Navigating What Feels Like a Whole New Restaurant Industry - An Interview with Christin Marvin (Part 1)

The restaurant business didn’t just “bounce back” after COVID. It rewired itself, and a lot of us are still trying to run today’s shifts with yesterday’s playbook. We talk with Christin Marvin of Columbine Hospitality about what happens when institutional knowledge disappears, why staffing feels like a grind, and how to rebuild a team when experience is thinner and expectations are changing fast.

We get concrete about restaurant hiring practices that work now: hiring for attitude and culture fit, defining core values as real behaviors, and building interview guides that help managers stop guessing. From there we dig into the unglamorous fix that changes everything: documented training. SOPs, checklists, onboarding steps, and clear standards turn “why can’t they just get it?” into coaching you can repeat, measure, and improve. We also talk Gen Z at work, why the constant “why” can actually force healthier management, and how growth paths plus frequent one-on-ones drive retention.

Leadership development is a major thread, especially for GMs and assistants. We break down 30-60-90 day plans, weekly alignment check-ins, and why owners have to slow down long enough to set the mark before they complain someone missed it. We also touch burnout and Positive Intelligence, plus how AI and better systems can free leaders to be present on the floor. Kristen shares resources like Multi-Unit Mastery at irfbook.com and a gifted coaching session for listeners who want to take action.

If this hits home, subscribe, share with an operator friend, and leave a review so more people in hospitality can find the tools to run better shifts and build stronger teams.

Make sure to follow us on Instagram.com/barninja and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Also be sure to stop by the store at barninja.com to purchase a J Plate bottle opener to help keep the show on the air! Thanks for tuning in! Mike, Bill & Kayla

Transcript

Welcome, Tech, And Checklists

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey Bar Ninja Nation and welcome to the Bar Ninja Podcast, where we talk about everything from trials and tribulations, from life behind the bar, tips and tricks to make you a better bartender and a better drinker. Join your host, Bill Thornton and Kaylee Lee, and yours truly, Mike Gates. Let's go have some fucking fun. Pretty funny. The uh we were laughing, we had tech issues once, and we had a chef guest on. And um, so we got to this point. Okay, we're okay, everybody can hear each other. Okay, it's great. And then we do the podcast, and at the end of it, Kayla's like, Did you ever hear record?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Oh, I heard I heard you say that on one of your shows. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

In an hour and a half long podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah. And I was like, man, live and learn. Uh checklists, people. Checklists. Yeah. So now it's like the first thing I do.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

100%. I had to write myself a checklist in the very beginning to make sure I I didn't because I did that once and I was like, I'm never gonna do this again. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

That's exactly what I'm saying. And I'm I've jumped from iPad to laptop back to I'm on my phone now. So we are all over.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

We hit up on your phone every once in a while. It it always is the easiest. But yeah. Yeah, it is. Um, yeah, so uh tell us. I know, I mean it's I keep it simple. I've I basically leave mine set up and then just come in and hit record. Yeah, so uh tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into I guess food and beverage in the very beginning.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Cool, and we're recording. I just gotta ask.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

We're recording. We are recording. We are recording. We already went through that. Like right before you jumped on, we were laughing. Bill's like, you have record, right? Yeah. He did, he saw the countdown on his screen.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Perfect. I I had the tech issues, so I apologize. Um, I like a lot of people, restaurants were my first job. I started

Kristen’s Restaurant Origin Story

SPEAKER_02 2:00

cooking when I was 15 at my family's favorite Mexican restaurant where we used to just go have the best meals. I went to school with their kids. We loved the family that owned, they had two locations in uh where I grew up, just outside of Kansas City, Missouri. And the restaurant's uh still in operation today, one of them is. And I think, you know, I was 15, I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to start working, I wanted to start making some money. And um I went somewhere that I was comfortable and familiar. You know, I I don't, I I obviously didn't have a resume to put together. I didn't go looking around at a bunch of places. I just went to a place that I thought was really comfortable. I don't even know if I asked for the job. I probably should ask my mom. She probably just asked for me, like, hey, what's available? Um, and so that was kind of my first, you know, four A into the into the restaurant world.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

A large percentage of employees I've had over the years have been their parents being like, hey, my kid needs a job. And I'm like, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah. Tell them to be here at 9 a.m. 100%. You you were saying you were talking on a different podcast recently

