Don’t let uncertainty stop your pizzeria’s success

Running your pizzeria during the COVID-19 pandemic feels like trying to navigate your way home through a raging forest fire, like the ones that ravage the West Coast. Much like a forest fire burns homes to the ground and devastates communities, COVID-19 is raging through the restaurant industry. As a restaurant owner, you have to do everything you can to obstruct its impact on your business and your life.

How? Here are two things to have in your restaurant business that can do this:
• Systems
• An implementer

Number one, when I say systems, what do I mean? I mean everything you do that somebody else could be doing. Whether it’s counting out your bar draw every single time the same way or opening and closing your restaurant. It could be sending in payroll or ordering food. You create your system, your process, your way. This allows you to impose your will so that people do it your way even when and especially when you’re not there.

Why systems and how do systems and an implementer work? Well, remember, I say it allows you to impose your will. By having your systems in place, independents operate much like the chains do. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be cold and sterile and serve packaged food hot out of a microwave. You’re still the same restaurant owner with the same set of core values. But you are going to set standards and train people to those standards.

Number two, the obstacle for most entrepreneurs is themselves. Even if you want to create all those systems and execute all those systems and train all those systems, you don’t have the time. Instead what you want to do is get somebody to help you get it out of your head, document it and actually implement it. That’s called an implementer.

Simply put: Find one person who helps you get it all done. That is how you can have success with systems.

The good news about systems is you already have them. All you need to do is document them. Once you document them, you teach them. Teach your implementer all the ways of the business, have that person document them all, have them bring it to you to edit and then BAM! You have documented and trainable systems.

Here’s a bonus tip that makes it even easier. Grab your cellphone and video yourself walking through the restaurant and performing all the tasks. Then have your implementer type it all up step by step. Then follow the same procedure. Review what they’ve captured, edit it, finalize it and BAM! Systems documented. Keep the video and it becomes a training tool for new employees.

As a restaurant coach I want you to know that I teach restaurant owners a whole series of systems that literally help you organize your whole restaurant. The systems I teach cover your restaurant operations through what you do every single day. And that gives you comfort. It gives you direction. It allows you to get through the ebbs and flows of running your business, even when there’s a high level of uncertainty like there is today with COVID-19.

If you truly want to transform your life to have freedom from your restaurant and a chance at real financial freedom, you’d be wise to put systems in place and find an implementer.

David Scott Peters is an author, restaurant coach and speaker who teaches restaurant operators how to take control of their businesses and finally realize their full potential. His first book, Restaurant Prosperity Formula: What Successful Restaurateurs Do, teaches the systems and traits to develop to run a profitable restaurant. Thousands of restaurants have worked with Peters to transform their businesses. Get his three principles to restaurant success at https://dsp.coach/three-key-principles.