Why Your Restaurant Is Busy but Not Profitable
A busy restaurant can still struggle to make a profit when labor costs don’t align with guest volume, lower-margin dishes dominate sales, and rising prices weaken the value guests perceive.
In Episode 506 of the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast, Roger Beaudoin welcomes Ami Alexander of Barrel Aged Management to discuss restaurant profitability, labor costs, employee retention, menu pricing, and the guest experience.
Drawing on her experience in restaurant and hotel hospitality, Ami shares practical approaches to building a stronger team and protecting margins while maintaining service standards.
In This Episode
Aligning restaurant staffing with your concept, guest volume, and average check
Hiring for attitude and character, then training for the role
Creating development opportunities that give employees reasons to stay
Maintaining accountability without rushing unprepared staff onto the floor
Reviewing menu costs and product mix to understand profitability
Protecting guest value as ingredient and labor costs rise
Improving the arrival experience and supporting service through cross-training
Keeping your restaurant concept relevant
Using technology to give leaders more time for hospitality
How Should Restaurants Manage Labor Costs?
Restaurant labor planning needs to account for the service you promise and the revenue your operation can realistically generate.
Ami explains why operators should consider hourly and salaried wages, kitchen stations, bar staffing, expected guest counts, and average check. A complex menu or highly attentive service model creates staffing requirements that need to make financial sense.
Roger and Ami discuss finding a staffing balance that supports both profitability and the guest experience.
How Can Restaurants Improve Employee Retention?
Ami emphasizes hiring for personality, attitude, and character, then investing in structured onboarding and ongoing development.
She shares examples of beverage education, paths from barback to bartender, and opportunities for aspiring managers to shadow leadership positions. Roger also emphasizes valuing employees who excel in their current roles and prefer to stay in those positions.
For independent restaurants, a supportive team, thoughtful family meals, flexibility, and an appreciative culture can provide meaningful reasons for employees to stay.
How Do Staff Training and Accountability Work Together?
Clear expectations need to be supported by consistent training and leaders who enjoy teaching.
Ami discusses daily lineups, food knowledge tests, shadowing, and a methodical process for preparing employees to serve guests. Putting someone on the floor before they are ready can undermine their confidence, create extra work for colleagues, and weaken service consistency.
When staffing is tight, she encourages operators to consider limiting sections or covers rather than assigning responsibilities an employee has not been trained to handle.
How Can Menu Costing Improve Restaurant Profitability?
Menu costing helps operators understand what each item costs to serve. Product mix shows how frequently guests purchase those items. Reviewing both helps reveal how menu sales contribute to profit.
Ami recommends reviewing product mix at least monthly and comparing item sales with their margins. She challenges blanket pricing formulas, such as multiplying every food or wine cost by three, in favor of more thoughtful pricing decisions.
Roger explains how a restaurant can fill seats yet struggle financially when lower-profit items take sales away from more profitable choices.
The conversation also explores creative menu development, balancing expensive ingredients with less costly dishes, and maintaining the quality your concept promises.
What Makes Restaurant Service Feel Like Hospitality?
Ami emphasizes the first few minutes of the guest experience: a prompt welcome, an attentive host, a clear handoff to the server, and a first interaction that makes guests feel cared for.
Roger shares how cross-training can help employees support one another and respond to guest needs. A trained busser or back waiter, for example, may be able to recommend a beverage and help a guest while the server is occupied.
Both connect knowledgeable, attentive service with the value guests receive from their visit.
How Can Restaurants Stay Relevant Without Losing Their Identity?
Ami recommends understanding your audience and knowing what guests value about your concept.
Some restaurants depend on signature dishes and traditions that regulars love. Others need more frequent changes to maintain interest. She discusses giving leaders opportunities to experience other restaurants, explore ideas, and contribute creatively to the guest experience.
Thoughtful changes to spaces, menus, or programming can give guests new reasons to return.
How Can AI Support Restaurant Hospitality?
Ami describes marketing and social media as areas where she has seen AI used. She also discusses emerging tools for inventory management, menu costing, reservations, and ordering.
Her priority is technology that reduces manual administrative work and gives managers, chefs, and beverage leaders more time to spend with guests and develop creative ideas.
Roger reinforces that technology should enhance hospitality and support human connection.
About Ami Alexander
Ami Alexander of Barrel Aged Management brings experience in restaurant and hotel hospitality. In this episode, she shares her perspective on staffing, employee development, leadership, menu profitability, concept relevance, and hospitality technology.
Listen to Episode 506 of the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast for the complete conversation with Roger Beaudoin and Ami Alexander.
