I had this note in last week's Special Edition. Normally only those subscribers would know about it, but this project -- which I'll call The Hospitality Imperative -- is important enough to share with everyone.
Over the past month or two I have talked a lot about the need to play a bigger game. The human tendency is to get comfortable with what we are doing and then refine our ability to do it. There is nothing wrong with that, but when it happens, the truth is that we are in a rut. A pleasant rut to be sure, but a rut just the same.
Richard Bach once said, "You teach best what you most need to learn."
My admonishments to you have been triggered by my own feeling that I was capable of playing a much larger game than just providing for my own income -- a sense that there was a way to change the industry as a whole and that I was the only one who saw it and who could -- or would -- pull it off.
(Hey, I am 63 years old -- if I don't make a move now, when do I think it's going to happen?)
The next big thing for me is nothing less than transforming the industry by designing an easily affordable system that will offer the universal solution to restaurant health. I envision a system that can ...
- eliminate most struggle and uncertainty
- put the spirit of hospitality back into the hospitality business
- turn the restaurant into a place of restoration for the communities it serves and the people who work in it
- make it possible for independent operators to grow and prosper for as long as they choose
- allow restaurants of all types to operate with effortless excellence
If we can do that, we can change the world, one neighborhood at a time, through the spirit of hospitality. The fact that all this is "impossible" makes the project all the more interesting.
I have no idea what a system like this would look like except that it will have to be something very different than anyone has ever seen before. Most people would consider a goal like this to be crazy which is why I think it hasn't yet been attempted. Whether I can, in fact, pull off something so audacious remains to be seen, but it is clearly a huge project that is worth doing ... and I have some pretty powerful people who feel drawn to it as well.
So if it were somehow possible to actually come up with a system that would take the struggle out of owning and operating an independent restaurant, what results would it need to produce to take the worry out of your life and free you up to focus on truly being a place of hospitality?
I put together a short survey to get a better sense of what your life is really like these days and where your greatest needs are as a way to get the project started. I invite you to
answer a few quick questions and see where it takes us.
