Welcome to another episode of Turning the Table,

sponsored by Benchmark 60.

Turning the Table is the most progressive weekly video cast for today's food and

beverage industry, featuring staff centric operating solutions for restaurants in

the hashtag new hospitality culture.

And if you ain't in there, you should be.

My name is Adam Lamb and I'm a career coach for chefs and

hospitality professionals.

And I'd like to introduce you to my co-host, Jim Taylor, a benchmark 60.

What's up

em?

It's good to be

back.

It Well, we missed you.

I missed you.

Yeah.

Like,

like, like you, like you ghosted us for the last episode.

What did you do?

I was, I was playing golf.

I was . I was on the California coast playing golf.

I was lucky to have a chance to get away for a few days.

All right, well, we'll get into that in a second.

But this is episode 1 1 3 Seasonal Challenges for restaurant operators.

We tried to have this episode last week, but it was interrupted by

my co-hosts trip, but that's okay.

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Thursday at 12 noon eastern time.

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So Jim, welcome back.

Thanks, man.

It's good to be back.

. It's good to get back in the swing of things, you know, like, so look good to

have a few days to sort of de decompress

a bit on the beach.

Yeah, it, and for those who are not following the show as they should

because it is one of the quickest growing podcasts in the restaurant space.

You just had a child not too long ago.

Eight weeks.

Two months today.

I'm sorry, say that again.

It's two months today.

Two months today and having a child any easy.

For either parent, so I say, bless your bride for telling you.

Get the hell on outta here.

When the opportunity came up and you decided to go to, well, you were gifted

a trip down to California to play some golf and, and where did you end up?

I'm sorry, Pebble Beach.

What?

Well, first of all, I should say it was Jen, my wife.

It was her idea for me to go, I, you know, we were back and forth by said,

Hey, you should go take this opportunity.

So that's pretty cool.

You're right.

Bless my bride.

Definitely.

But yeah, we were Pebble Beach for a few days

and.

I've known, you know, I don't play golf.

When I was in high school, I think I CADed for a couple years at

the local community golf center.

And I remember throwing a club my last day because I was like,

God damn it, I'm never gonna, you know, be in this place again.

. Yeah.

And I, you know, I know that I have a slightly addictive nature and if

I ever took up golf you know, I'd be like, Best clubs and everything.

And so I decided like to opt out, create a barrier around that.

And so what is it like to golf on Pebble Beach?

Well,

I mean, the whole ex being, especially being in the

someone who loves golf, but also being in the hospitality industry.

I mean, it was just right.

Unbelievable experience.

I mean, you don't see, you drop your golf clubs off at the, at the check in

and you don't see them again for the weekend unless you're on the golf course.

They just arrive when you are about to tee off or at the range when

you need them, or you know, the.

, even just down to the service level in the, in the hotel you check in and

somebody gives you a tour of the hotel on your way to your room and talks

about all the history and, you know, you get for the morning, you don't, they

obviously charge a good rate to get there, but they don't penny pinch anything.

It's all about the experience.

You know, you can have whatever kind of nut milk latte you want in the

morning made you deliver to your room.

You know, there's, it's just, it's pretty impressive.

And, and what was, what was your takeaway from that experience of

like being like in the lap of luxury?

I mean, granted, you know, they pay a good, you pay a good

thing, but you get the value out.

Is that what I'm hearing?

It

it?

Yeah, for sure.

Like I said, it was, it's not a cheap place to go, but there's,

once you're there, there's no penny pitching on anything.

It's everything.

Unbelievably good value, incredibly good quality.

The service was just over the top everywhere.

You know, Nine guys, I think we had three servers at dinner.

Hmm.

You know, just the service was, was amazing everywhere we went.

So yeah.

At, at, at ev every single moment.

Whether it was, you know, like I said, getting your coffee in the morning

or turned down service at night, or what the lobby bar was like, The

experience that, I mean, all of it was just you ne you kind of feel

like you never have to worry about.