Connect with Ami and Barrel Aged Management
www.linkedin.com/company/barrel-aged-mgmt
https://www.barrelagedmgmt.com
About Restaurant Rockstars
The Restaurant Rockstars Podcast helps restaurant owners and operators build stronger teams, increase profitability, improve hospitality, and run more successful restaurant businesses.
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Smithfield Culinary serves up perfect proteins for every dish, every daypart like Smithfield’s new ready to eat select bacon, new ground chorizo or the broadest portfolio of pork. When you partner with Smithfield, you serve what you love and your guests will love what you serve.
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Restaurant owners are facing a brutal combination right now. Labor costs are through the roof. Great people are harder to find and keep, and even when sales are strong, the profit just isn't there. So how do you build a team that stays, keeps your standards high, and actually makes you more money? Today, I'm speaking with Ami Alexander of Barrel Aged Management, who brings decades of in-the-trenches operating experience in restaurant and hotel hospitality, about the strategies that great operators are using to tackle labor, retention, leadership, menu profitability, and the shrinking margins squeezing restaurants today.
If you own or operate a restaurant or hospitality operation, you're gonna wanna hear this conversation.
Ami, great to have you today. Welcome to The Restaurant Rockstars Podcast. How are you?
I'm doing well. Good to be here, Roger
I'm excited to have you as a guest. You have extensive experience in hospitality, restaurants, hotels, everything, so you have a lot to offer our audience. Let's dive into critical finances. If you were to, say, start an independent restaurant today, Ami, what would be the most important financial sort of KPIs that you would follow, the systems you'd put in place?
What do you find the most important to really move the needle on profit and just know what's going on?
It's no secret that today the hardest sort of expense to manage is labor. It's really difficult to-- depending on where you're opening your restaurant, there's different rates. So I think the most important thing is to understand the rates not only for your hourly employees, but also your salaried employees and what you can expect.
A lot of times, we will build a concept that has different components to a food menu and a beverage menu, and you have to think about how many stations does that mean in the kitchen at all times, and how many bartenders are required behind the bar to do that. There's something we talk about which is your sort of server-to-guest ratio, and that is directly coordinated to the level of service that you wanna give your guests.
So is it highly attentive and multiple steps, or is it a little bit more approachable and casual, which means maybe you have-- that ratio is a little bit lower. I think labor is the biggest expense and really understanding that. A lot of times you'll get restaurateurs or hoteliers, building a concept that they're really passionate about, but not necessarily understanding the economics of how many guests are we actually gonna see a day, and what do we actually think the average check can be in this space, depending on market, location and all of that.
And that has to be considered so that ultimately you know that you can get a labor cost in line with something that will equate to profitability.
I call that the sweet spot, and I think it's something that I used to track every single week. I think it's really vital to track this. But you're-- I'm glad you brought that up because obviously labor, very high expense, of course, but kitchen labor has gone through the roof the last couple of years. It's amazing.
I used to have this rock solid grill person. He could have 30 steaks on the grill at any one time. Everything came out perfect. I probably paid him $15 an hour when I sold my restaurant, 10, 12 years ago. Now, to replace that person, I'd be looking at around 26, 27 an hour, and that's just one person.
So we're talking about exponentially putting people into different positions and knowing what that ideal labor-to-guest sweet spot is, both front of house, back of house. So I think that was excellent. Now, labor, as long as we're on the topic, obviously everyone seems to still be struggling with labor, and it's not just that there's a shortage, it's about-- I think it's their approach.
They're trying to hire versus recruit. What are the best operators doing differently today? Because it's about attracting people and then retaining them, because it costs so much money to, whenever you lose someone and have to retrain and get somebody back in the gig. So what's your best advice for the labor issue in general?
Yeah, I would say first of all, it's a different landscape than it was 10 years ago. Coming from a luxury lifestyle sort of property where you would be opening a restaurant or operating a restaurant, you would look for a server or a manager or bartender with at minimum five to 10 years experience in a similar caliber restaurant.
Those days are over. Now we focus way more on training. We hire personality, we hire the right attitude, the right character, somebody that can be molded and shaped into, the type of server or bartender that you want, or manager, quite frankly. So we're seeing a lot less experience at an entry point into the organization, so there, there has to be way more focus on training and development.
And I think not only at, for, in the beginning just to get someone, able to do the job that you've hired them for, but also when you talk about retention, people want to have a development path, right? They it's human nature to wanna learn and feel like that you're experiencing growth in your career and what you're doing for whether it be seven, eight, 10 hours a day.
So I find that if you have a ongoing training program where, let's say, you can get certified to be a sommelier even though you're a server, or you're a bar back, but you are able to, join in on the spirits training and learn how to make cocktails behind the bar, and there's a plan.
