Hi there, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m so stoked that you’re here. I’m doing another solo episode, and today is all about hospitality and salesmanship and delivering amazing guest service experiences and everything that your team can do to Be brand ambassadors for your business and increase sales and deliver what I call your hooks and set your restaurant apart from the competition.

It’s unbelievable. It’ll give you immediately actionable ideas that can increase sales in your restaurants. Alright, listen, , you may or may not know that our YouTube channel , highlights every single episode and you can’t miss an episode if you subscribe. So please do so. Or you can follow us on any major podcast player where you get your podcasts.

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So thanks so much for listening. Now, on with the episode.

You’re tuned in to the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast. Powerful ideas to rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

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Hey there, it’s Roger. Besides the regularly great guests that appear on our podcast, from time to time, I’ll be releasing solo episodes, just me speaking about my experiences and what made me successful in multiple restaurants. Today, it’s all about hospitality, salesmanship, And team training. Now, I travel the country quite often speaking at national food and restaurant shows, and the common thread that happens all the time, and again, it doesn’t matter the price point of the restaurant.

It could be fine dining, it could be a Denny’s diner, I meet people all the time that work in the front of house, and they may be personable and friendly, great personalities, but they’re not trained, they’re not knowledgeable. If I ask a question, they’ll have to say something like, oh, let me ask the manager, or I’ll get back to you on that.

And to me, that’s always a negative impression. And they don’t make recommendations. They don’t tell me what I’m going to enjoy and appreciate. They don’t take me on what I call the magical journey of what that restaurant is all about. because if you are anything like me, you’re looking for more than food and drink in a restaurant when you dine out.

You’re looking for an experience. And in my restaurants, I always wanted to provide extraordinary experiences. Dining experiences that made people say, Wow, I want to come back and tell all my friends about that place. I’ve always believed that the restaurant business is entertainment. It’s show business.

And your front of house team aren’t hosts and bussers and counter people and servers and bartenders. They’re actors and actresses on stage. I used to train my team. Before the doors opened for service, we always had a daily pre shift. Now, that was very important, and it wasn’t just about today’s chef special, that kind of thing, it was a strategy session.

How to read your tables, how to make friends with your guests every shift, so that they ask for you the next time you come in. And also, What are you going to open, what are you going to break the ice with? What are you going to suggest that is going to enhance their dining experience? Let’s get back to the show business thing.

When the doors open for business, I used to train them and tell them all the time. It’s like the curtain goes up and it’s showtime. And again you’re not an employee of my restaurant. You’re an actor on stage and you’re here to dazzle the guests, give them lots of great experiences, memories. And then they will, in turn, tell all their friends.

And then social media posts and online reviews will soar positively. So let’s get into this. I learned a long time ago a definition of hospitality. We all have our own definition. But I learned a long time ago that hospitality is absent when something happens to your guest. In any restaurant or hospitality business, hospitality is present when something happens for the guest.

See the difference? It’s that simple, and I trained my team in that. We talked about it all the time, and everyone understood what hospitality was all about, okay? Guests in your restaurant or bar or resort or club or whatever it is want to be recognized. They want to be acknowledged. And they want to be served.

It was so important that we treated every guest as if they were the most important guest or the only guest in the room, even if we have a full place. And that was all about choreographed service. Now, the word choreography, it means people working together seamlessly so that the experience is enhanced by each person.

Now, unlike most full serve restaurants, I had many full serve restaurants, in, in these types of organizations when I travel. Obviously, the people that make the suggestions sometimes or do the selling are the servers and the bartenders. But I trained everyone in the front of house in two things, product knowledge and restaurant knowledge.

I wanted everyone to know their menus inside and out so that if a guest asked a question, they would have an answer. I also wanted them to know everything about the menu so that they could make suggestions again. that our guests would enjoy and appreciate. That was super important. So we wanted to recognize people, we wanted to acknowledge them, and treat every customer, I like to use the word guest, as if they were a regular or a loyal person that comes in all the time.

