Employees...When to Fish and When to Cut Bait

When you own a small business there’s a high guest to staff ratio, so every staffing decision is critical. The idiom fish or cut bait means different things to different people. To me, it meant either making the investment in keeping the person and helping them be all they can be, or letting them go.

There are more than a few LinkedIn articles about the perils of not investing in your staff, specifically at the end of the lifecycle of a business. Every time I read those articles I realize that in the heat of the battle, when you’ve got the “lets get through this day” goggles on, I didn’t always make the best decisions. I was lucky though and I had an outstanding staff that worked together, worked their asses off, and for the most part, wanted my dream of owning a restaurant to succeed.

I hired one kid as a dishwasher. He repeatedly called out due to illness, pet illness, pet death, relative illness, relative death. I gave him a 2nd chance each and every time. One day he texted me 5 mins before the start of his shift, he decided to move to a different town and wasn’t coming in. I should have cut bait.

We had one member of the culinary team with us from day one. He ended up being one of the best, hardest workers we had, but left due to personal reasons. Looking back, I didn’t paint a compelling enough picture for him to stay. I should have fished.

I hired one server who said they had grown up in restaurants, and had a fairly long resume of experience. When it came time to open a bottle of wine for a guest, they asked another server to do it for them, they didn’t know how...I cut bait.

The one server, who from day one I knew that if I made the investment, would be the one who I could lean on and depend on, no matter what. They stayed until our last day and worked tirelessly, with a positive attitude until the very end. I’m so glad I fished...I couldn’t have made it without her.

Even though we didn’t make it, or succeed as some people would say. We did succeed in taking great care of our guests. We scored consistently high marks in customer feedback for our food and service in all of the social media platforms until the day we closed. Our reputation for service and quality is still talked about. We had a core staff that cared, worked hard, had fun, and wanted to be a part of what we were doing. Knowing when to fish and when to cut bait was an intricate part of our success and not doing it attributed to some of our failures. Going forward, I’ll know better when to go fishing and I won’t hesitate to cut bait when I need to.

Up next...People Like Booze!

Don Riedthaler currently resides in Camas, WA and has contributed to the service related industries in some way, shape or form for over 30 years (except for that 2-year stint as a project coordinator for a nationwide Sears licensed window and siding manufacturing and installation company) and is really enjoying spending time with his family while he seeks out his next career adventure. Most recently he owned Hey Jack, a small restaurant specializing in freshly made cuisine sourced from farms and purveyors in the Pacific Northwest. Reach out with questions or insights about the restaurant industry, I’d love to hear from you.