In six months if you follow the plan, you can go from bartend- bar back to bartender.
it.
We've had management programs where if you're a server and you're interested in being a manager, you could have days where you come in and you shadow the different positions, and you can shadow a manager and have this path to supervising.
So I think that it's really important to look at what is the training and development plan, not only when you hire somebody, but then also throughout their stay with your organization.
That is absolutely spot on, and it gives people an incentive knowing that there's an upward path. And I always say it's okay. Let's go back to that grill guy as an example. I had many people that I developed into leaders in my organization, and it all started by recognizing talent and giving them additional responsibility.
But there were people like him who didn't wanna do anything else, and I applauded that. I had a fantastic grill guy, couple other people. It's like they s- gosh, he stayed with me for about 18 or 19 years, and that's all he wanted to do. So that's okay, but I really love the development aspect.
Recognizing talent is really what a leader is doing. They're not just the boss barking orders. They're, recognizing talent, giving people additional responsibility, and then incentivizing that additional responsibility. Let's go back to what you first started about the training because obviously 10, 12, 14 years of experience is hard to find.
You have obviously a discerning clientele in your properties, and you're looking for people. So if you don't have the experience per se, I'm guessing there's mentoring and shadowing going on, best practices. You hire for personality and approach and a desire to serve the public, and you can train for the rest.
Is there a little bit of that thrown in the mix?
Absolutely. Yeah, I th- I think that's it today. And so looking at your leaders that you're bringing into an organization is just as important. Is a leader somebody who enjoys training, who enjoys, g- seeing people grow throughout their career? That is equally important. So you can bring somebody on who's really good at running a floor, and running numbers, and running a P&L, and
But at the end of the day, are they also good at leading a team that may be more junior than they've ever had that needs development? I ... is lineup happening every day? Is it consistent? Is there re- real valuable information being, shared there? I think it's changed not only the landscape in which we hire, but in which we look for leaders, and the most important attributes that those leaders have.
Because at the end of the day, they need to be people-led, and they need to be people who are natural sort of teachers and to, you know, like to see people grow in their roles
Old habits die hard, of course. Imagine I am a restaurant owner or a general manager today, and my biggest challenge is accountability, having people's performance consistent. What would you advise me in terms of leadership? How can I turn the ship around and get people's respect too, get them on the same page, and then, insist upon a certain performance standard, set really clear expectations and have high standards and have my people meet them? That's a challenge for a lot of operators today, if that question makes sense. What-- How would you approach that?
I think if you're running a business and you know that's not your greatest strength, then you need to put that person on your team who can do it, that you trust,
Is why we, this is why we look to, we d- we don't like, like the saying HR as much as we like people culture. We like to think of those departments as the ones that are there to resource your team and resource you as a leader and make sure that your people are taken care of, right?
Th- there's a guest journey and a guest experience when they walk into your business, but there's also the employee journey, and that has to be r- equally if not more thought about and protected. That's why company culture is so important, right? What am I gonna feel when I work here?
So if you're a leader and you don't, and you know that's not your strong suit, which every leader has something that they're not good at, right? Maybe you don't really understand beverage, or you don't really... financials is not your thing. That's fine. Get that person on your team, right? So you gotta hire somebody who is really passionate about training and development, and that was always something that was important to me.
If I'm gonna oversee multiple venues, I know that I wanna be very involved. I naturally am creative. I wanna be in every marketing meeting. I w- but I know that I need somebody there who has the d- training and development plans, that's keeping everybody on track, that's sending the emails to the staff saying, "Next week, here's an opportunity to come in and do this wine training.
Who would like to sign up?" Tracking that. That is really important, and it's also how you hold people accountable, right? So we're talking about all the good things, which is we wanna see growth, we wanna develop our teams, but it's also about holding people accountable. And, just like you hire people that wanna rise to the occasion, you hire people that don't, and so those people need to be properly managed, too.
And so if they're not showing up to the trainings or if they're not passing their food test, they shouldn't be on the floor. So s- managing all of that is a big job, and I would say if you specifically felt like that was not a strong suit, then you need to get that person on your team who can do it for you
I think you're absolutely right. I think there's a lot of bosses out there, managers who set people up for failure because they don't onboard properly and they don't, take people on the journey you're talking about. They just turn them loose and hope for the best, and that is definitely not a strategy.
Oh it's pa- it's painful to, it's painful to see. You'll, you're, "Oh, we're short-staffed, so they took a section today." You're like, it's their second day. It's their third day. Imagine how that person feels. They don't know where the forks are. They don't know how to get, they don't know where anything is.
