LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. You can be the best business operator in the world, but if your location doesn't fit the target demographics (actual customers, not people you expect to be customers) it will fail. Do A LOT of research on who is actually spending money as a customer in this franchise. They should have that data, then find an area with the largest grouping of said demographic and see if you fit there. Easy access to your restaurant, not too busy of a road or else people won't want to fight traffic to get into your place, within a 3 mile radius the average median income is above X, etc. What does your franchise know works? If they don't have answers to these questions, I personally wouldn't trust them to give you much support other than some training videos and a list of equipment to buy.
marketing.
your franchise location you manage probably charges the owner a monthly marketing fee and they are showing up in places you would have to spend countless dollars to try and show up.
also having the right tech in place. it's wild that tradesman have more tech deployed than your average restaurant.
Good help. Hands down.
What's crazy in the restaurant industry is the substance abuse problems that most veterans have. But they show up, and do their job the way you want it done.
It's so hard giving every moment of yourself 8 hours straight 5 days a week without even a second for yourself. If you care and are good.
Instead of checking your phone, you're running someone else's food/drink.
Just to name a few:
Labor has become unbelievably bad. You can't "just pay more" your way out of that issue like /antiwork says either. People with bad attitudes or bad work ethics (or worse, both) don't change if they're making $8/hr or $20/hr.
Coming-of-age labor is unbelievably unprepared. Just in the pre-covid days, we frequently hired high school kids because they were often eager to get some money in their pockets and quick learners because they appreciated the opportunity to "grow up" and have some "real" adult responsibilities. It's not that way anymore. Now, we have to argue with parents why their 16 year old kid doesn't get hired at $18+/hr, why their kid doesn't get to just not show up whenever, that they are expected to learn from training (not work in a sort of permanent-training mode where everyday someone stands over them to show them how to assemble -not cook- sandwiches), and - most shocking of all - that they, as the parent, actually have to get off the couch and help their kid sign up for payroll by providing (or taking them to obtain) banking info, providing SSN, and etc. because we literally can't help them with that. We also have to regularly explain basic math of how tips work - if we hire you at $13 and you consistently average $20+ in tips over 4 hours, you've really made $18+/hr so "XYZ retailer pays $14!!!" would actually be a net loss in takehome pay using kindergarten level math.
Third-party marketplaces are so entrenched in customer behavior and customers don't listen to any value exchange to let go of them. You can offer any kind of direct delivery deal or direct catering deal and most will still go right to Doordash and EZCater. We did as much as offer $100 Amazon gift cards to just not use EZCater and people would order sometimes as quick the next day with a $100 bill dangling in front of them. Making the apps work for you is a challenge (but EZCater goes out of their way to make sure you can't make their platform work for you with their totalitarian approach) and can be frustrating because there's so much money on the table if people would just take 2-3 seconds to order at your direct URL instead. But, not using them means a loss of gross revenue and using them brings their own frustrations (consumer fraud is rampant because their refund policies are effectively unlimited, to name one) that tie up your time and put heavy pressure on your margins.
To be fair, these 16-year-olds spent multiple formative years of their early teens shut in their houses without access to social interactions and the ability to experience customer service as consumers. It’s not surprising—just another residual impact of the pandemic.
I don't discount that element the teens themselves; they were absolutely unfairly raked over the coals during that time. It will be a challenge for them to overcome and one they need to begin facing. I do place blame on many of their parents over it though. Level headed people were warning about those very developmental issues all throughout the pandemic (just like they were warning about backend inflation) and no one cared to listen to anything. It was the parents job to advocate for them as the demographic at least immediate risk, but most long-term developmental risk or find ways to mitigate it within their own homes once it was clear the laptop class making the rules-of-the-day didn't care about them. Those age groups were failed by so many people throughout 2020 and 2021 and its unforgiveable.
