Why I Love The Restaurant Industry
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Why I Love The Restaurant Industry
For most humans, this is a rather big holiday weekend. Easter, Ramadan, Passover, and probably other unique reasons to celebrate that I am not fully aware of. Whatever your belief systems are, celebration is always worth elevating. Gathering with friends and family and recommitting to values beyond self is perhaps more important today than ever. So here’s to that!
When I scan my emotional landscape I find myself nowadays, more often than before, looking to my past for clues to the future. Perhaps it is a sign I’m getting older. When reflecting on my own career, I am constantly reminded of the imprint, importance, and incredible gifts that so many decades in the restaurant industry bestowed on me.
While today’s piece is about restaurants, I could also include almost any retailer or organization that meets their customers daily, frequently, and in the flesh. Whether they are hotels, restaurants, nail salons, bakeries, retailers, hospitals, nursing homes, or other delivery systems of service. However, my deepest experience is with restaurants which is why I return to them as a reference point to the broader service industry.
And in a week filled with incredible division and politicization all around us, I started thinking more about what kind of organizations have a more natural immunity against the kind of division, polarization, and dehumanizing attitudes that occupy so much of our public discourse.
The typical trajectory of many businesses (and human beings) can go something like this if we are lucky: we find what we like to do, we get better at it, and we grow and reap the rewards from this growth. Financially, and otherwise. But for most people and organizations, along the way, we also risk being set in our ways, as we become more interested in protecting what we have rather than expanding our horizons further.
We see it in organizations all the time. This is when they turn inwards, and the interest of the company seems more important than the interest of the customer. Hospitals caring more about processes and procedures more than sustainable health, politicians more about winning elections than a prosperous nation, CEO’s seeking short-term profits and jeopardizing long-term success (saw it recently with many banks).
This typical pattern can’t be stated more truly and powerfully than what John Gardner states in his incredible book, On Leadership:
“But means tend to triumph over ends. Form triumph over spirit. People become prisoners of their procedures. The means and methods were originally designed to achieve some specific end, but when circumstances change and new means are called for, it turns out that the old ones have become sacrosanct; the means have become ends in themselves - no longer effective perhaps, but enshrined.”
This is why I am more fond of smaller companies, in general. They are closer to the action before the layers of bureaucracy have set in. The immediacy and urgency of a customer is still front and center of their culture. And nowhere is the spirit of customer-centricity more alive and kicking than in restaurants.
If food or service isn’t good, there is simply no hiding. Customers vote with their feet immediately and they just won’t come back. They won’t tell their friends (or, worse, they will share their negative views online) and the business will suffer. Immediately. At McDonald's where I spent my formative years, we had a saying relative to all this: "Don't take your eyes off the fries.”
At some level, this is, of course, true for any business. But it is more true for business-to-consumer businesses and also even more true for distributed business models that have hundreds or thousands of locations. Businesses like these are hyper-local. They cater to a microeconomy in their local trade areas. People are loyal and frequent customers. While brands, recipes, and systems can be shared across locations, there is no hiding the fact that the success or failure of the enterprise depends on each and every one of those local visits. The front line is really their lifeline. That’s also why so many of them have selected business models where local management are also owners. Local teams that are in business for themselves but not by themselves (i.e. franchising, typically).
I would be the first to admit that restaurants are not an easy business. It’s often 24/7, thin margins, fiercely competitive, and in many ways exhausting. But it has, I would argue, three inherent benefits that have forever cemented my love and respect for any restaurateur out there.
First, it’s truly real. It's transparently honest. It’s simple, so far as people either like the food and the service—or they don’t. There are no excuses. We are there to serve. And we either do a good job—or we don’t. And because of the plethora of choices, every second you are judged and compared to others. And it is consumed immediately. So, in this way, the service and food are one. In many other businesses, service can be inferior, but the product you bought can "compensate" for the poor service in weeks and years after you bought it. You forget about the experience but enjoy the product. Not in food. They come in the same package—literally and figuratively.
Second, it’s one of the great social mobility escalators out there. Stewardesses rarely become pilots, nurses rarely become doctors, but kitchen crew almost always rise to the top of restaurant organizations. They promote from within. That creates opportunities. And I love seeing young people, often with limited career choices, grow and develop and end up as either restaurant owners or senior executives in larger companies. It’s so rewarding. Restaurants is an industry where trickle-down economics really work wonders.
Third, it’s human. Whether people are celebrating an anniversary or commiserating over a brutal work week, they turn to restaurants to amplify their joy or soften their misery. It’s our oasis for a much-needed break from an otherwise hectic day. We live in an over “technologized” world. Digital relationships have now overtaken real relationships. But every day in restaurants, we have the opportunity to connect, to touch, and to affect the day of another fellow human being. While that might sound like hyperbole, it is a fact. Small instances of joy, laughter, and being seen and heard might be more important today than it’s ever been. We call that hospitality. When that happens to all of us, when someone graces us with real superb service, it is easy to feel good about life. Isn’t it?
Working in restaurants has always been associated with some type of negative stigma. It’s sad, unfair, and unfortunate. Working in the restaurant industry is one of the greatest beginnings of a young person's working career you can imagine. You learn discipline. You learn hygiene. You learn teamwork. And you learn service. If you ask many successful people what job in their early career, they learned the most from, you will be surprised how many would say McDonald's.
In a world where human connections are suffering, we should celebrate all the hospitality workers out there. Anyone, whose job it is to connect meaningfully with another human being in service of making their day better deserves our appreciation, recognition, and full support.
I salute the service colleagues out there. They play an incredibly important role in the fabric of society. And if we showed them more of our love, they would show more of theirs back at us. It’s a two-way street. And perhaps civility and kindness would grow from there all the way into other parts of society that so sorely need it.
A few things for you on this topic:
The John Gardner Book I quoted is one of my favorite leadership books
The classic Servant Leadership by John Greenleaf that helped make this case to me so many years ago
A fantastic TED talk by Will Guidara on hospitality and how a New York Hot Dog changed his perspective on what service really is all about. Please watch. It’s short and powerful.
Of course, special mention to Danny Meyer who wrote a great book about the concept of service and who has done so much for so many restaurants.
Perhaps a bit different this week. But a more hospitable attitude towards all humans might be exactly what could change the world. Civility and kindness are neither celebrated nor rewarded as much as they are worth. The beauty of hospitality is that it doesn't cost anything extra to do something extra. We all have the tools to do it. A smile goes a long way. Paying attention to another human being's needs isn't that hard. And like with all gifts, it benefits the giver as much as the receiver. It's just another one of the beautiful human universal truths.
Have a great week!
