By Matt Plapp
In recent weeks, we’ve been looking at how restaurants can succeed by leveraging three marketing pillars, which I call the ABR strategy: Attract Attention, Build a Database, and Retain Your Customers. The goal is to help you win more new customers, win back lost customers, win more frequent customers, win higher check averages, win your community’s attention, and win against the chains.
But this week’s win isn’t about marketing. It isn’t about sales. It’s about a Facebook post I saw last month from a friend. Really, two friends.
Mike Lardy from Bravo Burrito got in his car and drove to Wyoming, Minnesota. Not for a conference. Not for a vacation. He drove to have lunch with Jake Grindeland at Cornerstone Pub & Prime.
Look at that photo below: Two of the most successful restaurant owners we work with at America’s Best Restaurants, sitting in a parking lot with a basket of fries and a couple of sandwiches, trading ideas. Two grown men who run busy restaurants, grinning like they just found free money.
Because in a way, they did.
Here’s the best part. Mike found it on somebody else’s turf.
He didn’t invite Jake to his place, where he’d have spent the whole lunch watching his own kitchen out of the corner of his eye. He went to Jake’s. He ate Jake’s food. He saw Jake’s systems, his line, his flow, his people. And he stole every good idea he could find.
That is the whole lesson. Now, let me tell you why I suspect that almost none of you are doing it.
The Problem Nobody Wants to Admit
As entrepreneurs, we are terrible at leaving our environment. We spend every waking hour inside our own four walls, talking almost exclusively to our own employees. Restaurant owners are the worst offenders that I’ve ever met.
You think the grind IS the job. You wear the 80-hour weeks like a badge of honor. You brag about not having taken a day off since the Obama administration.
But what you’re not seeing is the damage it’s doing.
It’s stunting your growth. You cannot get a new idea in a room where you’re the smartest person and every single person in it reports to you. Of course nobody’s challenging you. You sign their checks. The best idea you’ll ever hear from that room is the idea you already had.
That’s an echo rather than a team. And an echo never taught anybody anything.
So you keep doing what you’ve always done. Same specials. Same slow Tuesdays. Same marketing that isn’t working. Same problems on repeat, because the only person you ever ask for advice is the guy in the mirror, and he’s just as stuck as you are.
Why Does This Tip Live in All Three ABR Pillars?
Here’s why I’m giving you a whole article on going to lunch. Every idea Mike stole from Jake plugs straight into the three pillars we teach. That’s not a coincidence. That’s how it always works when you get around another operator who’s winning.
Maybe Jake’s crushing it on Attract Attention with a promotion Mike had never thought of.
Maybe Jake’s running a Build a Database play at the register that Mike could copy on Monday.
Maybe Jake’s got a Retain system, a text club, a follow-up, a reason for people to come back, that Mike’s been leaving on the table for years.
You don’t know which one it’ll be until you’re sitting in the other guy’s dining room watching it happen. You can’t read it in a book. You can’t get it off a webinar. You get it by putting your body in a different building and paying attention.
That’s the thing about Attract, Build, and Retain. The strategies are simple. The execution is where restaurants live and die. And the fastest way to fix your execution is to go watch somebody who’s already figured out the piece you’re stuck on.
Mike and Jake didn’t get lucky. They got out.
This Week’s WIN
This one’s simple, and I want you to actually do it. Don’t just nod your head and then click away from this article: Leave your restaurant once a week and go sit inside somebody else’s.
Pick ONE other business owner. It doesn’t even have to be a restaurant. Some of the best ideas I’ve stolen came from a car wash and a gym.
Text them today. This part is mandatory, so open your phone right now: “I’m buying lunch at your place next week. I want to see how you run things. What day works?”
Then go to THEM. Their building. Their food. Their systems. Not yours. The whole point is to get out of your own head and into somebody else’s operation.
And when you’re there, ask one question: “What’s working right now that surprised you?”
You might be shocked at what you’ll learn when you buy them lunch and actually ask the right questions.
Every Hour Out Is an Hour Your Brain Works
I need you to hear this because it goes against everything you’ve told yourself about being a hard worker: Every hour you spend out of your restaurant is an hour your brain actually works. Not the busywork brain that’s putting out fires and counting the drawer. The real brain. The one that sees your business from the outside and finally notices the thing that’s been costing you money for two years.
You will never get that hour of high-functioning brain time standing behind your own line. Never.
Mike got in the car. Jake set the table. They spent one lunch together, and both walked away with ideas they’ll use for the next decade. What did that cost? A tank of gas and a basket of fries.
So stop grinding alone. Stop treating isolation like it’s a virtue. Go find the people fighting the same fight you are, sit in their building, buy them lunch, and steal everything that isn’t nailed down.
Get out of your restaurant. Your business will thank you for it.
And if you want to go deeper, join our free ABR Skool community, where we help owners and their teams dominate all 9 strategies under the ABR pillars. Every Monday and Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern we go live and tackle a different WIN you could be having. Check it out at skool.com/americasbestrestaurants.
See you next week.
I’m Matt Plapp, the CEO of America’s Best Restaurants, and we exist to help independent restaurant owners win, not survive. We help them win through their marketing and by leveraging our three pillars: Attract Attention, Build a Database, and Retain Your Customers. The goal is to win new customers, win back lost customers, win more frequent visits, win higher check averages, win your community’s attention, and win against the chains.
