Special Interview: Two Restaurant Experts Reveal How & When To Raise Your Prices Artwork

The DFY Restaurant Revolution

Get your knife and fork ready to dig into a plateful of profits on The Restaurant Revolution Podcast with your host Recovering restaurant owner Michael Thibault.

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The DFY Restaurant Revolution

Special Interview: Two Restaurant Experts Reveal How & When To Raise Your Prices

April 04, 2025 • Michael Thibault • Season 3 • Episode 95

Two restaurant experts reveal the shocking truth about raising prices (and why it could kill your business.)

I just wrapped up an incredible interview with my long-time friend and fellow restaurant expert, Ryan Gromfin (The Restaurant Boss), and you need to see this.

Together, we have over 60 years of restaurant experience and thousands of success stories, and on this interview we tackle the biggest challenge you're facing right now: rising costs and menu pricing.

This isn't your typical "just raise prices to solve the problem" advice.

In this candid conversation, we reveal:

• Why raising prices might be the WORST move you can make right now

• The shocking truth about food costs that most bookkeepers get wrong

• A powerful insight from In-N-Out Burgers business model that could transform your profits

• The "60% rule" that successful restaurants live by

Listen now!

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DFY Marketing Systems: Welcome. Thank you so much for stopping by

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: That again. I think, I said, born ready when you were talking. Start that again.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah, all right.

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DFY Marketing Systems: hey? Everybody. Thanks for stopping by for this edition of the Dfy restaurant revolution, video slash. Podcast I'm super stoked today, I've got one of my great friends who's an old time. Not that he's old, but old time blood and guts restaurateur from way back in the day.

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DFY Marketing Systems: and I'm very appreciative that he's here today because we're going to be talking about a topic that is so sensitive and important to all independent restaurant owners out there in the marketplace today. And the reason that I asked Ryan to come and join me on this call today is because so many of our clients, you know, have reached out in our platinum groups

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DFY Marketing Systems: and in our chats on, you know. Obviously costs are way up, and a lot of them are just arbitrarily raising prices. And there's a right way and a wrong way to do that. And the motivation is completely different. So I'd like to introduce my special guest today, Ryan Gromfin, who's better known as the restaurant boss, and I've known Ryan for oh, jeez like over 1215 years now.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: A while now, for sure.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Been a really long time.

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DFY Marketing Systems: and he's an author speaker, coach. He's the owner of Clickbacon, which he's going to talk about in a little bit. But he specializes. Obviously, you guys know me. I specialize in the marketing and getting new customers. Get your existing customers to come back quicker, spending more, and Ryan handles that ugly stuff.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Where's the money going? The systems, the cost, the systems to control your costs, which is so important nowadays. But Ryan has experience being a multi-unit operator himself, and he's helped thousands of restaurants. We've been on speaking gigs together. We've done trade shows. It's just been awesome.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Totally trust

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DFY Marketing Systems: Ryan and his expertise and opinion when it definitely comes to, you know, controlling costs for independent restaurants. So did I miss anything. Ryan

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: No, I think you did a great job. So thank you. Obviously, thank you, Michael, for having me here, and we kind of joked about it. You know we. We turn on the cameras, we turn on the mic. We've done so many of these together, so every single time is an absolute honor. I've met some of your your members, and and we share a lot of people that get services from both of us. It's just always an absolute pleasure to to be here and to add any value I can. And the topic

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: today, I know, is like, kind of when to raise prices when's the right time to raise prices is like you said something I'm hearing from my clients.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So yeah, really important topic. Right now.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah. And it's just, you know, Ryan's being obviously extremely modest, because we could sit here and probably talk is about his background and pedigree, you know, for a half hour. But when you find somebody in this business that you trust

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DFY Marketing Systems: to refer and share clients with that says a lot, and I don't do that with a lot of people. But I you know Ryan has helped out so many, you know of our clients when it comes to, you know, controlling their costs and adding more profit to their bottom line. So I wouldn't obviously be doing this if I, you know, had any doubts about Ryan's capabilities, and he is

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DFY Marketing Systems: the go to Guy, you know, when it comes to controlling costs and systems inside your restaurant for me, having a more efficient well-run business. But, like I said, I've heard so much

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DFY Marketing Systems: from our members on increasing costs, and you know their 1st question is, what the heck can we do about it, and they automatically go to raising prices. Now you're in the game, you're in the blood and guts of it, you know, each and every day. What have you heard from your clients and different restaurant owners about rising costs and raising their prices

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Sure. So 1st off you're getting me in a great mood today. So it's gonna be a little feisty. I call these days, diet, Coke days. This is my vice, and today today is a diet Coke day, because anything stronger than this is illegal, and I'm not allowed to have it. But

