Collapse

Here are the topics that this is not about:
North Korean tunnel
Spanish Reign
The Anthem or the NFL
Hollywood Execs sex
Spacey and who didn't suspect
Direct TV and cable
to name a few...

But some are symptoms and some are synonyms for what is happening around us in the industry we chose as a profession. Restaurants.

I won't go into my conspiracy ideas of menu price increases (no decreases) from coffee bean shortages to, most recently, avian flu but I will say that the last few decades have had many catastrophes that have directly impacted our lives.

Sears, as a company, made a mistake years ago. The board voted not to leave Chicago, to keep the fluff and expenses of the company centrally located and because a tower was named after them, it would be bad for business to downsize. Maybe they could buy Kmart, that would help.

Our industry is faced with its own collapse. Years ago I asked for budgets that would help us develop a bench of managers. Can't. Don't have it. Not doable.
What we have today is an aging management workforce surrounded by unqualified teams to take over. Growth hasn't stopped with the upstarts of QSRs and coffee kiosks, its put more pressure on the industry. Truth be known, even the suppliers can't keep up with demand.
But people like me, we're tired, broken. Ready to move on. Jumping ship for that last big payday. Leaving the reigns to the next generation. Untrained, unprepared. And we will be blamed for the collapse.

We did bow to the corporate expectations of more profits each year even though we knew that without a team the supported us, we couldn't continue to win, create our dynasty.

We thought that because the music of the 80's lives on, so could our thought process and the way we do business. We wouldn't or couldn't admit it in public because we wanted to portray ourselves in an acceptable light. But the industry was still only about the larger bottom line.

They tell us now that to increase our speed the guests should have the ability to order at the table, bypassing the need for an actual greet from a server or at a counter making the cashier obsolete. Labor costs and insurance have given rise to less actual prep and cooking and opened the door to more ready to eat or heat and serve products.
The introduction of robotics, for all the owners reading this, is just a stop gap measure, prolonging the inevitable.
Streaming is easy. You have one bill. The decision to unplug is a no-brainer. Our industry created the home meal replacement. To go food. Add in the technology of today and its possible to see the end as we know it.
But it didn't have be this way. We crave interaction. We desire a warm atmosphere. But we didn't make the investment in the next generation, we sold them out.
THIS is my prediction