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Adventures Of A Black Belt Sommelier
The rewarding/frustrating life of a restaurant consultant
Well, welcome back to Adventures of a Bike Belt Somelier. The life of a consultant, at least as I know it, a consultant in the hospitality industry, can be very, very rewarding because sometimes you can really help people overcome obstacles or fine-tune their plan or rebrand themselves or just generally become more successful. But it can also be brought with frustration or amusement or silliness. I have three anecdotes I was going to share with you about the life of a restaurant consultant, a hotel consultant. One is I was hired by a hotel, I think, pretty sure it was a Ramadi Inn, it's connected in New York. That was really, really struggling and so I flew to Schenectady, I guess I flew to Albany and drove to Schenectady, I guess. But anyway, I went to this hotel and they were really well known because they had an indoor swimming pool and, of course, in Schenectady, that's a big thing because it's really cold there a lot of the time. As I was walking into the lobby of the hotel to check in, I noticed there was total water in the swimming pool, which, if all your brochures, and all your advertising, all your promotions are based on the fact that you have an indoor swimming pool, it's kind of important that you have water in the swimming pool. I checked in, this is a long time ago so there was actually a key to the door of my room. I went up to check in to my room and I opened the door and there was a naked man lying on top of the comfort on the bed. I very quietly, I don't think he ever knew that I can open the door, but anyway, I very quietly went back downstairs and they'd actually given me the key to the wrong room, of course. I knew that I had my challenges ahead of me and tried to help this place. In my first meeting with the general manager of the hotel, I asked him why there was no water in the pool because all their promotion materials are based on the fact they had an indoor swimming pool and he said, "Well, there's a crack in the pool and it won't hold water and we can't afford to repair it so we just don't have any water in the pool." We just explained to people that hopefully the next time they come, there will be water in the pool. This place was just, I mean it was just a disaster, but anyway, my main job was to try to help the restaurant, they had a coffee shop type restaurant, but in this size hotel you would expect them to maybe serve around 100 people at breakfast every day and maybe around 30 or 40 at lunch every day and maybe around a dozen at dinner every night or if it was successful or maybe two dozen at night, but they were serving, the restaurant had such an atrocious reputation that they were serving 20 people at breakfast at 10 at lunch and one table at dinner or whatever because people just knew you didn't want to eat there. I tried, you know, obviously I did figure out why the restaurant was so unsuccessful. So that night after I checked in, I just went and watched and they had two parties of four all night and they kept telling people they were out of things on the menu and finally I said, "Why are you out of so many things on the menu?" Well, it turned out that the cook, there was just one guy in a dishwasher, didn't know how to make half the things on the menu, so they just told people they were out of those. So I spent a couple of days teaching this cook how to make the things that he didn't know how to make and then I rewrote the menu, I mean it was pretty straightforward, coffee shop menu, but for instance, he didn't know that it had a butterfly shrimp on the menu and he didn't know what the word butterfly meant, so, you know, I explained that to him. Anyway, I rewrote the menu to make it a lot less complicated so that one person could produce it and, you know, he knew he would know he or the next person would know how to make the things on the menu. My third night working in this restaurant, they actually had a party of 20 come, which was more people than I think than they'd served in a week in the months previous. So I helped the cook, fix everything, get it under the heat lamps in the window ready for the server to pick up, there was a manager and two waiters there that night and the food just sat there and sat there and sat there. And finally, I went out in the dining room, I said, you know, can you get somebody to come pick this food up and serve it and the manager said let me see which one of the waiters is waiting on them. I said, you know, this is the only part in the restaurant. You should be waiting on them. You and both waiters and servers should be waiting on them. Well, back then we called them waiters. Actually, I think they were waitresses, but anyway, I think the cook and I ended up serving the food because it was just so, the incompetence was magnificent, actually. So if you're ever in a Ramada Inn in Connecticut, New York, that has a swimming pool with or without water in it, I'd love to hear your opinion or what your experience was like. I can't imagine that, you know, I made a lot of recommendations, the first of which was to put water in the fix the scrap in the water in the swimming pool of the water. But I can't imagine the project didn't do that because they didn't have any money because they weren't doing any business because the hotel had such terrible reputation. But if you've been to that hotel, I'd love for you to let me know what your experience was. My next anecdote, I had a consulting project with a very, very fine restaurant in the Gulf in Nashville, I won't identify it because it would be embarrassing for them. But well, they're no longer in business, but still it would be embarrassing for them. And I went in one night in their private, and it was a really nice restaurant, and it actually arranged for my friend, Bob Wagoner, Michelin Tees, to be the chef there. He was doing a wonderful job, it was really wonderful restaurant. So met anyway, in the private diner, they had the National Healthcare Council, like 20, 25 guys, mostly guys and some women, that were CEOs of major health care corporations, hospital management firms, hospital CEOs, everybody in the room was worth a lot of money. Everybody in the room had eaten in great restaurants all over the world. Everybody in the room was really important and really capable of being really good customers. And they had identified that the meeting was in this room by taking a piece of white paper, like copier paper, and handwriting National Healthcare Council on it and taping it to the window of the private diner. So I got the manager, and I said, you know, this is, well, actually the owner's son. I said, you know, this is not at this level of this restaurant, this is just not good enough, you know, get a little table, put a table by the door of the room, put a table cloth on it, print out National, you know, on the computer, print out a sign that says National Healthcare