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: let me take 30 seconds here for those of you who don't know who I am like, Michael said, like Ryan Cronfin's my name, the restaurant boss, clickbacon. But I help restaurant owners with systems, processes, procedures, increase profits, etc. And so yeah, this topic comes up a lot when I'm talking. Excuse me with my clients about

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: when to raise prices. Should I raise prices? My costs are through the roof. My food cost is high, my labor cost is high. Hey, Ryan.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I'm gonna raise prices, and I'm always like, Hold on! Hold on! Hold on! Like, maybe. Maybe.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: But I have a line, and I say, don't make your problem their problem.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So kind of flat blanket statement. 1st thing is, don't make your problem their problem.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You may have a higher than desired cost of goods sold a higher than desired labor cost.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: But have you put all of the effort into discovering that problem, that challenge that issue? Are you controlling the controllables as best you can.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: And if it's okay, can I tell this this story really quick here. And I want your help with this because I think it's gonna really set up what we're gonna continue to talk about here. Does that work for you right now?

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DFY Marketing Systems: Hey? Hey? If it doesn't involve me in New Orleans? On Bourbon Street you go

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: And it's and it doesn't involve our friend on the line, scooter and some dental work that happened either. So we'll leave that one for another time, because that's 1 of my favorite stories to tell, by the way. But no, so we've all heard of in and out, Burger. Now, maybe you're intimately familiar, having grown up in Southern California like I did, having eaten in and out

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: tens of thousands of times. Maybe you just know who they are right, totally simple, straightforward, classic, 50 styles burger super high volume. And to give you guys an idea of how high volume in and out Burger is in and out, has

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: 450 locations. Let's call it

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: 5 guys has 5,000 locations. Let's call it now, because in and out is not franchise and not publicly traded. It's a privately held company. Nobody knows exactly what their average unit volumes and sales are, but plenty of people with calculators and using. AI can just very quickly figure out approximately what they do in sales and in and out, it is estimated, does more in sales. Out of their 450 ish locations than 5,005 guys.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So it just kind of tells you like again, when we're looking at like a chick-fil-a. You know, Chick-fil-a is do 9, 1011,000,000 a unit. So we're putting in and out on par with that. These are insane volumes. So the question I have for you, Michael. You have a background cooking, and your audience does too. So this question is for everyone. But since I got you here, if you and I locked ourselves in a room for 1 h one day. Could we make a better hamburger than in and out

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DFY Marketing Systems: Probably not.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You don't think so. You don't think with your talent and my talent we could make a hamburger that tastes better than

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DFY Marketing Systems: I would it take me more than an hour because I'm getting I actually I did a Chili contest years back, and they looked at me like

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DFY Marketing Systems: I cause I had wild boar. Then, you know venison, you know.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You were a different type

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DFY Marketing Systems: Of Brisket, you know. And yeah, it took me like 4 or 5 days, because I went. And you know, sourced all the ingredients. And you know, yeah, obviously. And

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I'm gonna be arrogant. I'm gonna say that if you give me 10 min to make a hamburger I can make you a hamburger. That's better than Internet

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DFY Marketing Systems: Alright. Well, here, here's my caveat. To that I've never had an in. I've never had an in our

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You didn't grow up in Southern California. Listen, this is the point of the story. Is there good Burgers like when people say it's the best burger I've ever had. We're going to get to that in a second here, but the reality is for those of you chefs out there listening, or restaurateurs have been in the business, we could make a burger better than in and out. There is absolutely no question about it.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: But here is the question

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DFY Marketing Systems: Modest. I was trying to be modest.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I know, I know, and I got you off guard there, but

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: could we make a better hamburger than in and out?

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Sell it for $4.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Serve it as quickly as they do with as professional, of a staff in as clean of an environment, with locations as premium as theirs, pushing out 7, 800, a thousand burgers a day consistently, and still make money.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: and I know the answer to that

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DFY Marketing Systems: Well, I'll give you an answer. I wouldn't want to

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Flat out.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Like a boat boatload of work, and a lot

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: There is no way we could do. There is no way that we could make a burger as good as theirs. Sell it for $4 do all the things incredibly well that they do, and still make money.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So in-n-out secret sauce is not their delicious Hamburgers?

