The Fundamental Preface
About You And Your Business
Last Updated: August 21, 2026The Entry Point “It all starts with the operator. He sets the pace. He sets the template for what work looks like, what good work looks like, and what good growth looks like — both for the individual, the Guest, and the business.” — Jeffrey Summers You are not here because things are going great....
0032 Warning Accountability Is Coming
Last Updated: July 30, 2026Knowing the trap and avoiding the trap are not the same thing. The operator who knows the loop tightens at 2am still has to tighten it. The operator who knows the Guest is not the Guest still has to act like it on a Saturday night with three tickets hanging and a cast member crying...
0031 A Note On Directness
Last Updated: July 30, 2026This is direct. Not aggressive. Not harsh. But direct — in a way that may feel uncomfortable if you’ve spent time in the usual hospitality leadership content. Most of it is indirect by design. It softens the diagnosis to protect the reader’s feelings. It validates before it challenges. It wraps hard truths in so many...
0026 The Noise Problem
Last Updated: July 30, 2026There has never been more advice available to restaurant operators. YouTube channels dedicated to restaurant management. LinkedIn thought leaders posting daily frameworks. Consultants with large followings, polished decks, and vocabulary that sounds exactly right. The barrier to claiming expertise has never been lower. The barrier to actually having it hasn’t changed. Tom Nichols, in The...
0025 The Soft Skills Myth
Last Updated: July 30, 2026We’ve developed the habit of referring to people skills as “soft skills.” It’s the biggest oxymoron in the lexicon of workplace bullshit. The people stuff is extremely hard. And because it’s hard, we dodge it. We stop trying. We eat the turnover. We paper it over with fads, free donuts, and “fun” mandated by some...
0024c The Chairman and the Cleaning Lady
Last Updated: July 30, 2026Warren Buffett built the most successful holding company in the history of modern business. In his final letter as CEO, he did not mention the balance sheet. He mentioned the cleaning lady. “Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.” That sentence is the entire argument of...
0024b The World Is Catching Up
Last Updated: July 30, 2026The argument this work makes is not new. It has been running in the best restaurants for decades — in the rooms where the cast knew every Guest by name, where the standard held across turnover, where the operator built something that compounded instead of contracted. The argument was never academic. It was operational. It...
0024 The Argument
Last Updated: July 30, 2026Every restaurant book ever written falls into one of three categories. The first tells you what to do. Here are the steps. Here is the checklist. Here is the system. Follow it and you will succeed. These books are useful as far as they go — and they do not go far enough, because the...
0023 Your Competition Isnt Who You Think It Is
Last Updated: July 30, 2026Most independent operators think about competition the wrong way. They watch the restaurant down the street. They track what the new place is charging, what they’re putting on Instagram, how full their dining room looks on a Friday night. They benchmark against the category — who’s doing better, who’s doing worse, who just opened and...
0022 Why Restaurants Fail
Last Updated: September 9, 2026The modern hospitality gospel was written at restaurants doing $300 per Guest. Most operators are running at $65. That 4.6x gap isn’t a mindset problem — it’s a math problem. When people ask me why restaurants fail, I give them a simple answer. Restaurants don’t fail. Operators do. They fail when they mistake a restaurant...