All right, and that created loyalty, which is a really powerful thing. The pre shifts. I can’t emphasize enough that a pre shift doesn’t have to be 20 minutes. We used to do them 10 minutes or less. All right. It’s okay. What’s your strategy? What are you going to talk about? What are your favorites?

What are the suggestions that you can make? And that was super, super important. Let me get back to the training piece. Now, I mentioned that in most restaurants, servers and bartenders are You know, the selling people, but a lot of times in my experiences, they’re order takers. They, again, have a nice personality, but they have the pad and pen in hand, and they’ll expect that since you’ve had a menu, you know it sounds good to you, you’re just going to order what you want, and in that case, they leave so many sales opportunities on the table.

All right. Instead, let’s get back to that magical journey. If your team are so knowledgeable about the menus, they can describe things in glowing detail and bring them to life. I call that theater of the mind. If your team can make something sound so good to the guest that the guest can see it, smell it, and taste it before it comes out to the kitchen and is served, they’ve made the sale.

Okay, and that is a skill to be developed, and we trained on that all the time. So just know, it’s not just about the food, it’s about the experience. All right, we also had something called battle stations, because know that the rest, I say this all the time, the restaurant business is one of a thousand details, and even though we get 990 of those details correct, it’s the 10 we miss That the guest always sees, and I didn’t want the guest to see anything amiss in any of my restaurants, so we had battle stations, which means every person had a certain section, and it wasn’t just servers or bartenders.

We also had something called every table is your table, so there was Overlap. If somebody missed something, we all had a set of eyes. Before we opened the doors for service, we made sure that the tables didn’t wobble, that the condiments were all clean, and that the ketchup wasn’t spilling down the side.

There was no gum under the tables. The windows weren’t dirty. I had everyone walk through the front door of my restaurants, and I never really understood why a lot of restaurants have people come through the back door, because they can’t see. They don’t want the guests to see the staff coming in, coming and going, but I always knew that, and I empowered my people to notice and see things and fix things that were broken before the guests saw them.

So if a, and I was never too important. If I pulled in and walked through the front door and if I saw trash in the parking lot, I’m out there picking it up. If there was a window dirty, people would see me cleaning it, a burned out light bulb, but that was everyone’s responsibility. Walk through the front door, see what the guest sees in.

Fix what you can fix before the guest sees it. If there’s something hazardous or something broken that you can’t fix, bring it to a team leader’s attention, or my attention, and we will fix it immediately. And that way, we only delivered positive impressions, not negative ones. So again, a thousand details.

You don’t want to miss any of them. All right, that’s Battle Stations. Everything about the kids was important. Now, we had family friendly restaurants. Not everyone does. If you get a fine dining place, maybe this doesn’t apply to you. But in most family casual restaurants, take care of the kids. Make sure the kids are happy because happy kids mean Happy parents.

Now I had wood fired pizzerias, I had steakhouses, but we had lots of little details that made the kids want to come to our restaurants. Know that the kids often decide or determine where the family eats out and they want to go to the fun place. But again, parents want a quiet night where the kids are taken care of and they can enjoy their meal.

So we had everything from helium balloons that we’d give the kids, and we had, wood fired pizza dough that was made from scratch every day that they could play with and have fun. It went way beyond the coloring sheets. We had a big fishbowl full of lollipops. We had a treasure chest that the server would take to the table at the end of the meal and the kid could reach in and pick out, an inexpensive prize that was a lot of fun for them.

We did all sorts of things. But we even had a whole arcade and not every restaurant has the real estate or room for it, but if you can find a little space just for one of those crane games, the candy crane or the stuffed animal crane, you would be surprised at how much money gets poured into those things.

Now you, not every restaurant knows this, but there are game companies in every state in our country that will bring the games into your restaurant at no charge. They’ll bring in a change machine, and they’ll maintain the games, and they will literally Give you everything, and cash you out at the end of the week, and give you 50 percent of whatever the machine takes in.