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Their secret sauce is the price

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: for their delicious hamburgers, and an ability to still be profitable.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: And so, while this is not a conversation about magic powers, superpowers, unique selling propositions, all the words that Michael and I love using all these great salesy. You know business building words.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Today's conversation is every time you raise prices you introduce competition, because while in and out is the best burger you've ever had at $4

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: at $5. It's a really good burger at $6. It's okay at $7. You start to question it

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: at $8. No one's buying a burger from in-n-out anymore. At 9, $10. They're out of business. They're bankrupt, they're done. They're yesterday's news.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: There is always a price that we no longer value, something that we valued before.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Right a Toyota at $35,000 or $40,000 is is a good value, a Toyota at 55, 65, $75,000. I'm not buying a Toyota anymore.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Right, even a Ferrari, even a Lamborghini has a place where it's no longer of value. So the reason I want to tell that story 1st and then kind of talk back into this is every time you raise prices, you introduce the potential for competition into the market. The reason in and out has no competition, in my opinion, has no competition, is because of their superpower.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: They make a really great product, they serve it fresh, they serve it fast, they serve it friendly. They serve it clean

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: at a price that nobody else could do it and still make money.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: They've competition proof themselves. So

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: when it comes to you again. I say you probably will reach a point where you have to raise prices. You should raise prices. It's part of our business model, but I just don't ever want your 1st gut reaction to be. I'm not making the money I want to make. I'm going to raise prices. I'm not making the money I want to make. I'm going to make it my customer's problem.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: What I want you to do is, yeah.

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DFY Marketing Systems: So what you just said

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DFY Marketing Systems: is kind of the crust of the this whole. You know reason why I wanted to do this interview. Because in the line that you had earlier, everybody, you know, should write it down, you know about don't make your problem your customer's problem, because

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DFY Marketing Systems: and and I've had so many clients that you know I just met with a client 2 weeks ago. Good friend of mine Upper Scale Restaurant.

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DFY Marketing Systems: you know, sat down with him. And and he's like, Yeah, I got. I got to raise prices, you know, again. And I'm like again, like how many times he goes we've raised them 3 times in the past, you know, 6 months, and he's an upper high end, you know. Restaurant I get it costs are up. But

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DFY Marketing Systems: the 1st reaction. The 1st knee jerk reaction, like you just said should not be well, I'm just pass this off to my customers.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I'm gonna make it their problem.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah, I don't. Because as an owner operator, I don't want to go back and look at my food costs. My labor costs my inventory. Control my liquor, my beer, my wine. You look at all these things

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DFY Marketing Systems: that you have control over right now, whereas raising prices, you know. Yes, like you said absolutely you should do it, but really not after. You know I'm not before you take a look at your systems that are in place and your cost control. If you're running a fat restaurant when I say fat, I mean you're not lean

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Something that looks more like me is what you're talking about.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Oh, God, no!

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DFY Marketing Systems: But

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DFY Marketing Systems: you know a restaurant that you know is running an inflated food cost. They're not running, you know the projected labor that they need to, and they don't take the time to invest in those systems that are going to make them. You can't. You can't do that you can't just run arbitrarily high, you know, cogs. And think.

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DFY Marketing Systems: you know, I'm just gonna pass it off to my customers. And people aren't going to notice. And they're not. Gonna they're they're scrutinizing you and judging you

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DFY Marketing Systems: more under a microscope now than Covid

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Oh, yeah. Well, cause the government was printing money

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DFY Marketing Systems: And and costs are up, you know. Covid was the great excuse, for you know, when once restaurants reopened

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: It was what was the greatest 2 years in the restaurant, in the history of restaurants

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah, give. Give me a big big ass check. And I'm gonna double my prices because it's Covid. And I'm not gonna go back

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Give me, as in the restaurant owner, a big fat check and give my customers a big fat check to come, spend their money with me like talk about double dipping of the century. But anyways

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DFY Marketing Systems: Don't I mean, what? What do you suggest? Okay, a restaurant comes to you and says, Ryan, I'm dying here. I can't cash my checks can't pay. My, you know, Cisco, I want to raise prices. What should I do? What? What do you tell them?

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So I'm a very practical consultant. I'm a very practical coach, so as much as I would love to sit here, and I will, I consider, and I can give you 13 things you have to do. And all this stuff you have to do. Let's start with first, st like the 1st thing I'm going to do is I'm going to ask the questions like.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Do you know your food costs? Do you know your labor costs? How much do we trust those numbers. How accurate are they? How often are you looking at that? I want to validate those numbers. If you have them, we're going to start looking into that, I'll come back to this in a second.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I understand that some of you out there don't have great access to those numbers. Different conversation for a different time. I'll judge you later, for right now. Sorry I said that with a smile on my face. If you're not watching, if you're hearing you. You couldn't see that for right now, the 1st thing I want to do is a competitive price. Analysis, like the 1st thing I want to do is just look at you