Post-COVID Staffing Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 3:00

about, and something Bill's always harped on COVID and like the loss of talent, and now there was a huge changing of the guard pre-COVID and after COVID, like with the professional server and the pre professional bartender, and like that need now for more training and development. That you didn't even need it as much before because there was a big talent base. And that talent base, like you've said before, is was like interested in being the best and doing good. And you know, now it's like you're really having to coach up that yeah, I didn't feel like you had to coach up before COVID as much.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah, I mean, it's it you're so right. It, you know, we know that six million people left the industry during the pandemic, and those positions have been filled, but they've been filled with people with less and less experience. And so it is putting pressure on every single level of operations. It's starting with hire, you know, restaurants that we coach and and clients we work with all the time. We immediately have to start looking at their hiring practices. Do you have core values for the business? What are you measuring a good candidate against? Because we've had to retrain everybody in the industry of what to actually look for, right? They were looking for skills and those skill sets went away. And now they're like, I don't know what to look for anymore. It's like, well, we got to look at culture. We got to look at core values, we've got to look at what type of characteristics you're looking for in somebody. You know, we need to look for people that are that can make eye contact, that are engaging, that like people, uh, right. And that really clearly are aligned with the expectations of the job. And so it's putting pressure on interview skills for young managers. It's putting pressure on training programs that have been non-existent in a lot of the independent space for a while because, you know, like you just said, Mike, we had such institutional knowledge within the ranks that we could rely on these seasoned people to teach people the way. And now we are having to document every single thing. I was just having a conversation with a client this morning, and he said, I've got a I've got a new GM. He's been with us for about five months. He just keeps saying how overwhelmed he is. Our expectation when we hired him was to work 40 to 50 hours a week. And he keeps scheduling himself for 29 hours a week. And I said, Okay, we he said, I shouldn't have to have this conversation. I said, Well, we got, but we we haven't done any coaching yet uh in the four to five months that he's been with you. So we got to talk about resetting expectations and alignment. He said, He'll come into work and then when the shift he feels like the shift is good, he just leaves. Even if he's scheduled till five or six o'clock, he'll just go home. He's like, You guys got it, everything is great, right? So he just there was just, I said, I can't believe I'm saying this, but we just have to set much clearer expectations these days for every single person because I think a lot of veteran restaurant owners and operators have just been so used to people understanding how the industry works and being willing to put them in the grit and the hours and do whatever it takes to take care of the team and the guests because they understood the impact and the payback. And this new generation of people coming in is much more focused on setting their own boundaries, quality of life, getting home, taking care of their families, not taking work home with them, not wanting to work overtime. And the operators that are fighting it like crazy are so frustrated and having a really hard time. And the ones that are embracing it are going, okay, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna change things about operations. I'm gonna hire more people in order to, you know, to um counteract this. And they're making change, but it's a it's a real sticky time right now. And and I think it's gonna take us at least five to ten years to start to build this institutional knowledge back.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

I could not agree more. I could not agree more. We've got operations that are uh one that's closing now as we speak, and it has just been an absolute uphill battle. We cannot get people that are going to commit to the hours and there and everything you just went went over. I I and it's implementing, I think we all know that training for myself, uh, there was a book that we've mentioned before called Success That Sells that came out way back in the early 90s. And I I was given that book by by my good friend and manager, and you know, and he's an operator and owns multiple restaurants. And I just, you know, at that point in my career was like, I don't need to look at a book or whatever, but I did. And that's where the training really sat in with me and everyone else on the team and everyone on board. And it is so hard to instill that in new hires nowadays. That just the training has changed so much.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

It's so you're so right. And I think, you know, I worked in um uh for a local ice cream company for two years during the pandemic. So we had seven locations in Denver. It's called Sweek Out, it's one of the best ice cream places out there. Please come visit uh whenever you come out. Um, it was my first time working with, and these are very high volume shops. First time working with college kids and high schoolers, okay, since I was that age. Now each shop had 30 to 60 employees at a given time, right? We would double the size of our staff for summertime, and we would start hiring in January to get ready for April one. Um, it was like I said, it was really high volume, and 90% of these employees were all part-time. So we had to have very clear guidelines and SOPs in place for uh, I mean, uh, an interview sheet, a scoring sheet, um, expectations really, really clearly dialed in and training programs that had documented steps every single day. Day one, this is everything that you covered, and checked off. Day two, day three, day four. I mean, it was so detailed. I'd never seen anything like it before. And we would have, we had so much coaching instilled in the business. Um, our managers were amazing, whether they were 16 or 18 or 21 years old. They they they dealt with the same things, right? People just thinking it was okay to not show up. Or uh they, you know, we'd build the schedules two weeks out. So we'd ask for requests three weeks out and they'd show up and say, Well, my parents are taking me on vacation tomorrow. You know, they didn't tell me. So we really had to coach. This is why you got to have these conversations with your parents. This is why it's important that you show up for work. You got to take care of the team. But we also told them, hey, we're trying to make you the best employee ever when you leave, like make you better than when you came in here. We're building your resume for life here. So you can't just not show up. And you got to think about the long-term implications of what this is gonna look like for you as a human being, as an employee. And and and we we hired some really smart kids that were awesome and very, you know, disciplined and good got good grades and and wanted to play sports and all that, and and they got it. Um, you know, it took a couple conversations, but they got it.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