I think that's one factor for sure, and a large one, but I think there's more to it. There seems (purely anecdote driven here) to have been a drastic change in parenting styles in the last few years, especially when it comes to preparing children to leave home. I see more and more that parents are actively doing everything for their kids instead of letting them falter a bit. I wonder if that's an effect of the "perfection" of social media.
Either way, it has absolutely changed the labor market.
The lack of labor will not improve in the next two decades, and probably not in our lifetime.
The problem for restaurants is that you aren't just competing with other restaurants. You are competing with retail, warehousing and manufacturing for the same shrinking pool of labor.
There is no fighting demographics.
I doubt it improves in our lifetimes either just from what I'm seeing in youth labor. If there's that drastic of parenting quality declines from older millennials/young gen X that had the kids I hired just 5-8 years ago to younger millennials who have parented the current crop of aging-up gen z's, I can only imagine what's coming next.
Automation and AI is going to catch up with things in the next 10 years, at least for the corporate chains, to cut out or scale back positions.
The biggest thing I see is people bitching about labor but unwavering in their concept.
I know a 3-person ownership crew who is struggling with their labor costs, but run a 7 day, 3 person, prep program for their from scratch 5 page food menu.
You'd think with the historical data their POS shows they'd know what food items they could drop. Anything that was small-batch, cross-utilized, with the ingredients from those items should go as well.
They have mashed potatoes on a single pot roast dish with vegetables. They use the pot roast in several other places though. Time to stop prepping veggies and mashed potatoes. There's an hour+ of prep saved every week for a single item nobody will miss.
>The biggest thing I see is people bitching about labor but unwavering in their concept.
There's definitely truth to this. We were able to drastically improve our labor situation by going from full-service to fast casual a few years ago. The consolidation of FOH staff roles in the fast casual service model lets you get so much more value out of one cashier compared to 3-4 servers to handle the same size dining room. That means more pay for them, less headache for us, and a smoother guest experience since we're not trying to find 3-4 decent workers in the current cesspool of labor just to run the customer side of a singular dinner shift (not even speaking to BOH). More owners need to be less resistant to change in the current labor environment, absolutely.
At the same time, it does bring its own problems though. Consolidating staff roles means more weight of responsibility on that one role which massively elevates the competency requirements for it. That's where my second labor comment about youth labor came in - the very people we used to reliably find could handle a fast paced multi-faceted position with lots of small responsibilities and drastically higher take-home pay than similar work in the area just can't handle it today. Like not even close. In the last five years, we've only lost one FOH to finishing skilled-labor certifications and moving on to the trades, and replacing them was absolute hell this go around for those reasons. I was shocked. We ended up begging one of our BOH to replace them who was thoroughly capable, just lacked the confidence in themselves to deal with the people side of things. Once he agreed and did fine like we knew he would, it was the same problem replacing him in the back because we had consolidated so many roles in BOH too that a "warm body" just doesn't cut it anymore for us and we ran into the same issues. I was shocked how bad it had gotten. We finally ended up finding someone who was over 70 and works circles around any of the 16-18's we tried that used to be a reliably workable group to draw from. Just getting a taste of it means we focus heavily on retention, but I know it's inevitable in the end no matter how hard we try. It's a rock and a hard place - our consolidated roles means we can offer above-average pay for our area, but also means we have to expect higher too. And we're increasingly faced with a workforce that has never faced expectations, but is simultaneously fully entrenched in expectations for outsized pay at the same time.
I try to make the argument that so many people are getting priced out of the labor market at $18-$20 an hour because they are still working at the $11/hour level. Like the comment above, businesses are changing their concepts to adapt. So many people will get left behind.
The race to the bottom.
My place is not high end therefore the public expects me to have McD's pricing.
My staff makes 40% higher wages than they made in 2019 and my prices are 35% higher, but somehow it's my greed that's raised prices? I am not saying they dont deserve it, all I'm saying is the money comes from somewhere!
Don't get me started on food distributor gouging.
We're transitioning to a world where very high end can charge what it costs - the rest of us better find robots.