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: compared to your competitors. What I need you to understand, though.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Don't tell me you don't have competitors, because you're the only Italian restaurant for 5 miles.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You can only tell me you don't have any competition. When no one who lives in your community has a kitchen, there's no grocery stores. There's no movie theaters, there's no bowling centers, and there's no restaurants at all. Then you can say that you don't have competition like, if you had an aircraft carrier parked off the coast of Antarctica. You can tell me you don't have competition.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: but just because you're the only Italian restaurant or the only Burger joint in town. That doesn't mean you don't have competition. When we're hungry we'll eat anything.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So your competition is every restaurant.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Your competition is the grocery store. Your competition is the movie theater. Your competition is the bowling center. Because I can get food at all those places I can. I can have a bowl of cereal for dinner.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So the when I say competitive price analysis, what I really mean is, be honest with yourself.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Look at 7 or 8 restaurants or food service outlets in your community that fit the same need not the need for burgers or pizza, but just I'm a family of 4 that needs a quick meal tonight. Okay? Well, grocery store is an option. Costco's an option. Mcdonald's is an option. Those are all options.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So how do I compare to those. Now, of course, we're also going to focus in on your direct competitors. But I want to see a list of 15 or 20 competitors to you, and how do they rank similar

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: similar items to yours? And then let's just get a general feel. So that's the 1st thing competitive price analysis like, how do I feel compared to the community? Another thing that's kind of quick and dirty that I do is I look at my my guest counts, not check counts, but guest counts are my guest numbers down, because a lot of times

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: you may be flat in sales, or maybe even up 5% in sales. But, like Michael said, if you've raised prices 2 or 3 times over the last year.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: you're artificially inflating your sales. But if your guest counts are falling. We're losing customers.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So I want to look at that as you're increasing prices. If your guest counts aren't staying flat or going up. Your business isn't growing.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Now, there's many factors that can go into that. But that's sort of my like. 1st general analysis, then what I like to do is I like to look more detail. I like to look at your food cost. I like to look at your overall blended cost of goods sold. I like to look at your labor costs.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: And then I just start asking questions like.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: you know, what what would we have to do

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: to lower food cost one or 2 points again, depending on how good your data is. If you take inventory every week and we can look at waste, and we can look at theft, and we can look at spoilage. Great. But there's just this innate gut reaction that people have when I say to them, if I said, Hey.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: you have to lower your spend on food by $3,000 next month like you absolutely have to. What are you going to do? Different? Usually they're going to be able to spit out an answer right away. They're like, we're throwing out a lot of food. I'm like, okay, then let's find out why you're throwing out a lot of food. Usually they'll be able to spit out a quick answer and say, like man, portions are inconsistent. Great, then go fix portioning

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: but I cannot put enough emphasis on. Stand in your kitchen

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: for 5 or 6 h and just watch

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: like it is shocking. How many restaurant owners I work with.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: who sit in their home office.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: look at their computer screen, run all these numbers, and haven't stood in their kitchen in years.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Stand in your kitchen for 2 or 3 h on a busy shift, you will see dollars just being thrown out of the door, going in. The trash can going everywhere. And so again, like, I'm trying not to be overly analytical, because those of you that have all of that great data already. You kind of probably know what to do. I think this is usually more of a conversation for people who are just kind of

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: we're running our business. We're in it. We're dirty, you know, we're in the thick of it. We have a bookkeeper. But we're not getting the data we really need like. I'm just gonna raise prices.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Go stand in your kitchen for 2 or 3 h.

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DFY Marketing Systems: It's it's somebody brought up. It's timely data, too. Right? I mean, you know, if you're if you're getting this stuff, you know, from a month ago. It's kind of late to fix things if you don't have

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Most.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Timely data, right?

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Right. Most of my operators just say, like, Oh, I work, I know my food cost. I work with a bookkeeper, and I'm like great. When do they close out your monthly books and like today's March 26. Then they're like, I'm like, Do you have February's numbers, and they're like, no, I haven't gotten them.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Like, okay.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So. So if you don't have February's numbers, and it's March 26, it's not helping you at all to know what January's food cost is as we're entering April. So like Michael said, I mean I. And we can talk about clickbacon here in a minute. But like

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: you need to know you need to know by Tuesday afternoon what last week's numbers were.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: If you don't have a system for knowing your prime cost sales.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: cogs, labor discounts, forget about the other stuff. Forget about rent, forget about utilities. That stuff's not controllable. It's important, but it's not controllable. If you don't know your prime cost numbers by Tuesday afternoon for last week. You don't have actionable data.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: and it's not that hard to do

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah, especially nowadays. I mean back when I, you know, had the restaurants and I sold the last 2 in 2,008, we'd work off a weekly P. And L. Statement created in Excel. Right? That was, you know, hand entered in. You know I had a bookkeeper for the restaurants that, you know, controlled this stuff. But one of the other things you brought up was stand in the middle of your kitchen, especially on a weekend.

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DFY Marketing Systems: you know and see what's going. Now. You know in the trash 2 things that one of my favorite positions to work in my restaurant was busing because I was able to see, you know. Hey, are we over portion?

