7 Things Kitchen Nightmares Can Teach a Business

The following is a guest post from a friend of mine that runs a startup called Field Aware. Based in Chicago, the company could become a game changer for the mobile sales force and service community.  FYI, Brendan relocated the company from Dallas, TX to Chicago because they thought the opportunity was better here.

As a business owner you may find yourself looking for inspiration in the strangest places, including, perhaps, a reality show featuring a perpetually angry British chef. If you’ve never seen Chef Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” here’s a quick synopsis of the show’s formula:

1. The volatile “Tell it like it is” Chef Ramsay is invited to spend time in a restaurant that needs help.
2. The restaurant’s owners spend the first several minutes having Chef Ramsay try their food and inspect their kitchen.
3. What usually follows the inspection is an extremely uncomfortable few minutes as the owners receive the chef’s unvarnished opinions.
4. The rest of the show features Ramsay working with the owners to improve the restaurant, which usually ends well.

If you want to see an example watch below. Note: it gets ugly.

As I was watching an episode the other day, it occurred to me that there was more to learn here than how to run a restaurant. Hidden amid the tirades, messy kitchen tours and defensive chefs were some great nuggets for small to medium-sized business owners of all kinds. Here are the best ideas I took away.

Bring in outside opinions

Sometimes we’re our own harshest critics, but too often we’re not critical enough of our own work. Usually, it’s because we’re so close to the business and we identify so closely with it that we fail to see the flaws. Restaurant owners bring in Gordon Ramsay because while they know there may be problems, they’ve also realized that they can’t be honest critics of their own business. Even if you think you’re being honest with yourself about your business, you might discover that an objective third-party discovers things you never would have thought about.

In addition, it can be hard for your employees to be honest with you about the deficiencies they see. Even if you make it a safe environment for them to share their opinions, they’re likely to be more open with a friendly stranger. On Kitchen Nightmares, the best ideas often come from the frontline employees, who hear directly from customers all day long. They share this with Chef Ramsay, who puts himself between the owners and the staff. An outside consultant, associate or fellow association member can come into your business and ask questions that you haven’t (or haven’t wanted) to ask. When the information comes, sometimes in the form of constructive criticism, be open to it. Listen, learn and be humble.

Look for a superstar

Chef Ramsay opens himself up to the possibilities of people. As business owners, we don’t always afford these possibilities with the people that work for us and we find ourselves simply mired in running the details of the business, overlooking the real potential in our people. Ramsay uncovers it because he has no preconceptions for where people are best suited. This can happen in any business. People are hired for positions and they do well in them, so they’re left where they are. Sometimes for fear of having to replace them and having a perceived drop off in production. Sometimes the business owner simply is too busy to consider how people may be able to grow and do more for the business.

Spend some time talking to your staff about their goals as well as their thoughts and ideas about the company. Someone may surprise you with their insight or how much they’ve thought about your business. This can become an opportunity to give that person more responsibility, perhaps to make one of their ideas come to fruition. It will help your business as well as their career.

It’s not about you

On Kitchen Nightmares I’ve seen a lot of restaurant owners who identify their business with themselves….a reflection of their personality, their motivations and their goals. This can be a powerful tool for motivating staff and maintaining a cohesive brand throughout the business. However, failing to separate your business from yourself can also be a disaster. The fortunes of the business may rise and fall with the owner’s peaks and valleys. When a business owner is going through a personal crisis or a crisis of faith, the business must remain insulated.

I’ve also seen cases where a business needed to change to keep up with market forces, but the owner was unwilling to change with it. He refused to reconsider what he’d always believed worked and make any changes to the methods that had made the business successful up to that point. Often, despite the protests from his team. The business failed within a year. You are the leader of the business, but you are not the business. Be willing to adjust, make compromises and push your comfort zones for the good of the company.

You’re Nothing without Customers

In one episode of Kitchen Nightmares, a chef regularly kicked out customers who returned food. “They just don’t understand what good food is!” she claimed. It was appalling to see but it made me think about how other businesses treat their customers when they have complaints.