It's just so uncomfortable. So I think if you find yourself in that position, you need to just take a step back and go, "Is this really, are we really in a place where we should even open all the sections tonight? Or do we take a step back and maybe take less covers and manage this a little bit better?"
Because how you onboard somebody into your organization is extremely important.
You have so much experience with, like I said, high-level hospitality groups and hotels, and they seem to... I would say that they have an advantage over single independent restaurants because they can offer better benefits, and they have a company culture and all those sorts of things. Is there anything that an independent operator, even with s- a single location or maybe two or three locations, can do to get these people, find these people, and retain them and somehow make them wanna stay?
That's gotta be the biggest nut people are struggling with right now.
You know what? It is expensive. It is-- there are benefits working in a hotel when you look at insurance programs and benefits and some of the other things that, you know, that are available to you. I would say that there's two di-- you know, just like you would decide if you wanna work for a large organization or a family office you're drawn to different things based on your personality.
There are a lot of people out there, a lot of great talented people that want to stay in smaller, single-owned restaurants because it feels more like a family. It's-- people are very close. You don't always have a lot of the corporate bureaucratic, "Oh, you can't text me, I'm your manager.
It's not appropriate. You have to call HR if you're gonna call out. They will notify me." There's wa- there's a lot more process, and I think not everybody likes that. Some people wanna walk in and feel like they're family, and they can, you know-- they can behave a little bit more liberally.
And there's, it's give and take. I-- you can find certainly great people that are attracted to more of a corporate infrastructure and then people that I think are really-- work for these sort of family or smaller restaurant groups and really enjoy that too. And if you're somebody who's operating a restaurant and you know I don't have all the bells and whistles, I can't offer the best insurance plans, and I can't offer a 401match, and I can't do all of this, then you really gotta think about what you are doing.
Is it a great family meal every single day where somebody can come in, and they feel like, "I get to start my day with this amazing meal with my team"? Are you surrounding them with really good people and ensuring that, that the team stays happy and engaged and on the same page and aligned? If every time they need a day off, you're like, "No problem.
I got you. You have your day off." So there's other ways to keep people engaged and happy, and I think if-- you just have to be, the sandbox you're playing in, and it's more competitive than ever. So if you can't offer one thing, you gotta be doing other-- more appreciation led events and a appreciative culture.
That leads me to think about recognition and rewards programs. And in my restaurants, we did something every single week, and we made sure that every team member was involved. So every Friday and Saturday we did something because we had 65 people in my biggest restaurant. Not everyone worked every single Friday or Saturday, so you wanted to involve everyone. sure you've come across some great recognition or rewards programs that really work, and it's not employee of the month or you get the special parking spot. It's like there's something more creative that restaurants can do that people really embrace and they feel like, "Oh, I can't wait to see who wins this week, and I really wanna try to win."
It creates this healthy competition. Anything come to mind that you've seen or that you've done in any of your organizations that, recognize people for taking initiative and going above and beyond?
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For sure. I would say that one of the best things that you can do to encourage engagement and that p- I think really resonates with people is to start, volunteer programs and charitable programs, and you let them
back.
yeah, you give back and, you... who wants to be the ambassador of this program?
Who wants to lead the charity that we're doing, two months from now and get everybody to sign up and organize the shuttle and, and I think people really enjoy that. It goes back to that sort of initial thing we were talking about, which do I feel f- do I have fulfillment from work?
And everybody wants to feel fulfilled and like they're achieving kind of their, their life's dreams. And I think every person when they g- when they give back and become charitable, they have a sense of that, that I'm doing what I want to be doing and what I should be doing, and it's rewarding.
And that gets rewarded, right? Oh, as a part of you, a- as part of you leading this initiative on behalf of this group and accomplishing it, we wanna recognize that, and we wanna recognize you. And you always have to go back and give the recognition to the person who took that, that extra step or that leadership initiative.
And I've seen really powerful things happen with programs like that, so where people have gone on to, to work in, in those different sort of humanitarian, businesses full time. You never know kind of what what spark you're lighting but that's certainly something that I've seen a lot of engagement with.
So that's definitely a leadership trait because now we're recognizing that everyone in your place, your hotel, your restaurant, whatever, has a specific talent that might apply to your business. And if you get to n- know your people, and you know that this person is artistic, and they can create these really amazing marketing pieces, or somebody's really good with social media, they can become your social media expert.
It's like everybody's got a special talent, and it enriches their position within your place, and it makes them feel special and needed and productive and wanted. And, whether you incentivize them or not, it's like, wow this combines something I really love to do with my job. So I love that you added that.
That's part of culture also.
