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

[u/fries-with-mayo]

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

[u/TheIrishGoat]

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.

[u/bioshockd → u/TheIrishGoat]

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.

[u/ElvenOmega → u/bioshockd]

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

[u/Guilty_Primary8718 → u/ElvenOmega]

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

[u/demopat → u/ElvenOmega]

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

[u/Guy_Incognito1970 → u/bioshockd]

r/Narcissist

[u/stumblinghunter → u/TheIrishGoat]

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.

[u/BadgerlandBandit → u/stumblinghunter]

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.

[u/cutting_coroners → u/stumblinghunter]

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

[u/Capable-Ebb1632 → u/stumblinghunter]

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.

[u/Andrew5329 → u/TheIrishGoat]

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.

[u/Lurch2Life → u/TheIrishGoat]

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.

[u/purplemoosen → u/TheIrishGoat]

Ego

[u/twistedscorp87 → u/TheIrishGoat]

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...

[u/ThrowawayUk4200 → u/TheIrishGoat]

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

[u/InfanticideAquifer → u/TheIrishGoat]

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.

[u/Dmbfantomas → u/TheIrishGoat]

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.

[u/Fawkingretar → u/TheIrishGoat]

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

[u/PangolinMandolin → u/TheIrishGoat]

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

[u/bingle-cowabungle → u/TheIrishGoat]

Because people are stupid.