Which as a customer in a hospitality space, really good feeling, right?

I mean, Yeah.

So yeah, I walked away feeling incredibly lucky to have spent a

few days there and you know, can't wait to go back, hopefully one day.

And

. Adam Lamb: And how did Jen

Was she like excited that you were coming back or she was like, Okay,

I'm gonna send you on another trip,

Oh, she

was excited that I came home.

We I got home from the airport, had a quick shower, hopped

back in the car and went and.

Jim Jeffrey's a comedy show in Vancouver which was, I mean,

he's just off the charts too, so it was a great four or five days.

So that's interesting that you were talking about, you know, you

know how this sense of hospitality pervaded everything, and I think

that this is a great conversation to have because especially going into

some shoulder months going into that, there's a misunderstanding, but about

what services and what hospitality.

Yeah.

Can you speak to that?

And like,

Yeah.

I mean, and my take on that is service is just, you know, can I get a water?

Sure.

Here you go.

Right.

And hospitality was, you know, a place like that is one of the ho it's

one of the more high end places in, you know, probably in the country.

So that's one thing.

But even if it's not, you know, for someone to recognize you,

the, the day after you check in and use your name or, Right.

Remember the coffee that you ordered the day before?

You know all of those little touches, it was just a very hospitable experience.

And, you know, like you said, the seasonal change thing and shoulder season, I've,

in my experience, both as a customer and as a, as an employer, I think we've

been guilty of seeing that change.

You know, the service maybe diminishes a little bit because everyone's worried

about cost and worried about revenue, and then it ramps back up for Christmas

and then it kind of, you know, there's a bit of a hesitation again January,

February.

So what I'm hearing from you is, The things that made it special

for you was not anything that actually cost money for an operator.

It's actually the fact that being able to recall names or recall orders

or to be able to greet somebody with some warmth that's actually authentic.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, and you know, the funny, like you said about it not costing money, the

the two things that stood out the most, the whole time that I was there, one was

that every single time you were walking up towards an employee of any of the proper.

They give you the right of way.

So that I thought was very interesting.

It was just very much about customer first.

That and getting out of the shuttle or getting out of the Uber or

whatever it was when we got there.

It wasn't a, Can I take your bag?

It was, I am taking your, like, you are not allowed to be not

allowed to touch any of that stuff while you're here, kinda thing.

But that it was, it was a non-negotiable customer first.

It's all about the experience and that doesn't, like you said, it doesn't

matter if you're charging 10 bucks for an entree or a thousand bucks for an entree,

you can still have that same approach.

Right.

It's almost like assuming the position, like I am the.

In this space, I own it.

I'm not trying to take anything away from you, but you don't

have to worry about this now.

Yeah.

And I think I've worked for some pretty progressive hotel companies

and I, there's a lot of work that goes into training insofar as the way you

stand, the way you look at somebody.

At what point do you actually approach them?

You know, there was the.

The ten two rule.

So at at 10 feet, you look them in the eye, in two feet,

you have to address them.

And I thought that that was brilliant, only because it actually

got me out of an awkward space.

So you might think that I'm pretty gregarious and like to talk, but really,

you know, I'm all in my own head.

So to be in a position where I have to quote-unquote r.

Follow this procedure, quote unquote in order to be you know, a good employee.

It actually, it actually forced me to kind of come outta my shell a

little bit and actually look people in the eye and say good morning.

Hi, how are you?

You know, Yes sir.

No, sir.

And I took all of that back into my space where, you know, I spent

most of my time in the culinary side, but it was always like we.

Like we don't play around on the edges.

Like it's Yes sir.

No sir, thank you ma'am.

Whatever.

And not, not, hey baby or any of that other bullshit.

So getting back to shoulder season you know what causes

seasonal spikes in labor costs?

Yeah.

We did get, We've been asked that

question a few times.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, especially because we all know it's coming.

