Hard to believe we’re already getting into baseball and softball season!
We were at softball tryouts last week for my 6-year-old (admittedly ridiculous), and I saw a buddy who owns a number of local restaurants.
We were catching up, discussing upcoming plans, new spots they are opening, etc. And the convo turned to sales, marketing and customer service. Surprise, surprise.
I love learning from business owners in other industries. And I find the restaurant game particularly fascinating because it’s so dang hard to be successful over the long-term.
So I’m sharing a few nuggets of their success today. And also how you can apply these concepts to your practice.
1. Flip tables + Quality Service = Profit
We were talking about making money as a restaurant. And obviously there are a lot of pieces to that, but one of the big ones is how many times you can flip a table in a night. (i.e. how many different parties can you serve at one table?). The more groups of people you get through your restaurant, the more product you can sell and the more money you make.
Apparently a lot of restaurants can’t get this right, and only flip a table 1-2x during the night. I asked him why, and he said it’s a mix of not having proper processes in place, and not having efficiencies build into the menu.
He said for example, every item on their menu – from the time the order comes to the time it hits the table – is a max of 12 minutes. (Obviously a key to flipping tables is being timely.)
In addition to making more $$, this brings higher customer satisfaction and the ability to serve more people.
How do you apply it? Find your bottlenecks and fix them. Why do you have 30-60 minute wait times? Why are consults taking 1.5 – 2 hours? Solve it, get more people through, raise patient satisfaction and make more money.
2. Invest in the best.
Along the lines of creating efficiencies so you can flip tables quickly, the topic of hardware came up.
We were talking about this cauliflower dish they have, which basically tastes like awesome mashed potatoes. And apparently a big part of that is the type of oven they cook in.
I can’t remember what he called it, but it’s like a $75k oven. Sounds like a lot to me. But the quality + speed + dependability + results it provides make it well worth the price tag.
Going back to point #1, part of setting yourself up for great service, a solid product AND efficiency is investing in the proper equipment.
For them, it’s the fancy oven, adequate burners and kitchen set up. For you, it could be anything from a CRM to SMS automation, a new diagnostic tool that saves you time, even an upgraded laser suite. You get the picture.
3. They are inefficient in their staffing.
You didn’t misread that. And I thought this was interesting. We discussed their hiring process and how they train their people. And he mentioned he keeps 1 extra manager on for each of his locations. Like if a restaurant needs 5 managers to run at peak efficiency, he will go with 6.
Why? Keeps everyone from being spread so thin they get stressed. And if someone leaves, goes on vacation or gets sick, they still have enough to function well. To paraphrase his words – “Sure it’s an extra $70k/year per location that we’re spending, but everyone is happier and everything works better. Small price to pay…”
Does that mean you need to carry a bunch of extra employees? Not necessarily, but you should think about your practice the same way a college football coach thinks about his team.
YEAH you might have a good team now, but are you always recruiting? Looking for new talent? Looking for more ways to leverage your current talent? Preparing for your next step – a new location, expanding your current office, offering a new service, etc.?
4. Success leaves clues. Follow them.
I told him I thought they had one of the best happy hours in town.
“You like that? Yeah it’s a carbon copy of what <REDACTED> restaurant has always done for their happy hour, works really well. We started our careers there, and learned a lot about what to do (and what not to do) in our restaurants.”
For you? Stop trying to figure everything out. Stop reinventing the wheel. Learn from other successful practices. Hire us to come in and teach you how to sell more surgeries while giving a great customer experience.
No need to spend time, money and frustration stumbling through problems when they’ve already been solved.
I’ll be going in-depth on all these (and more) during this week’s “Jam Session” coaching call in our private coaching community. So if you’re a member, fwd this to your team to jump on the meet-up tomorrow with us!
And if this was helpful and / or interesting to you (or not), hit reply and let me know. Your feedback is appreciated.
Enjoy your week,
Troy “Happiest Hour” Cole