I recently asked the owner of a gas station near my house why half of the gas pumps at his station had been out of order for months. He said because he had enough working pumps and didn’t want to pay to have the broken pumps fixed. I explained that there actually weren’t enough pumps because lines formed regularly and people had to keep driving around to find working pumps, which made the whole station even more difficult to navigate. He told me to get my gas somewhere else if I didn’t like it. Well, I’ve been doing just that ever since.

These are extreme examples, but how do you react when a customer complains or questions your policies? Do you seek to resolve the issue or do you defend yourself? If you feel defensive automatically, stop for a second and ask yourself a simple question: “Could they be right?”

Sloppiness in the kitchen will be discovered

Oh the horrors that have been uncovered in restaurant kitchens and coolers on Kitchen Nightmares. Chef Ramsay always makes a beeline for the kitchen cooler to see how it’s maintained. He’s often disappointed. He spends days working with the kitchen staff to understand how things operate and uncover hazards, inefficiencies or improper techniques so that they can be corrected. All this goes on behind the scenes and customers have no idea how good (or bad) things are in the back.

How are YOUR back office operations? Sloppy? Disorganized? Are your collections behind? Are your invoices taking forever to turn around? If you’re sloppy back there, your customers will know it. And they don’t care what excuses you have (“Our regular invoice person is out this week!” “Our accounting system needs to be upgraded!” “Our last part order hasn’t come in yet!”). All your customer knows is that they’re not getting good service and there are plenty of other places to give their business. Stop and ask yourself “What is the dirty kitchen cooler of my business?”

You can’t (and shouldn’t) do it all

Business owners wear a lot of hats. In the restaurant world, an owner may be many things as well: a head chef, an interior decorator, an accountant, a trainer, etc. In many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares, it becomes obvious fairly quickly that an owner doesn’t necessarily excel at all those different roles. Sometimes, in fact, their most deficient area is cooking. That’s a tough hurdle for any restaurant to overcome.

You may be great at running the business, but that doesn’t mean you’re great at all parts of it. You could be a bad marketer or an ineffective salesperson. You could be jumbling your books or providing inadequate training to salespeople. This doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it just means your talents do have limitations and ignoring those limitations could be hurting your business. Start figuring out how to divide the work smartly. There is likely talent and experience in your organization that’s not being fully utilized.

Simplify

I recall an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where a chef had developed a six-page dinner menu along with a nightly specials menu with 15 more items. There was no way in the world the small kitchen staff could handle that many different items especially when the owner/chef himself wasn’t a great cook (see the previous finding). Diners were confused by all the items, wait staff couldn’t remember all the item descriptions and many of the items were never even ordered.

Has your business gotten unnecessarily complicated? Have you added too many products and services? Have you instituted processes that seemed like a good idea at the time but turned out to be unnecessary? Maybe it’s time to step back and simplify your business. What can you cut out without affecting your ability to serve your customers? How can you be more efficient internally? One customer of ours told us that because they had added so many new services that technician training time had quadrupled and quality had dropped. They decided to cut back some of their less-used services and saw that while they may have missed out on some opportunities, they had drastically reduced training time and improved overall customer satisfaction. Remember, while more is always more it’s not always better.

BONUS: Changes need to stick

Once Chef Ramsay leaves a restaurant, presumably in a better state than when he arrived, it’s up to the restaurant owners to keep the momentum going and make sure that the positive changes stick. This doesn’t always happen and sometimes the restaurant slips back into its bad old ways. Maybe they were only going through the motions of change. Maybe they lacked the leadership and motivation to make real change.

If you’ve run your business the same way for fifteen years, don’t expect to have an easy time changing things. It will take serious effort and frequent check-ins. Set milestones and be realistic about how long it will take to reach them. Then have regular, honest reviews on your progress, or, better, have an outside person check in on your progress. Did you get that new accounting system up and running? Did you turn over marketing to your office manager who has a marketing degree? Gain commitment to the changes and discipline yourself to make them stick.

If you’re lucky, Gordon Ramsay will never come into your business and film the whole thing, but don’t let that stop you from digging in and ending some of your business nightmares.

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