And I’ll tell ya, parents will literally throw 10 bills at their kids, once you feed them, and then the parents can have a great time. So that’s an opportunity that you don’t want to miss. So happy kids equal happy parents. We even had a diorama. You know what a diorama is? If you ever go to a carnival, you’ll see those big cutouts with the faces, and people put their faces in there, and it’s a photo opportunity, and the diorama itself is something hand painted, it’s an artistic work that either applies to something fun at the carnival.

In our case, we were at a ski resort, and our diorama was a ski mountain. with the faces cut out. And there was a little stool for the shorter kids that could stick their faces in, but parents used it too. And this was such a social media phenomenon. It’s like people came in, they took pictures, our logo was on the diorama, and it got, spread virally.

And it was so much fun. So one person was literally skiing down the mountain underneath the face cutout, and another person was a mountain climber climbing up the side with ice axes. And it was really cool. So think about, get creative. What is the theme of your restaurant? Can you have a diorama that’s just a photo op?

Because the social media value there is just huge. I got to tell you about that. Okay, in most restaurants, I started to say this earlier, but in most restaurants, the job positions are really delineated, meaning, okay, a host will answer the phone and do takeout orders, perhaps, and maybe even sell retail merchandise, but their main function is obviously seating people at tables, and if there’s a waiting list, they obviously take names down, and hopefully, they’re Under promising and over delivering.

We never want to tell people, oh, the wait is 30 minutes and it turns into an hour. That’s a nightmare. But they need to be, trained in putting a positive spin on everything, being accurate with wait times, and telling people, hey, if you’ve got a lounge or a bar, you Why not go in there, have a drink, and enjoy yourself?

We’ll call you, we’ll make sure to call you as soon as your table is ready. We know that’s what a host does. Bussers, same thing, right? They communicate with hosts. Whenever a table is, recently vacated, then they will literally clean that table, reset that table, wipe it down, and then they’ll communicate back to those, hey, table three is ready.

Okay, that’s their typical job. Servers and bartenders, we know what they do. In my restaurants, people were choreographed. They were trained in product and restaurant knowledge so that everyone could make a suggestion that enhanced the guest’s experience or turned into a sales opportunity. It really was not uncommon that we had bussers that could recognize that a lady’s glass of wine was empty in front of her at a meal, and they could And he would ask her, did you enjoy that glass of wine?

May I bring you another one? Is there something else that you would like? And that person was trained in using the point of sale system. They could go over and order another glass of wine or beer or cocktail or whatever it was, and then go to the service bar and pick it up and deliver the drink to that lady or whoever at the table.

While the server for that table was in the kitchen. Okay, so that’s extraordinary. Everyone could make suggestions that the guests would enjoy and appreciate. And that was incredible. Not only was it better service, but sales went through the roof and check averages went up. So that was really powerful also.

Alright. Do you know what a hook is? I love the word hook. Hooks are those things that set your restaurant or hospitality business apart from the competition. What makes it unique, different, special? And you need to make a list of these things, and perhaps you even forgot some of them. But hooks are so important because guests are interested, and two, they sell more product.

If you promote your hooks on your menus or on your table tents, if you have them, or in posters in the bathrooms or wherever it is. These are impulse things, perhaps, sometimes, and people see that and they want it, but hooks are also highly visible. Things that sell themselves as they go through the restaurant.

I’m going to give an example. One of our biggest hooks was our wood burning brick oven. We had wood fired pizzerias, and that was just a two of my restaurants, but nonetheless, the oven was not in the kitchen. It was right in the middle of the dining room floor. It was entertainment. It was show business.

It was a show. I had pizza makers making the doughs and making the pizzas and firing them in this, 800, 900 degree blazing oven. And so many people came up and it was a photo op and that went on social media. That was one hook. We had live rock bands, and we actually, again, we were at a ski resort.

We had a snowmaking machine that actually made snow on people while they were dancing in the rock band, in addition to the light show, with the flashing lights and the disco balls and all that stuff. Imagine the snow crystals coming down. We did that. That was a hook. We had a huge mug club. That had over a thousand members with their own exclusive mugs.