Council, frame it and put it on the, put it on the table because at the level, you're operating at taping a piece of paper, the window's not going to, and you can even put like a fishbowl there and ask people to put their business cards in it, and you could build your mailing list, and you could have all the members of the National Healthcare Council added to your mailing list at the end of the night, but don't just tape a piece of paper to the window of the frame. And so I went in about a week later for, I think to have a drink or have dinner or something, and they had done what I asked them to do, which I was astonished by at least by, but then I went in two weeks later and there was a piece of paper taped to the window again. So you know, as they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, and you can give people sound advice, but you can't make them take it, and, you know, it's just, you know, it's I don't understand, if they, I don't understand, it's hard to understand why they did it once and didn't do it forever, because it's not, it wasn't like I was asking them to do something difficult, but, you know, people like those guys and women in that room, I apologize for referring to them as guys, that's just my age, I'm sorry, that's unacceptable. The people in that room, the men and women in that room, they notice details, that's one of the reasons they're so successful, and a detail like that is off-putting. Anyway, I've had that conversation with the owner's son, and he listened to me and did what I asked him to suggest that he do for one week, and then, but again, you know, that's only so much you can do. The third anecdote I have is I've got hired to try to help a pizza restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, they couldn't figure out why their costs were so out of line, their food costs were too high, the liquor costs are too high, so I went up and I spent a night sitting at the bar watching the restaurant, I had one of the pizzas and pizzas and good. You know, the prices seemed reasonable, the portions seemed reasonable, it didn't seem like to me that there was an enormous amount of waste, so why would their food costs and liquor costs be so out of line? It just didn't make sense because they might have been a little bit out of line, but they were like double what they should be. So I was in a meeting with the owners the next day to go over my thoughts and their head bartender, they called him head bartender, but I think he was really the only bartender. The head bartender came in and said that he needed three, needed to go to the liquor store and get three bottles of fireball because it was Friday and they couldn't get a delivery and they needed it for the weekend. They gave him the money to go buy some fireball in the liquor storage, it's probably illegal but they did it anyway and he came back with some change and the next day, Saturday I had another meeting with them and we were talking about things and what I thought kind of changes they made. And the bartender came in and said he needed three more bottles of fireball and he needed some money. They had a big sales report from the night before in my hand and I looked and according to their sales report they'd only sold three shots of fireball. And there was a, they had a big kind of party the night before, I guess you'd call it a party. They had a big group of people that were likely to be to the bartenders friends to have concluded a lot of the bartenders friends the night before. And so if you, you know, there's 32 ounces in a liter that's 96 shots of fireball and they had shot so they'd charge for three. And I said, so what happened to the other 93 shots of fireball to this guy and he said, well, you know, the people in that group where they were really good customers. So I just, you know, I just gave him fire by gave him shots of fireball all night long to thank them for being such good customers. I said, you know, you gave away about 20% of the restaurant sales last night and you didn't have the owners. I'm sure you didn't have the owners approval to do that. So they fired him, went back a month later or follow up conversation and he was standing there. Again, you can only do so much, you know, what does it say to the rest of the staff if you rehire someone that you've fired for stealing that you know is a fee, but you tell the rest of the staff is it's okay to steal. It's okay to give your friends fireball or pizza and that, you know, it pretty much we know why their food causes that like is they were given it with the staff has given away pizzas. We know why their learner causes two hives because they were given away fireball or whatever on any specific night, you know, if a fireball is the shot of fireball is five dollars five times ninety three is a significant amount of money in a small pizza restaurant in Bowling Green, Tucky. So that's my three silly stories about being a restaurant consultant. I could tell more. I will say that I'd had one restaurant job with another restaurant in Nashville where I sat down with the owner of the restaurant, my first meeting with him, actually the reason I started doing restaurant consulting is because I was leaving this restaurant one night and I said and we just had a just terrible meal and I said to my wife, you know, I wish I could help them because I know they want to have a good restaurant, but they just know the house. She said, well, why don't you call them and offer to help them? So I did and that was my first restaurant consulting job and my first meeting with them. I asked him, what do you think the strengths and weaknesses of your restaurant are? And he said, well, I think the strength is our quality of our food and the weaknesses are location. And I said, well, this is a big problem because your location, it's really like you have the best location of any restaurant in Nashville, but your food is terrible and you're still doing pretty well because the location is a great people eatier because they like you and they like your family and it's so convenient that they come in spite of the fact that the food isn't very good. So why don't we hire you a chef, let's get a chef who can make good food. So I asked a friend of mine who's a really great chef, a very well-known chef to sit and recommend somebody and he recommended a guy and we hired him and in this restaurant in a matter of them, probably six weeks from being maybe the worst restaurant in Nashville, of course, nice restaurant in Nashville to being one of the best restaurants in Nashville. So there are success stories too and that restaurant is still in business, still a really great restaurant and it's very, very successful, partly because they listened to what I had to say. Thanks for tuning into Adventures of Blackbeltzel.me, I really appreciate your interest and support. And if you've ever been to the Ramada Inn with its connectivity that has its own endorsement tool, I'd love to hear what your experience is like. [BLANK_AUDIO]