Yeah, and I've worked for hotel, great hotels that have done talent shows. And and it's incredible. Sometimes it's the sh- the shyest, guy that works on the line, the prep cook that, barely looks up and to meet you in the eyes when he shows up for work, and all of a sudden he comes out and he's rapping, and he's incredible.
Or he's, break dancing or, a, an incredible artist. I've just seen such awesome things come from this. And to your point, how many times I've sat there and go, "I didn't know you could do this. Why didn't you tell me? We should have you help design the menus. We should have you, you could DJ one night."
So it's fun and you get to see people for more than just, the job that they're signed up to do
I call that empowerment versus delegation. You're not just telling somebody to do something or how to do it, you're literally empowering them to use their imagination, their creativity, their skill sets, and to do something extraordinary within your operation.
Every single person at the end of the day just wants to be seen. Regardless of how they're showing up, they just wanna be seen. And so I think if you can find ways to do that and really see your people and really get to know them you ingratiate them to your corporation in a way that is very powerful and meaningful.
And ultimately gets passed down to the guest in te- in a millionfold
So we're gonna shift gears because labor is a huge issue. The next biggest pain point that restaurant operators are struggling with obviously is shrinking margins, with crazy inflation, and before that it was tariffs and all kinds of shipping delays offshore for certain products. And, restaurant owners have been through the gamut. But it's so hard to continue to offer value for the guest per dollar spent, right? As opposed to, "I have to pay more for this, therefore I gotta pass it on to my guest," and now suddenly it's $35 for a cheeseburger in my independent... You know what I mean. There's a point where the value is lost.
Yeah
do you see happening? How do we combat that?
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It's a great question. I think That for a minute it was like the race- like who could charge the most for a martini. It was like a joke, right? It's like a 20, 25, 30. I signed checks where it's been a $50 martini. It's like, what are we doing here, guys? But, margins are real, and ex- owners want returns.
And I think that there's been a shift. There was this expectation that a great restaurant that was stabilized not in its opening year or the sub year or anything like that, but would grow 7%, maybe 10% on a good year if the economy was in- was strong. And we don't really, we don't really budget for that or plan for that so much anymore.
Unless you have really meaningful programming shifts, where you're focused on events, or you're focused on bigger nights, or spending more on sort of marketing- with your marketing dollars to draw in a crowd. If you're just running the business as is, 7% to 10% is difficult because your costs are going up more than that per year.
You're seeing a shift, I think whereas every restaurant had, like the best cut of everything, that was sort of the goal. You'd go out to eat, and you would expect the best of everything. I think restaurant- restaurants are being, a little bit more savvy with their ingredients and dishes and mixing things up.
And so you may have a couple of things where it's the best cut, the best fish, the best, proteins, but then there's more dishes where there's not protein or they're taking the cuts of something and making a sauce, and that's the sauce for the pasta. And so I think chefs are having to be a little bit more creative, and the same goes with the bar.
Luckily, we're seeing a huge surge in sort of non-alcoholic drinking habits, and so there's a ton of non-alc spirits out there. And surprisingly, the demand is not that they are paying less for the s- for something with non-alcohol. If they're having something that's made with quality and great ingredients and has, either health benefits or adaptogenics or something, like the, the guest is paying the same as they would for a cocktail, and I think that's helping margins a little bit too.
So smart operators are adding that and layering those, those sort of products in. So you know it is difficult. We've all gone to a restaurant that we've loved and known and gone it's not as good as it used to be." And the reason is probably because the ingredients have changed or they're operating with less staff.
And so it's something you have to keep an eye on. But at the end of the day, if you're gonna open a concept and it's-- and quality is part of your concept, then it's your job to maintain it.
You started the conversation by talking about the importance of tracking labor and labor cost, and that's just one part of the prime cost formula. So we also have food and beverage costs, but I found that this industry is so hyper-focused on food costs when it really should be focused on profit. And I've recognized, I've worked with a number of restaurants where they haven't costed out their menus at their peril. They have no idea what it costs to serve a particular appetizer, entrée, or dessert to a guest, but they randomly assign a price to it and again, hope for the best. And once we do this analysis, we find that there's a big profit difference in each category of what profit is delivered if they sell this versus that. And restaurants sometimes are busy and they're filling their seats, but they're wondering, why aren't I making any money?" And it's because lower profit items are taking sales away from what they wish they were selling, what they could be selling that are more profitable per plate served. Do you in your experience, do your chefs all cost out menus?
Are they really dialing this aspect in? Because it's really the only needle mover when you can't control... Unless you've got 100 restaurants and you've got leverage with a supplier, economies of scale, if you get a single place, really can't control the price you pay for goods, you can't control the high labor costs now, but you can control menu profit.