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DFY Marketing Systems: Are we overboard

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DFY Marketing Systems: eating, or do they not like it? I mean, you can see everything. And the other thing is clear. Garbage bags.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Trash bags.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Clear. I went clear trash bags with everything, learned that one real quick. But 1st

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I was working at the Peninsula Hotels, 5 Star Hotel Restaurant in Beverly Hills. It was my 1st job in a kitchen and like day one. I was scraping ketchup out of a number 10 can, and I put the number 10 can in the trash can. And this old guy, Harry, who I turned out loving this guy. But old school, like Harry, walks by. He goes and he stuttered a little bit. new guy, new guy, new guy, new guy.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: What is this? And I'm like, I'm like, 16 years old, I'm like, Oh, I'm like, it's my trash. He's like there's money in here.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: and he goes and he gets it, and he grabs a spatula. Rubber. Spatula goes. This is called a money saver. Use it. And I'm like, Okay, and literally like yelled at me like through that stutter of it's a money saver. And now that's what I call them. Now I call spatulas money savers, that's what they are.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Never. Yeah. You've never forgotten that. Never

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I've never forgotten that I got yelled at

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DFY Marketing Systems: And and one thing that we're talking about you know, with controlling your costs and knowing your numbers and savings when when you're

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DFY Marketing Systems: cutting becoming more, you know, a leaner, more profitable restaurant. You don't want to cut or affect things that affect your customer experience, or are front facing, you know, for your customer, like, you know, I know we need to repair the Drywall in the ladies restroom because it's falling off, and they're getting hit in the head, you know, and the hot water doesn't work in there.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Well, I'm not gonna spend the money on that. We're gonna wait on that.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Those are the wrong things. And that's not what we're talking about here. You know, we're talking about systems that control, your cost of goods sold and things that you are able to control that are wasteful. You know that all restaurants. It's it's the nature of the business, right? But it gets out of hand. It can be a beast that you just.

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DFY Marketing Systems: you know, lose control of, and starting. That control is knowing your numbers in a timely fashion, and the other thing is what you referenced before about your competition, you know, and finding out where you fall. That is the 1st thing I tell you. Know my clients the exact same thing. Where do you fall amongst the competition? The group.

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DFY Marketing Systems: you know, are you at the top? Which is fine? If you're delivering

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Where do you want to be? If you're the person who says I am the business that should be more expensive than everyone in the community. That's so. That's that's not a bad place to be. You just have to be there with intention. If you're the person that's like we're kind of a mid market restaurant like we know that like, we're not trying to be the highest, we definitely don't want to be the lowest. We want to be right in the middle. Well, if you find yourself creeping up to the top, and you're a mid-level restaurant. That's a problem. So just make sure that we're like, I think, to what you're saying is, be where you need to be with intention.

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DFY Marketing Systems: And the other thing I asked them. You know, when we take a look at their menu and take a look at their pricing, you have to look at it from a customer's standpoint, and it's called perceived value like you referenced the in and out with a $4 hamburger, and then at $10 they go out of business because

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: More perceived value

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DFY Marketing Systems: There's no more. You've exhausted or outreached your perceived value, and there's a lot of different ways to create perceived value in your restaurant, not only with the food, but the presentation of the food, you know, with your atmosphere, with your service, you're going to get different service at, in and out that you're going to get at the 4 seasons, you know, when you're ordering a Hamburg, it's all about, you know, perceived value. But if your price

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DFY Marketing Systems: does not match perceived value. If there's a discrepancy there, you're going to lose customers. And that type of rhetoric goes really quick online in reviews. And you want to cut. You want a secret shopper. Go, read your Google reviews. It's amazing to me how many restaurant owners don't pay attention. They're going to say this place is overpriced. I can't believe what they charged me

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DFY Marketing Systems: for this. Right? So don't fall into that trap. I wanna

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Let's perceive, really quick on perceived value. My wife and I. We had recently. They had 2 meals that brought up a memory a couple of weeks ago we went out. We spent a couple 100 bucks on dinner for the 2 of us, and when we left I was like that was cheap.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: because, like the quality of the service, the whole experience I was like, I wouldn't say that was cheap. But I was like, I'm totally okay with that couple $100 dinner like in no way do I feel like I got like I overspent for what we got. And then 2 days ago we picked up a $19

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: family meal from a local kind of Mexican grocery store restaurant, a whole chicken rice, beans, tortillas, like 3 different salsas, and I. I opened it up, and I was like we just got ripped off.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: because, like they, they forgot the tortillas they gave me this small thing of Salsa. They gave me this small thing of rice, and I was like this is, it's not about the amount of dollars it's about what you're getting for. When I opened it up it was this tiny chicken that was cut weird, and it just had no perceived value to me. So again, it's not about 200 or $20. It's what Michael said. It's

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: what's my expectation. When I when I consume this experience.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: we all come to an experience with a preset mind of money dollars. What's this gonna cost? And when we're when we fall out of line of that, that's when we have problems

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah. And that's what same thing. That's what I tell restauranters. You know, we do a ton of restaurant websites. What are they interested in. They want to know your location. Where are you at? They want to know your phone number. If they have any questions they want to call. And what's your menu and your pricing, and show me a couple of pictures of the inside? Because I need to know. Do I need to dress up, or can I get in with sandals and shorts?

