Hey everybody my name is Ryan Gromfin I’m an author, speaker, chef, restaurant owner and I’m the founder of TheRestaurantBoss.com as well as RestaurantProfitandPerformance.com. And like I said, today I want to share with you how to get fired up with excitement, with inspiration for your restaurant business for the future!

You know a lot of times we just go through that day-to-day flat line rut and we get kind of bored. We just keep going through the same things over and over again. We keep saying to ourselves … we’re waiting for that next big idea; we’re waiting for that huge thing to come our way. We always want to be the first to market with something new because we think that’s how we’re going to get excited and do something different and really grow our business.

But I want you to think for a second about first-to-market. About the first people who come to market with these new ideas and let’s think about how well that worked out for them.

Let’s look at like Netscape. How many of you are still using Netscape as your browser? They were the first browser out; they were first to market where are they now?

Remember Palm Pilots? Right? We all had a Palm Pilot – it was the coolest thing in the world…and where are they now?

Remember TiVo? Well now our cable company just provides that for us. TiVo doesn’t exist anymore, and if they do they’re very small.

Same thing with Kindle. You know, we all had Kindles five years ago now it’s different. Reading books on our phone, on our iPads – they still exist but they’re not what they were.

So sometimes first-to-market isn’t always the best thing… But what’s really important is that we’re constantly getting the stream of inspiration. That we’re always getting better at what we’re doing. We don’t get stuck in a rut.

So a couple of things that I suggest for my clients to always be doing in their restaurant:

Eating at other restaurants. Go eat at other restaurants. Find out what others are doing. Don’t just compare yourself and say, “Oh we’re so much better than them at this…” or “we’re better than them at that…” But look around and see what are they doing really well that you’re not and get inspired by that.

Follow the trends in your community. Read the blog’s. Read the posts. See what other people are talking about. Get inspired by that.

Another thing that I can’t tell you how important it is… Is to subscribe to a lot of the food magazines and trade magazines. Not just the business ones but also the ones that your customers are looking at. Bon Appetit, Martha Stewart, Food Network, Rachael Ray, whatever it is.

But, you need to get inspired by the dishes that they’re putting in there, by the plate presentations, by the way that they’re showing things, by the recipes, by the ingredients they’re using, and bring that back with to your chefs.

Bring that back to your team and say, “How do we make our food look a little bit more like this?” Because if that’s what your customers are seeing, and you’re not presenting it to them in the same way there’s going to be this huge disconnect.

So get inspired by other people’s publications. By other things that are going on. You know, obviously we can look at Food Network… We can watch all these great cooking shows and things on TV, but if we’re not looking at that and getting inspired by it, and coming up with new ways that we can do things in your restaurant, we’re leaving something on the table.

The last piece of advice I have for you about finding that inspiration, about getting out of a rut that you might be in and getting excited about coming into work every day is look at what the corporate chains are doing.

The corporate chains are usually way ahead of where we are only because of the dollars they can spend. Now, they may be a little bit behind the trend, they may not be like the hottest and the freshest in the newest, but the point is, if they’re doing it then they’ve invested money—dollars and time and research.

And if it’s showing up on their menus, or if its technology that they’re implementing, or if it’s a new way of service that they’re implementing in their business, chances are it’s proven and it works, and it’s something that you should be looking at implementing in yours.

I just recently ate a fast-food restaurant that I haven’t had in a long time and I can’t tell you how amazing their menu was. And all of these really great ideas started coming to my head for other restaurants that I was working with—even though the other restaurants aren’t fast-food.

I looked at these ideas and was like… Oh my gosh, we can do this; we can do that; we could do that; and so I started calling of clients and sending them emails, from all these ideas I had just by revisiting a fast-food restaurant that I hadn’t eaten in a while.

So I encourage you to find inspiration everywhere you look, it’s everywhere. Keep a notepad on you, write down ideas. Think about how you could do it better, faster, cleaner, leaner, more efficiently, more exciting. Make it your own. Don’t steal ideas from other people. But there’s inspiration everywhere…

And if you’re bored at all in direction if you feel like you’ve been doing the same thing over and over again and you’re not fired up, go take a look and see what other restaurants are doing. See what the corporate restaurants are doing. See what your competition is doing. Read the food blogs. Look at the magazines. Watch TV. And find that inspiration that you need to get all fired up and make your restaurant awesome.

I hope you enjoyed today’s video. I look forward to seeing you next week.