What are you seeing there with all the organizations you work with now or have worked with?
First of all, you're, h- you're completely right. Not everybody does do this, and it is best practice. We talked a little bit about KPIs that you look for, and one of the KPIs is what is your menu costing and how does that match up with your product mix? So at the end of the day, you've gotta every at the very least every month, be running a product mix and going, "Okay, what did-- how many steaks did I sell versus salads versus apps?"
And all of those need to be lined up against your profit margin. Anybody who goes up and just, marks up times three for food or for wine isn't really doing a thoughtful menu pricing analysis, right? We know that there's some dishes that don't sell as much, and so you can be a little bit more conservative on that markup, whereas dishes that, are flying off the shelf and have a really low cost, you wanna be a little bit more aggressive with because it's gonna ultimately offset.
We cannot help what's happening to the price of beef and the price of seafood, but it's really painful to go into a restaurant and see, a 12-ounce steak for over $100. You may have to lower that. You may have to take a hit on that margin, but then you've gotta create some dishes that are much more affordable to make but still command higher prices in the market because people want them.
So y-you looking at your product mix every month is really important. That, that is literally how we get a food cost. But, you may have to do adjustments on prices, and the best, best chefs are always thinking this how do we adjust the price points so that we are in line with what cost we need to be at to ensure profitability?"
Do you travel much in your career? I'm assuming you do.
Yes
Do you dine out in other properties other than the ones that you manage?
Of course
You do. So just a quick question. Service levels, right? Service is so important. It's called hospitality. We all have our own definition of what that means. But you can tell a place where you walk in the door and it's running on eight cylinders, the staff are happy to be there, they're knowledgeable, they make suggestions, they create an experience versus taking the order. I rarely run into that, and that's a training issue, right? We talked about the importance of training labor, and it's front of house as well. What are you seeing out there? Do you see order takers? Do you see well-trained staffs that have both personality and knowledge and suggestive selling skills?
You're right, it's not as common as I think it, it once was the art of really taking care of a table and guiding them through the experiences.
Mhm
I think we have, w- we certainly, we have cut down on the amount of servers per, per shift, per section, than we have ever had before, and we are hiring people with less experience than we've ever hired before.
So that absolutely is something that we're seeing, I think especially in casual restaurants, whereas before a casual restaurant, you still, would be guided and be asked, "Do you have any questions about the menu, and can I make any recommendations for you? And you know what, I noticed that you, maybe you over-ordered.
I think it's a little bit too much. Why don't we take one off, and if you'd like, I can check back in and I can add it back in if you still feel like you need more food." M- like more of this kind of "I'm guiding you through. I'm the expert. I know this restaurant. I know how much you should eat.
I know what you're gonna love." And and I think fine dining you still see it, because that's the expectation. And you talk a little bit about price per value in terms of food, but price per value also very much speaks to the service. You can go out and have a dinner for two for $300 very easily.
It's not hard to do, especially with a bottle of wine and
Nope.
appetizers and a dessert. But and the food can be great, but if the service is bad, it, y- the value's not there. It's just not. So you really have to hit on all of the levels, and I think the, the, the thing that is the most important is that first touch that a server has at the table.
I cannot stand when, you can walk into a restaurant, you can see when they're busy, but if a server sees that you're sat and sees that you're looking for them and doesn't immediately come over to you or makes eye contact but walks away, that immediately just, puts you on edge.
And I think especially if you're the host or you're the one who selected the restaurant or, then you're really on edge because you are now responsible for the experience that everybody is now, has shown up that you've promised a, a, a good night and you've made the recommendation and.
So I think it's really important for restaurants to double down on the f- the first few minutes someone's in the restaurant. The arrival experience is so important. Don't leave somebody standing at a host stand for five minutes. Check them in. May- Whether you have the table ready or not, check them in.
Guide them either to the bar or to the table. Take your time. Engage with the guest. "What are you doing here? Are you celebrating anything special? Have you dined here before?" Introduce the server. Make sure that pass-off to the server is good, that they get the note that says, "This is the guest's name.
This is how many times they've eaten here. Here's the profile that we have because of the reservation system that we have." And then when the server comes to the table, regardless of how busy, it's don't let th- don't let them see you sweat, right? Like you've gotta show up, and you need the full attention, and I think if you do that, then your guest is now at ease.
They know they're taken care of, and it gives you a little bit of fr- a little bit of freedom if it takes you longer to get something to the table after that because at least they know "I'm in good hands. This is a place where they really care about how I feel and my experience."
That is a desti- definition of hospitality unto itself. You alluded earlier to cross-training and involving other members of the staff in something they don't typically do, which is a way of moving them up, giving them the skill sets where in a pinch you can rely on them to jump in, and we certainly benefit from that as well.