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DFY Marketing Systems: Right? I mean, you know, I just gave you the perfect restaurant website template, you know, in under 30 seconds, so that if that perceived that you can charge what you want, go ahead, charge what you want. If you want to be at the top of the list, you know, for your area. That's great. But you better be delivering a perceived value that out

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DFY Marketing Systems: performs your competition for what you're charging, because that's what they expect you're right. You got a preconceived notion when you go into that place. The that better be up here, and we all have those stories right? I mean, you know everybody's got them

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: See your guests expectations, if their expectations are here, and all you do is meet. It

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: like the least used star on a review system is 3, because no one says, Hey, Michael, I want to tell you about a totally average meal. I just had

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah. No.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: It's either Michael. I want to tell you about this amazing new restaurant or Michael. I want to tell you about this restaurant that totally sucked. But no one's like picking up the phone calling their friends to talk about incredibly average expected experiences.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So meeting a guest's expectations is not good enough.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You have to exceed their expectation. You don't have to exceed it by a mile. Right? What was it? Ken Blanchard? I forget the book, but 1%. You only have

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: their expectation by 1%, but you have to exceed the expectation

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DFY Marketing Systems: Right. And remember, like, I always say, if you've been listening to my, podcast nobody wants to go to a boring restaurant, don't be boring

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: No, you gotta. We're selling fun. We're selling experiences. We forget that food is an experience. And we used to live in a world where just going out to a restaurant in and of itself was the experience. But now I mean.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I'm going to drive by 332 restaurants today to take my son to baseball practice. Why am I going to go to some lame boring restaurant that serves the same frozen burger on the same frozen bun with the same frozen fries, iceberg lettuce, 2 slices of tomato, and 3 pickles. Why am I going to do that?

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah, yeah, you just don't

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: How to sell fun.

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DFY Marketing Systems: So before we before you tell us about Clickbacon, and I'll inform you know, everybody where they can get information. And you've heard us talk about it, but

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DFY Marketing Systems: I've always wanted I've never asked you this question. I've always wanted to ask you this question. Don't worry. It's nothing personal.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Give it a place

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DFY Marketing Systems: I don't hear you. You don't talk about percentages a lot, are you? What? What side of the fence are you on? Or you know what school I mean. Are you like strict? All right, you got to hit a 32% food cost. You got to hit, you know, 20% labor where

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Very well rehearsed. Answer for this, because I have this conversation

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DFY Marketing Systems: I'm dying to hear this, because I've never asked you this over how many years we've known each other

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So there. So I'm I'm about to. I'm gonna tell you something, and I'm gonna break the rule. And I'll explain why I'm gonna break the rule.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: There are. There are general guidelines that are starting places for me.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: My rule is, if you hire a consultant, a coach, a company to come and help you do something, and they tell you

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: you are running a 32% food cost that is too high. It needs to be lower. I hope you politely look them in the eyes and say, I never want to work with you again. Get out of my restaurant

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: because there is no number that is right for them and right for you. These are your numbers. Now, again, I'm gonna break that rule with some general guidelines.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: areas that are a starting place for a conversation for me. But I have clients that are running 42, 43% food costs

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: and make more money than you and I can ever imagine.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: And I have clients that are running 2324% food costs that couldn't pay their bills tomorrow.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So there is no number. That is right. Also everyone measures it differently. You will not find 2 restaurant groups that measure their cost of goods sold the same. There is no black and white for this. There's Ryan's way, which I truly believe is the right way.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Nobody does it the same. Some include to go containers, some don't. Some include discounts, some don't, some take discounts on the top, some take discounts in the middle, some take discounts in the bottom, so until you know the answers to all that. What I always tell people is your numbers are your numbers.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You should have a benchmark, for where you feel you are comfortable, you should operate off of a budget at that benchmark, and you should compare yourself

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: to yourself with that said