We um worked in a couple of restaurants, James the Madison University, which is a college in Virginia, and you had the same problem where you know, you would start pushing the college employees, you know, well, I know it's spring break, but we're not closing for spring break, you know, and you were making $200 a night, you know, for the last three we need you next week too. And people, well, this is not my career, you know. Well, it's my career, and like, you know, you almost had to have like an accountability culture more and let them know that it's not like you're saying it's not casual. You can't just be like, Well, I'm not coming in next week because of X, Y, Z. And so that that's a tougher kind of it's a conversation that's had more now, Gen Z.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

We've seen we've seen so much of a change where uh, you know, Blacksburg, Virginia Tech in the 90s, college students were working because they needed the money. Uh and you know, the social aspects are always great in the restaurant industry. And now that just really doesn't exist in Blacksburg, you know. And just speaking of towns, you know, a town that I know very well. Operators, nobody the kids aren't working, which is, you know, uh understandable. They maybe don't need the money or what or whatever the the reasoning is. And it's still the like you're saying, I mean, w we really are probably 10 to 15 years out of I'm just so curious about everything that you're doing on your end, Kristen, with your your company, because it is such an uphill battle. We are. You know, it's all about training and getting the people that are interested and want to do the job, but I don't know where we're getting people from. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

You know, two of the two of the ice cream shops that we had in um with Suical were in Boulder, uh Boulder, Colorado, major college town. And those shops had, you know, I mean, the ice cream industry is typically 100% turnover anyway. Those shops were about 125, 130%. They were just always hiring. And I will say that what made the difference was our managers were so good at doing one-on-ones with those employees and constantly checking in on are you happy? You're getting what you need, uh, let's check in on performance, but also what do you want to learn more about? So they were constantly talking about development. And what that did for them was created a culture of development and learning and made sure that people weren't stagnant, but it also helped develop a bench of recruitment um of you know candidates. So in these shops, when managers, managers rarely had to post ads, they would just go, they would message the team on Slack and say, or we use Schedule Fly and say, Hey, um, we've got an opening. And people would start firing in, going, I want my friend in, I want my friend in, I want my friend in. So it there we had to get real uh deep into the culture to figure out what was actually motivating these people and figure out how we could accommodate that.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

But it was it was uh And it's hand hand in hand with the industry. We know from starting when we did and going through it, that family mentality that we've always that's always existed and has helped with with all, I think, of all of our success in

Coaching Gen Z And Building Culture

SPEAKER_01 12:40

the industry. And like you're saying, it's like, oh yeah, I want my friend to come in. I'm gonna be working with Tom and Pina, and and they're and they're building that energy together, and that's what makes the uh operation so successful. And yeah, it's it's instilling that. It's almost like you just really do want to recruit friends instead of individuals, which can and cannot work.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Absolutely. I think the growth thing that you're keen on is too like that generation seems to really want to know they're moving forward. And so even if you're creating levels of roles where it's a junior server, senior server, whatever, where somebody feels like they're moving, there is a path to move forward. Yeah. Um, internally, even if you're just creating more baby steps and like benchmarks so that the person knows that they have you did a good job, you've moved to this level.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Um absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

And they're so the ones that I have spent time with and and have talked to, and it they're so passionate about their mission and the purpose and working for great companies, right? They want to know the ins and outs of everything. They want to work for a respectable company, respectable company. Um, they want to know that what they're doing is making an impact. And again, that's putting pressure on companies to be more community-minded, uh, you know, mindful, to be more sustainability focused, to have their mission together, to have a clear vision together, right? These are the a lot of the fundamental pieces that we help companies put into place. But yeah, you're right. They they want to know like why am I here? They want the why, right? 100%. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Definitely. And that's something like Gen Z also will point out, not point out the by voting with her feet, but like it's hard to have a bad manager with a Gen Z crowd because you can't just you have to do this, you have to do that. You know, you really do have to massage that new generation a little bit, or just kind of change, we're managing them differently than we would have managed a Gen X or a millennial, you know. Just it's an evolution of management.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Well, and again, I think pre-pandemic, we were able to say things like we do this, this is what we do. I need you to do this, I need you to do this. And they're questioning everything. And it's making us go, okay, wait, maybe I should stop saying, well, this is just the way that we've always done it, right? Which we know is the line that's going to kill any momentum in the industry. But what I love about it is, you know, our clients are coming to us going, I'm getting challenged on this, I'm getting challenged on this. And I'm like, well, let's talk about it for a second. Does that make sense, what you've been doing? And sometimes they're like, no, you're right, it doesn't. We should probably change, you know. So I think it there's give and take there for sure. But they are pointing out some things about the industry that just don't work anymore and haven't worked for a while. And so kudos to them. I know, I know it's challenging and it's frustrating when so many things that you're doing on a daily basis are being questioned for sure. It's taking a lot more time and energy from our teams, um, which is putting, again, it's putting pressure on workload and productivity. You know, we were having a lot of conversations with clients right now about AI and how to build out AI systems from your executive team level so that it's freeing up your teams from not having to sit and and become the expert in all their tech and figure out how to run all these reports and how to find everything that's a complete mess in Google Drive when they need a training material. Like, how do you set all that stuff up behind the scenes for them so that AI is really a thinking partner and an assistant so that they have the energy and the time and the capacity to be on the floor with the teams? Because that that's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

And it is, it really is. What are you what are you seeing or implementing for that matter for effective methods for developing

Hiring Managers And The First 90

SPEAKER_01 16:05

the managers? It's it seems like it's so much harder to get somebody in a general manager position and assistant manager position. Back in the house is a nightmare.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

It it is really, really it's more challenging than it's ever been. Um, when someone comes to us and says, hey, we need help with recruitment, or when anybody comes to us and says we want to scale, we immediately say, slow down for a second. We're gonna look at your leadership team. We're gonna make sure that you've got the right number of people in the right positions in place, because pre-pandemic, we could promote people based on loyalty and make up positions for them, right? Top line allowed for that, margins were good enough to do that. We can't now. And so we make sure we've got the positions that make sense for the business first and foremost. And then we start looking at where the gaps in development are or where the holes are that need to be filled. If there are holes that need to be filled, we obviously look at, okay, what are the options, external or internal? If it's external, we make sure we've got really tight job descriptions set with core values and hiring guides so that people have something to measure these candidates against. If we're talking about executive level positions, we are having people do um a CEO, for example, director of operations, a couple of candidates that we've just helped place. We are having those candidates present 30, 60, 90 day transitional plans to the leadership team so that they understand where their focus is, how they're gonna transition into the roles, put some skin in the game of what that's gonna look like. And we also have the companies make sure that they have 30, 60, 90 day plans in place as well so that there's alignment there and then that somebody is doing one-on-ones with that new hire coming in on that 30, 60, 90 every single week, just sitting down, checking in where are you at? Where are you learning? Where do you feel great? Where do you need additional support? It's so we know how important the first 90 days is. We've got to build that confidence and we've got to make sure that there's alignment there. But we also by putting in these systems and these processes, it helps the operators who are desperate right now slow down, which is so hard to do when you when you are short staffed. And and we try to narrow down to two to three candidates instead of just taking the first person that walks in the door or hiring that person that you worked with 10 or 15 years ago that you trust and you have a good relationship with. Because again, so many things have changed these days. So we've got to be more diligent about every single aspect of hiring.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

I love hearing core values because it's it's actually something I really hadn't put that much thought into, I guess, even though it's almost like a common sense thing to me. But how are you uh representing those core values or trying to help people represent the core values, you know, and present that to new employees?

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Is that within training or so it a couple things. I I was with you years ago. I didn't understand core values. I thought they were fluff and woo-woo, and I didn't really understand how they were showing up in the business and how they were guiding us. I was like, ah, these are just things that live on a wall somewhere and it's a poster. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

In the kitchen, in the dish fit. Yeah.

unknown 19:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

We have them for our for our business, uh, you know, I that those core values are very much aligned with who I am and how what behaviors I want to see show up in the business all the time. And we coach to those constantly. So we do the same with clients. We sit around with the leadership team, we ask what's important to them. We have them tell us stories about let's talk about a time in your life when you were the happiest. What was going on for you? Uh, what was the who were you around? What was the environment? What were you doing? Because when you are most fulfilled in your life and you're happy, that's when your core values are firing in all cylinders. I didn't know what my core values were until I was 40 years old, and now I'm living them and it's great. But I immediately know I hear you. I hear you. I immediately know when they're out of balance. And so I can point back and go, okay, this one's a little bit wobbly. Let's figure out what's going on. From a restaurant perspective, from a company perspective, to answer your question, once we have them identified, they are infused in the interview questions, in the interview process. We identify the actual behaviors. What does consistency look like? What does freshness look like? What does integrity look like? What does respect look like on a daily basis? What does hospitality look like in our organization? We hire to those to make sure that there's a match because when the days get really hard and the shifts get tough, you're connected to your core values and keeps people aligned. Once we've hired people that are a fit for those, uh are aligned with those core values, then we create performance docs, coaching docs that are that have those core values infused. So they're always top of mind and people are always being coached back to those. So it's not, oh, GM Tommy thinks I'm doing a really awful job. Tommy goes, hang on, we need to talk about consistency because you're a little wobbly in this area. This is what it means to the organization, and here's what we need to do to close the gaps. So it gives the managers something of concrete um value that they can take to the teams and go, okay, I know how to hold managers accountable or uh hourlies accountable now. I know what behaviors I want to see of them. Uh, and so it makes because coaching is just very intimidating for somebody that's never done it before. So this really anchors the entire organization, but you've got to talk about it often. It can't just live.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

You make the subjective objective.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

That's all yeah. Yeah, that's great. What do you use disk analysis, Myers, Brett? Are you guys using any kind of like personality tests when you do recruiting?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Or like what's your You are the second person today that's asked me for personality test.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Although that's it's really hot right now. A lot of marketing or a lot of uh recruiters are using there's so many tests out there. I was I have a friend that has tried them all, and then she is now at would I have a beer with this person? I'm hiring attitude, I'll train skill. Would I have a beer with

Core Values That Guide Coaching

SPEAKER_00 21:55

this person? Would they fit into our culture and then I'll train them what they need to know? So, like it's when You talk to hiring managers, it's so frustrat, it's like frustrating because they're like there's no silver bullet to do it perfect.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Yeah, you know, I think I think those tools are all valuable. There's so many of them that are connected. I think you can it's so great to have a tool that you can use to measure your employees against, and then something to to use consistently and gather feedback for. I've taken a disk assessment in the middle of one of my careers, and unfortunately, and it was very well facilitated. But uh in in my experience with some of those personality tests, I've taken them and I love learning about the self-awareness. And then I walk out the door and I go back to the restaurants and I forget, or I don't know how to apply it, or it just kind of falls flat. So we um we love positive intelligence and the saboteur assessment because we love training clients on how to recognize their negative thoughts and how to manage their negative thoughts and help them focus on um growth mindset. I I have done a lot of studies and work around positive intelligence for myself when I burnt out in the career in my career and lost my way with um with hospitality and desperately wanted to get back to it. It's the the cool thing about positive intelligence is it's it's relatable to everyone. We all have what we call saboteurs, which are all the negative thoughts that cause all of our stress and our frustration and our anxiety and our depression, right? Sounds like you you've heard of it and you know what I'm talking about. Um, I've done workshops for AGMs on this and they just eat it up. And then I've done workshops on it with um operators that have been in the industry for 20 years, and it reaches, you know, every single level, which is really, really cool. Again, the most important thing is we were having a conversation with a client today about that. We were planning our next leadership workshop with them. There's gotta be some sort of like we create action and a commitment and accountability with, we co-create that with the with anyone that's in a leadership workshop or taking an assessment. There has got to be something beyond the four walls when that assessment's done or that workshop is done. Somebody's got to continue to do that work with them to make sure that these new habits that they want to put in place stick because we know as humans it takes us 30 to 60 times to do something over and over and over again before it becomes a habit. And like I said, the worst thing that can happen is you invest all this time and energy and money, they walk right in the door, they just get right back to operations as it was.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah. You've also said that it needs to be 50% leadership, 50% on the personal side, right? That development has to be from the employee and the leader equally.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

I love a person the hard way. I uh the minute I was so passionate in my 20s about investing in myself through studying to become a smalllier, studying uh for bar smarts, um reading setting the table. It was it was my guide to to everything about the restaurant industry. I was always looking for ways to grow and develop. And when I stopped that, that's when my burnout started because I wasn't learning, I wasn't growing, I was just going through the motions. And so I write about, you know, I write a a lot about that in my first book, just to tell people like, please don't rely 100% on the leaders in your company. I I did not have a great leadership at some levels. And I I unfortunately worked for somebody that did not care about leadership development, that if you didn't meet expectations, would rather slap a performance improvement plan in front of your face. Yeah, you p that's coaching out, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah, it's it's pipping. Pipping's coaching out instead of coaching up, right? Pitts should be dead, like it's not a performance improvement plan.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

I'm 100%, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Yeah, I don't like them. It's a negative yeah, it's a negative connotation to the employee. Now you're like, now the person's like, I'm not doing it. You're just telling the person you're not doing a good job, you know, and half the time they're not given the tool to do a better job. It completely you're just pipped by the manager.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Just pipped. It is a coaching out. It it is, you're so right. It it comp that completely spun me out. That was a low point of my career, and I'm grateful for the failure, uh, is how I how I look at that, because you can't have success without it. But I want to make sure that the younger generation understands this is not all on the company's shoulders. This is not all on the leaders' shoulders because we are all human and we all have to invest in ourselves and grow and develop. And I put the leaders around me on a really high pedestal uh that was not fair to them. And uh boy, it did not work out in my favor.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