So that's a strategy, and some people would consider that a cost when I always considered it to be an investment in the service levels of the restaurant in retention, right? When people feel like they're involved and they're learning new things, and they could jump in, and they're called upon and given that responsibility, and when they shine, they feel great about themselves. So that's choreographed service. It was not uncommon that, my back waits or bussers, call them what you will, knew the wine list and could literally make a recommendation because we did that. And the server's in the kitchen, and she's taking care of getting someone else's food, and now there's the busser clearing tables at her table in that section, recognizes that a lady's glass of wine might be empty, asks her if she enjoyed it.
"Would you like another one? Could I get you something else?" That person's trained to go to the POS, enter it, go to the service bar, bring the cocktail back, whatever it was, while that server... it's backup. It's a backup plan, and that's hospitality, too. So I'm glad you shared that. I think cross-training is vitally important, and it is an investment, and it just... I think it keeps people, and it really-- and the guest can tell. When a person that's clearing their dishes can suddenly make a recommendation and take care of that while the server's not there, the guest is having a better experience for sure.
100%. And if you protect, if you protect the role and it's not easy to be a server, right? You- there's a lot that you have to be able to do. You have to know,
Thousand details
yeah, you have to know all of the details. You have to sh- regardless of what's happening in your life and in your day, you have to show up, you have to be warm, you have to be friendly, you have to have a smile on your face, you have to know all of the items on the menu, you have to know the ingredients, you have to know allergies, right?
You have to be able to
Oh
manage different tables with different expectations. You have to be able to manage different personalities and different difficult guests. So it's not an easy job, and I think when you pluck somebody who's under-experienced or hasn't been trained properly and put them on the floor, not only are you doing them a disservice, but you're doing a disservice to everyone else on your team and saying it's not that it's not that hard," or, "It's not that difficult."
And I think that is equally detrimental, right? You have to protect the ex- the-- what you've expected everybody else to learn and what you expect them to do and say we understand this is not easy, and your team needs to be as strong as you are." So it's really important that when you are taking somebody who might be a back waiter or a food runner, and you're saying, "You have an opportunity to be a server," that you are very consistent in that process in how you treat people and that the way that they shadow or the way that they train up and ultimately earn a space on that server team is very methodical and done in a way so that when they are a part of that team, the team welcomes them and says, you've made it.
You took the test, you did the hours, you shadowed and you deserve it." And that's really important, too. I think it, it really drives overall culture and reinforces that, what I do is not easy. My manager knows it's not easy and doesn't just put anyone on the floor. It has to be somebody who really knows what they're doing so that the level of service is the same, right?
At the end of the day, if you're coming into my restaurant, and you sit in one server section or another server section, I expect you to have a great experience and a consistent experience, whether you're a 10-year server or day one.
Absolutely agree with you. Now, you've worked in so many different concepts. In your current company, Barrel Aged Management, you consult to clients, you manage properties. Let's talk about relevance of a concept. How do you keep a concept relevant so that, some are tourist destinations, sure, but you also wanna cater to local people that live in the area. But it's so many restaurants that have been around for decades literally didn't keep up with an aging population, didn't stay relevant, didn't change with the times, whatever it was, and after 40 or 50 years, they're gone. It's like, is there a key to relevance and brand-building and keeping your guests so engaged that they think this place is the greatest, and you have such intense loyalty? What would you say to that?
It's a really good question, and at the end of the day, some restaurants need to ... are iconic, and they become a fabric of a community or a city, and people go there because they want that cocktail or that dish. And, we've all worked in those restaurants where you change up the menu, and then your people are coming in "Why did you change the menu?
Where's my favorite dish?" And then there's restaurants that sort of d- don't evolve, and you go in, you're like, "This is stale. Nothing's changed. Like, why is there no seasonality? Why is it..." So I think the first thing is know your audience. Know what is your concept. Is it something that is ... are you trying to be a neighborhood 20-year spot, or are you trying to be on the hot list every, on Eater 38 hot list every month for five years?
In which case you better pay attention to what's happening in terms of trends and your city. You asked me a question, if I travel, do I eat outside of my restaurants or my hotel? Of course, I do. And I really expect the leaders of the company to be doing that also. Having an R&D budget where the food and beverage director and the chef and the manager goes out, and they're trying, the new restaurants that have opened that are garnering attention and awards is so important because it
You want to experience it and say, "What are they doing well that we can learn from, or that we can be inspired from, or that we can bring back and do ourselves?" The places that truly stand the test of time in terms of trend and appealing to a younger, demographic that has maybe newer options to select from are constantly evolving their space.
