Today’s Topic: Restaurateur Realities

Todays To do list: Try to create an amazing training program, friendly and uplifting work environment, relevant benefits packages, and pay “fair” wages in an industry with margins that don’t allow for this type of change. This is what’s on my plate today. Every day this level of task is on my plate. As a small “mom and pop” business it is literally just me, my husband, my mother in law and our amazing team (about 20ppl). Most of our team are cooks, dishwashers, servers and bartenders. About 1/3rd of them are still in high school. Yes, high school. Many of them have skills that we encourage by asking for help to make these above things happen. We value the strengths of our team and encourage their personal growth.

Running a restaurant is by far the most challenging thing I have done to date. That was true before the pandemic started. The pandemic threw a whole new level of challenge at us. It not only closed us down for a while it has changed our industry in such dramatic ways. I often feel like we entered into the twilight zone. Thankfully my husband and I make a great team and work well together and our strengths compliment each other. Other wise we would have been done months ago. During the peak of the pandemic we were literally put us on our asses. (mostly binging Netflix while we waited). We couldn’t even hold still and relax much, that’s not in our nature. If you also own your own business you know what I mean. We were constantly thinking of ways to adapt and get our crew back to work safely. Finally, we are back (its been over a year now) and getting better every day. However, we still face challenges large enough that we could still possibly not make it. We are far from “back to normal”.

Customers say all the time, “We are so happy you made it!” I politely thank them and say we are too. But the reality of what we are still up against has my brain saying “We haven’t made it yet.”

Four things have contributed more to my stress on a day to day basis then anything else. Here I will talk about 2. A decreasing work force, with higher expectations.

Other stressors are

Raising cost of produce

Raising expectations of guest:

I would say I will write about these at a later date, but lets be honest. I probably won’t. It will be a miracle if I finish this post. And a feat of courage if I actually post it.

Note: I am not a statistician, an expert of any kind, I’m not a politician nor do I align myself fully on either side of the 2 main parties. I don’t know much about economics or psychology, nor do I claim to know anything as 100% fact in this world. This is my experience, my first hand knowledge of what I am personally dealing with. With that said, this is what we (my husband and I) are up against currently.

Raising expectations of the work force:

The pandemic shined a light on the service industry that illuminated aspects of it that I personally hadn’t even thought of. Wages, how they are paid and long hours to name a few. When I was growing up I had my first few jobs in restaurants and never once asked about pay and why it was that some people made small wages and tips and others made higher wages. I never once questioned 12 hr days or 7 day work weeks. Stuff needed done and someone needed to do it and I was one of the people that signed up to do it. So it was my job to get it done. It was just that simple. If I didn’t want to do those things for that pay wage I could just leave, find something else.

The pandemic did a few things that are good for people but not so good for industry. By industry I mean anyone trying to run any business. The day we were shut down, I was mad, confused, scared about the future all the initial emotions that you would expect someone to have. But then, the EXHALE.

I felt like the world took a deep breath, stopped for a moment and relaxed. They didn’t have to hustle, they don’t have to run all over. Some did, some had it worse and had to work more and longer and harder I don’t want to over look that. But, for those who got shut down and had some time at home and steady help coming in from unemployment (I’m not going to get political with this, I’m leaving that outta here) They had some time to rethink what they do and why. They had time to reset priorities and had lots more time with family maybe. Why do I grind? Why do I have 2 jobs (maybe a full time job and part time side hustle at a restaurant).

Its great that some people got to refocus on what matters most to them. Its great that they understand there are more important things then work and perhaps the one job is good enough or they need something totally different and now they have a chance to reinvent them selves, start fresh and see what happens. They literally had nothing to loss or where motivated because they didn’t qualify for help and had to figure out how to make money. Find a side hustle or two that didn’t involve working in an industry that was temporarily dramatically downsized. Use to be you needed a few extra buck a week you could walk into a restaurant and do dishes or learn to serve part time. Well, not any more. (during the pandemic, you can do it know! We would love to have you join the team) But then.

Meanwhile all over every town restaurant owners were and still are racking their brains trying to get people back to work that may not even actually come back. Media went nuts trying to raise minimum wage (not a bad thing entirely). Again not gonna touch that topic with a 10 foot pole. The media started talking about long hours and unfair pay practices for tipped employees. Making me feel like a horrible human being for just running my business like every other restaurant. I didn’t invent tipped employee wages, I just follow the standard. I even offered my tipped employees $15 with no tips and they refused and said they didn’t want a pay cut!

Most of our employees found other work while we where closed. Some found work from home jobs others Amazon. The one common factor was they weren’t in the industry anymore and had no desire to return. When I asked them why they simply said the money and benefits are better, the schedules have every weekend off and they don’t have to deal with demanding customers or drunk people. That’s pretty hard to argue with. Keep in mind we pay more than your average restaurant, try to keep set schedules to ensure better work life balance, I have never not approved a request off even if I end up working for the person myself. We go out of our way to be a better employer then most in the industry. We encourage personal growth, give time off for school and training, offer certifications, ect…

So, when you still cant find people how do you appeal to them? We are still baffled. We are investing in training and building out apps to make our training better and more consistent. We are offering PTO benefits (we don’t even know if we can afford them). We are adding services to make working easier like order and pay systems so less staff are needed and the ones that are here capitalize on their time. We pay a fair wage and offer yearly bonuses. Holidays off paid (full or part time doesn’t matter) Some corporations don’t even do that. Yet, there are still less and less people applying.

Business has been spiritic and more unpredictable than usual. One day we have 4 people in the restaurant all day. Others we have a 20 minute wait and a full dinning room. Somedays we don’t have enough people in the kitchen to work. Other days the front of house is short handed. This makes it stressful for those who are here. Maybe they work full time all week and work shifts here on the weekends, a few super stressful ones and they are gone. We are a side hustle. Now we have to rehire if we can find someone, start over with training, spend more money on onboarding, training, regular wages, and then if they leave we start all over. No return on investment, back at square one. Despite efforts to have the best training and good wages. And then a guest posts a 1 star review and says your “pricey” and the service is slow. Meanwhile behind the sense you are killing yourself with 60 hour work weeks putting your heart and soul into every home-make sauce you produce just to be judged by some idiot with the mentality of a person that that gives McDonalds a 5 star review. I mean who the hell reviews McDonalds anyway?! End rant about unrealistic customers, most are amazing and we live to give them a great experience.

The problem we run into most is availability, people only want to work when they want to work. Like Uber Eats, Door Dash, Amazon Flex to name a few. I can’t offer a list of shifts to pick from to masses of restaurant workers, I can’t offer surge rates and last minute cancellation options for kitchen crew or servers. Bottom line, we face a lot of challenges. I hardly feel equip to run under normal circumstances but here we are fighting like hell to “make it”.

Cue the entitled public, we are open for business, just barely.

#Entrepreneur #Pandemic #RestaurantOwners #Womaninbusiness