In this episode, we'll discuss: Marketing. Great food is not the only way to make money and be successful in the restaurant industry. Direct marketing. Direct response marketing. Small business marketing. Highly-targeted marketing. Royalty Rewards. Cost-effective marketing. You need to have a birthday club! The most important thing is a good online presence. Making it easy and encouraging to have customers leave positive reviews online. Constantly be in contact with your customers about incentives to come be your guest. The importance of taking action.

In this episode we discuss, being sincere, creating impacting relationships with both guest & team members, being genuine & authentic to yourself, starting small & scaling up, and getting experience before opening your own restaurant.

Originally from the Northeast, Michael Pazdon started sinking his teeth into the hospitality industry after moving to New York City in 1999. It was his time in NYC when he fell in love with food and drink. After 11 years in New York, he moved to Napa Valley and ended up staying there for over 5 years. Around 2015, it was time to head back home to the Northeast where today, Michael is the Founder and Mixologist of the Wallingford Dram in Kittery, ME.

In this episode we discuss: Customer service IS THE BOTTOM LINE! Learning how to gain skills with face-to-face interactions. Transformative relationships. Training your staff. How do people learn and how do we successfully implement tactics for learning. When a restaurant closes it affects a large community, not just the owners. Being supportive of your co-workers even beyond work-related issues. Must succeed in your personal life to succeed in your professional life. Don't go to work just for the paycheck. Your training tactics should be flexible to the kind of learning your staff is more apt to succeed at. All problems in a restaurant start at the top. Managers shouldn't just be putting out fires but preventing them. Bringing people up to your level will empower them and you. Make yourself better to make others better. Don't just accept mediocrity. Keep moving forward.

Andrew Carlson is a restaurant consultant and coach with focused knowledge on personal growth, leadership, training, customers service and social media marketing and he writes on these topics at Andrew-Carlson.com . As of recently, he is also an author and just published his first book Customer Service is the Bottom Line.

In this episode we discuss: surrounding yourself with people who want to make a difference in the world, who aren't just out to benefit themselves. Hard work and believing in yourself pays off. Providing employees with metro cards to get to and from work. at the end of the day if you don't support your community your community won't support you. being a "people person" helps in this industry. Have someone to hold you accountable because you need someone to push you and guide you when you need it. You can't teach hospitality. Increasing staff productivity. Believing in the core values of the company you work for. There is a place out there for you but it will take an effort to find it. Don't tackle a problem right away; be patient and formulate a plan first. Service and hospitality are completely different things. You should want your co-workers to move on and do better things if they want it. If you screw something up just fix it! Don't expect people to come to your restaurant just because you open the doors.

Patrick Patterson has always been drawn to people and their stories. After a stint documenting Texas Death Row for publications such as Playboy, Patterson's career took a different path, restaurants. Patterson, who as a kid, had standard rolls of washing dishes, cleaning spuds, bussing tables, and getting fired for eating croutons and dressing in the walk-in cooler! In 2008, Patterson landed on the steps of the Food Fight Restaurant Group in Madison, WI where he quickly rose from part-time bartender to first time GM & owner. In 2015, Patterson and his family relocated to the NH Seacoast. Today, Patterson is the GM of Block Six, the restaurant at 3S Artspace, a local arts non-profit in Portsmouth.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of human resources, the core of HR being genuinely caring, why there isn't a problem with finding good people but instead it is a problem with good people finding good employment, going beyond transactional relationships to transformative relationships, and living a life that is true and transparent. 

As a human resource professional with more than 15 years’ experience, Carrie has dedicated her entire career to helping restaurant owners and operators navigate the complexities of HR policy. For more than a decade, Carrie served as the Director of Human Resources for Potbelly Sandwich Works where she was a key player in the ten-year expansion of Potbelly, which included growing the chain from three restaurants in one market to more than 200 restaurants in ten markets. With her success at Potbelly Sandwich Works, she founded Restaurant HR Group in 2010.

In this episode, we discuss: treating your restaurant job like you own it, open-book management, not just showing up to work to fill a role but being proactive in helping the business grow and be more successful. Lead by example, be able to do what you ask others to do. Treat the business as if it was your own. Dreams are just dreams until you put them into action. Internal growth-spurt. Every day you come to work you should be learning something. Create a mission statement that is ingrained with your personal values and your communities values. Servant leadership. Mentor not manager. Better to make one thing that are incredible and beautiful than it is to make ten things that are mediocre.  Your biggest strength flows into and feeds your greatest weakness.

Dimitri is the founder and Owner Dimo's exists as a for-profit hospitality organization that champions unity, development, and justice for our guests, our team and our communities in order to lead the charge in creating a positive, long-lasting impact.

In this episode we discuss, the influence our culture has over us, first training culture to our people, training as an investment and how investing in your people leads to the ultimate competitive advantage, the 5 basic elements of training your staff, training technologies, how to train those 16 of years and older, and why the training and learning process is never ending! 

A graduate of Texas A&M, Dr. Anton Villado holds a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. During his career, Dr. Villado has worked with organizations in various industries, but most recently the restaurant industry. In 2016, Anton joined RestaurantOwner.com to become their Chief People Officer. His work has been presented at national conferences and published in various scientific journals and book.