I think we've been all been there, or maybe not all been

Burnout, Mindset, And Self-Investment

SPEAKER_01 26:30

there. Um circling back, one of the uh uh bartenders has just been working, working, working, working, working, working, and he he's burnt out and he's lost his positivity, but he still has this intelligence about the capability and just having a set-down talk with them and saying it was other people in the on the team are starting to see where this person, you know, he's been held, you know, as the top bartender and and the performer and the guy everybody leans on, but he just doesn't have that anymore. And speaking with him and and him realizing that he wasn't being a positive part of it because he wasn't managing it properly within himself, then he all of a sudden, it just changed how he looked at the job. It changed the burnout, it changed everything. And unfortunately, that a lot of that was related to uh management, not necessarily doing a great job, but it's just when you were talking about the the negativity is is a killer. It is the worst thing you can have uh coming at us when we're in the industry. And uh I'm I'm I just think that is a great term. I love positive intelligence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

So how many like your like normal client? You know, I know I was studying like scaling and like Japanese management philosophy, or you know, you can open three units and I can schedule that by myself. I can schedule three shops. When I when I get to my fourth, now the process breaks, and now I have to basically delegate

Scaling With Systems That Stick

SPEAKER_00 27:55

that scheduling between more people. I have to give up control. And then when I get to and then the process I make for that'll make it to nine units, but when I open my tenth unit, it all breaks again. So it's like multiple, it's like three, nine, twenty-seven, and ninety-nine. Those all your processes break at the fourth unit, at the tenth unit, at the twenty-eighth unit. Um, what does your normal client kind of look like? And are you seeing that philosophy hold true?

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Oh, I mean, the beautiful and crazy thing and frustrating thing about this industry, as you both know, is every single concept is completely different, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:32

It's true. Yeah. Some are simple, some are complex.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

They are all unique and they are magical and they are beastly. And I would say that it depends on the processes, and it depends on how long they've been in place, and it depends on that the leadership team, if they were bought in um to those processes. We've seen clients that have one or two restaurants. Uh, they that because they have no processes, they broke it too. Um right. And and they can't get off their cell phone, they they're constantly getting texts around the clock, they can't take days off. You know, I think that what we do when we have we we have clients come to us that are, you know, they've got two or they've got three locations and they say, okay, we're ready to scale. Again, we take a look at what's in place and we say, okay, we're gonna take a look at these systems in addition to the people, we're gonna put systems and processes in place for you. If your goal is 10, let's look at the systems and processes that we're gonna put into place now for 10. Let's start acting like that. If we, you know, and you got to give and take there, obviously, with some tech platforms that are expensive and it won't make sense. But we want to create systems and processes that are gonna scale with the business so that they're not having to recreate those things. Yeah, at three and at six and at nine. Um, because we, you know, I this one of the biggest groups that I worked with when I was transitioning out of independent independent operations kind of unknowingly. We went from six to forty-eight locations in seven years. And you talk about a flood of systems and tech, you know, when we didn't have any. Um, because we had such strong systems in place, we were able to scale that quickly. But I learned so uh so much about how to roll out successful change. There's a very clear, you know, multiple multi-step process to do that and do it the right way and do it slowly so that you are not adding more chaos to the company and more chaos to to the employees. And when you do that, when you start to roll out new processes and new systems with confidence and with ease, boy, the trust and the respect that you get from your team is a game changer. And that's where retention starts to to uh to rise, leadership starts to get more confident, and then that's where scalability starts to become more sustainable.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Got it. Yeah, we used to uh for consulting breakdown, all problems are a process problem, a capacity problem, or a people problem. So, you know, you go behind the bar and it was like, Well, there's your problem. You have two wells. We had there was one bar that I did and uh it was a college bar, and they were like they had never rung $10,000 in one night. And mine used a long time ago. Drinks are like three bucks for a real drink. So um but I was like, we can do $10,000 tomorrow night. And I'm like, what's what's your $8020? And he's like, Well, Bud Light 22s, we sell, you know, and I was like, okay, here we go. Over there, yeah. I was like, Yeah, porter bars, you like catering bars? He's like, Yeah, I was like, all right, put a porter bar in that corner. All it sells is Bud Light 22s, put a sign over that bar that says Bud Light 22s, $2. I'm like, what's your other thing? He's like, Red Bull and vodkas. And this is Red Bull is new at that point. I'm like, all right, put your other porta bar in the other corner. It's Red Bull and vodka's five bucks, whatever it is, and then that all that's all that bar. And then, like, let's free up the actual bar that's making cocktails. And um, they did way over ten thousand dollars at night, you know, and that was a capacity problem. You couldn't, you know, well, we're four deep at the bar. And I'm like, you should not be four deep. That's the bar's fault for being four deep. Like, no bars should be that busy. You're the bar is not serving drinks fast enough. Um, but uh, so but it's funny, like now, anytime I walk in a place, and I always when I talk to owners, I'm like, get out of the parking lot in your restaurant and just look at it for a second. The awnings torn over there, your sign's got a burnout letter in it, you need to paint the fascia board. Like what I'm gonna pothole in your parking lot. You know, and it's like so many owners are showing the weeds, they don't go in their own bathroom to see the sink needs to be caulked. Right, you know, um, and so how do you change, how do you get them to slow down enough and like really pay attention to the business they're operating?

