Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

I’m admitting to a mad, irrational crush on Gordon Ramsay, the big-name, possibly insane Bad Boy chef who uses the “F” word as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and endearment. I’m addicted to the BBCA series, Gordon Ramsay’s F Word (The F is supposed to stand for “food” in this case. A bit cutesy, but the show is well done)…and both Kitchen Nightmares series (U.S. and British.)

In Nightmares, Chef Ramsay travels around working with independent restaurants in trouble. It’s a fascinating look behind the scenes of the food biz…and makes you think twice about eating out. Just how old is that pesto, anyway? He works with the owner and chef to fix problems (and is often surprisingly - profanity aside - pretty nice. And he does know the food biz.)
Those problems invariably come down to a lack of any or all of the following:

1. Order (Things are just thrown into the walk-in. The kitchen floor hasn’t been scrubbed in years. The front of the house hasn’t been vacuumed in living memory.)
2. Simplicity (The owner tries to do too much - a menu with 22 combinations for one item, 90 different entrees, etc.)
3. Quality (They’re cutting corners and thinking people won’t notice that - for example - those fresh clams are deep frozen. Then they’re perplexed why people aren’t buying the defrosted, deep-fried muck.)
4. Process (Even when they do have customers, they can’t get the orders out quickly and effectively.)

When all is said, screamed and thrown, the root cause of all this is that the entrepreneur doesn’t have focus.

So it goes with any entrepreneurial endeavor - start-up, small, or otherwise. The real “F” word should be “Focus.”

Sidebar tip re eating out. One of the big-name chefs (I can’t recall which one) said you should always check out the restrooms. That’ll tell you the state of the kitchen. This holds true in my experience (both as a customer and having worked in kitchens.)