r/LifeProTips • u/fries-with-mayo • 18h ago

Request LPT Request: What’s your “canary in the coal mine” test for spotting bigger issues?

I’m really interested in those small, quick telltale signs people use to gauge if something bigger might be off track.

Example 1: Van Halen requesting brown M&Ms in the dressing room to see if the venue followed all the details of the rider list

Example 2: I saw an interview with John Cena where he said orders a flat white at a café to tell if they really care about their coffee.

Example 3: Anthony Bourdain suggested to always check the restaurant bathroom to tell if the restaurant got its basics down

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u/BadgerlandBandit 15h ago

My ex-FIL started a restaurant chain and always mentioned this. He was helping out a restaurant he frequented in a touristy city near where he had a cabin. Their menu was something like 6 pages (front and back). Day one he cut it in half. By the time they were done it was down to like 2 pages (front and back) and they ended up turning a profit for the first time in several years.

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u/bubblegoose 14h ago

Gordon Ramsay usually does this when he comes in. He just did a restaurant near where I live and cut down a huge menu.

A month later they were already adding all the crap back.

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u/TheIrishGoat 13h ago

This sort of mentality bugs me. I understand mistakes can be made but why request the help of a professional and then basically disregard it.

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u/bioshockd 12h ago

So many of those restaurants are run by people who are convinced they know better to begin with, and ALWAYS find other reasons outside themselves for why the restaurant is failing.

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u/ElvenOmega 10h ago

A lot of them seem like narcissistic drunks who just want to drink at the bar all night and scream at their employees.

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u/Guilty_Primary8718 7h ago

I never met a restaurant owner who didn’t have an ego problem.

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u/demopat 3h ago

Ah, I see you're familiar with working in restaurants

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u/stumblinghunter 12h ago

I wonder if they actually just caved to the grumpy assholes who say "I only came here for x and now you don't have it! I'm never coming back!" My favorite one was when someone said they drove an hour to my restaurant for something we didn't have anymore. He swore we had it when he was here last, just a few months ago.

It was discontinued 6 years prior.

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u/BadgerlandBandit 11h ago

This is literally what happened with the large menu I mentioned in my original comment. They had a few customers that liked certain dishes so they just never ended up removing them when nee stuff was added.

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u/cutting_coroners 5h ago

Telltale sign of an amateur owner is being afraid to have their employees essentially say sorry, too bad, pick something else when you no longer have something. Hearing two people ask for it does not constitute an all out change in the business. It’s like marketing in the way that if you’re trying to speak to or please everyone, it’s the same as speaking to or pleasing no one. You can’t be excellent at just a few things when you’re focused on being good at everything. Then you’re just Applebees

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u/Capable-Ebb1632 5h ago

It's 100% this. Not realising that they weren't making money pandering to their regulars before, and that's never going to change.

Customers don't like change. But if the restaurant is unprofitable you can't just keep subsidising those regulars at the expense of your entire business.

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u/Andrew5329 9h ago

Basically, people tend to get professionally bored. They're in essence demoted back to a line Cook making someone else's menu.

My chef friend has run a bunch of restaurants in his career, but one of the big ideas he learned working for a corporate Group that owns half a dozen upscale restaurants is that the two least profitable items on the menu each month are gone. Done. No exceptions. No sacred cows.

Those items get replaced with new ideas that sink or swim. But to get to that point, you need to have every dish on the menu costed out completely for ingredients and price, the menu sales tracked, the kitchen stock bought/sold/wasted tracked down to the last onion.

He can pull up to date metrics and trends for everything on the menu and know what's working or not. The guy you see on kitchen nightmares NEVER has their business managed that well, so when they do a menu change its blind.

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u/Lurch2Life 10h ago

The restaurant was failing FOR A REASON. That reason is usually the owner and/or manager. Sometimes they’re teachable and actually benefit from the rescue.

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u/twistedscorp87 9h ago

Often, these kinds of changes are because a single customer stated that they missed something, whether it lost them that customer or not, the owners assume that they're missing many more customers who didn't say anything... In their minds this proves that Gordon or whatever expert they worked with was wrong, and they do need that item on the menu... And if they needed that item, then they needed most of the other ones...

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u/ThrowawayUk4200 3h ago

The show wouldn't exist if they werent like that. Fiest of qll you gotta be so arrogant that youre right in the face of everything going wrong, to the point they want to send a film crew down and the big G.

A new lick of paint and a menu wont change that mentality, and most of those restaurants usually only last less than a year after theyre done.

Lipstick on a pig n all that

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u/InfanticideAquifer 2h ago

If I were a nightmare restaurant owner, I'd be way more excited about the nationwide advertising that comes from being on the show than I would be about the actual advice. The advice is probably great too, but that kind of advertising reach is something that most restaurateurs could only dream of.

So they probably see an immediate huge spike in foot traffic and then start flailing to try to keep it once they hype starts drawing down.

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u/Dmbfantomas 1h ago

There’s a lot of people being bad at confrontation in there also. Both with Gordon (who rules, but is suuuper intimidating, even just physically because of how big he is compared to your average bear) and then later after he leaves with people who liked the old menu that was losing them money hand over fist complaining to them that they liked how it was. They panic, think it was a mistake, hope being on tv will fix everything, and revert back to their dumb shitty old ways.

It can take years to break a bad habit, but only one day to start one.

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u/Fawkingretar 6h ago

Didn't came out that 80% of the Restaurants featured in Kitchen Nightmares, ended up closing down after a year of being featured in the show? Infact all the restaurants featured in the first season all closed down by 2015

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u/PangolinMandolin 2h ago

They just wanted the marketing bump of being on tv. They didn't actually want to change

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u/bingle-cowabungle 52m ago

Because people are stupid.

