As the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots prepare to take the field for Super Bowl LIII, one thing is perfectly clear – both teams owe much of their success to coaching. Great coaching is critical to the success of a football team, and the same is true for your business. Great restaurant managers are critical to your success.
The Rams’ Sean McVay and the Patriots’ Bill Belichick bring unique qualities to the game. One is the youngest head coach in the league and is coaching their first Super Bowl while the other is one of the oldest and has won five championships. Despite their differences, they are considered as two of the best in the game and they share important qualities found in any football coach or restaurant manager. Most notably, they don’t make decisions without having the best possible information at their disposal.
Football coaches have a lot of difficult decisions to make. Should they go for it on fourth down? What personnel package should they use? When the stakes are raised (like in the Super Bowl) their decisions are magnified and their ramifications are amplified. While restaurant managers might not have millions of people watching their every move at home, they face similar challenges.
Restaurant managers have to make tough choices. These decisions involve inventory, food preparation, and labor management, just to name a few. As with football coaches, heightened stakes make decision making even more important.
Whether you’re deciding to run or pass on third down or determining how much food to prepare ahead of your restaurant’s Super Bowl promotion, information is key. Playing the wrong personnel and mismanaging the clock can lose football games. Scheduling the wrong team members in a given shift or managing an inefficient inventory can hurt profits. Those with easy access to critical data have a much better chance of winning.
Fortunately, decisions don’t need to be made alone. Coaches turn to assistants who provide critical insights into each situation. Restaurant managers have similar resources at their disposal. They can turn to software that also provides critical insights into each situation at their restaurant. In either situation, the key is limiting the amount of time sorting information so more time can be spent on data-backed decision making.
One way restaurant managers can do this is by keeping instant access to all critical metrics on their person at all times. Mobile reporting applications allow restaurant managers to measure the performance of real-time KPIs for sales, food and labor costs, and forecast variances, among other key insights.
Like football, the restaurant game is incredibly competitive. In order to succeed, restaurant managers need the most information, the best information, and the quickest access to information. A system that integrates food and labor management data and provides one version of the truth can help restaurant mangers make the right decisions. Ultimately, those who do will win.
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