And that was a hook. So you can’t have too many hooks. Okay. Again, what sets your business apart? I’ve told this story before, but one of the biggest hooks that wasn’t at my restaurant, I was, I’m a big skier and many years ago, I went to this Vermont ski resort and I walked into this bar and I sat at the bar and I was so amazed because there was a conveyor belt.

On the back bar that was going click click. And I saw these pint glasses sitting on it and they would You know, they would travel on this conveyor belt underneath the beer taps. They probably had 10 or 15 beer taps. You’ve seen these bars with multiple craft beers on tap, that kind of thing.

But here’s this moving conveyor belt. I’m like, what’s that all about? I look to the left and there’s a hole cut in the side of the building and all the mugs or the pint glasses on this conveyor belt are going through the hole and out somewhere. And then I look to my right where the conveyor belt first started and there’s a hole.

The conveyor belt literally went around the back of the building out in the cold Vermont below zero winter, and those pint glasses would come in frosty and frozen chilled. The bartender would take a pint glass, pour the pint, and give you the coldest beer you ever had. That was a hook. Okay, so think about what your hooks are.

Talk about your hooks with your team, and make sure your entire front of house team know what they are, because again, your guests are interested, they want to know, it increases sales, and it’s an icebreaker, people are interested. Can’t have too many hooks. Alright. We used to have quizzes. And role playing exercises.

Pop quizzes. Again, product and restaurant knowledge. You know about the product thing. That’s knowing your menus inside and out. Restaurant knowledge is, again, what are your hooks? What’s special about this place? Every restaurant has its own unique story. Do you not? My story for the Woodfired Pizzerias was, I was obsessed with pizza,

Pizza was created in Italy, and not everybody knows this story, but a long time ago, almost 30 years ago, I was reading a food magazine, and it did a story on pizza. Pizza and its origins. And in Naples, Italy, it’s where pizza was first invented a long time ago, generations ago, and I was fascinated by this story, and it’s a time honored tradition where pizza making is passed on from grandfather to father to son to grandson, you get the idea, and they all come up in this business and they’re revered, it’s an important position.

It’s to work in a pizzeria, because people in Italy are fanatical about pizza, so I’m like, I gotta check that place out. The article in this magazine talked about the oldest pizzeria on the planet, the actual restaurant where pizza, the food we know of as pizza, was actually created a

long time ago, and it’s been passed down from generations, and I’m like, I gotta check that place out.

So I jumped on an airplane and I flew to Naples, Italy, And I walked in the door.

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Now, I had lived in Italy when I was in graduate school. I did an internship in Milan, and I ate a lot of pizza back then. And I had very basic Italian. I was a little rusty many years later, but I still was able to communicate that the the descendants of the original creators of pizza still

I owned this pizzeria, and I was able to tell them, I’ve got this pizzeria in America, and I’d really like to do things the authentic Neapolitan way, so I got on a plane, and I flew out here, and here I am, and I just want to eat your pizza. Next thing you know, they threw an apron over the counter at me and said, come on back, you’re going to make pizza with us.

I spent the next several hours making pizza in the oldest pizzeria on the planet where pizza was actually invented. And that was a story. I learned the secrets. I learned three key things that they did that set their pizza apart from any other pizza on the planet. And I brought those secrets back with me and I implemented those in my pizzerias.

And so that was my story. Who else could say that they made pizza in the oldest pizzeria where pizza was created and literally those secrets that they used for hundreds of years. It’s been passed down. We’re now using those techniques in our pizzeria. That was a hook, right? We printed that on our pizza boxes.

We printed that on our menus and on our table tents and everything. And that was a huge hook. So what is your restaurant story? Make sure your team know the story and tell your guests because it’s a really powerful thing. All right, let’s talk about the quizzes and the role playing. All right, that’s all about product knowledge.

I told you about restaurant knowledge. They need to know these things. I used to randomly call on people or give them pop quizzes, and we’d do role playing exercises, and it just kept people on their toes, kept them sharp, and delivering that hospitality so that things were happening for the guest. All right, I had a very powerful exercise.

