Restaurateurs: Why Your First Day Back From Vacation is the Most Important Day of the Year

In this essential episode for restaurant entrepreneurs, Matthew Mabel reveals why your post-vacation return is the most critical business opportunity of the year. Restaurant owners often fall victim to "habits" - the ownership equivalent of store blindness that prevents managers from seeing operational details. This episode explores how vacation creates a unique window to break free from automatic behaviors, implement new strategies, and drive meaningful restaurant business growth. Matthew shares four actionable steps to harness your fresh perspective for profit optimization, sales enhancement, and entrepreneurship breakthroughs. Perfect for independent restaurant owners seeking to escape routine thinking and accelerate their business success through strategic habit disruption and fresh operational approaches.

Key Topics Covered

• Understanding "store blindness" and how restaurant owners develop similar habit-based limitations
• The love-hate relationship with habits in restaurant entrepreneurship and business operations
• Four essential action steps to maximize your post-vacation business breakthrough potential
• How to resist automatic behaviors and challenge established restaurant management routines
• Strategies for involving your team in fresh perspective initiatives and operational improvements
• Connecting vacation insights to concrete restaurant profit and growth opportunities

Resources Mentioned

• Website: www.surrender.biz
• Free initial consultation available

Connect with Matthew Mabel

Matthew works with owners of successful, independent, multi-unit restaurants to improve:

• Profit growth
• Sales optimization
• Guest count increase
• Unit expansion
• Employee engagement
• Brand loyalty

How to Support the Show

• Subscribe to the Restaurant Success Podcast and Newsletter
• Rate and review the show
• Visit www.surrender.biz for additional resources

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Restaurant Success Podcast. I'm Matthew Mabel, veteran restaurant advisor, coach, consultant, and speaker devoted to multi-unit independent restaurant unit, profit and revenue growth, internal harmony and ownership freedom and flexibility.

This is your weekly entree of the advice, strategy and tactics that I currently provide to my best clients.

Today we're going to talk about something that might sound a little unusual at first - why your first day back from vacation is actually the most important day of the year for your restaurant business. We'll explore how to break old habits, start new ones, and use that fresh perspective you get from time away to catapult yourself and your company forward. I'll also share some specific action steps you can take to make sure you don't waste this incredible opportunity.

You know, if you tend to rush into that skyscraper-sized group of emails when you get back from vacation and don't stop to think about this, you're missing a tremendous and fleeting window to move your business ahead.

Let me start by asking you something - have you ever heard the term "store blindness"? If you've been in the industry as long as I have, you've probably come across it. And no, it's not a place to buy window coverings. It refers to managers who have been in their stores so long they can't see the details anymore. You ask your general managers to constantly fight that tendency to miss out on repetitive details at their location, but they just don't see them.

Well, as an owner of a successful independent restaurant company, you have your own version of store blindness. It's called "habits."

Now, we have this interesting love-hate relationship with habit. On one hand, if you needed to stop and think about how to do something and evaluate every time you approached a tiny decision point, you would never get anything done. That's why we love habits - they keep us moving with no apparent effort. They allow us to feel like the passenger rather than the driver.

However, habits also prevent us from adopting new behaviors and considering new options. Which is not so good. Relying on habit is like opening your Uber app and discovering it only allows you to go to places you've been before.

This brings me to why I want you to enjoy both your vacation and the breakthroughs when you return. With Memorial Day behind us, it's time to focus on one of the most important events of any year - your summer vacation.

As a regular listener to this podcast, or reader of my newsletter, you know I advocate taking as much time away from work as possible.

Most people would be envious of the flexibility in your life, and shocked if you wasted something they would treasure if only they had what you have.

Here's what I want you to do - I invite you to bookmark this episode and make a note to listen to it again on the day you return from vacation this summer. Then swing into action on your first day back with these four steps:

First, be mindful of the things you do in a rote manner. Resist them. Pay attention to those automatic behaviors that you've fallen into and challenge yourself to approach them differently.

Second, stop and consider what you can do differently with a fresh start. Act on that. Don't just think about it - take action while that fresh perspective is still with you.

Third, share these observations with your team. Get them involved in this process of looking at things with fresh eyes.

And fourth, connect this to at least one breakthrough opportunity for your company to excel. Use this momentum to drive real change in your business.

You see, vacations can transform you from being the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water to the frog that jumps out when thrown in the pot. If you keep score, please note: The latter frog lives; the former ends up as lunch.

Which do you want to be?

Let me tell you about how we might work together. I work with owners of successful, independent, multi-unit restaurants to grow their profit, sales, guest count, and unit count. My unique approach bonds employees and guests to restaurant brands and allows owners to enjoy the freedom and flexibility they have earned.

To schedule a call with me to discuss how to achieve your biggest goals, follow the link in the show notes. The initial consultation is complimentary, and we can discuss which big moves might be right for your operation.

Thanks for listening. If you haven't already subscribed to the Restaurant Success Podcast and Newsletter podcast, please do so, and rate and review the show. Find more information in the show notes at Restaurant Success Podcast dot com.

Also find tons of information you can use in print, audio and video form at my website, www dot surrender dot biz. Thanks again and see you next time.