OPERATIONAL HOSPITALITY

For Independent Cafés & Restaurants

Running a café or restaurant means making hundreds of operational decisions every day.

Over time, those decisions shape the way the business performs.

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They influence things like:

Customer Experience
Labour Costs
Team Accountability
Waste
Consistency
Business Performance

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Everything you'll find on this page has been developed to help you strengthen those day-to-day operations.

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Not through:

Lengthy consultancy Programs
Ongoing software subscriptions

But through practical Operational Tools that help you:

Understand your operation
Improve your operational systems
Build stronger operational habits

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Every tool has a specific job.

Some help you identify where your attention is needed.

Others help you improve a particular part of your operation.

Together they support one simple philosophy.

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Better operations create better business performance.

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If that way of thinking makes sense to you, you're in the right place.

EXPLORE THE OPERATIONS WORKSHOP

BACKGROUND

Over the years I've met many independent café and restaurant owners who genuinely wanted to improve their business. Like most owners, they worked hard, cared about their team and wanted to build something they could be proud of. What many of them were looking for was a practical way to strengthen the operation they already had.

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During the years I owned and operated cafés and restaurants, I kept seeing the same thing. Most businesses weren't being held back by one major problem. They were being held back by dozens of small operational weaknesses that, on their own, rarely attracted attention but together quietly shaped the way the business performed.

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As I worked with more operators, I noticed something else. Our industry was becoming increasingly focused on reports, dashboards and software. Those things all have an important place, and I use them myself. But somewhere along the way, attention drifted away from the operation itself.

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And it's within the operation that I believe the greatest opportunities still exist.
Because that's where business performance is created, protected and controlled.

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That observation eventually became the foundation of what I now call Operational Profit™. It's the philosophy that sits behind every Operational Tool you'll find here in Operational Hospitality. Not as another consultancy program or software platform, but simply as a practical way of looking at a hospitality business.

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EVERY SHIFT LEAVES CLUES

Every shift tells you something about your business.

The challenge is that those clues are often easy to miss because they appear as small frustrations that gradually become part of everyday life.

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Perhaps you've noticed things like:

Labour costs creeping higher without a clear reason
Staff asking the same questions every day
Certain jobs never quite getting finished
Food finding its way into the bin a little too often
Customers spending less than they used to
The same problems returning week after week

On their own, none of those issues may seem particularly serious. Together, they're telling you that part of the operation deserves attention.

The goal isn't to react to every problem as it appears. It's to recognise the pattern behind those problems. Once you can see the pattern, you know where to begin.

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That's the thinking behind the Operational Profit Cycle™.

THE OPERATIONAL PROFIT CYCLE™

Over the years I found myself approaching operational problems in much the same way, regardless of the size of the business or the issue that needed attention.

I would first observe what the operation was telling me. Then I'd work to understand the real cause before deciding what deserved attention first. Only then would I look at improving the operational system behind the problem and making sure the improvement became part of the way the business operated.

Eventually that process became the Operational Profit Cycle™ :

The Operational Profit Cycle™ isn't something you complete once and then put away.

It's simply a practical way of looking at your operation.

As one improvement becomes part of the way the business operates, another opportunity usually appears.

That's why the Cycle keeps repeating.

It simply becomes part of the way you think about your business.

WHERE SHOULD YOU START?

Start by understanding what your operation is trying to tell you.

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There's very little point in improving one part of the business if something else deserves your attention first. Spending time understanding the operation almost always leads to better decisions about what to improve next.

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That's exactly why I developed the Profit Leak Detector™.

It helps you identify the operational areas that deserve your attention first, so you're working on the things that are most likely to improve the way your business performs.

Once you've done that, choosing the next Operational Tool becomes much easier.

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Work through the complete Operational Profit Cycle™ together and identify the next improvements for your business.

Supports:

Supports all five stages

LEARN MORE

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The person behind the Operations Workshop

People occasionally ask why I call myself a Hospitality Revenue Technician instead of a consultant or coach.

To me, the difference is quite simple.

When your espresso machine stops working, you don't begin by replacing it. You first want someone who understands how it works.

That's how I've always approached hospitality businesses.

Before deciding what needs improving, I want to understand what the operation is telling us. Once that's clear, we can decide what deserves attention first and work on strengthening the systems behind it.

That's the thinking behind every Operational Tool you'll find in this Operations Workshop.

My goal has never been to make owners dependent on me.

It's to help them better understand their own operation, make more confident operational decisions and build systems that continue adding value long after the work has been done.

If these Operational Tools help you build a stronger operation and give you greater confidence in leading your business, then they've achieved exactly what they were designed to do.

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MEET JEROEN