Wanna see the big picture?

The range and depth of expertise expected of an independent restaurant operator is amazing. It is what has kept me interested in the business for so long. The fact that an operator’s work week can contain so many varied responsibilities helps keep each day fresh, and the challenge of mastery of an every

expanding set of capacities means work is never stagnant.

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Changes to the restaurant industry have pushed all operators to be better at “running” their restaurant. The world has truly grown smaller. Armed with a Yelp app on their phone, every guest is a critic. With a rotisserie in every grocery store, they are all now competitors. Google makes everyone an expert on everything—your guests and employees included. The democratizing impact of the web as a marketing and messaging tool allows any start-up to create a polished, professional business presence that rivals their long established competition. And speaking of competition, the cost of building brick-and-mortar restaurants hasn’t slowed it much, but it has encouraged new operators to think creatively and explore food trucks, home delivery schemes and pop-ups as alternatives to traditional restaurants. They’re all competing with you.

As costs increase we become smarter at managing them, and more frequently turn to tools for help—time and attendance or scheduling software for labor control, purchasing software and web apps help us compare costs for sardines and stoves. And where off-the-shelf solutions don’t exist, we create byzantine clustered spreadsheets to help us. Of course most of us still manage a POS system.

Regulation pushes us to become familiar with complex (and sometimes contradictory) labor laws, health codes, accessibility requirements, even ANSUL maintenance schedules. A tight labor market means we learn to be better employers, devoting more time to nurturing and training staff, because we do not want to have to try to hire new ones (but when we do, there are apps for that too). Employee retention is a different challenge than the “just get new ones” mentality that many seemed to espouse years ago.

In working on the website for Queue Consulting, I created a mind map of as many of the competencies a modern restaurateur must employ in order to succeed as I could come up with. I did not include the basics like take care of the guest, provide good service and food. It’s a fascinating and complex picture of a truly challenging endeavor. I’d love to hear what I missed—I’m sure there is plenty!