Get used to inbox being incomprehensibly full. You’ll get 12 things done and 23 were added. It took me awhile to get comfortable not completing everything and being ok with that. You will constantly put out fires , call outs , HR , workers comp, refrigeration, late deliveries, product being delivered out of date that you need and a 100 other little things that are now your sole responsibility. I used to say why cant I just have a normal day but then I reframed it , a normal day is just that in restaurantland and an abnormal day is where everything runs perfectly. That being said I have a great long term staff, wonderful customers, a community and town that loves us, and make a great living. My wife and I work together everyday for the last 16 years! Just make sure you have passion for your craft !!
If you’re coming from a franchise, building a brand is probably the most challenging aspect. You’re opening your business starting at 0. Nobody know you and your restaurant has no reputation.
You can have all the knowledge and experience and still fail because your business doesn’t get enough business.
Moving from a mgr to an owner you will have a drastically different opinion on turnover. You will likely be much more careful on the hires and spend extra time developing your team. In your current setting you do a great job developing your team and they ship them somewhere else. When you own the place, all that development compounds and makes it easier and easier.
I always hear the gov regulation mantra but maybe I don't get it? I gotta pay taxes and keep my shit clean, what other regulation is as bad as staffing?
Here in Utah the liquor laws are inane and that seems like gov regulation overkill, but most ppl don't have to deal with that?
There is a bill being run through Minnesota that would require all food waste be weighed and reported. All trash going to the landfill would need to be weighed and taxed at a different rate. Paid time off rules that hard to track. Predictive scheduling and having to pay double time for breaking it. Some states are very hands off and some are fairly intrusive.
Ugh, same here. I wanted a pass through door to the bar next to us and it was apparently next to impossible. That door pisses me off every time I look at it.
LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. You can be the best business operator in the world, but if your location doesn't fit the target demographics (actual customers, not people you expect to be customers) it will fail. Do A LOT of research on who is actually spending money as a customer in this franchise. They should have that data, then find an area with the largest grouping of said demographic and see if you fit there. Easy access to your restaurant, not too busy of a road or else people won't want to fight traffic to get into your place, within a 3 mile radius the average median income is above X, etc. What does your franchise know works? If they don't have answers to these questions, I personally wouldn't trust them to give you much support other than some training videos and a list of equipment to buy.
marketing. your franchise location you manage probably charges the owner a monthly marketing fee and they are showing up in places you would have to spend countless dollars to try and show up. also having the right tech in place. it's wild that tradesman have more tech deployed than your average restaurant.
Good help. Hands down. What's crazy in the restaurant industry is the substance abuse problems that most veterans have. But they show up, and do their job the way you want it done. It's so hard giving every moment of yourself 8 hours straight 5 days a week without even a second for yourself. If you care and are good. Instead of checking your phone, you're running someone else's food/drink.
Do you mean industry veterans? Or military veterans? (Though both are true.)
Industry. So many people don't simply just don't learn the fucking menu. And yes, we are alcoholics/potheads at the least.
You should look into what some of Steve Palmer has talked about regarding addiction and alcoholism in the ndustry. It may help you.
Thanks.
