Creating a restaurant culture should be a top priority for owner-operators looking to grow their business. Culture is the dominant force in everything else a restaurant does, informing staff morale, customer perception, and operations efficiency. It might not seem as practical as numbers or logistics, but as renowned management consultant Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
When it comes to strategizing culture, at National Restaurant Consultants, we like to remind our clients about the industry category: restaurants are part of a hospitality industry, and hospitality is literally defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.” At the heart of every restaurant culture there should be an emphasis on compassion, service, humanity—in a word, kindness.
Natan Mohart, a tech expert who writes about leadership, has the hard data to prove that leading with kindness is actually best practice when it comes to reaching customers and building company culture. He says, “Most people think success comes from: being tough, pushing harder, demanding more. But the research shows, teams led with kindness are 70% more engaged, 40% more resilient, 21% more productive, and four times more likely to stay.”
Kindness isn’t a second thought or a practice to integrate. It is where to begin; and leading your company culture with this starting point means you’re destined for the path toward success, with your teams and your customers.
Perhaps it seems unnatural to “strategize” kindness. Kindness is something you want to emerge from people organically… Which is exactly why strategizing around kindness is so crucial. If your strategy is born from this core value, it will influence everything about your business—and in an organic way because it is the culture.
David Manela recently posted, “We talk a lot about strategy. Channels, org charts, GTM plays. But none of it sticks without the right culture. Because execution isn’t about knowing what to do. It’s about how people show up every day to get it done. And that’s culture.” Building a business around the cornerstone of kindness creates the foundation for an environment where kindness is the first reaction, it’s inherent. And it’s a strategic plan that your whole team can easily get behind—and benefit from. “If your team isn’t aligned on the same vision and goal, if accountability is vague, if no one feels safe to challenge a bad idea, it won’t matter,” adds Manela.
Creating a culture of kindness begins at the top—it starts with leadership. The best leaders are less concerned with power and more concerned with morale, with how it impacts environment, performance, and longevity. And as Mohart reminds us, simple as it seems, “When someone shows you kindness at work, you feel seen and valued…Kindness isn’t weak. It’s a strength multiplier.”
With decades’ worth of experience in the hospitality industry, our principal Richard Weil knows this to be true. Good leadership is people-driven, and what motivates people is true kindness. “As the first quarter of the 21st century comes to a close in a few short months, management and leadership style have had to change throughout history. Some might say this was due to several economic and socio-political factors, from 9/11 and The Great Recession, to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whatever the reasons, economic climates are always in flux and so sustaining with a culture-driven organization is paramount to your business success. This will always be true.”