Restaurant Strategies: Three Deadly Leadership Sins

In business, nothing guarantees success better than success itself.

It’s no secret that restaurant businesses are closing up shop one after another. No amount of “How to” restaurant marketing research is going to change that. Fact is there’s any number of reasons why a restaurant fails to get off the ground, and one of those reasons is lack of good leadership.

Forget about trying to bring in more customers if you can’t even convince your own employees. As a restaurant operator, it’s your job to make sure your chefs, waiters, service crew and everyone else is in top condition.

And believe when I say you aren’t doing that when you…

1. Lack of energy and enthusiasm
Lack of enthusiasm is contagious. In college, I only had to look at my professor who obviously wasn’t very satisfied with his job to get distracted myself. Same goes with being a restaurant operator. If you aren’t excited about running the business, don’t expect the rest of your team to stray too far from your tracks.

Find a way to trigger a positive emotion. Stick a picture of your kids next to your notes. Listen to the Rocky theme song. Anything to get you pumped up and ready to serve.

2. Lack of clear vision and direction
Here’s a fact. Did you know that 90%, just about, of the human brain’s sensory input is a result of visual stimuli?

A good restaurant operator and leader paints a fine picture of his restaurant strategies and goals and shares it with the rest of the team. If you can do that, provide visual stimuli, your staff will have a clearer vision of what is it you want to achieve in the long run.

If they see it, they’ll follow.

3. Don’t collaborate
A big part of motivating the team is getting them to take on more responsibilities.

I remember saying in another article that making your customers feel like they are a part of your operation is an effective way to lure them in and turn them into loyal patrons. The same applies to your staff. If you don’t collaborate, you’re missing out on a lot of fresh new ideas and restaurant strategies. At the same time you’re driving your staff to be indifferent to your business.

To run a successful restaurant business is to be a good leader. And a good leader is everything that isn’t one or more of the qualities I mentioned above.

Good restaurant strategies stems from good leadership. But it works the other way around, too. Let your being a good leader be your winning restaurant strategy.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Offline Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.