We were, we are in the budget meeting.

We know that these are the soft months.

And I think, I don't think shoulder months or soft months are the ones

that are given the most attention to.

But you know, we all know this is coming yet somehow it all seems

to like grab us by the pants.

Mm-hmm.

. Jim Taylor: Yeah, we, I don't think that

involved in, but with a, with a group that we've been working with, we, we actually

were helping them proactively plan.

Canadian Thanksgiving and everybody knows that Canadian Thanksgiving is the quietest

weekend of the year in restaurants, right?

Everybody eats at home.

So we, we did a bunch of proactive work with them on here's what the forecasting

looks like, and here's an, you know, help work through what they were gonna need

to do in order to prevent the spike in percentage on labor costs in that week.

And out of eight locations, one of them actually accomplished

it, the rest of them.

They still went, you know, knew what it was telling us.

We knew what happened last year.

We knew what happened in 2019.

Forget 2020, and they still didn't respond quick enough to the tune of

8,000, almost $8,000 at each location.

So the company lost what, 35, $40,000 in one week.

And I guess the next one coming is, is January, right?

And just what, what happens from the Christmas business model to the, to the

January business model, at least in the colder parts of the country and Canada.

Right?

Yeah.

And I think a lot of it has to do also with the fact that we've been through, you

know, three years of complete uncertainty.

What we, what we knew before Covid.

Now no longer holds.

So it's almost like so will people come out?

Is there gonna be another is there gonna be another omicron rise?

I mean, I look at all the statistics and you know, there's starting

to be a rise in Europe, which is about three weeks in front of us.

And so our operators actually looking at that to try to consider how best to staff

their restaurants in order to maximize their opportunity for flow through.

So

prior to.

Pandemic related stuff.

How did you used to prepare your kitchens?

For that type, a seasonal change, whether it was cost or dropping

revenue or, Cause I was all front house

and we all know that the biggest cost is in the back of the

house, so put it all on me baby.

Right.

So you know, I spent 25 years in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale

specifically, and we got really, really good at being able to gauge

seasonal spikes and and slowdown.

And there's a couple different things that go into that.

I mean, when you think that you know, the local population is probably slowing

down all the, all the people from Quebec come down and start flooding.

So it's like a weird mix.

So typically what would happen is September 1st, the first week

of September always sucks because everybody's going back to school and

then it starts slowly, incrementally.

Coming up and then Christmas and New Year's is hell week, like

everybody's, you know, holding on.

Yeah.

And then right after that, it, again, there's a big pull down.

So generally speaking, what would happen is we would staff up right around

September, those first three weeks.

and start pulling in people, getting them trained so that everybody's in

their position and we're rock solid.

Yeah.

And then as it came down on the other side, which would've been April,

May, the staff is basically winnowed out and there's basically nothing

but you know, chefs and kitchen managers left in the kitchen.

, Yeah.

Right.

To write, to write out the summer.

And that's why most of the service staff go.

Florida to block Island or somewhere else in Maryland

seasonally and go back and forth.

But I don't know too many people that can actually consistently do that just

because it's such, it's such a tear on the body, man, . So I'm a data freak.

I just love diving into the data.

And the more I learned, the more it became clear to me that if I wasn't

prepared before, These seasonal spikes that I be like left out in the cold

because you cannot make up that space from a revenue standpoint quick enough.

Right.

Or from a cost standpoint.

And I'll be the first one to say that there was a time when I.

Pencil whip the case is shrimp in the freezer.

I'm sorry I didn't , I did it.

But you know, you, you're coming down to the end end of that 30 days.

And for most of us, our calendar year fiscally ends December 31st.

So if you make a mistake in October, there is no way you're

gonna make it up in, in December.

No way.

Just can't happen.

So then all of a sudden you start looking for creative ways in.

Sorry, I'm just I'm, I, I won't speak to the employer, but yeah.

He knows

. Jim Taylor: He already knows about it.

