Obviously you can, lots of people do . . . but without specific knowledge, skills and ability in the management of a food and beverage operation, you're adding a great deal of risk to what is already a risky venture. 80 to 90% of independent, non-franchised restaurants fail within the first two years.
I've actually heard human resources people talk as though middle management is middle management — if you can run a hotel, then obviously you can run a restaurant; if you can run a convenience store, then obviously you can run a movie theater; if you can manage a daycare then obviously you can run a hotel — and I've always wondered how such genius evolved on earth.
I've managed hotels for years. I've managed motion picture theaters for some 15 years in addition to that, and there isn't that much about running theaters that qualified me to manage a hotel. Even the art and science of supervision is different: with theaters, you use minimum wage teenagers; with hotels, you employ adults who have to make a living on what you pay them, who are more likely to question the legitimacy of any authority you try to assert, and with whom you cannot deal so arbitrarily. Supervising kids truly is ‘kid stuff’ (bad pun) by contrast to supervising adults. Things we associate with “management” — organizing ability, hiring, training, staffing, discipline and supervision; vigilance, marketing ability, troubleshooting and problem solving, recordkeeping, overall responsibility and accountability — are all together just one part of the required skill set; and many of those parts aren’t doable without some specific subject matter expertise. If you don't know what you're trying to manage, there's a very low limit to how well you can manage it.
Can I run a restaurant? I myself wouldn't attempt anything much more complex than a hot dog cart (or a concession stand at a movie theater). I can cook breakfast or dinner for myself and maybe any company I have over at my house; but I have no illusion that I can stay on top of things in a commercial kitchen, and it would take me a few months to get on top of any more than the most basic logistics, inventory management, recordkeeping and marketing involved in a food operation. Best leave that to the professionals — people who are always in the game.
I can run a Best Western or Comfort Suites and if you're my competitor managing a nearby Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn, then watch out, I'm coming after you. Assuming that capital isn't a problem (with Choice-franchised and Best Western member hotels, it often is, but our management agreements are written so it won't be), that we're not running a sub-optimal property that will never be anything more than a weak competitor no matter what anyone does with it, and that we're not operating a recently-signed property under a new management agreement that needs a year or two for a turnaround, I'll cut circles around you, because with that kind of hotel, I know what I'm doing. I know what most any hotel, given its design, furnishings and location, can realistically be made to do. I can completely disassemble the thing in ways that occasionally scare the heck out of the owners, put it all back together again blindfolded, have it running better than before; and all the leftover parts that the owners are worried I maybe shouldn't have ripped out won't be essential components, they'll be stuff we can throw out that the hotel would have been better off never having had in there to begin with.
I'll exceed the Choice brand standards or the Best Western rules and regulations in ways that will catch you by surprise if you're not reading my TripAdvisor reviews (and I'll be reading yours), my sales and marketing is going to be very aggressive and relentless in ways that will catch you by surprise if you're not reading your STR reports (and I'll be reading mine), and it will be obvious to you that you're up against a serious competitor.
And that's even before we go there about how, if you're managing an IHG or Hilton franchised property, you're going to be bound by so many cumbersome rules and policies from your franchise organization that chances are, you won't be able to get out of your own way . . . and I will fully and mercilessly take advantage of that. I'll have my best (as well as my most devious and sneaky and outside-the-box-thinking) people sitting around dreaming up stuff that we could do to market more effectively and keep the guests happy and coming back, that Choice or Best Western will let us get away with, that IHG or Hilton won't let you do (at least not without requiring you to spend months getting approvals, if you can get them at all). It's part of what we designed Beechmont to be: a management company that can take a property with a second-tier franchise (Choice, Best Western, Carlson, Wyndham or Red Lion), and compete successfully against a property with a first-tier franchise (Marriott, Hilton ot IHG).
Could I do that well with something similar to a Hilton Garden Inn or a Courtyard by Marriott (say, a Hyatt Place or one of the new Park Inns by Radisson that they are going to introduce in the next month or so)? Probably — but I'm going to have an experienced restaurant manager there. At that tier, you're getting into properties that have a food and beverage operation, that operation is going to have a little more complexity than a hot dog cart or a snack bar at the movies, and I just don't have the food and beverage expertise to attempt it without an experienced F&B manager.