It’s called how to turn $100 into $1, 000. What does that mean? So one day I came up with this brainstorm and I’m like, okay, we do the daily pre shifts. And yes, they’re always about strategy and about fun and all that kind of stuff. And it’s team building exercises, but I want to have a more formal session with them.

The entire front of house team, okay, and I want to do that once a month to reinforce all the knowledge and all the culture and all the strategies that we talked about in daily pre shifts. So I went to the bar and I opened up the cash door and I took out 100. I took out one 20 bill and two tens and a couple of fives and the rest ones and I randomly shuffled this money.

And I held the first meeting, and again, it was mandatory. We did this once a month, and you had to be there, and we made sure it was a time when everyone could be there, it was either early in the morning or whatever, clearly before the the opening doors for service. But nonetheless, and then we gathered our props.

Okay, why did we call them props? Because again, this is show business. It’s entertainment. Know that you have lots of things in your restaurant, your bar, your whatever in your hospitality business, that are things that your team can use to bring the show to life. It could be bottles of wine, it could be a menu, a table tent, retail merchandise like a t shirt with your logo on it.

It could be a dessert, it could be . Any hook. We had this huge hook, and this was one of the hooks that, a prop that we put on the table. We had these things called glacier bowls. We had a full bar, and we came up with a series of drinks that were poured into these goblets with a stem, and it was a very large vessel.

I think it held like 45 ounces of water if you poured it in filled with ice or whatever. It was like a fishbowl with a stem on it. And it was a hook. We had about 10 different specialty cocktails that we called Glacier Bowls. Remember, we’re at a ski resort. It’s a winter place. And they all had unique, catchy names, like the Ice Pick and the Ice Disaster.

All kinds of crazy names, right? Which caught the public’s imagination, but the best part was we put a glow stick, you go to those parades and you see the kids wearing the necklaces and the bangles around their wrists, and they snap and they hold together and then they glow at night.

They’re non toxic, so we bought a whole bunch of those things and we always had them behind the bar and we would put one of those in the drink and every drink had either blue curacao liquor as a splash or it had grenadine in it. And those drinks looked like antifreeze or, glowing red. And when you put the glow stick in a dimly lit dining room, and they’re going through on the service tray, everyone would point and say, what’s that?

I want one of those. And we charged like 20 a piece for these drinks. And it was a cash cow. It was almost pure profit. That was another hook. So anyway, let’s get back to the 100 to 1, 000. Imagine you, you’ve assembled all of your props and they’re on the, on a dining room table and you got your whole team there.

I used to call on people randomly. Now don’t forget there’s 100 randomly shuffled in the middle of the table. And we would do this role playing where, okay, a server might play a host or a busser might play a server or a bartender. And someone else would play the guest. And I would say, okay, Enact this scenario and bring things to life for me.

And if they did a great job, one person at a time, they could take a bill off the stack. Maybe they got a 10 bill. Maybe they got a 20 bill if they’re really lucky because there was only one of those. Maybe they got a five. We also had little candy treats too that I would throw to people if they did a good job.

Little, Reese’s peanut butter cups or whatnot. But it was an interactive exercise. Anyway, $100 suddenly turned into $1, 000 or more extra. That was just a name. More times than not, sales increased by $1, 000 or more just because, so $100 turned into a return on investment of 900 and increased, more additional money.

Anyway, just an idea for you. Okay. Iceberg. I love this analogy. Everyone has an idea of what an iceberg looks like, right? If you closed your eyes for a moment and imagined an iceberg on the surface, it would probably be really huge in your mind. Sunk the Titanic. I say that all the time. This is a perfect analogy for hospitality and salesmanship in restaurants and hospitality.

Okay, so if you were to open your eyes and see the image of the iceberg, you’d see this big piece of ice floating on top of the surface of the water. To me, I always called that daily sales that just happen. You’ve got order takers on the floor, people have the menus, they decide what sounds good to them, the chips fall where they may.

