Working ON Your Restaurant instead of IN Your Restaurant

One of the most asked questions I get when I’m speaking at a conference or coaching a client is “How am I supposed to work on my restaurant when I’m always stuck working in it?”. This is a great question and the focus of this newsletter article.?

First, let me start off by saying, in no way is this easy. The daily challenges that pop up in a restaurant every second of every day can be exhausting and overwhelming and lead many of our fellow hospitality professionals to feel defeated, burn out, or ultimately leave the industry.?

Before we jump into the strategy of balancing these two opposing forces let me give you some clarity on what working ON this business is and how it differs from working IN the business.

Working ON the business includes big picture, futuristic vision and planning and working on a strategy and the implementation of making that vision a reality. This is a Macro look at your business. For example as a restaurant coach, I work ON the business by writing this newsletter, recording a podcast, speaking at a conference, or jumping on calls with potential clients.

To the restaurant owner, management, or chef this may include working on attending chamber of commerce events, reaching out to concierges and party planners to grow the business, or planning on how you want to scale your business or finance that growth.

Conversely, working IN the business is working on details in your business that affect the day-to-day of your restaurant. This is a Micro look at your restaurant. For my coaching business this is the work I do for my clients. This includes the clients strategy for reaching their goals, zoom calls with their managers and chefs, and putting together processes to move them forward.

For the restaurant owner, manager, or chef working in the business includes writing schedules or orders, doing a line check, expediting, working the floor, talking to guests, creating a cocktail program. Did you notice that for me, working on the vision for growth with a client is my working IN the business but for the restaurant owner, working on the visioning strategy is working ON the business for them. Because working with my client is how I work IN the business, it’s different for the owner because that work is Macro for them.

However, theory without strategy is just pipe dreams. So, let me share a strategy I learned from my client, Nick Fosberg. Nick showed me something he learned called Time Crunching. Nick sets up a excel sheet with days across the top and hourly increments down the side. Then he breaks down his schedule into 3 areas. They are Working ON the Business, Working IN the Business, and Personal Time. He writes the schedule focus he is doing in each hourly cell for each day. When he is done he color coordinates each of the three categories, ON, IN , Personal. Now he can look at his schedule each day and the colors help him stick to the plan and help him get into the mindset of whether he is working ON or IN the business.

If you want to know more about this concept as well as other strategies to work ON the business, join my co-host Scot Turner, my guest and client Nick Fosberg, and myself for this week’s Restaurant Success Club Linked In Live event Thursday 2pm on my Linked in page.

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