Kitchen Nightmares and Small Business

One of my new favorite “reality” TV shows is Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay, which is based upon the highly successful BBC show, aptly named Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. For those not familiar with the show, Gordon Ramsay, one of the most successful chefs and restauranteurs in the world, is called into a failing or underperforming restaurant and attempts to turn it around in a week. These restaurants always have many things wrong with them, be it a bad staff, inept owners, filth, horrible food and the like.

As I was watching the last few episodes, I couldn’t help notice something that I’ve seen way too often in the past 10 years occur in 1 hour: how arrogance, denial and ineptitude destroys a small business -- and that’s just the start of it -- I’ll elaborate more on this in a second, but before I do, I came across a review on the web about this show.

Gina Bellfante of The New York Times wrote: “The subtext of “Kitchen Nightmares” is that ordinary middle-class business owners need brash and brilliant moguls to save them from a sad reliance on their own mediocrity. It is an ugly message that Mr. Ramsay makes undeniably hypnotic.”

I hate to break the news to Ms. Bellafante and the New York Times, but when a business is in a tailspin, they need the help and guidance of those who have been successful -- and it’s not just the “middle-class business owners” that suffer. For 10 years I worked with small businesses as well as several publicly traded companies which wouldn’t be called “middle class” by any means who were in trouble because their management and owners refused to act as such. Many suffered from Pollyanna Syndrome believing that tomorrow they will land the big client or the big sale and everything will turn around. Nine out of ten times, it doesn’t happen. They have to decide at that point whether or not to continue to go ahead with the business, suffering along the way and hurting themselves, their staff and customers in the process; or they can admit that they have a problem and get help.

With Kitchen Nightmares, each of these restaurants have recognized that they need help and that’s why Ramsay is brought in. After seeing the damage that’s been done, towards the middle and end of each shows, focused on getting the owners to buy into the process of turning the restaurant around by making strong decisions. Some are drastic changes including the firing of the current chefs and staff members and hiring new ones. Some are subtle, such as a change of the menu to something that will attract people and create a “name” for the business -- a signature dish, for example. (In the sales and marketing world, we call this a Unique Selling Position).In a recent show, Ramsay was in Tuckahoe, New York, a town 15 minutes outside of New York City. The restaurant he was working with was an Italian restaurant that was housed in an old mill. The scene was rustic, but nice, but the service and food were bad. Ramsay, decided to tour the town and found lots and lots of Italian restaurants throughout the small town. Having been to Tuckahoe many times, I can vouch for this first hand. He went to a butcher shop and asked the owner if there was a steakhouse, ever and after he was told no, he deiced to go back to the suffering restaurant to make the change from Italian restaurant to steak house. The owner was very resistant and so was the bumbling staff, but after going through the financials with the owner’s wife, they realized that if they continued on the way they were - losing money -- and if they closed up shop, they would “be in the hole for at least $500K.” That alone was motivation to try Ramsay’s approach.

The short end to the story was that the business turned around and became a big success.

Small business owners need to know how to work on their business versus working in their business. Most don’t. Most are self-employed, meaning that they own a job, versus taking ownership of a business. Some are so self-consumed and refuse to delegate responsibility and authority to others that they ultimately fail.

Every business owner or those that want to become one should watch this show and also read and own The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, one of my all-time favorite books. Yes, Kitchen Nightmares is reality TV and it’s one of the closest things to REAL life on TV versus the crap that’s out there. Despite what the New York Times may think, mediocrity has no place on business. Why be average when excellence is an option?