Operator Toolbox: Leadership & Team Building

Sullivan’s Laws Part 2

I love the perfect business quote. It can speak volumes about our crazy industry without taking up much space. A good quote says the most by saying the least. It can reveal the little truths about hospitality and management that training manuals and videos too often obscure.......

By Jim Sullivan

I love the perfect business quote. It can speak volumes about our crazy industry without taking up much space. A good quote says the most by saying the least. It can reveal the little truths about hospitality and management that training manuals and videos too often obscure. And since I get a lot of e-mails from readers asking if I have assembled a collection of my favorite quotes, I thought I’d do just that. So read ‘em and reap!

Since I’ve been in this business I’ve learned that…

  • All work is teamwork.
  • If you want to be bigger than everyone else, you’d better be better than everyone else, too.
  • Our business is run for the enjoyment and pleasure of our customers, not for the convenience of the staff or the owners.
  • There is something called the Law of Probability Dispersal in the restaurant business: “Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.”
  • The customer is NOT always right, but IS always the customer and it’s all right for the customer to be wrong.
  • A pat on the back is just a few vertebrae up from a kick in the butt.
  • Challenge the process daily: Are we doing the right things and are we doing the right things right?
  • Never practice on the customer. Training is your secret weapon.
  • The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
  • Overteach. Managers and employees both underlearn and overforget.
  • Employees are our first market. Never treat a customer better than you treat an employee.
  • You can have the best product in the world, but if you can’t sell it, you’ve still got it.
  • All behavior is the result of consequences: you get what you reward.
  • Don’t be a corporate weenie.
  • If you’re not out selling, you’re being outsold.
  • Use the Sullivan Nod: if servers smile and slowly nod their heads when suggesting a large Coke, fries, an appetizer or dessert the customer almost always says yes.
  • Some turnover is inevitable: of all the people who will never leave you, you’re the only one.
  • If a customer tells you right off the bat to take good care of them because they’re “Big Tippers”? They’re not.
  • The seafood is always fresh. Even in Wyoming.
  • Sullivan’s Law: Customers have more fun eating in a bar than drinking in a restaurant.
  • In this business, you can always tell when it’s a full moon without ever looking outside.
  • One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things over and over again and expect different results.
  • Life is short: Don’t sweat the petty things… or pet the sweaty things.
  • The restaurant business is a free circus. All you have to do is pay attention.

To get a poster of these sayings for your office visit www.sullivison.com


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