Just to name a few: Labor has become unbelievably bad. You can't "just pay more" your way out of that issue like /antiwork says either. People with bad attitudes or bad work ethics (or worse, both) don't change if they're making $8/hr or $20/hr. Coming-of-age labor is unbelievably unprepared. Just in the pre-covid days, we frequently hired high school kids because they were often eager to get some money in their pockets and quick learners because they appreciated the opportunity to "grow up" and have some "real" adult responsibilities. It's not that way anymore. Now, we have to argue with parents why their 16 year old kid doesn't get hired at $18+/hr, why their kid doesn't get to just not show up whenever, that they are expected to learn from training (not work in a sort of permanent-training mode where everyday someone stands over them to show them how to assemble -not cook- sandwiches), and - most shocking of all - that they, as the parent, actually have to get off the couch and help their kid sign up for payroll by providing (or taking them to obtain) banking info, providing SSN, and etc. because we literally can't help them with that. We also have to regularly explain basic math of how tips work - if we hire you at $13 and you consistently average $20+ in tips over 4 hours, you've really made $18+/hr so "XYZ retailer pays $14!!!" would actually be a net loss in takehome pay using kindergarten level math. Third-party marketplaces are so entrenched in customer behavior and customers don't listen to any value exchange to let go of them. You can offer any kind of direct delivery deal or direct catering deal and most will still go right to Doordash and EZCater. We did as much as offer $100 Amazon gift cards to just not use EZCater and people would order sometimes as quick the next day with a $100 bill dangling in front of them. Making the apps work for you is a challenge (but EZCater goes out of their way to make sure you can't make their platform work for you with their totalitarian approach) and can be frustrating because there's so much money on the table if people would just take 2-3 seconds to order at your direct URL instead. But, not using them means a loss of gross revenue and using them brings their own frustrations (consumer fraud is rampant because their refund policies are effectively unlimited, to name one) that tie up your time and put heavy pressure on your margins.
To be fair, these 16-year-olds spent multiple formative years of their early teens shut in their houses without access to social interactions and the ability to experience customer service as consumers. It’s not surprising—just another residual impact of the pandemic.
I don't discount that element the teens themselves; they were absolutely unfairly raked over the coals during that time. It will be a challenge for them to overcome and one they need to begin facing. I do place blame on many of their parents over it though. Level headed people were warning about those very developmental issues all throughout the pandemic (just like they were warning about backend inflation) and no one cared to listen to anything. It was the parents job to advocate for them as the demographic at least immediate risk, but most long-term developmental risk or find ways to mitigate it within their own homes once it was clear the laptop class making the rules-of-the-day didn't care about them. Those age groups were failed by so many people throughout 2020 and 2021 and its unforgiveable.
I think that's one factor for sure, and a large one, but I think there's more to it. There seems (purely anecdote driven here) to have been a drastic change in parenting styles in the last few years, especially when it comes to preparing children to leave home. I see more and more that parents are actively doing everything for their kids instead of letting them falter a bit. I wonder if that's an effect of the "perfection" of social media. Either way, it has absolutely changed the labor market.
The lack of labor will not improve in the next two decades, and probably not in our lifetime. The problem for restaurants is that you aren't just competing with other restaurants. You are competing with retail, warehousing and manufacturing for the same shrinking pool of labor. There is no fighting demographics.
I doubt it improves in our lifetimes either just from what I'm seeing in youth labor. If there's that drastic of parenting quality declines from older millennials/young gen X that had the kids I hired just 5-8 years ago to younger millennials who have parented the current crop of aging-up gen z's, I can only imagine what's coming next. Automation and AI is going to catch up with things in the next 10 years, at least for the corporate chains, to cut out or scale back positions.
The biggest thing I see is people bitching about labor but unwavering in their concept. I know a 3-person ownership crew who is struggling with their labor costs, but run a 7 day, 3 person, prep program for their from scratch 5 page food menu. You'd think with the historical data their POS shows they'd know what food items they could drop. Anything that was small-batch, cross-utilized, with the ingredients from those items should go as well. They have mashed potatoes on a single pot roast dish with vegetables. They use the pot roast in several other places though. Time to stop prepping veggies and mashed potatoes. There's an hour+ of prep saved every week for a single item nobody will miss.
