Food service consulting and restaurant consulting are both incredibly challenging and exciting projects to take on and even more so to master successfully. Unbeknownst to me, I started consulting long before I realized what I was doing. That is both the good news and the bad news. The good news is, I took my profession and my professionalism seriously enough to really know the business of food service well enough to be of service and value to others. The bad news is, I never intended to be a food service consultant and therefore never thought about it until after I had made a lot of mistakes. Luckily, those mistakes turned out to be what finally got me to take this new business seriously. So whether you are looking to be a food service consultant or to hire one, I hope that some of my mistakes will help you.
The first and biggest one was to realize that a chef/consultant is not in the chef/consultant business but rather a professional services provider who is ultimately in the business of building relationships of trust. I’ve had dozens of clients hire me to fix their restaurant, so I marched in full steam ahead, armed with my classical training as a chef, ready to fix their problems. As it turns out, not one of them wanted fixing, as they knew their business better than I did. In fact, what they both wanted and needed was someone to understand them, their business, and their needs. I guess I missed that day in school.
Hint: People don’t listen to someone they don’t know or trust. Build trust first.
Second mistake was to promise deliverables and ensuing results when I was not in a position to make such promises. If they weren’t me and weren’t going to do it exactly my way, the results wouldn’t be mine. That gets us back to lesson #1: Build trust first.
The third and potentially most dangerous one was, I was selling the above results rather than my time, acumen, and insights. That meant that I was underselling myself. And living like a pauper with frustrated clients and me pulling my hair out.
Here’s the trick: a food service consultant is someone who is there for a specific period of time to accomplish a specific set of goals. Both the consultant and the client would best be served to define those goals as well as agree on how that is going to happen. I’m happy to share my experience, so please feel free to email me with any questions you might have.