You confessed.

I did.

I had to go up to finance and go, I, I, I don't know what to do.

This is, I was very young in my career and it was, it literally

started out as one box of shrimp.

In the freezer.

Mm-hmm.

. And in three months it was a case because I could not make up the gap between what

was there and what the revenue dictated.

So it was like a slippery slope.

And I wish somebody had told me that I was being that stupid at the time.

But

and most of the other chefs and, and bar managers

who've done the same thing, I

mean, is is there a case of vodka on the floor?

I don't know.

Could be.

Well,

and it doesn't even have to be a case of vodka.

Is that bottle half full

or three quarters?

Right.

And And before the technology caught up for it, caught up to it, it was

like, is it one fifth, one quarter?

And now you've got these systems where you put the bottle on and it's

calculating exactly what it is, which is fantastic from a control standpoint.

It still doesn't answer the fundamental question about like,

how do we get into these conundrums?

Like how the productivity metric could actually save us from those

types of those types of conundrums.

Like having to make those type of decisions in the moment, because

I get that if you can maximize your flow through, you're in

the, you're in the cap bird seat.

However, as things start to, as they start to trend off, Like maybe more quickly

than you're actually able to calculate.

Right.

Cause that's what happens.

Like everything happens like that and you're like, Oh shit, I gotta,

I gotta cut the staff tomorrow.

Yeah.

And then I'm stuck.

Part of it's

about making up for lost revenue or preventing seasonal spike,

but part of it's about having a better understanding if the business level,

if the level of productivity remains the same through every month of the.

but customers behave differently.

Oh.

Than our labor cost is gonna change

no matter what.

Wait a second, man, that, that's like juicy.

So you're saying it's basically the same overall, but depending on whether or

not your customer feels like it's been a tight fiscal quarter and he doesn't

necessarily wanna buy the dessert, Right.

The customer spend drives everything.

Is that what I'm hearing You.

. Yeah.

So

I usually, you know, one of the examples that I get into

a lot, and you and I have talked about this before, but mm-hmm.

, consider the difference between, in, in the restaurant business

between December and January.

Mm-hmm.

, and let's say this is not in Florida, this is in a market where.

Things slow down dramatically in January.

Right.

The differences between December and January

are significant.

I can, I can tell you the market that I'm in right now, which is Ashe,

North Carolina, there's that fourth season with all the leaves turning.

Mm-hmm.

, which is like that pop in October, but right after that it drops way down man.

Way down.

Right.

Yeah.

And it, everybody's just holding on for dear life.

We find there's low hanging fruit quite often as if you can maintain

the same level of productivity in.

Consistently.

Then the low months, you know, the, the months where the revenue's gonna dip,

you're gonna see a spike in labor costs.

And that's normal because it's based on less customers.

Mm-hmm.

and less spend per customer.

But it also means that in the months where you have more customers and

more spend per customer, your labor cost is actually gonna come down.

And that's not a bad thing.

It doesn't mean you're short.

So, you know, quite often it we, What we're trying to find ways to

do is help cons help clients and restaurant operators and all of this.

Understand that, let's say a 25% total labor cost in December is actually too

high and a 30% labor cost in January might be too low, which probably sounds crazy.

It maybe should be 22 and 30.

. But if you look at that over the course of the whole year, it's

gonna even out to 27 or whatever it is that you wanted to get it to.

Right.

So you know that looking at it in terms of how productive the business

is really helps to remove stress around why is my cost spiking?

To make sure we capture opportunity in months where

there's opportunity available.

Totally get it.

And, and this leads me to my next question, which is traditionally

speaking, using a labor cost metrics.

You know, are we actually shooting ourselves in the foot with the

way our budgets are established?

Huh?

I mean, there is a lot of work that goes into a, a yearly budget.

Yep.

And you know, to be called into one of those meetings and

having to defend yourself or.

The advocate for higher prices.