SPEAKER_02 32:40

The owners themselves. Um, we create that space for them. So we work with operators for an hour every other week. Sometimes we'll have longer format meetings depending on the project they're you know, what we're working on, if it's people, um, org charts, uh, vision sessions, what have you. Those are going to be some longer meetings. But one hour every other week, we slow down, we carve out that time for them, we dive deep into the problems. You know, it's it's fairly easy for us to create checklists and things that, you know, um, again, we did this this week, how we're 16 and 20 year olds, we're doing a full walkthrough, full 360 once a week of every single aspect of the space um and keeping it clean and sharp. You've gotta have as an owner, if you are as a visionary, you've gotta have an integrator, right? You've gotta have somebody that can implement every single thing that you want. I think that where we see a lot of owners fall, you know, or um not feeling great about their operations is they're trying to be the owner and the visionary and the integrator. So we have a we have a client, they have one really successful restaurant that just got nominated for a Michelin award. They've got two owners, one's the executive chef, one's the um one's the GM. We've been working for a year to get them out of those positions so that we can backfill with leadership so that they can open number two and they can open number three. They're having a really hard time giving up control.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Is it the give up? Yeah, they don't they want to you like you have to stop doing the work to scale. You've got to trust, trust and verify.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

But you cannot scale. You can't be in the kitchen and scale.

SPEAKER_02 34:21

So we have been picking one thing on their list slowly, slowly, slowly to delegate and develop so that they can slowly earn trust. But look, they've been doing this for 25 years. Like this stuff doesn't happen overnight. We can't come in and be like, just delegate this, this, and this, and this, and you'll be fine and you're ready to scale, right? This stuff takes time. And so we that's you know, we work with clients for years and years because they

Delegation, Integrators, And Trust

SPEAKER_02 34:45

have to they have to test it. Like you said, they've got to develop their team, they've got to let people make mistakes. We've got to coach them when they come to us furious about that mistake and they want to fire that person, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

That's gotta be so difficult because it is such a from an operator standpoint, it's that is a very difficult thing to do. But you have you have to train, you have to have your replacements.

SPEAKER_02 35:07

Well, we've got to get that everything that they've got in their head. We've got to get that down somewhere on paper for the teams.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Do you find that a lot of restaurants don't have any processes when you when you get there? Are you basically writing the ship first, like getting everything straight first, or that you finding people have lots of manuals and books and processes?

SPEAKER_02 35:25

No, no, they need everything.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

But everywhere I've ever worked, they need I mean, I don't know that many places I've worked that. I mean, maybe there's a manual that was like photocopied from another restaurant and like stitched together. It looks like a ransom note.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Basically, it's got stains on it. Yeah, it's got stains on it. Yeah, no doubt.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

It's definitely a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Like it's been lost, and then like, hey, do you have oh, we have one over like go copy Terry's and then we'll give it to the new guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

No, it's it it is just again, it's what we talked about, you know, in the very beginning of the show. Um, in terms of training, you had this institutional knowledge, people got it. It was very clear when you delegated, people understood exactly why you were delegating. And um, and so people didn't really put these things in place. And now when operators are getting so frustrated with their teams, my first question is always where is the expectation that you've set for them? Where is it written? Was it in the job description? Was it in the employee manual? What are you coaching them to? What standards are?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

That's a good point. What is what standard are you holding them to? Where is the bar? Did you set it?

SPEAKER_02 36:28

100%. And and a lot, you know, what I always say to operators is every single time you bitch about or complain. Sorry, I don't know if I can cuss. Oh no, you can't.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

We cuss. You can definitely cuss. It's a restaurant business.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

So we are that crew. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

Fabulous. Every single time you bitch, uh bitch and complain about a staff member, it should be a trigger that there's a conversation on the other side of that that you haven't had yet.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

It's like, did they miss the mark or did you set the mark?

SPEAKER_02 36:56

100%.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

And bitching just doesn't get anything done, I don't think, anymore. Lord knows we could do it, and I've done it, and it's been done to me uh over the years, but now you just have to lead with, you know, just positive energy. It is it is key to anything you're going to be doing in this industry.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

Yeah, and just we've got to be more clear and concise in our language than we ever have before. And again, when you've been doing this for 20 years, it's really hard to break down, distill down those little bite-sized things that you haven't 20, you haven't thought about in 20 years. That takes so much time and energy away from running the business and managers are going through it too. I mean, again, it's just it's harder. Everything is more taxing because we are constant, they are living in an environment right now of constantly training every single day, whether they've got new hires in the building or not. Everyone's a new hire at this point. That's the mentality.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

And the rotating. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

I I where can

Free Book, Coaching Offer, And Wrap

SPEAKER_00 37:55

people find you when we started? We didn't actually say what your company name was.

