Success Story

Improving Leadership Skills Translates Into a Better Restaurant & Better Financial Results at Leal's Mexican Restaurant

A central issue for the leadership at Leal's Mexican Restaurant was, well, leadership.

"We believe that everything rises and falls on leadership," explains owner Jeremy Waller, who recalls having read an article at RestaurantOwner.com that talked about being able to work on the business and not in the business.

"That article launched me into thinking of the restaurant as a business. Since then, so many additional RestaurantOwner.com articles, webinars, and weekly Profit Tips have continued to motivate me to improve the business that much more."

The results have been increased sales, better systems, sustained profits, and improved guest and staff experiences.

"Part of that ongoing success needed to include more leadership to be in place to take more items off my plate," Waller continues. "When I really stepped in and took over the operations in 2007 we were running about $17,000 a week. Now we average about $45,000 a week. In fact, we just hit a record week of $62,861.20. We have had double-digit growth the last 10 years, and I only am physically in the restaurant 10 hours per week for the last two years."

Last year saw Waller invite additional staff members to be a part of his leadership team in order to help improve production, morale and overall consistency. The move proved a positive one, resulting in more employees available "to help accomplish our mission, implement changes quicker, etc.," he recalls. "We also have more of a back-of-the-house presence at our manager meetings than we used to. It has made a huge difference in the communication between the front and back of the house."

Waller has since added more leadership to his weekly management meetings. "The managers that weren't in the meeting before have really stepped up since they have been included, and are really learning to become better leaders. Everything is running so much better."

He adds that it has also "been great to see the new managers start growing, and I can see them being involved in a higher level of leadership in the future.

Leal's team holds meetings every Thursday to go over upcoming events and issues that need to be addressed, as well as changes they need to address together. "When an issue does come up, we will talk about it as a team and see what everyone's thoughts are before we make a decision." He and his staffers have all taken the DISC personality test so that they can see issues from different point of views and "better understand why someone has different thoughts and ideas."

"I learned from RestaurantOwner.com how important training our staff is, as well, and it is paying dividends," says Waller. "When we have a staff issue, sometimes we will even do a role play to discuss the issue even further." The goal is to learn from it "to see if we could have handled it better; not to get anyone in trouble or make them feel belittled, but truly using it as a learning opportunity. Then after we have finished with any business we go into the learning part of our meeting. We are always learning, we are always improving the business, more importantly we are always improving ourselves."

The results, Waller adds, are undeniable. "It is amazing how people want to grow when we show them that we believe in them, even more than they believe in themselves."