make systems that help make everyone like that. Or at least get close.
To wrap it up
Every industry you work in will teach you something a little different about business.
Because of the complexity of restaurants, you quickly learn how to manage costs; otherwise, you won’t survive.
The lessons I learned from owning a restaurant will definitely help me in future businesses. Hopefully, they help you too.
Thanks for reading
P.S. Many of these lessons work in your regular life, too