Rethinking leading in restaurants: 4 ways to boost business and people success
Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash
Summary: Effective modern restaurant leadership requires inspiring a collective vision, proactive adaptability, investing in staff's skill and personal development, and communicating authentic purpose—a shift from singular, product-focused leadership to a more holistic, people-oriented approach for long-term business sustainability.
Over the past several years, there has been a shift in what’s required to be a successful leader in restaurants. It’s palpable. We’re sure you’ve felt it, too. A complex economic reality, hiring and retention challenges, and lingering effects of the pandemic have created a complicated picture that’s requiring leaders to have skills that can effectively support both the business and people sides of a hospitality operation.
Given this landscape, what are the most successful leaders in hospitality doing to create strong, sustainable businesses? We’ve outlined four things that we’ve observed first-hand and heard in our conversations with hospitality leaders across the country that can set leaders up for success.
1) Create a collective vision to inspire
The traditional way of leading in restaurants was one with limited flexibility and openness. Leading was most often done via command and control (often referred to as brigade style). In this style of leadership, people are “told” and are expected to comply without any question. This style of leadership was also often centered around a singular vision or voice—most often the Executive Chef or the restaurateur.
Most of us in hospitality have experienced working in a restaurant that prioritizes this singular voice and command and control style. But the reality is that staff needs and wants have evolved over the past several years, and employees are demanding—and expecting—to be led differently.
Today, people seek to be included and inspired. Our teams want and need to be led via a clear vision, motivation, and guidance, not demand. And as younger generations move into the workforce, there is a stronger emphasis on a collective vision and leading in a way that prioritizes the whole rather than the individual. We see this from some of the most cutting-edge restaurants and restaurant-supporting institutions.
A superb experience for diners stems not simply from food, beverage, or service, but from collectively engaging employees around a clear vision that inspires.
2) Be proactive to stop being reactive
For a long time, restaurant leaders and teams have been reactive, trying to just stay out of the weeds. When a restaurant can barely accomplish the day-to-day, its ability to pursue a bigger goal is severely limited.
Think about how many times you, as a leader, have felt like you just can’t catch up and then something pops up and catches you off guard. Now you’re reacting to problems, not catching them before they hit you.
Successful leaders are proactive, which means that they have to build behaviors and patterns that allow for innovation, flexibility and adaptability. How we think about our roles, our daily jobs, our calendars, and our time has to shift to allow us to stay on top of the wave.
When we achieve this state, we can look at our business and people operations from a 30,000-foot view, which allows us to identify systemic challenges or opportunities for improvement that, when addressed, will have a bigger impact on organizational culture and the bottom line.
3) Invest in staff development
Restaurants, especially those driven by a singular vision, often valued the product over everything else. Owners often felt that if they could just put out the best food or the best cocktails, then they would experience success financially and stay in business.
As a result, the industry’s training time and dollars have typically gone toward perfecting technique and technical training. But today, there’s too much competition to only focus on product. Diners are looking for more. They want to feel that a culture is positive and runs deep. They want great product and great people to be a part of their experience.
One harsh reality is that economics are extremely hard to manage in restaurants, with razor thin margins and constantly rising costs. Restaurants need to be business-oriented, and people-focused to thrive now. This means we need to put our training time and resources into not only technical expertise, but also into building people expertise.
Although margins are thin, investing in training and development is important, as it supports achieving long-term sustainability, staff retention, and ultimately, a more balanced business.
As leaders, we have to dedicate the same amount of time and energy to managing the business, producing great products, and focusing on our people’s development for the restaurant to be successful.
4) Communicate purpose to motivate employees
Finally, restaurants have traditionally focused on excellence. How do you win awards? Excellence. How do you get press? Have the best food, drinks, or service. But the reality is that excellence doesn’t motivate everyone. It doesn’t even motivate most people.
Restaurants have experienced a shortage of capable candidates over the last few years, and the motivations of those walking in our doors are different than they were 10 to 15 years ago. People today want purpose in their work.
As traditional forms of community have evaporated, research shows that people are looking for community and purpose in other places, like their jobs. They want to believe that how they’re spending their time matters. And it needs to be authentic.
Successful leaders help their teams understand their purpose and how they matter to the operation and to the diners. To make this happen, we have to split our energies between still reaching for excellence and being purpose-oriented.
When employees feel they have purpose, they are more engaged and more likely to stay in their roles, which can contribute to higher retention and lower turnover over time.
Moving from an old to a new way of leading in hospitality
We’ve thought about this shift in hospitality leadership requirements a lot at Tableside. In fact, it was a primary reason that we started Tableside in the first place. We saw a need for manager training in these four areas from first-hand experience. We also heard a need for leadership development from hospitality business owners and operators across the country.
If you’re interested in developing these skills in your leaders, check out our Leading in Restaurants program, which helps hospitality managers build a strong foundation in people management skills that will support business needs now and in the future.
Leading in hospitality is hard and complicated but it doesn’t have to be as stressful. Together, we can build knowledge, mindsets, and skills to help us, our staff, and the industry as a whole.