I mean, I've been in those, both of those situations where I've had to like bring in

every possible document that I can counter like, Okay, so these are the trends.

This is what's going on.

And I'm telling you that sometime between this time and this time,

the market reports will tell you straight up what prices are gonna

be, but yet a lot of times, you know, nobody wants to hear that.

No, they just wanna look at the percentage or the dollar amount

that came outta the bank, right?

Yeah.

Because at the, in the end of the day, it is just dollars in dollars out, right?

A hundred percent.

It is.

But if, if the budget's written on percentage, and this is a, a,

we shouldn't, I shouldn't use the term argument, but this is a good

discussion and debate that we get into.

If the budget is written on percentage and you expect that

percentage to remain flat all year.

We can tell you from without even looking at a p and l, without even

knowing what color the walls are in a certain restaurant, that if the

percentage is the same in December as it is in January, there's a good

chance the business left money on the table in December and overworked

the team in January.

Right?

And that's every operator's nightmare, right?

To have to cut and cut and cut, send people home in a month where, Most

of them are actually looking towards some type of holiday, right, that

they need to support their family.

And then right after that get so jammed up that they, you know, can't spend any time

with them because of short term thinking.

So I'm curious to know, but like, why would anyone, any operator out there

decide to even take a look at this particular process when, as far as they

know, It's as good as it's gonna get.

Well, I mean, I could answer that in lots, lots of

different ways.

But , I know it's a loaded question, man, but I think you're used to that for me,

right?

Yeah.

So, okay, so why, Why should I look at something differently?

Because prices are different.

Menus are different.

Wage structure's, different employee benefits are different.

Supply chain is d.

Everything is, the entire industry has changed.

Yep.

So if the strategy doesn't change along with it, you know, it's,

it's likely not gonna keep up.

And, you know, that's why we talk about this all the time is, you know, the way

that we're trying to approach this is it's the end of, we've always done it this way.

Right, Right.

Right.

If all of those things, I mean, just consider the wage structure in restaurants

and menu pricing in restaurants are so dramatically different based

on labor shortages and inflation.

Right.

If we haven't adjusted the way we look at targets and budgets of in, in

correlation, we're behind the eight ball

already.

I I can, I can only imagine what operators in, say, Belgium or Germany

or the UK are looking at right now because with, you know, 300,

500% spikes in their energy costs.

Mm-hmm.

, I mean, I, I've heard from a couple of our partners.

Folks are like, like, like, it's cheaper for me to close the doors, man,

everyone knows in Florida that there's gonna be a hurricane at some point.

Yeah, right.

Why not build in some infrastructure, some resiliency in the budget to be able

to support that what they say is one, one in a hundred or one in a thousand.

Like that's the excuse.

It's, it's once in a deck.

Like I don't care when it is.

Like we all know it's gonna happen and.

If anybody's listening to this in Florida, you know, water's arising, and my Miami's

already starting to pump out streets.

So if you're not planning for that, how are you gonna

manage anything in the future?

Because it's always gonna be disaster after disaster after disaster.

And so if you're in an area that's troublesome, aren't you doing

your due diligence by saying like, Should I have my business here?

Should I move?

It kind of ties into the same thing.

Having a business that's flexible, that's, that's that's ready to meet

any particular challenge, whether it's not shut down or whatever.

I think, I think we gotta take the blinders off.

I think we gotta take the blinders off and say there, there will be

other things that are gonna be coming.

The pandemic is not over.

I don't care what anybody else says.

And if we're not planning for this, there's no way to keep staff.

And as we all know, Jim Taylor.

Retention is the new cool.

Retention is the new

cool . Well, and, and you know, just one last comment on that, the,

the way that all of these variables have changed in the industry, you know, back

when you were a sous chef and when I was, you know, managing a Florida, oh boy.

If someone said, Hey, your labor cost percentage is high, Based on the

way that wages and, and new prices were, you probably needed to like

send one person home an hour and a half early and hit your target on

the whole shift with two people less.