And I'll give you an example of that. I toured a membership club that has been open for many years in a northeastern city that obviously values consistency and loves, loves things dearly for a long time. And, there was an executive chef of the property walking me around, and he opens a door.
And he goes, "This used to be the coat closet." And he opens it, and it's a custom candy machine, and there's all these different candies. And he's like now it's ... now our members can come here and just, It's like a candy bar." And that's so cool, and it- these are the t- that's the way that you have to approach this
call. I'd
Yeah.
a hook.
And it's like you could've just left it a coat closet, i'm sure there was someone in the room like do we really need to spend the money on converting a usable space to something that's like fun and..." And they said, and the great thing is they all said, "Yes, let's do it." And it beca- to me, it was like the thing I remember the most out of this like five story, you know, gorgeous membership club that had all the bells and whistles.
But it's that the people that really show up to work and are constantly inspired and going like, "How can we... You know what? That coffee shop could really be like a cool listening lounge at night. Like maybe we should activate it two nights of the week at night," and are thinking about how to give more and create more and th- those are the places that really stand the test of time.
So at the end of the day, you, and you as an owner needs to create the opportunity for that. It is difficult to hold on to creative, passionate people if you don't have a budget to play around a little bit and to be inspired and to go do R&D trips and to bring those ideas back. Like not every idea's gonna land, but I think it's really important for senior leaders to be able to contribute to guest experience in a big way
You're talking about don't fix what isn't broken, but reinvent something that might need a little makeover or something that's tired or a new opportunity, and that takes some creativity. that absolutely is a great idea. That speaks to a friend of mine used to own a whole series of ski resorts across the country, and he had something called the amusement park theory, and that meant that every year you need to bring in a new ride to keep people coming back for more.
And I think that's relevant to restaurants also. They appreciate what they appreciate. Some have become iconic, but you can always put a new spin on something that catches their imagination, and that also can become a hook. That's terrific, Aim. Thanks for sharing. Let me ask you a last question. What are you seeing in terms of technology?
What is vital? What is... how are your properties using AI to best effect? 'Cause that's changing minute to minute, right? There's always a new hospitality tech or a new AI tool or whatever. How are you seeing all of that combine to, to give an advantage?
I think it's still, I think the f- when we talk about marketing and promotions that's probably where AI is being used the most to, help create flyers and social media management and posting management. That's where the, I think, the most impact the AI has had to the hospitality and restaurant industry so far.
I've personally sat in demos for maybe a dozen other AI tools that have either just come to market or are about to come to market that seemingly replace reservation systems or ordering systems or, really help with the menu costing process that we just talked about and how to manage that, because right now there's a lot of manual in- input, right?
Between monthly inventory management, cost management, looking at your pricing between all of the, you know, hundreds and hundreds of ingredients that y- you buy for a restaurant. There are some really great tools that are coming that are gonna make all of that a lot easier. I think ultimately when we started this talking about labor shortage, and it feels fitting that we're gonna end talking about AI because at the end of the day, this is a hospitality, industry, and I think people really do value and will continue to value human connections.
I don't think that people- ... wanna go to a fine dining restaurant, for instance, and be s- and have it automated. So- ... I think that people are not going anywhere. However it's become really difficult to create sort of those magical moments and to reinvest into a restaurant every year and to have the sort of creative wheels spinning like we talked about because, there's a, just a tighter squeeze on margins, and so that's the first to go, right?
I think that there will be more investment into AI that frees up time for management and frees up time for, beverage leaders and sommeliers and chefs who are spending a lot of time on these programs manually inputting inventory- ... manually figuring out costing. I think that gets us on the floor more.
I think that gets us in front of people more, more creative. Yeah. So m- my goal, I think that the AI platforms that are gonna work and that restaurants are ultimately gonna sell are gonna be ones that give you back time so that you can focus on hospitality and that's where I think that's what I think is coming.
You can talk a lot about like this AI program can cut all of your food for you. I don't think that we're gonna be going for that so much as how do we get managers out of the office in front of the guests? How do we keep us... how do we stay engaged?
Fantastic. I'm hearing, or we're hearing several things. We're hearing that it's about efficiency that allows you to spend more time treating the guest, and there's the hospitality piece, and not ever letting hospitality be replaced by tech. It should only enhance hospitality, never detract from it.
So I think that's excellent advice. Fantastic. Great, Ami. You've been a great guest. Thank you so much for being on the show
Thank you for having me. This was fun
Absolutely. That was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. Thank you so much to our audience for tuning in. Thank you to our sponsors this week. Can't wait to see you in the next episode.
Stay well, stay tuned, and I will see you then.
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