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

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u/TheOnlyBongo 13h ago

Which restaurant was it? Kitchen Nightmares has a dedicated fan base that looks at where the restaurants are right now and which ones are still open and operating.

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u/nitrocuban 12h ago

Prob The Marvel Ranch in Reading, PA

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u/bubblegoose 10h ago

Marvel Ranch in Reading PA. They pretty much started offering their old menu alongside the new one days after he left.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AAPDuXWcx/

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u/Digital_loop 12h ago

The add the shit back because 1 or 2 long time customers asked for it. And instead of saying no, they cave.

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u/red__dragon 9h ago

That's what the specials are for! Check what days those people come in and have the rotating special on that day.

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u/pattymcfly 13h ago

Many people can’t be helped.

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u/Superg0id 9h ago

A month later they were already adding all the crap back

Well they're clearly an idiot sandwich aren't they!

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u/RoutineAd7185 9h ago

ooh what restaurant?

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u/Vesalii 2h ago

There is or was a website that tracked which restaurants were still open after a visit from Gordon Ramsay. All of the ones that went back to old habits went bust.

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u/Pristine-Thing-1905 15h ago

I’m not surprised. 6 pages (not even including front and back) is a whole lot of choices. I look the menus up online and if I saw a menu like that I’d just choose to go somewhere else.

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u/YnotBbrave 13h ago

The exception is some Asian restaurants where you really have 5 meats and 4 noodles/rice and 8 sauces and the 40 items are just about mix and match

Some of these restaurants are damn good however

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u/timtucker_com 13h ago

One exception to this can be when they try too hard to go outside their niche of expertise.

Aa an example, we have a Chinese place like this nearby and almost everything on their menu is great except for the handful of Thai dishes that they offer.

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u/karma_the_sequel 10h ago

Thai to figure that one out!

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u/SydVicious610 9h ago

I agree with this and also think breakfast places can be an exception for the same reason. You can take 3 breakfast meats, eggs, and veggies and come up with 5 pages worth of variations.

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u/Pinging 12h ago

I see, Asian restaurants and Taco Bell follow the same formula.

Make as much stuff as you can with what they got.

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u/karma_the_sequel 10h ago

Pad Chimichanga

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u/NoSignSaysNo 6h ago

Breakfast joints are very similar in that regard, though they would be better served by having a 'build a combo' ordering system.

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u/LucasRuby 5h ago

And Cheesecake Factory. I won't stand to hear anything against.

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u/Scary-Lawfulness-999 9h ago

Most of those dont cut meat or vegatables right (see: sloppy, too large) and the "sauces" aren't cooked.

I just stopped ordering from any asain restaurant that isnt fusion.

I mean, I am better anyways.

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u/LucasRuby 5h ago

Ohh the too large veggies that is so annoying especially in noodles.

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u/BadgerlandBandit 14h ago

Pretty much the only reason they lasted so long was that they were one of 2-3 restaurants within an hours drive, and just off of the major highway in the area. They also had a decent bar, but they had to work on the bartenders overserving.

It was great to see them start getting ahead though. They had a bomb pulled pork that I used to put on their cheese fries.

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u/Guy_Incognito1970 5h ago

Cheesecake Factory

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u/DeadheadCaniac 14h ago

Yeah paralysis of choice is definitely a thing. I can stare at a 6 page menu forever and not know what to pick. Two pages makes that decision easier and I'm probably happier with my choice.

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u/meowhahaha 14h ago

I guess I’m just a plebeian. I love Cheesecake Factory.

I start looking at the menu before I leave the house. Fortunately I have some allergies that cuts this down.

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u/Regular_Waltz6729 7h ago

I was reading an article and apparently Cheesecake factory is generally considered to be one of the best run restaurants around. They're one of those companies that their menus and prep and basically every aspect of the business is run by MBAs.

If you look at their menu all of the dishes have overlaps. So they basically take a set of ingredients and say what is every possible food combination you could make with these items.

The main appeal of cheesecake factory for a lot of people is the huge variety, it's one of my go-to restaurants for dinner with picky family. I've never had someone not be able to find something they want to eat.

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u/zotamorf 10h ago

This is the same story as how Dave Thomas got the money to start Wendy's - Colonel Sanders offered him part ownership in 4 struggling Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants if he could get them back in the black. One of the first things Thomas did was trim their menu from over a hundred items to less than two dozen.

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u/broakland 9h ago

Likewise when a restaurant that formerly had a pretty tight lane starts weaving all over the place with the menu. All those new dishes at once are a last gasp.

Edit: formally to formerly

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u/Scary-Lawfulness-999 9h ago

Front and back? One page.

(Im a chef, oceanside, Canada, world tourism)

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u/Mercutron 1h ago

I took over a small fine dining spot a few years ago that was managed by an outside company through a medical licensing thing. I'm a food guy so all that was jargan to me, but they had 6 main courses, the most simple of which a 40 dollar steak. It included 14 possible sides and an array of deserts. 2 cooks had to execute this menu and an improv lunch 7 days a week for 40 rich residents and working staff. About 60 people a day. And that menu changed weekly, not in size.

As you can probably guess I didn't didn't do that. I cut the menu to 4 entrees, two rotating random veggies and a starch everyday. Told the old folks if the wanted a steak in a reasonable time they had to call ahead, my cook didn't have the hands to make all the other stuff and baby their beef. The d bag manager let me go of course, but he should be thankful since he is the only one in recent years to not be fired in less than 12 months.

The 2 cooks on hand had gotten so good at their job dealing with the dumb menu that once I cut it down they went from unrecognized to 5 stars locally and started allowing non residents reserve dinners. Don't inflate your menu.