Right?

And it, it just, the same approach of cut hard, work harder, go in on

your day off, do your admin from home, all of that type of stuff.

It just doesn't work anymore.

Right.

Because the industry's short-staffed as it is.

And now we're trying to find ways in shoulder season to hit

targets by just working harder.

And it's just, you know, it's gonna compound and, and make things.

Working harder is not the answer.

We

say this all the time.

Was it difference between hard work having to work

too hard?

Yeah, but I spent my entire career, you know, with that idea of like,

if I just work a little harder, if I just like, you know, I just

focus in just a little bit harder.

Everything's gonna be work out.

Yeah.

Can I ask you a question?

Sure.

Why

aren't you in a kitchen anymore?

I am right in back of me.

Well, it's, it's, you know, you know, there's, there, there, there, there comes

a certain point in every chef's life.

If I can just say this out loud, that we have to consider our own

mortality and our own physicality.

I've had two back surgeries and neck surgery.

I, I know what it's like to like spin and jump on a saute station and

slam it all day long or expedite.

A 500 cover early bird, and yet I understand that there are some physical

limitations, but they go against the idea that I am still a young man, my.

Opportunity now is to leverage everything that I've experienced and learned to

support others in the pursuit of the HO hashtag new hospitality structure.

Because I know that a lot of us came in in the industry with the same ideas

and the same hopes, and didn't ask for what we want because you know, there was

just no asking, man, nobody gave a shit.

Now.

Things have opened up a little bit, and I celebrate that and I want to support

the next generation of, you know, leaders mentors, supervisors, chefs.

I celebrate that.

So I'm not going to sit on the sidelines and just expect someone else to do that.

I mean, I wanna throw my hat in the ringing or my toque

in the ring, as it were.

So, why, why do you ask?

Why am I not in a kitchen

? Jim Taylor: Well, because, you know,

too, that there's a difference between hard work and having to work too hard.

Right.

And that's where our industry's at right now.

The, the restaurant industry never will be easy work.

It's, it's, it's grind.

It is, Right.

It's long hours.

It's shift work.

It's split shifts.

It's, you know, split days off it's work on holidays.

That stuff's never gonna change because our industry

is in service of other people.

So it's gonna be there.

, but having to work so hard that you're burnt out, that you're exhausted,

that you're having mental health challenge, that you know, that

stuff comes to the forefront more.

Actually in, in our experience with, with the restaurant groups that we've

worked with, the overworking and the workload management stuff comes into

effect and into account more in downturn season than it does in busy times.

I've, I've taught, I've talked to so many chefs lately,

just lately and they're all kind of singing the same song about like this.

There there's a deep sadness that they're completely undervalued by

their employers, by the customers.

And they don't know what to do because if it was up to them, they would still

hang in there because they like, it takes a very, very special person to commit

themselves to a life of service, as you said, whether it's in the front of the

house or the back of the house, you know, I get certain positions, there's a little

bit of power, you know, behind the bar you got all the power to break the chain.

Of an expectation that someone should actually appreciate how much work you put

in when they will never, ever understand.

That is kind of like my job one because, and only speaking for

myself, getting in the industry, I was like kind of locked into this

immediate feedback loop of instant gratifications put up a great plate.

Someone comes back and says, Hey, that's really great.

Thank you very much.

And all of a sudden I feel.

Which, which belie the fact that really as a mature professional, there is this

whole idea about delaying gratification and building things for the future.

And so in this stage, as an elder in the community, as I claim I

think it's my responsibility to be able to build those structures in.

Because again, like you said, the people that are coming into

the industry now are asking.

Not, Well, certainly they're not asking, some are demanding a certain way of

being a certain expectation of their job.

And I was just looking at LinkedIn.

There was a, or I'm sorry Burnt Chef added a new module to their,

to their free educational platform about re employee retention.

And one of the things was like being incredibly realistic.