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: generally. I'm a prime cost, Guy. So the 1st thing I look at is prime cost. I want to see less than a 60% prime cost.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: The reason I can say that is prime cost takes into account most of the factors that we see variables and how people measure the only thing prime cost doesn't take into account is some people with to go. Containers will put their to-go containers below prime cost. Some will put it higher, but, generally speaking, prime cost should be sales minus discounts, minus cost of goods sold minus labor.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: And so again, when I'm talking about someone who's running a 42, 43% cost of goods sold, they might only have a 16 or 70% labor cost. They could be a restaurant or a business that buys a lot of convenience products, that everything comes in a bag, they open it up, they microwave it whatever, and so they have a really high cost of goods sold, but almost no labor to produce that

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: vice versa. When you look at fine dining, most people think, oh, fine dining, high quality ingredients. Their cost of goods sold is going to be really high. Most fine dining restaurants are going to run cost of goods sold in the 2324%. But their labor is going to be 35, 36%. So for me to sit here and say, if you run more than a 30% cost of goods sold, you need to raise your prices. You need to fix something you need to get to work. That's just unfair

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: with all that, said my general starting place is about

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: 2 to 3% in discounts

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: 2829% cost of goods sold 2829% labor costs. That'll get you to that. 60 number or below.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Give or take a few points. But again, if you're going to go up on cost of goods sold, if you're going to go to a 32, 33 cogs. Well, then, you better be at a 2425 labor. And remember, when I'm talking labor, I'm talking all in labor.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I'm talking indirect labor. Also, I'm talking your employer

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: fees. I'm not just talking about what comes out of your pos system.

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DFY Marketing Systems: Right.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Because that's going to account for another 4 to 5 points on your labor. So a lot of people will tell me like, Oh, I'm running like a 23% labor cost. But then, when I look at their quickbooks, all of these additional fees are down below social security, Fica, you know all that other stuff. You add that back in there at 31, 32,

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DFY Marketing Systems: Right? Right? So this whole interview, probably the last 3 to 5 min, is

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DFY Marketing Systems: well worth the entire. I'm probably going to cut snippets out of that and play that back over and over again, because restaurant owners love that type of information. I know you're the go to Guy when I got questions about cost savings control and systems, and I had the pleasure Ryan showed me quite a while ago the new system that he developed for Clickbacon, which

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DFY Marketing Systems: it it blew me away, and he's been working on this for a couple of years. He's got, you know, tech experts and dumped a bunch of money. But what really

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DFY Marketing Systems: turned me onto it was your dashboard and the ability to see things quickly in real time, and the way you've got it laid out where you can see your costs, and then you have these visual indicators in the red or the orange and the green. I mean, it was just. Here's the advantage of Ryan's, you know, systems and development.

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DFY Marketing Systems: He's not. He has tech guys. But he's a restaurant guy. I mean, you can tell just by the way. He, you know, gave us this dissertation on, you know, percentages off the one question I asked, but he knows restaurants, and he knows restaurant owners. He knows what they need to see to make their restaurant profitable, and when they need to see it.

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DFY Marketing Systems: that's why I think you've got a huge advantage over all these other. You know, companies that are just cranking out, you know, bookkeeping systems for any business. And you know, restaurants is obviously very unique. But just tell us a little bit about clickbacon and what you've done with it

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I'd love to and thank you. So you mentioned spreadsheets earlier. So when I left the industry and started coaching, consulting, I had this whole library of spreadsheets on my computer that I had acquired and built, and I mean one of these spreadsheets. I remember I spent like probably a whole week like 40, 50 h building a spreadsheet, and then for years I kept tweaking and tweak, and it was super powerful, and I started by giving that away to my clients. And then I was like, you know what like, I gotta. I gotta take this to another level. I sent that spreadsheet off to a software developer. And within like 3 weeks.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: we had the 1st version of Clickbake. And this was about 10 years ago, about 2,01320 14, and basically Clickbacon started as it was all the great data that restaurants love off of their spreadsheets. But in a web application.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So you could run reports and go back and look at data. Over the last 10 years we've grown that. And it was very successful. And it's been incredibly fun journey to get feedback from restaurant owners. But about a year year and a half ago we had fallen pretty far behind on technology. And so I went out and I found some investors. And I found some tech people. And we rebuilt a software tool that now uses all of the best technology, all the best AI,

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: all these really great tools. It's super fast, it's super slick. And it's built for independent restaurants. And so

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: what our software does is it? It's a dashboard. It's a reporting tool. It's an operations metrics, key performance, indicator, tool to help. You know.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Where am I at in this moment? In time I believe in budgets. I believe that what we focus on we fix. And so most of the tools out there have really clunky really difficult to use. Budgeting. It all starts for us with a budget. Hey? This is how much I think I'm going to do in sales. This is what my target cogs is. This is what my target labor is. This is what my targets are.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: and then everything gets compared to that. So then we can see like you hit your sales last week, or you didn't. You hit your cogs last week, or you didn't. You hit your labor last week, or you didn't so like, Michael said. In real time you can look and be like man if I really want to hit my profit goal at the end of the year. If I want to hit 10% profit. At the end of the year