SPEAKER_02 37:58

Oh, that's okay. It's uh Columbine Hospitality is uh the name of our company. Anybody listening to this show, if there's something that we've talked about that's resonated, two things I would love to offer. Um, multi-unit, we we'd love to give you a copy of multi-unit mastery, and you can get that book at irfbook.com. So that's international international. It's the second time I said that today. Independent restaurant frameworkbook.com is what IRF stands for. That's a framework that we created after three years of working with um 40 independent multi-unit groups, going, oh, okay, everybody's missing the same things here. We need to, we need to create a framework here. So grab that book at that link if you're interested in um those tools and resources and walk you through implementation. And then if you want to take a deeper dive, let's do a gifted coaching session for anybody that's listening to the show. Once you download the book, you'll immediately get a link to my personal calendar. Grab some time on there. Let's start moving through, like let's create some space and start moving into some action because the stuff is so important.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

It is amazing. I think you were just doing incredible things for the industry. I want to get we need to get a round table going. We need to get everybody in the same room, a couple of operators I know personally. We'll we'll go to Denver and I'll sit down and just have some amazing conversations because you can tell you are you are dialed in and trying to do the right stuff, Kristen.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

Thank you. I appreciate it. I I am so, you know, again, you like as I said earlier, I've been in this industry since I was 15. Love, you know, fine dining, high volume. I've been in a part of so many wonderful concepts from speakeasy to barbecue to French to Italian. I am so grateful for that. This industry has made me who I am today. Feisty as hell, uh bossy, whatever you want to call me, you know, a fighter. Some people say I'm too much. I love that shit.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Um just gritty. No such thing is too much. There's no such thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

But I just, you know, we are just giving back um to the industry. And it there, you know, things happen for a reason, and the timing is just it's so right right now to be able to offer so many wonderful resources to people. And and you guys know, just doing a show and like being able to create content that reaches people where exactly where they're at now they want to learn. It's nuts. Like, I never would have thought I would be doing this, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

We were oh well, the funny thing is we were gonna do a podcast just for bartenders and like mixology. And then we kind of started talking about kind of what was wrong with the industry, and it would turned into more like owners listening to us, and then all of a sudden it's like, man, 10,000 people are downloaded, and then Spotify's like, You guys podcasts listen to more than 98 or 89% of other podcasts. And it's like like I mean, we were ranked ninth on Feed Spot for bartending, and I was like, we haven't even talked about mixology yet, but we've been stuck on kind of this. It's the operators need your help, especially independent. The world, the restaurant business changed after COVID. The your staff has changed, the everything is evolving. And if you've been in the the industry 20 years, great, your skill set is not applicable to the current situation. And like you you need a code, you know, like people need to call you if they have one restaurant or 10 restaurants or have one than one 10.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Right, or if or it's time to get out. And we have a lot of clients that are working, we're working through succession too. They just realize, like, and I get it, right? It's like I've done something for so many years, I should be the expert. Why is it this hard? Why do I need all this tech now? And and you know, it's a hard evolution for people. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Because you've got uh you open table, resin, your whole platform, your customer, you know, there's like now you're talking about CRMs back in you know in the 90s, it was like, what's the POS system? But your POS wasn't integrated with your CRM, and then and then do you do reservation? You know, so there's like it it just gets more complex by the day. So and also we would go ahead, G. I was saying when you need marketing in there now, too. Like you need now, you need to be a digital marketing specialist, as you know. So a lot of restaurants can't afford to pay thousands of dollars a month for the just for the uh that we teach a lot of in addition to helping restaurants scale.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

We also have a couple programs where we teach restaurant owners and operators that want to transition out uh and start their own coaching consulting companies. We teach them how to do that. And uh it's so cool to see how many fractional positions there are now: fractional training, fractional uh CFO, fractional somebody that can help you with your um online reservations, fractional digital marketing, somebody that can just write your newsletter. I mean, it's just so cool um to have all these resources, but it's it's really hard for operators to understand where to find those resources. So kudos to you guys for um for the show and the success. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Yeah, no, thanks for being here. We're having a blast. Just started doing interviews. We've done, I guess, four or five interviews totally. So we'll get this, I'll get this one edited out real quick. Anything else you want to kind of mention, talk about, wrap up?

unknown 42:36

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bar Ninja Podcast. Please be sure to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast player and join the Bar Ninja Nation that has over 7,000 bartenders in it by going to www.barninja.com. And you can enter your email until next time. See you then.