With the newer properties we have in development, I dream of the day that we can launch our own hotel brands and operate without anyone's franchise other than our very own. (This could take awhile: mortgage lenders who finance hotels have a strong bias toward franchised hotels.) I don't need some brand manager from Marriott, Hilton or IHG telling me I've got to change my two-year-old carpet, or what color the drapes in the lobby should be. It's my job to know and when I'm not sure, it's my job to know who to ask and what I should ask. But any restaurant included with any of those properties will probably be a Huddle House franchise. That's a legitimate need for and a legitimate use of the franchising model. They have the expertise and experience, we don't. We need the guidance. A restaurant is a different type of business altogether.
So is a cocktail bar if you have that. So is meeting and event space if you have that. So is a gift shop or retail space if you have that.
So is a casino if you have that — although usually, a casino hotel is merely a sideline to the casino instead of the other way around, just as a restaurant or a gift shop or a lounge in a nice hotel with no casino is merely a sideline to that hotel's business of renting hotel rooms.
Our job is to make it all work together as a unified hotel operation, but we really need people with specific subject matter expertise to run the added revenue departments, once those departments acquire any complexity at all. And to do that, you bring in the people you need to get it done right.
If you've never done it before, don't assume you can do it yourself. Even if you went to school for it, someone with actual experience will know things that they didn't quite cover in any of your classes, and that it will take you a long time to learn on your own. A butterbar Lieutenant in the Army, or a Navy Ensign, outranks a Master Sergeant or a Senior Chief — but by golly, they listen to them.
That's how full-service hotels that have restaurants run successful restaurants. (Many don't. In a lot of full-service hotels, the food and beverage operation is actually a cost factor and you're lucky to break even.) In some parts of the world it goes without saying that hotels include a restaurant. In the minds of people who travel, the two seem to go together because they always eat out when they're traveling and staying in a hotel. But the reality is that you can run a very good hotel without without a restaurant, and that it's possible to run a very successful restaurant without having any hotel rooms. While they both get lumped together under “hospitality”, each is very different and requires very different, almost entirety separate, skill sets.
If you aspire to open your own restaurant, you really need to focus on food servicemanagement, not necessarily hotel management.
Originally appeared on Quora
I've actually heard human resources people talk as though middle management is middle management — if you can run a hotel, then obviously you can run a restaurant; if you can run a convenience store, then obviously you can run a movie theater; if you can manage a daycare then obviously you can run a hotel — and I've always wondered how such genius evolved on earth.
I've managed hotels for years. I've managed motion picture theaters for some 15 years in addition to that, and there isn't that much about running theaters that qualified me to manage a hotel. Even the art and science of supervision is different: with theaters, you use minimum wage teenagers; with hotels, you employ adults who have to make a living on what you pay them, who are more likely to question the legitimacy of any authority you try to assert, and with whom you cannot deal so arbitrarily. Supervising kids truly is ‘kid stuff’ (bad pun) by contrast to supervising adults. Things we associate with “management” — organizing ability, hiring, training, staffing, discipline and supervision; vigilance, marketing ability, troubleshooting and problem solving, recordkeeping, overall responsibility and accountability — are all together just one part of the required skill set; and many of those parts aren’t doable without some specific subject matter expertise. If you don't know what you're trying to manage, there's a very low limit to how well you can manage it.
Can I run a restaurant? I myself wouldn't attempt anything much more complex than a hot dog cart (or a concession stand at a movie theater). I can cook breakfast or dinner for myself and maybe any company I have over at my house; but I have no illusion that I can stay on top of things in a commercial kitchen, and it would take me a few months to get on top of any more than the most basic logistics, inventory management, recordkeeping and marketing involved in a food operation. Best leave that to the professionals — people who are always in the game.
I can run a Best Western or Comfort Suites and if you're my competitor managing a nearby Holiday Inn Express or Hampton Inn, then watch out, I'm coming after you. Assuming that capital isn't a problem (with Choice-franchised and Best Western member hotels, it often is, but our management agreements are written so it won't be), that we're not running a sub-optimal property that will never be anything more than a weak competitor no matter what anyone does with it, and that we're not operating a recently-signed property under a new management agreement that needs a year or two for a turnaround, I'll cut circles around you, because with that kind of hotel, I know what I'm doing. I know what most any hotel, given its design, furnishings and location, can realistically be made to do. I can completely disassemble the thing in ways that occasionally scare the heck out of the owners, put it all back together again blindfolded, have it running better than before; and all the leftover parts that the owners are worried I maybe shouldn't have ripped out won't be essential components, they'll be stuff we can throw out that the hotel would have been better off never having had in there to begin with.