Communicating what the possibilities are.

Right?

And I thought that that was brilliant because as Chef Dodge told us before

in another episode, you know, there's a disconnect behind people coming in the

industry and what they think will happen and what we know the reality to be.

But it's not to say that our job is to like slam them down and

say, Your reality is nothing.

Our job is to kind meet them in the middle and say, Okay, so what is possible?

And.

I'm working to make sure that everyone understands that this is

an honorable, profitable profession that's worthy of their time and effort.

And if they're called to be in this industry, then come on in.

I don't want anybody scared like, Oh my God, like I read all the papers and solve

We Together can make it a better place, and that's why I'm partnered with you.

Well,

and and vice versa.

And you know what, it's.

It's the role of the leaders in our industry to protect the people in

the industry, to find new ways to do things, to keep up with what change is

happening, you know, to look at other industries in terms of how they have

weathered these types of storms before.

Yep.

You know, all of those types of things.

I mean, even Google right now talking about this productivity

thing we were looking at earlier.

The CEO of Google announced about a month ago a company-Wide Simplicity

Sprint, is what they're calling it.

Company as a, as an organization worldwide to look at ways to become

more productive because they're aware of the fact that so many variables are

changing that they can't keep up with just things like pricing or layoff.

Right?

Or put a hiring.

They have to find ways to be more productive.

And the same applies

for our industry right now.

You know, if we're not willing to look at other industries

to see what works for them.

Like, I know that you like to say that this productivity thing came

from manufacturing, but I was like playing around with this in 2006, 2007.

It was already out there.

It just hasn't, it wasn't effectively applied like , like I laugh so

much when we first got together.

I'm like, wait a second.

It's like I was off by one decimal . Yeah, but it just, But it just.

That that solution existed and that we're all kind of tapped into it.

So I think it behooves all of us as operators and especially because we're

in a relationship with our customers.

We're in a relationship with our fellow managers.

We're in a relationship with our associates.

And, and I think that's where it kind of comes back to, you know,

this whole idea about hospitality is all about relationship.

And if we fucking forget that man, then what the hell are we

doing here?

And the same, it goes for customers and staff, right?

Yeah.

The term we use all the time is you gotta protect your people.

I have, I have a really great question for the next episode, but I'm

gonna hold off on it right now, , because it would, it would launch us into

another thing because there was someone who dme on a social media platform

about a situation with with the guest.

And his question was like, how do I as a small business owner protect

my staff and also, Honor my guests.

Mm-hmm.

when my guests might not necessarily be acting appropriately, but neither did we.

So it was a really great conversation, especially on the tail end of this

whole thing with James Gordon, you know, going into a restaurant and like

being an asshole, and then like being banned for , like the cancel culture.

Like, yeah, probably some people should be canceled, but you know what?

I'll due process.

I'm sorry, I, I, I just don't go for that shit.

And it prevents people from actually owning their own bad behavior and perhaps

apologizing and trying to make amends.

So I am all down for.

For trying to bring in harmony in these particular situations.

But I will save that for our next episode.

Good job.

Cause I'm sure you got a lot to say with it cuz I'm sure you've had plenty of

I'm sure you've had plenty of, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, for another day.

Well, for next week, for sure.

. Thanks, Jim.

Thanks, Adam.

You bet.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Turning the Table with

me, Adam Lamb and Jim Taylor.

This episode was sponsored by Benchmark 60.

We're on a mission to change the food and beverage industry by focusing on

staff mental health and wellbeing.

By forecasting and actively managing workload productivity.

Over 200 restaurants and food and beverage operations have discovered for themselves

how to increase staff retention and become a preferred employer in their

market by using our proprietary system.

If you'd like to have an operational culture that everybody wants to work for,

then check out Benchmark 60 on the web.

www.benchmarksixty.com.

Thanks for taking the time to be with us and the courage to try new things.

For the restaurant profession's, oldest problems, turning the table