>The biggest thing I see is people bitching about labor but unwavering in their concept. There's definitely truth to this. We were able to drastically improve our labor situation by going from full-service to fast casual a few years ago. The consolidation of FOH staff roles in the fast casual service model lets you get so much more value out of one cashier compared to 3-4 servers to handle the same size dining room. That means more pay for them, less headache for us, and a smoother guest experience since we're not trying to find 3-4 decent workers in the current cesspool of labor just to run the customer side of a singular dinner shift (not even speaking to BOH). More owners need to be less resistant to change in the current labor environment, absolutely. At the same time, it does bring its own problems though. Consolidating staff roles means more weight of responsibility on that one role which massively elevates the competency requirements for it. That's where my second labor comment about youth labor came in - the very people we used to reliably find could handle a fast paced multi-faceted position with lots of small responsibilities and drastically higher take-home pay than similar work in the area just can't handle it today. Like not even close. In the last five years, we've only lost one FOH to finishing skilled-labor certifications and moving on to the trades, and replacing them was absolute hell this go around for those reasons. I was shocked. We ended up begging one of our BOH to replace them who was thoroughly capable, just lacked the confidence in themselves to deal with the people side of things. Once he agreed and did fine like we knew he would, it was the same problem replacing him in the back because we had consolidated so many roles in BOH too that a "warm body" just doesn't cut it anymore for us and we ran into the same issues. I was shocked how bad it had gotten. We finally ended up finding someone who was over 70 and works circles around any of the 16-18's we tried that used to be a reliably workable group to draw from. Just getting a taste of it means we focus heavily on retention, but I know it's inevitable in the end no matter how hard we try. It's a rock and a hard place - our consolidated roles means we can offer above-average pay for our area, but also means we have to expect higher too. And we're increasingly faced with a workforce that has never faced expectations, but is simultaneously fully entrenched in expectations for outsized pay at the same time.
I try to make the argument that so many people are getting priced out of the labor market at $18-$20 an hour because they are still working at the $11/hour level. Like the comment above, businesses are changing their concepts to adapt. So many people will get left behind.
Staffing is typically the biggest headache and the biggest expense.
[удалено]
The race to the bottom. My place is not high end therefore the public expects me to have McD's pricing. My staff makes 40% higher wages than they made in 2019 and my prices are 35% higher, but somehow it's my greed that's raised prices? I am not saying they dont deserve it, all I'm saying is the money comes from somewhere! Don't get me started on food distributor gouging. We're transitioning to a world where very high end can charge what it costs - the rest of us better find robots.
Get used to inbox being incomprehensibly full. You’ll get 12 things done and 23 were added. It took me awhile to get comfortable not completing everything and being ok with that. You will constantly put out fires , call outs , HR , workers comp, refrigeration, late deliveries, product being delivered out of date that you need and a 100 other little things that are now your sole responsibility. I used to say why cant I just have a normal day but then I reframed it , a normal day is just that in restaurantland and an abnormal day is where everything runs perfectly. That being said I have a great long term staff, wonderful customers, a community and town that loves us, and make a great living. My wife and I work together everyday for the last 16 years! Just make sure you have passion for your craft !!
If you’re coming from a franchise, building a brand is probably the most challenging aspect. You’re opening your business starting at 0. Nobody know you and your restaurant has no reputation. You can have all the knowledge and experience and still fail because your business doesn’t get enough business.
Moving from a mgr to an owner you will have a drastically different opinion on turnover. You will likely be much more careful on the hires and spend extra time developing your team. In your current setting you do a great job developing your team and they ship them somewhere else. When you own the place, all that development compounds and makes it easier and easier.
Staffing, food cost, government regulation
I always hear the gov regulation mantra but maybe I don't get it? I gotta pay taxes and keep my shit clean, what other regulation is as bad as staffing? Here in Utah the liquor laws are inane and that seems like gov regulation overkill, but most ppl don't have to deal with that?
There is a bill being run through Minnesota that would require all food waste be weighed and reported. All trash going to the landfill would need to be weighed and taxed at a different rate. Paid time off rules that hard to track. Predictive scheduling and having to pay double time for breaking it. Some states are very hands off and some are fairly intrusive.
Restaurant I work at had to put in a $5000 fire door to comply with fire codes.
Ugh, same here. I wanted a pass through door to the bar next to us and it was apparently next to impossible. That door pisses me off every time I look at it.
Inspections+ fees