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I already missed my cogs. In January I missed my cogs. In February I got to get to work so I could repair this before the end of the year. Otherwise operators are right. We're hoping we wait till the end of the year, and we're like, hey, bookkeeper, did I make the money I wanted to make? And your bookkeeper is like you've known your numbers all year. What do you mean? Did you make the money. It's all right there. But with our tool, like, you're going to know in real time and again what we measure we fix.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: So if we know that we're having trouble in food costs. Let's get to work on it. We just we fix it naturally, just by looking at it. So again, I can get into the techies of this, I'll take 30 seconds. But basically, we integrate with your pos. We, we pull in your sales and your labor data. We categorize that properly. That's a big challenge that a lot of bookkeepers have is they? Just look at any money in as a sale

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: gift. Cards are not a sale.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Hold on

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: gift. Cards are not a sale, it's revenue, but it's not a sale. It goes on the balance. Sheet

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: sales tax collected is not a sale, it does not go into the into the sale column, it goes on the balance sheet deposits for catering events are not a sale. Tips collected are not a sale. So while that's money that came in, if your P. And L. Right now says cash and credit card as your sales categories.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Your 1st of all, your cogs are wrong. Your labor's wrong. Everything's wrong. You're also overpaying on taxes. You're paying sales tax on sales

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DFY Marketing Systems: Sales, tax

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: You're paying sales tax on gift cards. You're paying sales tax on deposits. So 1st thing is just, most bookkeepers are just flat out doing it wrong. So we offer a free audit if you want to send us a P. And L. But, like, I said, we take your sales, we take your labor, we categorize it properly. We push that to quickbooks online.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Then we have an invoice extraction tool. So you send us all your bills, all your invoices, everything. We read it, line item by line. Item, we categorize food to food, beer, to beer, wine to wine, liquor, to liquor, to go to to goes. We do all that for you, and push that also to your quickbooks, and then we bring all that into this beautiful world that you can look at correct cost of goods, sold, correct, discounts, correct labor.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: We've done all the hard work for you. The best part about it is right now that service is is

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: a 3rd the price of the competitors out there. Because we're built for the independent restaurant operator. All those competitors, you know their names. They are not built for the 1, 2, 3 unit. They'll sell their software to you.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: and they'll they'll gladly tell you that they are absolutely built for your 1 million 2 million dollars a year operation, but I have clients doing $1213,000,000 a year that use some of those tools

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: and have to pay consultants another 50, 60, $70,000 a year if they want to use it right. And I asked them, Hey, what was your food cost last week. You know what they say to me? I don't know. And I'm like you're spending. You're spending a thousand dollars a month on software. You're spending 2 to $3,000 a month on bookkeepers, and you still don't know your food cost. That's the problem we're trying to solve. So if you have an independent restaurant. If you're not happy with your books, if you're not happy with the data, you're getting

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: head to clickbacon.com fill out the contact form. Let us know that you're part of Michael's group of the Dfy group. We will absolutely give you some specials. We will take care of you. Michael is amazing. You guys are amazing. And and this is so off the cuff that we don't have like a whole landing page and everything set up. So just tell us that you came from Michael, and you will absolutely get the best that we can absolutely do for you. And that's a promise I make

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah, head over to clickbacon.com, or email us, you've been on our website. Those of you that have the free membership shoot us an email. We'll hook you up with Ryan, and he'll take care of you.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Audit submit for an audit like if you're just like you know what I don't know. Like, send us, send us an email. We'll set up a time, I'll look at your P. And L. I'll look at your balance sheet. We'll look at whatever spreadsheets or whatever software you're using, and I'll just give you an honest assessment, hey? I'll be, I promise you, if I think you're doing it great right now, and we can't provide a better solution. I'm going to tell you that because I care about restaurant operators, I care about this business.

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: I'm not worried about picking up one or 2 sales. If this industry grows, we all grow. I just want to make sure you're getting the data you want

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DFY Marketing Systems: Yeah. And Ryan's a straight shooter, and like I said, he knows independent restauranters. Ryan. Thank you so much for doing this.

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DFY Marketing Systems: I super appreciate it. I know it's going to be really helpful to everybody that's listening and checking out. And remember.

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DFY Marketing Systems: just tap like, shoot me an email subscribe whatever. You're listening to hearing this on your favorite podcasting channel, you're watching on Youtube. Please subscribe, shoot me an email. Let me know. Thank you again, Ryan, really appreciate this. Michael Tebow, saving the world one independent restaurant at a time, cheers my friend

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Ryan Gromfin, The Restaurant Boss: Have a diet Coke kind of day

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DFY Marketing Systems: There you go! Thanks, Buddy.