Introduction:

I’ve got a really fun topic for you this week! A user recently submitted this question: “How do you deal with jealousy or envy? It seems a competitor opened up a new restaurant just two years ago and out of nowhere he’s opening up 4 more. How do you do that? I can’t wrap my head around it and it makes me jealous. They have such crappy food and service; yet they’re opening up multiple restaurants. How do you deal with this?”

It’s a really great question but there’s really three questions in there: 1) How does a restaurant that’s only two years old open up four more restaurants? 2) How is this even happening when they have reviews that say their food and service is crappy? 3) How do you deal with jealousy?

How to Deal with Jealousy:

The first thing I want to do is address jealousy. Whenever I or my clients, customers, guests, etc. feel jealous, I ask a couple of questions. First question: “Is what I’m jealous about real?” Is it real, average, normal, or is it extraordinary?

It’s very possible that what you’re jealous of is completely abnormal. There will always be companies, restaurant chains, or anyone who are the anomaly. They just happen to open at the exact right moment or the exact right person happened to walk in, and they exploded because of it. You shouldn’t justifiably be jealous of that because that’s just an anomaly. You have to ask if it’s real.

If what they’re doing is normal, average, or expected and not completely abnormal like what I just described, then I move to the second question: “Did I have a goal and have I put the effort in where I can actually be feeling this emotion of jealousy?” Jealousy usually comes from the belief that we should be somewhere at a certain point in time.

For example, maybe you’ve had a restaurant for four years and you feel like you should have two or three locations by now. Your competitors maybe have two or three locations, but you’re still at one. You feel like you’re behind on the business or growth cycle. Then the question I want you to ask yourself is: “Have you put in the work or did you have a plan?”

When you opened your restaurant, you may have said to yourself that you were going to have four locations in five years. But can you show me that plan in writing? Can you show me your calendar that shows all the sacrifices you made to get there? Can you show me the step-by-step daily actions you were taking to ensure that happens? Or is it just something you’re talking about or you’ve dreamt about.

One of my favorite Tony Robbins quotes is something along the lines of: if you show me your calendar I’ll predict your future. What Mr. Robbins means by this is another one of his quotes: “If you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you plan for it, it’s a goal. If you schedule it, it’s real.”

So basically, ask yourself if what your jealous of even normal? If it is normal, have you put the work in for that? If not, you can’t really be feeling jealous. You have to go back to the drawing board to find out what could you have done different and what should you be doing different.;

How is a restaurant that’s only two years old expand to four locations?

I can quickly tell you that because I’m working with a client right now whose restaurant is just barely a year old and they’re going to open up two more locations this year. How does that happen?

A couple of things – Ever heard of lightning in a bottle? Maybe they were in the right place at the right time. But also something totally exciting, unique and buzzworthy to the point where they didn’t have the wherewithal to open up a second and third location, but someone walked in who did and saw something different. They were a very successful local business person who heard about the restaurant, ate there and they thought “Wow! I need to talk to the owners. There’s something amazing here!”

If you want to get press, do something press worthy. The only way you’re going to expand is if you’ve got something buzzworthy, something people are going to talk about.

Otherwise it will take a long time and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with putting together a long term plan, stashing away the cash from the profits, and making a very methodical slow growth. These concepts that just go from like 0 to 10 units instantly are either very well connected financially or they did something amazing or buzzworthy.

How is this even happening when they have reviews that say their food and service is crappy?

Often when I talk to clients and customers they say “Our food so much better, it’s the best in town. Why aren’t we busier?” I hate to say it but a lot of it doesn’t have to do with your food. That’s a given that your food and your service has to be great but sometimes it’s more than that.

There are plenty of restaurants in your community that maybe have average food and or average service, but they’re killing it. Maybe it’s the location or the ambience, or maybe it’s the place to be seen. Whatever it is you know you can’t just rely on food. There’s so much more to operating a restaurant than just food. If you’re one of those people that’s sitting here saying “Our food and service is better”, you have to start looking further than that. Look deeper into it to see why that restaurant is so busy and ours isn’t and give yourself an honest assessment.

I wish I could go deeper on this subject, but it could take too long. I really wanted to address that and I think my comments here will hopefully help you on your journey to becoming a highly successful restaurant owner and operator. I look forward to bringing you more videos just like this one in the future.