What very few people realize is the greatest mass of that iceberg is actually hidden and unseen beneath the surface of the water. I call that the land of the sales star because there’s so many opportunities that if they’re not presented to your guests, those are lost opportunities. They’re gone forever.

Let me give you a couple examples. Okay. Upsells. If you have a full bar, here’s just an example. If someone orders a gin and tonic, your team are so knowledgeable that they suggest a premium liquor. Would you prefer Bombay Sapphire or Tanqueray 10? And always give two choices. Okay, add ons. I’ve always believed that a restaurant menu should have lots of opportunities in each category to add things on that enhance that dish, but also upcharge.

A salad, for example, we used to have four different kinds of cheese that could be added to a salad to enhance it. Do you like blue cheese, goat cheese, feta cheese, parmesan shaved cheese on top? You get the idea. We had scallops and shrimp and chicken that could be added to a Caesar salad. We had a steakhouse, and we had different specialty rubs on those steaks.

We had a selection of sautéed options. You could have sautéed mushrooms. You could have sautéed peppers and onions. You could have bacon to add on top of that steak. All these things were upcharges, and our servers would suggest it every table, every time, and People would go for it. Okay. And again, it enhanced the meal.

It was better service. So that’s what that’s all about. Okay. Bottles of wine go without saying, I’ve always loved bottles of wine because it’s like having another person at the table ordering at least a $25 entree and bottles of wine can go up to hundreds of dollars. Most restaurants, the wine is 20 to 30 to 50 bucks, right?

But there’s no extra work involved. You don’t have to serve one extra guest at that table every single course. The appetizers, the entrees, take those orders, all that kind of stuff, suggest things. And they order a bottle of wine and there’s an automatic $25 plus added to the check. And wine is an icebreaker.

It’s a conversation starter. It’s the perfect start to a meal. But we’ve also seen that people will still order their favorite beer cocktail after they share. A bottle of wine a bottle of wine goes really quickly. If it’s a two top, they’ll have two glasses each. If it’s a four top, they’ll get just about one glass a piece.

And then it’s gone, and there’s an up sell opportunity for a second bottle. Now, not every state allows it. But our state, here in Maine, will always allow you to sell a second bottle, and if the guests don’t finish it, as long as you bag that bottle of wine, you cork it, bag it, and then staple the bag, they’re legally allowed to take that with you, and that was a sales opportunity.

Again, we’re at a ski resort, and my service would always say, if you don’t finish that, take it back, enjoy it in front of the fire at your condo or your ski house or whatever later on, and we sold lots of wine. All right, so that’s an opportunity. Desserts go without saying. Every restaurant has desserts.

But what about coffee drinks? When was the last time you went out to eat at a restaurant and you ordered a cup of coffee and the server or the bartender or whoever said, would you prefer Bailey’s or Kahlua or Jameson’s in that coffee? Maybe with a dollop of whipped cream and some chocolate shavings perhaps?

It’s the perfect end to your meal. And then suddenly that 3 or 4 coffee turns into a 14 coffee because of the Bailey’s or because of, whatever the liqueur. That is an opportunity. Alright, retail merchandise is a huge opportunity. I’m a huge believer in not running a restaurant, but running a business and building a brand.

Anyone can run ABC Restaurant or whatever the name is. And it’s just a restaurant, but a brand is something special. It’s powerful. It has an image or an aura in the guest’s mind. And when you get to that level, now suddenly you can put your logo and come up with really creative merchandise, whether it’s wearables like t shirts or hats or hoodies, it can be pint glasses with your logo on it.

It can be liquor flask that someone might put on. Put whiskey in and maybe take it to a sporting event or something. We sell these things all the time. You put your merchandise program together and suddenly you can sell lots of merchandise. So that’s another opportunity. And then finally there’s live entertainment.

Not every restaurant or bar has room to bring in a stage and have rock bands like we did, but we also did acoustic guitar players and we started small before I had a stage and some of my smaller restaurants, All we needed was a little space in the corner in the lounge or in the bar where people could see the guitar player.

He had a little amplifier and a little acoustic guitar and he’d sit on a stool. He or she, we had, we had both, they were excellent musicians and it only cost a couple hundred dollars and they would play for three hours and they kept people longer eating the food, drinking the beer, and there were songs that people enjoy.

The songs that you can sing by heart and it would often break into sing alongs in the bar and it was just so much fun and that became a draw. that people would come in for. So just know that live entertainment or comedy acts or whatever you can do, and even make a special night of it. Every restaurant isn’t busy seven days a week.

There are certain days, maybe it’s a Monday, maybe you create a special event around bringing in a musician or a comedian or whatever. What about healthy competition? As long as we aren’t allowing order takers on the floor, and we’re turning people into what I call sales stars, and they’re knowledgeable, everyone in the front of house, remember, what about having competitions that encourage people to suggest things?

So a long time ago, I came up with A game that people, my team members, just loved, and they looked forward to doing it every single week, and we called it Bingo, because everyone has played Bingo. You know that game where, you’ve got a card in front of you, and you’ve got little beans or little chips or whatever it is, and someone rolls the basket, and they call out a number and a letter, and you put it on the card, and the whole idea is to get five in a row, whether it’s sideways, across, up or down, diagonal, upside down, whatever.

We did the very same thing. I created bingo cards. And in each of the squares, instead of a letter or a number, we printed on a computer template the things we most wanted to sell. Our hooks, our most profitable items. Okay, that was super important. Or even perishable things okay, we brought in a ton of seafood, and we’re going to sell it.

We definitely want to make sure it’s still fresh when we serve it, so we’ve got to sell these last few pieces of fish. Whatever it is, we put the things that we most wanted to sell that were advantageous for our restaurant to sell in each of the squares. And then the get, the servers knew, the bartenders knew, even the host could play.

And the whole idea was to fill the bingo card. And the first person that sold any of those things in succession, sideways, diagonal, up, down, whatever. would win the bingo game, and they would get a nice prize. Usually there were gift cards, gas cards to local gas stations, or movie tickets, or whatever it was.

We always kept things fun. That was super huge. While we’re on that subject, it was a team builder and a morale builder. We also did something called difference dollars. Now, you should have a recognition and rewards program in your business. Mine was very simple. Difference Dollars was about recognizing someone that went above and beyond the normal scope of their job.

They helped a guest with a problem. They solved a teammate situation. Whatever it was, they were helpful. I remember one time there was a busser walking through the kitchen with a full bus bucket and the floor wasn’t dry. Somebody, didn’t mop the floor or dry it properly and this person slipped.

And I remember the whole bus bucket went up in the air and all the plates and glasses like smashed on the floor and the kid was just mortified and I’m not sure why he’s feeling really badly, but he’s down on his hands and knees picking it up. There’s a server that just happened to be in the kitchen, and she jumped right in and helped him clean up the mess.

It wasn’t her job. She had a full table in the restaurant, but she had a moment, and she helped. She jumped in. That was

a way of recognizing her, and so we started this Difference Dollars thing. So every single week, I wanted to recognize two people for doing something extraordinary beyond the job.

So we always did it twice because Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest nights in our Businesses, aren’t they? Mostly. And not everyone on your schedule works every Friday and not everyone on the schedule works every Saturday. I had 60 employees in my biggest restaurant, so I wanted everyone to take part.

So before the start of service, before we opened our doors, we’d gather the whole team together, either in the kitchen. Or in the dining room. And then everyone knew what it was after we did it the first time and they looked forward to it. So let’s just say that the server, I’ll call her Sally. Sally helped the, the busser pick up the mess.

So I’d stand up in front of the crowd and I’d say, and this week’s winner is Sally. And this is what Sally did that made a difference. And I’d go into glowing description, glowing detail of what that difference was. Everyone would clap and, cheer, pat her on the back, whatever. And then I’d give Sally a can of Red Bull and a 20 bill, and I’d thank her very much for making a difference.

