1. What is Ryan’s background and does he have restaurant experience?
Ryan’s culinary journey began as a teenager after watching the great chefs and personalities on TV.
This led him to the Culinary Arts program at Johnson & Wales. After graduating with honors, Ryan worked in countless restaurants, at 5 Star Hotels, and operated 4 restaurants. Other owners took note of his success and began seeking his advice.
As The Restaurant Boss, Ryan is the most followed restaurant coach in the world and a professional speaker, helping Restaurant Owners and Operators increase profits, improve operations, and scale and grow their businesses.
Learn more about Ryan here.
2. What services do you offer?
I am delighted you want to work with me and appreciate you asking about my services. There are 2 ways we can work together one-on-one.
1. 90-Minute Strategy Session. This option is perfect if you want to explore a coaching relationship with me but aren’t ready to commit to a long-term relationship just yet or if you just need help with something you are stuck on. All clients go through this session so we can set initial goals and get questions answered. Sometimes it’s all a person needs to get going. Sometimes they want more. After this 90-minute call, you will have a very clear strategy and path toward your goals. Here are a few things we can talk about on this call:
– Lowering Food Cost
– Lowering Labor Cost
– Creating a New Menu
– Improving the Management of your Staff
– Training Program for your Staff
The price for this session is $497. Book your session here.
2. Coaching / Mentoring. When you decide it’s time to take your restaurant business on a fast-growth track and you are ready to enjoy more money, more freedom, and smoother operations, coaching is perfect for you! This option gives you the most one-on-one access to me and offers the most accountability. We will 100% customize what we work on based on the results from our initial 90-minute strategy session.
Coaching is available for $997 per month (3 sessions per month) with a 3-month minimum commitment or $3997 for 12 sessions that you can use throughout the year, whichever is better for you. Just remember, before we start with coaching, you must have had a 90-minute strategy session first.
3. What products do you offer?
One of the reasons I transitioned from owning and operating restaurants to coaching restaurant owners and operators is that I simply love to teach!
I’ve created several training products that cover all aspects of the restaurant business and I’m certain you will be able to find the perfect product to help solve your problem.
You’ll find all of my training courses PLUS the TRB Membership options here.
clickBACON is my Restaurant Profit Software. We have built the easiest and fastest Food, Beverage and Labor costing app for your operation. Whether your restaurant is a pizza joint, fine-dining establishment, food truck, or anything in between, you won’t use an easier tool to get weekly and monthly food, beverage and labor costs than clickBACON.
Plus, clickBACON helps you create a budget, know how much you have left in your budget at any point in the month, and has a systems builder so you can build checklists, prep sheets, order guides, recipe sheets, build sheets, and ANY other systems you will need in your restaurant.
clickBACON is the software tool all of my clients use to implement what I teach.
4. Do you offer any FREE Resources?
Yes! In addition to the weekly videos that I post, you can also sign up for my FREE Restaurant Owners Toolkit here.
Inside you’ll find templates, checklists, training videos and so much more … everything you need to run your restaurant business.
5. What if I have questions about Restaurant Financials?
This is probably the most asked about topic and for good reason: it can be confusing!
Here is a very basic overview on calculating your restaurant financial targets.
Cost of Goods Sold (CoGS): The cost of the raw ingredients (food, beer, wine, liquor) that you sell. For more information on calculating your food cost, please watch this video.
Labor Costs: Cost of labor + employer expenses (taxes, benefits, insurance, etc.). For more information about labor costs, please watch this video.
Prime Cost (Total CoGS + Labor Costs/Total Sales): Prime Cost is a “golden number” that should be looked at weekly and should always be between 55%-60% of your sales. For more information on calculating Prime Cost, please watch this video.
Direct Operating Expenses (DOE): Items you purchase but don’t sell back to customers, such as toilet paper, napkins, gloves, foil, to-go containers, and chemicals. DOE is usually 6-8% of your sales. To understand more about the difference between CoGS and DOE, please watch this video.
If you need a deeper understanding of restaurant financials and how to calculate and use them in your restaurant, I recommend taking our SCALE course (it’s also part of the TRB Membership) and using our costing software (it does the work for you!) clickBACON.
Twice a month, I also hold Office Hours to answer your questions about clickBACON and restaurant financials in general.
Register for as many or as few of those sessions at the top of this page.
6. Can you help me become a better restaurant manager?
Second to restaurant financials, we get a lot of questions about restaurant management. You definitely want to know more about:
– Becoming a Manager
– What is the role of a Manager
– How to get a promotion
– How to motivate employees and grow your team.
– How to one day own your own restaurant
These questions excite me because YOU are the FUTURE of our industry. However, it’s very hard to go the depth needed to answer them properly in a FAQ. I suggest two things:
1. Take our Restaurant Manager Certification course. This certification program can be completed in around 2 hours and touches on all of the subjects above and MORE. The best part – it’s extremely affordable! Learn more here.
2. Watch our YouTube playlist that features FREE videos with my restaurant manager tips.
7. Can you help me with my employees? They are out of control!
If I had a penny for every time I heard this. Check out the 2 videos below, but I also have an entire playlist dedicated to managing teams.
Check out some of my videos and if you still feel like you need help, you can book a 90-minute one-on-one session with me or join our next TRB Membership office hours.
8. Can you help me with my menu?
Menu engineering is the art and science of maximizing profits through design and item placement on a menu. What does all that mean? It’s basically our way of influencing customers to purchase what you want them to purchase.
While there is a lot more to it than we can cover in an FAQ question, here are 5 tips that any restaurant owner can do now:
1. Don’t put dollar signs anywhere on your menu at all.
2. Hide the price in the text.
3. Don’t bold the prices. We don’t want to draw attention to the prices and we don’t want to hide them, but don’t want people to make their first decision based on the price
4. Use a smaller font for numbers. Numbers have a way of looking larger than letters do, bump your font down 1 or 2 points to make them look the same.
5. Don’t use even dollars on your menu. The only exception is if you’re high-end fine dining and you’re in the 22+ dollar range, then the even numbers work better.
If you are serious about re-engineering your menu and would like help in doing it right, please contact my team directly. Depending on the size of your restaurant, this full service ranges from $2500 – $25,000.
If you want to take a stab at doing it yourself and need a re-designed menu, check out 99Designs on our trusted partners page.
9. What are your favorite business books?
Check out my full reading list here. I usually find at least one book a month that I add to that list.
If you’re like me and prefer audio books, you can get a free month subscription and 2 free titles using this link.
I may be biased, but if you don’t have my newest book, Make It Happen, you can get a free copy of that here.
10. Who are some of your clients?
Wine Bar and Bistro Owner Get’s His LIFE back.
“Through The Restaurant Owner’s Road-map and establishing a relationship with Ryan… It made me accountable for things that I start, it gave me the confidence to create my own systems, and it allowed more freedoms into my personal life. We’re making more money than we ever have. Everyone’s happier and I work less.”
– PJ Strain
Owner, Pure Wine Cafe
Pizza Owner TRIPLES His Business…
“Ryan pushed me hard to fulfill my dreams. I wouldn’t have the success I have today if I didn’t follow Ryan’s systems. Now I am a better boss and a better businessman.”
-Dante Ismail
Owner, Pizza One
Plus, if you want to hear what real clients are saying about our products and services, you can watch videos and read what they have said here: