Pizza Today - May 2024 - 12

Mike's Monthly Tip
The ROI Bottleneck
Mike Bausch
Owner, Andolini's Pizzeria
G
ive a knee-jerk
answer to this question:
What is your
restaurant's limitation today?
What is your bottleneck? If
that one thing were fi xed, you
would earn more total profi t-
not simply revenue, but profi t.
What is that one thing that is
not happening?
For example, Let's say you
have a widely high food cost,
that if corrected, it would mean
you made real money. Th en
that would be the limitation to
profi t. If so, what is the reason
for it being off ? Is your portion
control off because staff
won't listen, which relates to
lackluster training, lazy hiring
practices and a leadership team
that doesn't feel enabled? Th e
core fi x of that issue would be
inspecting work, incentivizing
results and penalizing insubordination.
What
if your staff is excellent?
Renegotiating with your
vendor could be as simple as
getting those percentage points
back.
Whatever the leak in the
house is, you have to go to the
source of the leak, which might
not be right above you where
you see the water leaking. But
what is your leak, or, in the truer
form, your business bottleneck?
Could it be location, i.e., people
don't know where we are, or is
it that we've angered too many
customers over the years and
need a whole new approach to
gaining new customers who
12 / P IZZATODAY.COM / MAY 2024
don't feel burned by our brand?
Knowing the bottleneck to
profi t means you can undo the
potentially multi-knotted rope
holding you back. A word of
warning, though: the typical
thing people will do is reinforce
the strongest facet of their
restaurant when confronted with
the need to reframe. Suppose
three legs are holding up a table
that represents your restaurant
business. In that case, typical
restaurant owners look at the
leg that they know the best and
seek to reinforce it. " Hey, the
holdup is this super weak leg
over here (marketing), " but then
their actions are ... " Okay, well,
we'll just reinforce the strong leg
better (menu). " Th is egregious
oversight is typical of a chefdriven
restaurant with solid food
but horrible fi nancials, weak
marketing and a lackluster team.
And when confronted with all
that, they go back to what they
know: let's make the food better
and come up with more food
items.
I'll make this even more
obvious. Th ere are only two
ways to improve profi t: get more
customers and/or get more out
of them. If your current base is
saturated, you need new customers,
and a new daily special can
only pull that off if it's overtly
advertised to non-followers.
Th e execution of that math
equation could go down a
thousand diff erent rabbit trails.
Finding the rabbit trail that you
still need to go down more of is
the key, and that means the fi rst
question: what is the thing holding
you back? Is it leadership,
food cost, marketing, customer
satisfaction, speed and space for
more customers? Your knee-jerk
reaction, your gut feeling, and
your instinctual knowledge will
tell you that fi rst rather than
overthinking it. So again, I'll
ask or restate what you already
know: what is your bottleneck to
profi t, and what are you doing
about it?
vectormine/adobestock.com
@mikeybausch
http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM
Pizza Today - May 2024

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