Jason Olinik: Discernment / The Dining Room Disagrees

Fell Into Food Podcast

Jason Olinik shares his journey from a 16-year-old dishwasher at Chili's in Brighton, Michigan, to a seasoned hospitality leader and author.

Key takeaways

Preparation—beyond food—is critical to restaurant success; it includes people, equipment, and environment.
True hospitality shines during challenges like staffing shortages when leaders communicate clearly and stay prepared.

Main topics

Hospitality leadership
Operational preparation

Notable quotes

"You can tell when you're in a good restaurant how focused people are on the preparation."

"Great leaders are master communicators and they bring clarity to any organization."

Conclusion

Jason Olinik's story underscores that lasting success in hospitality comes from staying grounded in

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hospitalitychain.com, the world's first online hub designed for the hospitality, culinary, and catering industry. From leading food and beverage brands to professional food service equipment, hospitalitychain.com makes sourcing simple. Search, select, buy direct, and save, all in one global marketplace. Speaker 2 (0:27) Jason, take me back to being 16 on that loading dock in Brighton, Michigan. What did it actually look and feel like? Speaker 1 (0:35) So first of all, it was my first job. My first job in restaurants, my kind of intro to hospitality, if you will. It was Chili's in Brighton, Michigan. It was across from a movie theater in a Target, so a very busy location back in the early 2000s. Speaker 1 (0:56) So my brother was a server there and he got me in. I'm a 16-year-old kid with braces. I'm wearing an enormous Chili's t-shirt. And it's about 95 degrees on a humid day in September. And it's my first day on an early Saturday morning. I'm a junior in high school at this point. And my first job is scrubbing the back dock of a Chili's. And back then, this was before they had companies that came in and took the fryer oil from you and recycled it. You had to put it in a shuttle and take it out to the oil bin and let someone come to pick it up. So there's oil everywhere, grease everywhere. It smells like an old blooming onion. And I'm sitting there and I'm scrubbing and I'm sweating and it's 830. In the morning, I'm tired, and it was kind of my intro into what it looks like behind the scenes of a restaurant and what it takes and how early you have to get there and the attention to detail and doing all of the little things that no one notices but everyone expects and setting up a dining room, cleaning tables, scrubbing a back dock. My first day, I hated it. And then I saw, you know... what a good shift is and what that means. And all these people kind of working together and what my part in that was. And that was, you know, busing tables, ensuring that the dining room stayed clean throughout a busy service, sending that place up for success. And I just kind of fell in love and I've been doing it for 23 years. Yeah, you've operated almost every format hospitality Speaker 2 (2:42) has. Is there one thing you've watched? Is there one thing you've kind of watched kind of break in every single one of those, no matter what the operation was? Speaker 1 (2:49) I think, you know, preparation is so important. You know, you can tell when you're in a good restaurant how focused people are on the preparation. And when I say preparation, I mean more than just food prep. I think about the plates that are chosen, the classroom that's chosen, the chairs that are chosen. Are they durable? Are these things that last? I think people that focus on the details tend to run successful restaurants. And, you know, are your people prepared? Are you running great pre-shifts? Are you bringing everyone together? Is everybody on the same page? I think everyone can agree when you go to a great restaurant, you feel it more than you see it. I think you feel it in who is prepared for the day, for the shift. We, you know, we have this thing where a long wait time is not something that we're proud of. We want to bring people in, invite them into our space, have them enjoy an experience, and then send them on their way talking about how great it was. Everything should be efficient. The seating, the greeting, everything should be clean. The food should be great. Everything should be paced very well. A great appetizer has to be at the table. It's cleared before the dinner comes. All of these little details, I think. matter. And it all comes down to, are you prepared for the day? Yeah, I think even if... Speaker 2 (4:12) there's a longer wait time, but all the details are there to your point of you're greeted, you're greeted immediately. You get something to drink. And even if a server says we're a little behind today, whatever it might be, whatever the situation is, you're four cooks down, you're three servers down and they're, they're covering half the restaurant. I feel like if they're prepared and they know that and they communicate that to the guest that at least for me, that you're more willing to give some grace to be like, Okay, I get it. Like they got a lot going on, but they're hitting all the details and you still feel the energy. You feel all those points that you just Speaker 1 (4:47) said. Yep. Yeah, I think great leaders are master communicators and they bring clarity to any organization, any restaurant. I think, hey, you know, we're going to be short today, but here's what I want you to do. Here's how the sections are going to be laid out. Here's your tandem partner today. It's going to be a rough shift, but we're going to get through it. And here's what you need to know. And I think, you know. I think people appreciate that. I think everyone understands that the restaurant industry is very difficult. You're relying on a lot of different parts to make it happen every day. And sometimes those parts aren't there. Sometimes things are