The Restaurant Success Podcast

Three Ways Fantastic Bosses Make Restaurant GMs Great

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In this episode of the Restaurant Success Podcast, Matthew Mabel tackles one of the most overlooked opportunities in multi-unit restaurant business growth: developing the bosses of your general managers. While most restaurant entrepreneurship focuses on training GMs, the real breakthroughs in guest count, profit, and culture happen when owners invest in their operations directors, area managers, and district managers. Matthew shares the three pillars that separate exceptional multi-unit leaders from the rest — a steadfast commitment to growing GMs, a simple sequential operations plan, and a genuine focus on personal improvement. Whether you're an independent restaurant owner preparing to hire your first operations director or a multi-unit leader looking to elevate your own performance, this episode offers practical strategy and coaching insight to help you drive sustainable restaurant business success.

Note: The Restaurant Success Podcast is pausing for the foreseeable future after this episode. The weekly newsletter will continue, and Matthew welcomes listener feedback on how to make the podcast more valuable when it returns. Email your thoughts to matthew@surrender.biz.

Key Topics Covered

  • Why developing the person above your general manager is the biggest blind spot in multi-unit restaurant leadership
  • The three pillars that separate great multi-unit leaders from the rest
  • How a sequential, quarter-by-quarter operations plan creates unprecedented progress across restaurants
  • Why personal improvement and 360-degree feedback belong alongside business objectives in executive coaching
  • What to look for when hiring your first operations director, including the "No Bulldozers" rule
  • Why coaching is for high performers, not just people who are struggling

Links Mentioned

Resources Mentioned

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

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  • Visit www.surrender.biz for additional resources

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 fantastic bosses, but first I wanted to bring you up to date on these podcasts. So, we'll be pausing them for the foreseeable future, but we will be continuing with our weekly newsletters to give you this information in a format that you know and love. If you don't already subscribe to those, there's a link to subscribe in the show notes.

As we look for ways to improve the podcasts, I'd love to hear your ideas for making them more valuable to you. Don't hold back, I've got thick skin!

We have a loyal podcast audience and we'd like to grow it. Please email your thoughts to me at Matthew at surrender dot biz.

Now back to this week's subject.

So today we're looking at the three things that separate the great bosses from everyone else when it comes to making their restaurant GMs truly excel.

We'll talk about why the person above your general manager matters more than you might think, the three pillars that create breakthrough success at that level, and what happens when owners finally commit to developing the bosses of their GMs.


You know, in our industry, we spend a whole lot more time developing general managers than we do developing their leaders. And that's a real blind spot.

Because when companies extend that development focus to GMs' bosses, great things start to materialize. Things that people thought would never happen.

I'm talking about raising guest count in this flat market. Enrolling employees and guests by launching an inspiring and authentic culture program.

Dropping an additional two points on the bottom line. Right? These are the kinds of breakthroughs that only come when you invest in the people who have the most influence on your GMs.

Let me paint a picture of why this matters so much.

In any restaurant company, the general manager remains the most important person. That's just the truth. But think about what that really means. The level of your restaurants' success is determined by the qualities and skills of the person who has the most influence on them.

That's the Area Manager, the District Manager, the Operations Director.

And if you do it yourself - it's you, the owner.

I spend a lot of my days coaching operations directors and people at that level, and I'm also hiring them for owners who have not had great experience or success in selection.

I also coach owners when they employ a multi-unit leader for the first time. And my coaching clients at this level, they come from a really wide range of backgrounds.

Some have recently been promoted to GM and have never been multi-unit leaders before. Others have decades-long track records and are trying to understand how to adapt to a new organization. 

So, it's a wide spectrum.


So let me tell you about the three things, the three pillars, that make the difference between breakthrough success and having to look around for a new job.

The first one is the steadfast commitment and ability to grow general managers. Operations directors work with an assortment of GM personalities, strengths, and talents.

And the most successful ones? They know how to pivot to the general manager they see in front of them at any one moment.

They have an agenda to make each person better, and they follow that agenda every single time. They don't just manage their GMs, they develop them in every interaction.

The second pillar is having an operations plan. And here's the thing, it can be overwhelming to make a multitude of restaurants better. It really can.

So what we do is we create a simple, sequential operations plan, with clear points of accountability, that goes quarter by quarter in every area of operations.

And having that plan in place allows people to make unprecedented progress. Because now you're not reacting to everything at once. You have a roadmap.

And the third pillar, and this one is really important, is personal improvement.

When I coach, we do not focus solely on business objectives. We always include a necessary component of personal improvement that we uncover through a three-hundred-sixty-degree assessment or through a lot of reflection by these leaders.

And in this way, they not only improve at business, but at the interpersonal habits that make them more influential, more cherished, and more effective.

Maybe they learn to relate better to employees and guests. Or to just appreciate them more. Or maybe they master an aspect of the business that doesn't come naturally to them.

Sometimes, you know, they work so much that they have to learn how to go home and recharge. That's a real one.

And one of my clients said something to me recently that I won't forget. He said, "Nobody ever invested in me like this before." And here's a guy, decades into his career, who had always thought executive coaching was for other people, not him.

I have a lot of fun helping these leaders figure out how to make real improvements. And you know what? Owners enjoy our improved results.

Before I wrap up today, I want to point you toward a couple of articles I've written that really connect to what we've been talking about. The first one is called "How the Great Become Even Better Through Coaching," and it gets into why coaching isn't just for people who are struggling. Michael Jordan had a coach. Tom Brady had a coach.

The CEO of Ford has a coach, and by the way, I've met him! 

The coach, not the CEO!

In that article I walk through my top five reasons you'll gain from coaching, things like perspective, experience, support, getting a different voice in the room, and focus. And I also talk about what it really means to be coachable, because that's the piece that determines whether any of this works for you.

The second related article is the "Smart Restaurateurs' Guide to Hiring Your First Operations Director." Now, this one is for the owner who's still in the middle of operations, running things themselves, getting five texts every time a manager needs something.

That article walks through what happens when you make the move to hiring your first operations director.

I share a story from my friend David Cea in Lubbock, Texas, who made that transition and said his sales, numbers, and profits are the best they've ever been, and his quality of life is the best it's ever had. And I get into the three most important criteria to look for when you're hiring that person, including what I call my "No Bulldozers" rule.

You can find links to both of these articles in the show notes.


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, and remember, we will be pausing the podcast with this edition. But we'd love to hear from you with ideas about how to make it more valuable to you when we do return. If you haven't already subscribed to the Restaurant Success Newsletter, please do so. There are links in the show notes. 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 I hope to hear from you.