Official Website of Author
Real problems. Real situations.
Real solutions. Real Answers.
Really.
Accelerate your career with
The New Restaurant Manager
Learn from the mistakes of others
Avoid the mistakes that most beginning managers make.
This refreshing how-to guide is written in a practical, down to earth style, like having coffee with your mentor.
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Guides you through situations and traps that could hurt your career
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Recognize career killers and how to avoid them
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Learn how you really get promoted
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Helps you work smarter, not harder
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Learn what to do when it is not going well
This book takes you through the most common situations, scenarios, and events that you are likely to experience as a new manager. Now rookie managers like yourself can avoid common mistakes and accelerate your career.
This book is the result of years of personal experience in restaurant management, teaching restaurant management, observing new restaurant managers, and gathering solid expertise from all levels of restaurant management. The personal experiences that the author had, both good and bad, and the experiences that he has observed have proven to be the same experiences that every single new restaurant manager goes through.
This is a career, self-improvement book that will accelerate the learning curve of new managers and prevent bad decisions and questionable career moves that can derail or delay promising careers. This is written in a practical, down to earth writing style to help new restaurant managers begin their career journeys.
Table of Contents
Part 1: You Got This
Chapter 1 How you really get promoted
Chapter 2 Work the Shift, don’t let the shift work you
Chapter 3 The P&L: Understanding the numbers will set you free
Part 2: Getting it together
Chapter 4 Employees: Don’t lose a good one. Don’t keep a bad one.
Chapter 5 Customers: Can be people too
Chapter 6 Know the score. How am I doing?
Chapter 7 Manage Up. The GM and you
Part 3:Danger zone
Chapter 8 Career killers and how to avoid them
Chapter 9 The Boss talk: Cover me, I’m going in
Part 4: Tomorrow is almost here
Chapter 10 Career Plan. You can do it
Chapter 11 What’s holding you back? When to leave and when to stay
Excerpts
Work the shift
Many managers think of shifts as something to get through. But, realistically, when you think about it, what you do during your shift each day adds up to your career. That’s why it is so important to use each shift to move your career forward rather than just be a series of days that might (or might not) get you promoted.
The P & L
If you’re like most new hospitality managers, you probably don’t consider yourself a numbers person and probably (definitely) never loved taking accounting courses. The good news is that this is just another learned skill. The bad news is that it requires a little effort on your part, but, if you remember, so did learning to play the guitar. The best news is that once you understand the Profit and Loss statement (P&L), you’ve taken a giant step in your progress toward promotion.
Employees
When you first arrive as the new assistant manager, you’re going to be nervous. But your employees are just as nervous about you. Each employee knows they will have to re-establish themselves with the “new guy”. They’re going to have to start from zero with you after they had already “broken in” the last assistant manager. They knew what they could and couldn’t do, but now they don’t know what to expect from you.
Customers
Unfortunately, the typical day-in-the-life of a restaurant manager includes customer complaints. Many managers hate talking to customers anyway, but they really hate talking to ones with problems. Unfortunately, this is not only a part of a manager’s job description, but also a fact of life.
The good news is that it can also be very satisfying to change a customer from hostile to loyal customer. This is a learned skill and should be looked at as a challenge to the manager’s ingenuity, hospitality, and graciousness. Once you have this attitude, you’ll love customer interaction, rather than hate it.
About me
John spent 16 years in restaurant management at several restaurant chains, was vice president of a regional restaurant chain, and owned three independent restaurants and a comedy club.
When he started out, he made every mistake that a new manager could make. As his career progressed, he noticed that new managers were still making the same mistakes.
He went back to school, got a masters and Ph.D., and taught hospitality management at the University of Alabama, Golden Gate University, and Cal Poly Pomona (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona) where he is Professor Emeritus. Graduates who went into restaurant management told him about the mistakes and problems they were having, and nothing had changed: they were still making the exact same mistakes and having the same problems that he and other new managers had made. That’s when he decided to write this book and has been adding to it ever since.
John has taught hospitality management internationally at universities in Xian and Dalian, China and was a Fulbright Scholar in Helsinki, Finland at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences.
John has been a guest on KPCC Southern California Public Radio on restaurants and the economic recovery, and was one of the featured consultants in the Los Angeles Times series "Small Business Makeover".
John has many academic presentations and has published his research on turnover and restaurant failure in such journals as the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education, and the Journal of Foodservice Business Research.
John gives workshops and presentations to help new managers accelerate their careers.
TMI
In his spare time, John loves international travel, reading post-apocalyptic and science fiction, is a private pilot with instrument rating, flying radio control airplanes, and ham radio (K6VFR).
Likes: Pork and beans out of the can, comedy, trivia, humor, and bad jokes. Dislikes: Restaurants that pick up dirty plates but not the dirty silverware, and is really ticked that Pluto is no longer a planet.