broken. Sometimes people are short-staffed. But I think that's when true hospitality comes out. It's, hey, you know, you're not going to feel this, but you're going to feel it's a great experience. And this is why. It's because we came into work and we knew that there was a plan to get through all of these things that we're faced with today. Speaker 2 (5:33) You said that you had to unlearn that scale and bureaucracy are the same thing. What do you mean by that? And how did you unlearn it? Speaker 1 (5:43) You know, I think for a while when people talked about scaling organizations and growing organizations, it was about adding layers. You know, we got big, we got this to this point. Now we can hire this position and now we can hire this position and now we can hire this position. I think what I learned is that makes scaling very difficult because it adds more complexity in between. You know, what I learned is what I had to unlearn is that, you know, no matter how high you get in this industry, no matter where you are and where you're going, it's so important to stay connected to the operation. I think, you know, you just learn a lot of things that you wouldn't that you don't see in a report you don't see in a meeting. You know, I think, you know, what I wrote my book about was seeing what's in between the story and what's reality. I think reality is walking into the restaurant and, you know, feeling that people are prepared, feeling that things are clean. You know, you can have a really busy restaurant, but it could be chaotic. And then you start to have deterioration from the inside and you might not even see it. But, you know, that report says that sales are up. We're up 5%, 10 % year over year. Everything's great. And then you walk in there, place is dirty. You know, there's high turnover. There's things that you're not seeing on that report that matter. And, you know, I think field engagement is so critical. I think being connected to your leaders that are on site, no matter if you're a VP, an EVP, a CEO, you know, they have these. these shows, you know, where the CEO goes and does the, does the job for a week. And he's like, and he's learning all these things and it's like shocking. And you're like, you know, you should always feel that connected. You should always know what's going on and what your guests are experiencing. And that's how you can make really good decisions. And, you know, bureaucracy, I think there's a place for it. I think there is a place for, for layers, you know, but those layers all have to be connected and seeing the same thing. And that's what we should be talking about in meetings. We shouldn't be talking about just results. We should be talking about what's actually happening in the field. Speaker 2 (7:53) Yeah, I always say that it's managing the middle of the P &L. Because if you manage the middle of the P &L, then the results drive themselves. You don't need to spend all the time of like, why are we down in our sales? Why are we down in this? And it's like, well, if we just focus on the middle, right? To me, the middle is the people, the food, the things that actually make an operation run, that if we can focus on those, everything else. And it's a hard concept for a lot of people to put in their brain, especially at a higher level when you say you have to trust the process and the results will come. Well, when you're looking at... a spreadsheet and it says we're down, you know, quarter over quarter, 10%. How are we going to make these changes? You know, they want, they want the result to drive what happens in the middle of the P &L. And I feel like that's what you're, you're really driving over talking about. Yeah, Speaker 1 (8:38) absolutely. And I, you know, I learned that from, you know, luxury hotels, right? And managing the middle is the people and the experience. That's what's the guest experiences. And that's what drives your top line, right? That's how, that's why people come back. You know, in luxury hotel world, it's all about who you hire and who you're and who you're placing in front of these guests, you know, and who is owning that experience on the floor. You know, we had this thing. It was it was we hire happy, friendly, smiley people and we can teach them any job in this hotel. And I took that to the airport when I opened up a restaurant there and I was like, I want to hire happy, friendly, smiley people at the airport. That's how people walk by. And the airport's the ultimate test of, you know. Are you do you have you built the team that's going to attract people who are going through maybe the worst day of their life, maybe the best day of their life? You have no idea. You know, but if you have happy, smiley, friendly people, they're going to see that they're going to choose your restaurant. You know, and that was always my goal. And I think that's, you know, those are the little things that when you are managing the people, when you are managing the experience, when you are managing the food, those produce tremendous results for your restaurant. Speaker 2 (9:47) How do you think leaders can stay connected to the operation? The higher you get, like you said, there's obviously a time and a place for layers, but how do we keep leaders connected to the operation when there's so much paperwork, when meetings just pile up on a calendar, when travel comes into play? What would you say is a best practice that a leader can do? You Speaker 1 (10:08) know, post-pandemic, the meeting culture has kind of derailed what I think, what it means to be a true operator. You know, I think meetings are important. I think, you know, like I said, communication and clarity are critical to any organization. But some things can be an email. And that's not just a joke. It's true. It's, you know, sometimes information just has to flow. We don't all have to sit on a meeting for an hour with 30 people. You know, when there's real-time stuff happening,