And then everyone would go on to their positions, the doors would open for business, and the show would go on. But it didn’t stop there. I went into my office and I had a template on the computer, difference dollars, big and bold, stars in the corners, and I would type in Sally’s name, and then again, in glowing detail, what she did that made a difference.

I had all these frames, the little wooden, very inexpensive frames. You can get it at a Walmart or a Target or whatever. They’re eight and a half by 11. They hold a sheet of computer paper and I would print that out and we would hang them up. And they were all over the restaurant behind the scenes, the employee break area, the employee bathroom where they hung up their coats in the kitchen, that kind of thing.

And it was so gratifying to me whenever we hired some I recruited a new team member that just started and maybe they’re on their first break after working a couple hours just having a soda and I would be so fulfilled to see these people just walking one after another reading about differences that my team members had made over the years.

And it was so powerful a program. And it spoke volumes about our company culture. Our culture was hospitality, family, and fun. It’s all about hospitality. I told you my definition earlier. We wanted everyone to feel like family. We wanted the team to feel like family, so that they made the guests feel like family, and we wanted everyone to have more fun.

And that just spoke volumes about how the restaurant was run, what our expectations were, and after a while, we didn’t have to fire anyone anymore. They either assimilated that culture, they wanted of it. They felt a part of it, or they voted themselves off the island, which rarely happened. And that’s why my retention rate was 96 percent in my restaurants, even though several of my restaurants were seasonal.

They’re only open during that winter season. Again at the ski resort, 96 percent of the people came back every year because of hospitality, family, and fun, and they made a lot of money too. It was lucrative. Okay, so that’s about company culture and server bingo and Know that your team members are brand ambassadors for your business.

Okay. And they have everything to do with delivering amazing experiences, giving people lots of reasons to come back, but also making friends. We mentioned this earlier. If they make friends with your guests, then chances are those guests are going to come back again and ask for your best people.

All right. And that’s what it’s all about. That will make your cash register ring. All right, so all of everything I talked about today is included in the Our Restaurant Academy, all right? The Restaurant Academy is all about cost controls and profit maximization tools, full templates and videos that train you on all these things.

It’s also about the SalesStars program, the hospitality training system that I started so long ago is now turnkey for you to use as well to train your team in hospitality and salesmanship. And again, not just servers and bartenders, but everyone. front of house you’ve got a food truck, your counter people, everyone is a salesperson and a brand ambassador for your business.

Marketing, the hooks, the mug club I talked about. Everything that you do for marketing should be trackable so you know where the business is coming from and what the return on that investment is. So the Academy is awesome. Full of marketing ideas that have been proven in my restaurants and literally other restaurants that have purchased it around the world.

So real ROI to that, as well as efficiencies and anything you would need to run a stronger operation. So check that out at restaurantrockstars. com. Thanks for listening. I can’t wait to see you in the next Roger Solo episode. I hope I’m giving you some helpful information and advice that you can put into practice in your restaurant.

ASAP Alright, stay well. Thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.

People go to restaurants for lots of reasons, for fun, celebration, for family, for lifestyle. What the customer doesn’t know is the thousands of details it takes to run a great restaurant. This is a high risk, high fail business. It’s hard to find great staff, costs are rising and profits are disappearing.

It’s a treacherous road and smart operators need a professional guide. I’m Roger. I’ve started many highly successful, high profit restaurants I’m passionate about helping other owners and managers not just succeed, but knock it out of the park. I created a game changing system and it’s filled with everything I’ve learned in over 20 years running super profitable, super fun restaurants.

Everything from creating high profit menu items and cost controls, to staff training where your teams serve and sell, to marketing hooks, money maximizing tips and efficiencies across your operation. What does this mean to you? More money to invest in your restaurant, to hire a management team, time freedom and peace of mind.

You don’t just want to run a restaurant, you want to dominate your competition and create a lasting legacy. Join the Academy and I’ll show you how it’s done.

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. For lots of great resources, head over to restaurantrockstars. com. See you next time.

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