I'll exceed the Choice brand standards or the Best Western rules and regulations in ways that will catch you by surprise if you're not reading my TripAdvisor reviews (and I'll be reading yours), my sales and marketing is going to be very aggressive and relentless in ways that will catch you by surprise if you're not reading your STR reports (and I'll be reading mine), and it will be obvious to you that you're up against a serious competitor.
And that's even before we go there about how, if you're managing an IHG or Hilton franchised property, you're going to be bound by so many cumbersome rules and policies from your franchise organization that chances are, you won't be able to get out of your own way . . . and I will fully and mercilessly take advantage of that. I'll have my best (as well as my most devious and sneaky and outside-the-box-thinking) people sitting around dreaming up stuff that we could do to market more effectively and keep the guests happy and coming back, that Choice or Best Western will let us get away with, that IHG or Hilton won't let you do (at least not without requiring you to spend months getting approvals, if you can get them at all). It's part of what we designed Beechmont to be: a management company that can take a property with a second-tier franchise (Choice, Best Western, Carlson, Wyndham or Red Lion), and compete successfully against a property with a first-tier franchise (Marriott, Hilton ot IHG).
Could I do that well with something similar to a Hilton Garden Inn or a Courtyard by Marriott (say, a Hyatt Place or one of the new Park Inns by Radisson that they are going to introduce in the next month or so)? Probably — but I'm going to have an experienced restaurant manager there. At that tier, you're getting into properties that have a food and beverage operation, that operation is going to have a little more complexity than a hot dog cart or a snack bar at the movies, and I just don't have the food and beverage expertise to attempt it without an experienced F&B manager.
With the newer properties we have in development, I dream of the day that we can launch our own hotel brands and operate without anyone's franchise other than our very own. (This could take awhile: mortgage lenders who finance hotels have a strong bias toward franchised hotels.) I don't need some brand manager from Marriott, Hilton or IHG telling me I've got to change my two-year-old carpet, or what color the drapes in the lobby should be. It's my job to know and when I'm not sure, it's my job to know who to ask and what I should ask. But any restaurant included with any of those properties will probably be a Huddle House franchise. That's a legitimate need for and a legitimate use of the franchising model. They have the expertise and experience, we don't. We need the guidance. A restaurant is a different type of business altogether.
So is a cocktail bar if you have that. So is meeting and event space if you have that. So is a gift shop or retail space if you have that.
So is a casino if you have that — although usually, a casino hotel is merely a sideline to the casino instead of the other way around, just as a restaurant or a gift shop or a lounge in a nice hotel with no casino is merely a sideline to that hotel's business of renting hotel rooms.
Our job is to make it all work together as a unified hotel operation, but we really need people with specific subject matter expertise to run the added revenue departments, once those departments acquire any complexity at all. And to do that, you bring in the people you need to get it done right.
If you've never done it before, don't assume you can do it yourself. Even if you went to school for it, someone with actual experience will know things that they didn't quite cover in any of your classes, and that it will take you a long time to learn on your own. A butterbar Lieutenant in the Army, or a Navy Ensign, outranks a Master Sergeant or a Senior Chief — but by golly, they listen to them.
That's how full-service hotels that have restaurants run successful restaurants. (Many don't. In a lot of full-service hotels, the food and beverage operation is actually a cost factor and you're lucky to break even.) In some parts of the world it goes without saying that hotels include a restaurant. In the minds of people who travel, the two seem to go together because they always eat out when they're traveling and staying in a hotel. But the reality is that you can run a very good hotel without without a restaurant, and that it's possible to run a very successful restaurant without having any hotel rooms. While they both get lumped together under “hospitality”, each is very different and requires very different, almost entirety separate, skill sets.
If you aspire to open your own restaurant, you really need to focus on food servicemanagement, not necessarily hotel management.
Originally appeared on Quora
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